Temple Chima Ubochi
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind (Winston Churchill)
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves (William Shakespeare)
The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future (Herbert Spencer)
The key journalist of the future must be able to relate todays event to yesterdays fact in a way that helps indicate tomorrows meaning (Edward Barrett)
any northern leaders, especially those from the north-eastern part of Nigeria, have no love for the country, as they’re imbued with fake patriotic and nationalistic ardour, because, their hearts and allegiance are else where. This part of the country has “cling” to Nigeria because of the oil wealth and the political power they have been enjoying, more than any other part of Nigeria. Likely, one of the leaders of the north-east created Boko Haram, with the support of others, for their parochial interests. The northern leaders are only there to take all they can out of Nigeria; and when it (Nigeria) becomes “worthless” in their eyes, they would abandon it for a new country. A senate report has it that Boko Haram wants to take over the north-eastern part of Nigeria and declare it another country. Boko Haram has waged its insurgency since 2009, with more than 3,600 lives lost. The group is pushing for the creation of an Islamic state out of Nigeria.
In 1990, Major Gideon Orkar (may his soul rest in peace) and co. envisaged all these happening today in Nigeria; that was the reason they decided to sequester the north-eastern part from the rest of Nigeria, while giving it (the north-east) the opportunity to pledge genuine allegiance to Nigeria, and to see all Nigerians as having equal access to the national political power, before its re-admission as a part of Nigeria, or else, to remain excised for ever. Major Orkar and co. knew what that part of Nigeria was thinking and wanted to make it easier for them either to belong or to opt out, unfortunately their mission failed even before it had begun.
Just as Thucydides (460 –395 BC) wrote that “The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage”, Major Orkar and co. wanted a Nigeria where unity, peace, liberty, equality and fraternity would reign, as Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote that “Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires". Orkar and co. wanted a better Nigeria, just as Albert Camus (1913-1960) wrote that “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better", but, Boko Haram wants to dismember the country through subjugation and religious fanaticism, and then, force people back to Stone Age practices.
Cornelius Tacitus (55-117 A.D.), in The Histories, wrote that "The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion". Some of those accused of being behind the Boko Haram sect, were some of the military rulers/leaders, who Major Orkar and co. wanted to topple in 1990. If they are really the people who created Boko Haram sect, just as accused, why didn’t they allow Orkar’s coup to succeed by accepting to opt out of Nigeria then? Because power was in their hands then, they refused to accept what’s “sensible” to them now, then. What Boko Haram has unleashed on Nigeria now, was what Orkar and co. wanted to save Nigeria from (wanton destruction of lives and property, displacement of people, psychological trauma suffered by victims and their families, hatred, animosity, religious fanaticism etc). If the northern leaders had allowed Orkar and co. to have their way in 1990, all the lives lost; property destroyed; people displaced; women and girls raped; the human and material resources wasted in fighting the insurgents etc wouldn’t have happened since 2009 till date.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), in the “Young India, 22 October 1925”, wrote that “The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles". Ironically, the same people being accused as the unseen hands controlling the insurgents, are those who allotted many of the oil wells in the south to themselves and their friends when they were in the corridors of power, and still, they don’t want peace in Nigeria as long as that serves their narrow interests. Some of those being pointed at as those who created Boko Haram sect, are the retired military generals, the untouchables, and probably the oil thieves depriving Nigeria of millions of dollars everyday through oil theft and illegal bunkering they engaged in. They have gained, all their lives, from Nigeria, and still, they pledge no true allegiance to Nigeria, and do not recognize or respect its sovereignty – Nigeria has been too good to them, their families and their zone, more than any other people of other zones, but still, they’re the most ingrates in the country.
The President, while declaring the state of emergency in the three north-eastern states on May 14, 2013, said these, amongst other things:
“I have received detailed briefings from our security agencies. These briefings indicate that what we are facing is not just militancy or criminality, but a rebellion and insurgency by terrorist groups which pose a very serious threat to national unity and territorial integrity. Already, some northern parts of Borno state have been taken over by groups whose allegiance is to different flags and ideologies.
5. These terrorists and insurgents seem determined to establish control and authority over parts of our beloved nation and to progressively overwhelm the rest of the country. In many places, they have destroyed the Nigerian flag and other symbols of state authority and in their place, hoisted strange flags suggesting the exercise of alternative sovereignty.
6. They have attacked government buildings and facilities. They have murdered innocent citizens and state officials. They have set houses ablaze, and taken women and children as hostages. These actions amount to a declaration of war and a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and threaten her territorial integrity. As a responsible government, we will not tolerate this”.
This writer wrote these excerpts, on this website, on Friday, August 14, 2009:
“Who said the northern elite have no knowledge of what Boko Haram stands for, or the idea that the security crisis was coming? The northern leaders have no love for the country; they are only paying lip service to the notion of one Nigeria because it serves their purpose. Once the oil wells dry up or when oil becomes worthless, they might secede. The northerners owe their allegiance to foreign lands rather than to Nigeria. I read this in the internet recently. The true story goes like this:
“It happens I've a female friend from Northern Nigerian, she is from an elite home. I went to their house in Kano State to spend some time with her. I noticed something very disturbing about their way of life. I started seeing it on the first morning, I woke up. She is a faithful Muslim; she wakes up early to say her morning prayers. Then when the day breaks, she tunes on her TV to watch news only on Aljazeera news TV. In their house they don’t have any Nigerian channel; they don’t watch the National news on NTA. She reads newspapers like Daily Trust and Kano Based Triumph. She cares less about what going on in Nigeria. All what she cares about is Kano and the Arab world.
In the afternoon, we went to see her friends about 4 of them. The situation was all the same, no Nigerian channel on their Sat. Her Friends were born in Nigeria and schooled in Nigeria. To my greatest surprise they can’t speak English. They speak Hausa and Arabic only. They did their secondary school in the heart of Kano and got Admission in Saudi Arabia to study medicine. I asked one of them to recite the National Anthem, she can’t???!!! She told me that!! Back at my friend’s home in the evening, I was chatting with her brother, I asked him to recite the national anthem, and he did it half way and shut up. I then asked him to recite the National anthem of Saudi Arabia; he did it without any mistake.
I went back to my friend and ask her some few Nigerian Leaders, mostly current Governors from the South East and Niger-Delta. She doesn’t even know one of them. But she can name all the Governors in United Arab Emirate, including Syria, Yemen, Oman, and off course Saudi Arabia. I became totally speechless. In their house they have 4 Saudi Arabia's flag and no Nigerian flag. I've chatted with more than 50 young people in Kano and the condition remains the same. Generally Speaking Kano has very strong tie with the Arab world than Nigeria States and nothing can change this. No wonder many Arabs indigenized in Kano and can run for elections and win! Many Kano Boys want to marry Arab women, they like them 100% more than Nigerian girls. Younger generations of Kano have Arab roots. So please Nigerians what can you say about this???”
The northern deceit to the concoction called Nigeria did not start today; it has been there all along. This was what Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, (who later became the first prime minister of Nigeria) said, prior to independence, while speaking in the Northern Region's House of Assembly:
“We do not want sir, our Southern neighbours to interfere in our development. I should like to make it clear to you that if the British quitted Nigeria now at this stage, the Northern people would continue their interrupted conquest to the sea".
The Parrot (Newspaper) of Oct. 12 1960, wrote what Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, said twelve days after Nigeria's independence from Britain:
”The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate from our great -grand father, Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South as conquered territories and never allow them to have control of their future”.
When I read the above quote for the first time, I was speechless for minutes. Do we now see from where groups like Boko Haram derived their ideology, and why the northerners think “they were born to rule?”
Groups representing indigenous communities blasted the Hausa-Fulani ruling class in August 2013, saying their cold response to the violent activities of the Boko Haram sect amounted to complicity. The groups including the Green Peoples Environmental Network, Southern Nigerian Ethnic Nationality Alliance, O'odua Nationalist Coalition, the Coalition of Nigerian Civil Right Groups and the United Middle Belt Youth Congress, said the conflict in the Maghreb region and Boko Haram insurgency had led to displacement of indigenous communities and the seizure of ancestral homelands, rape and killings of innocent civilians by the armed Islamic gangs.
In a joint press statement, the groups said as the 2015 presidential election draws near, they would begin an intensive campaign against Islamic fundamentalists who might want to contest. According to The Punch: They said, "We assert our full support only for a presidential candidate that will restructure Nigeria and guarantee ethnic self-determination. Any candidate that does not support full resource control of resources by the communities that produce them must be opposed with all our strength. Hausa-Fulani political groups are interested in nothing but a system that will sustain and oil their own parochial and self-serving interests, little wonder that the violent Boko Haram has become a political scare crow for a section of the Hausa-Fulani political class. The responses of the northern caliphate to the series of bombings have been that of cold complicity." The groups also said without a national dialogue and the restructuring of Nigeria, there would be no end to the circle of violence which has continued in Nigeria since 1960.
To further co-relate Boko Haram with some north-eastern leaders: the Daily Trust of August 16, 2013, wrote that the Joint Task Force(JTF) in Kano arrested a suspected Boko Haram member at the residence of the son of late former Head of State Sani Abacha, Mohammed.
Also, 247ureports wrote: “He is untouchable. He has been at the helm of Nigeria’s affairs and most importantly the nation’s security boss, through several administrations, both military and civilian. Known as the Spymaster, no one appreciates the intricacies of developing or curbing terrorism like this man. He has links to international governments and international secret intelligence departments. He is one-on-one friends of top world leaders, politicians and other government officials. The powerful PDP member we are talking about, also has a die-to-rule Nigeria ambition. General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (Gusau being his hometown), is this one man. Nigerians as with masses all over the world, usually stay fixated with the politics and shows of the ruling individuals, without realizing the machinations behind, including forces of good and evil that select, keep in power and compress their leaders. These power and terror broker “elite,” are usually the most dangerous enemies to the people and the true reasons for their suffering. Elected officials are handicapped, at the mercy of these barons.
In our July 2nd article (General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, Are You the Boko Haram Sponsor Azazi Inferred?), we described how late NSA, General Andrew Owoye Azazi, who briefly occupied the “NSA” position Gusau literally owns, professed to an audience that as a result of “internal workings of PDP,” a “die-to-rule” PDP presidential candidate, who was among those “shenked” by PDP, was behind Boko Haram “suddenly” acquiring the ammunition, skills and financing to reign terror on Nigeria. Possible contestants in that run-up were Gusau, IBB and Atiku.
The Nation Online on 01/01/2012 had stated: Hard-line allies of Jonathan’s have gone further, suggesting that northern rivals within the PDP – such as Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau – may have covert ties to Boko Haram. Privately though, some of Jonathan’s securocrats have been asking Babangida and Gusau for advice. Gusau has even also been recently implicated in having connections to dangerous ammunitions found in Kano, in the possession of Lebanese with “Hezbollah’” links. It was under his tenures as NSA that these arms were likely, easily imported and stored. Spymaster Aliyu Gusau, of the team of Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku Abubakar, fits the profile Azazi painted, to the teeth. Gusau has been in and out of corridors of power, has the financial capacity, the desire to rule, the wherewithal, the desperation and the history, including being involved in the brutal government of Babangida, to be able to be the chief Boko Haram sponsor.
An article on September 14, 2011, in PM news, “Why the Terrorists are winning in Nigeria,” asserted from “sources,” that when Boko Haram began constituting itself as a terrorist organisation, the president in charge at the time, Obasanjo asked Gusau, his NSA, about this group, popularly called the “Nigerian Taliban,” in intelligence circles at the time. Gusau surprisingly responded, “No such group exists in Nigeria.”
The article further revealed that Steven Davis, activist and public commentator said of the NSA:
“Goodluck Jonathan became President of Nigeria upon the death of Umaru Yar’Adua in May 2010. Former NSA Aliyu Mohammed Gusau was once again made National Security Adviser. Gusau could not possibly have missed the threat of Boko Haram. If his security operatives failed to raise the matter in their reports, then the public statements released by Boko Haram and printed verbatim in Nigeria’s national newspapers should have raised questions from the NSA, if not alarm. The handling of the Boko Haram matter while Gusau was NSA resulted in a dramatic escalation in the conflict to the stage that it threatened the nation’s security.” As we described, Azazi’s death, right after he made this admission, fits with the style of Babangida and Abacha era top Intel orchestrated assassinations. Late General Azazi’s chopper was described to have blown up in the skies of Bayelsa and fallen into the bushes of Okoroba on December 15, 2012. The dangerous nature of the spymaster possibly partially explains why the Nigerian president simply does not have the mettle to arrest him. In late General Azazi’s words, “where is the president” to do so? Like Pakistan’s Musharraf and Egypt’s Mubarak, Nigeria’s problems can not be seriously tackled if impunity remains for its leaders and upper echelon who commit the most heinous atrocities, corruption and mass murder. If the government does not mete justice, not only will suffering, poverty and terrorism flourish, but the civilians and youth will increasingly demand it in their way”.
Please read (or re-read). Note where Ojukwu and major Orkar were mentioned:
To be concluded!
TIT BITS
THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!
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