“My brethren the Infidels in this country are pointing their fingers to our faces we also should do the same. After the message I gave in Rijau Niger state and presently am in Kontagora the message was delivered to the president through a reliable source. I stand by the existing code that all Muslims must rise and defend ourselves from all infidels and all Muslim uniformed men must stand and defend Muslims at all cost for every one should know the road to his or her fathers home. We have sent our message to the president and I was assured he got it. He is with us and believes in our cause. Every Muslim in Nigeria must be ready. We will never allow any infidel to come to power again. We want our Muslim soldiers in the barracks to be on their guard and never allow these infidels to intimidate us again. Whether we are prepared or not every soldier must answer his father’s name.” – Sheik Abubakar Gero Argungu, Sawtul Hikmah, March 9th, 2018.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his man is playing with fire. Such threatening words in a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic nation and plural society like ours where over 100 million Christians live and reside? Such madness is rarely seen.
I am constrained to ask, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that has chosen to defy the armies of the Living God?
Who is this reprobate unbeliever that seeks to challenge Christendom and to dare and denigrate the Christian faithful?
Who is this son of perdition that mocks our God and that seeks to demean the sons and daughters of light?
Who is this blood-lusting barbarian who seeks to unleash the dogs of war on our nation?
Who is this ranking pagan who loves the shedding of innocent blood and who brings nothing but threats, division, bloodshed, conflict, strife, violence and destruction?
The truth is that this Abubakar Shekau in the making, this demon in human flesh and this servant of satan should have been arrested long ago for his dangerous and provocative words and his reckless disposition, both of which are capable of setting Nigeria on fire.
And neither is he a real Muslim or truly representative of the majority of Muslims in our country.
His utterances are unacceptable and the fact that, rather than caution him, the Buhari administration has instead encouraged, pampered, protected and supported him speaks volumes and gives cause for concern.
Those that welcome such sentiments, that encourage such words, that are stoking this dangerous fire and that are fanning the embers of sectarian strife, religious bigotry and hateful intolerance would do well to recognise the fact that no-one and no group of people will come out as the winner in a religious war in this country.
Worst still if such a conflagration were ever to be ignited we would all, both Christians and Muslims, suffer the heinous, horrific and unimaginable consequences, we would all witness the wholesale slaughter of millions of our compatriots and we would all watch our nation burn to ashes around us.
When one reads the contributions of such mad men and couples it with the credible assertion and legitimate concerns of no less a person than Vice President Mike Pence of the United States of America who recently said that “the most dangerous place in the world for Christians to live is Nigeria”, one cannot but conclude that the massive Christian population in Nigeria is not only under a serious existential threat but is also gradually becoming an endangered species.
It is therefore with the greatest incredulity that one considers Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo’s latest contribution to the public space when he said, “Christians and southerners are the greatest beneficiaries of Buhari’s government”.
One wonders just how far this man is prepared to go to please his Fulani masters. Surely even misplaced loyalty and what can only be described as the madness of blind fanaticism and the bedlam of quisling servility has its limits.
If there was ever a need to provide any evidence to prove that Dr. Reuben Abati’s “Villa curse” is real, this is it.
Claiming that southerners and Christians are the greatest beneficiaries of Buhari’s government is rather like saying that human beings are the greatest beneficiaries of hell.
The truth is that Nigeria is as much of a paradise for southerners and Christians as hell is for damned and lost souls.
I am constrained to ask the question: is my old friend Yemi Osinbajo alright upstairs? Given what he has said, I really do have cause to question his sanity. I am convinced that he needs help.
First he said Nigeria cannot be restructured and that those leaders that have called for restructuring were just looking for government appointments.
Then he said that we must forgive the Fulani terrorists that have been slaughtering and maiming thousands of innocent and defenceless Christians in the Middle Belt and the south over the last three years.
Finally he said that we must not attempt to defend our loved ones, our families, our homes, our farms and our land when the Fulani attack and that instead we must allow them to do as they plesse and pray for them.
Strange counsel indeed. Yet when it comes to the activities of his fellow Christians and southerners his tune changes, he becomes aggressive, unforgiving, war-like and bellicose and he proudly proclaims that the Federal Government and the Nigerian people must crush and kill members of Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB even though there is no record of them attacking or murdering anyone or of carrying arms.
How does the Vice President explain this glaring double-standard? How does he rationalise this schizophrenic ‘Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde’ disposition?
How does he manage to show his face in public and still hold his head up high when it is increasingly obvious that he has been struck with an affliction that is commonly referred to as the ‘Stockholm Syndrome?’
In his world there appears to be one law for northern Muslims and another for southern Christians.
When a northern Muslim Fulani terrorist slaughters innocent and defenceless men, women and children he is supported by the state, given free reign, forgiven and prayed for.
Yet when a southern Christian Igbo dissenter voices his support for the right of self-determination and does so in a passive, peaceful, lawful and legitimate manner without physically attacking or killing anyone or carrying arms he is labelled as a terrorist and slaughtered in his home and in the streets by our security forces.
How can Osinbajo, who claims to be a Christian and indeed a Pastor, justify this and how does he sleep at night?
This unacceptable application and display of double-standards, skewered values, institutional racism, preferential treatment and nonsensical implementation of an absurd and self-serving policy can best be described as ‘the gospel according to Osinbajo!’
Yet his latest contribution, namely that Christians and southerners are the major beneficiaries of Buhari’s government, makes his previous utterances pale into insignificance.
His latest ‘faux pas’ can best be described as the mother of all lies and the most shameful and dishonest contribution that ANY Vice President has EVER made to public discourse in our entire history.
Osinbajo’s nauseating mendacities and his sickening attempt to further ingratiate himself to his master Buhari and the Fulani ruling class at the expense of the welfare and safety of the Christian community and southern Nigerians is as repugnant as it is repulsive. Simply put, he turns my stomach.
The truth is that he betrayed the south and Christendom long ago by standing shoulder to shoulder with a man and a people whose hatred and sheer contempt for southerners and Christians can hardly be disputed and can barely be hidden.
Worst still, Osinbajo makes no apology for his servile and cowardly disposition, he is totally unashamed and unrepentant of it and he can never be redeemed.
They say destiny speaks at the end. The fact of the matter is that history will judge him harshly and at the end of the day he will not only sink with his principal Buhari but he will also be dumped and forgotten in the dustbin of history.
For him I have the following questions.
Firstly, what profiteth a man to gain the world and lose his soul? Is the Vice Presidency of Nigeria worth your eternal and precious soul?
Secondly, other than death, destruction, opprobium and eternal damnation what did Judas Iscariot’s treachery and betrayal of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ buy for him with his 30 pieces of silver?
Thirdly, what price does a man pay for betraying his calling, his faith and God’s people in their time of need and, as it was with Ichabod, has the glory of God not departed from you already?
Finally when a great and courageous Queen and Daughter of Zion by the name of Esther proclaimed “if I perish, I perish”, went before the King, spoke up for the people of God and thereby saved the children of Israel, were there no lessons to be learnt?
Is Buhari more intimidating, more terrifying, more awesome, more deadly, more captivating and more powerful than the great King Xerxes of Ancient Persia and the glory and splendour of the mighty Persian empire?
Whatever his answers are let me set the record straight: Buhari’s government is a government that was put in place and in power by the northern Muslim Hausa-Fulani ruling class and it is a government whose primary purpose and objective is to further and protect the interests of that class at the expense of all others.
It was never designed or conceived to benefit southerners and Christians and neither has it ever done so.
His administration is not only hostile to southerners and Christians but it has persecuted and marginalised them more than any other government in our history, treated them with the utmost derision and contempt and demeaned, insulted, maligned and denigrated them on a daily basis and in an unprecedented fashion.
Anyone that doubts that should ask the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) or should consult the leaders of Afenifere, Ohanaeze, the Niger Delta Elders and the Middle Belt Forum.
More Christians and southerners have been targetted, slaughtered, persecuted, humiliated and denigrated under the watch of the Buhari government than ANY other government in the history of our country outside of the civil war.
It is not about how many Christian or southern junior or senior Ministers there are in Buhari’s Federal Executive Council or cabinet: it is about respect, dignity, security and equity for the Christian community and the people of the south. It is about giving us our dues and treating us as equal citizens.
The fact that every single security agency and branch of our Armed Forces in the our nation, except for the Navy, is headed by a northern Muslim speaks volumes.
The fact that every single major department of NNPC is headed by a northern Muslim, that the northern Muslim Group Managing Drector calls all the shots in the oil sector and that the southern Christian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources has been hopelessly sidelined and marginalised says even more.
The fact that 808 Christians were butchered in their homes in southern Kaduna on Christmas day alone in 2016 by Fulani terrorists and that not one of the perpetrators has been apprehended or brought to justice makes the point eloquently.
Yet it does not stop there. Consider this:
Mr. Charles Ogbue, one of Nigeria’s keenest minds and most brilliant writers, in an essay titled “Buhari’s Boko Haram War Is An Organised Crime” wrote the following:
“Make no mistake, most of these soldiers laying down their lives in the wild goose chase known as the Boko Haram war are drawn from the soithern part of the country and non-Caliphate part of the north. The Fulani soldiers are mostly here in the peaceful south and the southeast to be more precise. Come to 82 division here or go through southeast roads and see for yourself. The soldiers on all our peaceful roads are 90% Fulani soldiers. This whole thing would be comically entertaining if it wasn’t such a national tragedy. Shame, isn’t it?”
Mr. Paul Achalla makes a similar point in his essay titled “The Undeclared War On The South”. He wrote as follows:
“I lost a cousin to Boko Haram last year in Sambisa forest. He has been in the military since 1983 and was due to retire last month (February 2018). Just a few months to his retirement, he was sent to fight the dreaded Boko Haram and was declared dead on specifically the 18th day of April, 2017. He was one of the over 200 soldiers that were killed in that operation. And not less than 100 soldiers in that operation got missing and their bodies are unaccounted for till now, putting the number of deaths to about 300. This news was kept away from the public. Of striking importance is the fact that none of the soldiers killed in that operation was a northerner. The allegation is that over 90% of the soldiers fighting Boko Haram directly are of southern extraction. While the brutal harmful northern soldiers are sent to fight harmless “pythons” in the south, armless southern soldiers are sent to fight the harmful terrorists in the north. Those who are unfortunate to find their names enlisted for such suicide missions almost never come back alive. Unfortunately the pawn in this chess business is the south. We want to be more Nigerians than the real Nigerians”.
Can anyone legitimately dispute what Mr. Ogbue and Mr. Achalla have said? Is this absurd arrangement and state of affairs one of the major benefits that Chrisians and southerners are enjoying under Buhari? Is this what Osinbajo was referring to?
Or is it the fact that Taraba, Plateau, Benue, Adamawa, Nassarawa, Kaduna and other Middle Belt states that have a Christian majority and virtually all the southern states have been especially and specifically targetted by the Fulani terrorists and subjected to genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing and mass murder whilst the Fulani and Muslim-led Federal Government conveniently turns a blind eye and does nothing to protect them or bring their killers to justice?
Is that another of the great benefits that the Christian community and southerners are enjoying under the Buhari administration?
Is it not clear that Baba Ayo Adebanjo, one of the most reverred elderstatesmen, nationalists and patriots in our country, was absolutely right when he said that “villa juju” had turned Vice President Osinbajo into “the worst devil”?
In my view any southerner or Christian that is part of the Buhari administration or that refuses to call them out or still supports them is nothing but a shameless underling, a self-deprecating slave, a gutless quisling, a modern-day “Uncle Tom”, a self-hating field-hand and a miserable and feeble-minded appendage.
And that includes our dimunitive Vice President who believes that the constant repetition of the most despicable and filthy lies somehow turns those lies into truth.
May God deliver him from his self-serving delusions.
Permit me to conclude this contribution with the famous words of Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King jnr.. He said,
”Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right”.
This is deep wisdom and these words are not ordinary. They are the oracles of God, spoken by the Sprit of God, through a great and annointed man of God.
Those that believe that we must remain silent and not speak truth to power when men like Sheik Abubakar Gero Argungu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo foul up the space with their deceit and tyranny and their hurtful, irresponsible and dangerous assertions have much to learn from Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King.
Femi Fani-Kayode is a lawyer, a Nigerian politician, an evangelical christian, an essayist, a poet and he was the Special Assistant (Public Affairs) to President Olusegun Obasanjo from July 2003 until June 2006. He was the minister of culture and tourism of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from June 22nd to Nov 7th 2006 and as the minister of Aviation from Nov 7th 2006 to May 29th 2007. He runs a syndicated column on The Trent. He tweets from@realFFK.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
