by Femi Fani-Kayode
“When I say that the Presidency must come to the north next year, I am referring to the Hausa-Fulani core north and not any northern Christian or Muslim minority tribe.
The Christians in the north are nothing and the muslim minorities in the north know that when we are talking about leadership in the north and in Nigeria, Allah has given it to us, the Hausa-Fulani.
They can grumble, moan and groan as much as they want but each time they go into their bedrooms to meet their wives and each time they get on their prayer mats to begin their prayers, it is we the Fulani that they think of, that they fear, that they bow to and that they pray for.
Some of them are even ready to give us their wives and daughters for one nights sport and pleasure. They owe us everything. This is because we gave them Islam through the great Jihad waged by Sheik Uthman Dan Fodio.
We also captured Ilorin, killed their local King and installed our Fulani Emir. We took that ancient town away from the barbarian Yoruba and their filthy pagan gods. We liberated all these places and all these people by imposing Islam on them by force.
It was either the Koran or the sword and most of them chose the Koran. In return for the good works of our forefathers Allah, through the British, gave us Nigeria to rule and to do with as we please.
Since 1960 we have been doing that and we intend to continue. The Igbo tried to stop us in 1966 and between 1967 and 1969 they paid a terrible price. They were brought to heel and since then they have been broken.
No Goodluck or anyone else will stop us from taking back our power next year. We will kill, maim, destroy and turn this country into Africa’s biggest war zone and refugee camp if they try it.
Many say we are behind Boko Haram. My answer is what do you expect? We do not have economic power or intellectual power. All we have is political power and they want to take even that from us.
We must fight and we will fight back in order to keep it. They have brought in the infidels from America and the pigs from Israel to help them but they will fail. The war has just begun, the Mujahadeen are more than ready and by Allah we shall win.
If they don’t want an ISIS in Nigeria then they must give us back the Presidency and our political power. Their soldiers are killing our warriors and our people every day but mark this: even if it takes one hundred years we will have our revenge.
Every Fulani man that they kill is a debt that will be repaid even if it takes 100 years. The Fulani have very long memories”.
These are the words of an unrepentant Haramite by the name of Aliyu Gwarzo who I am told hails from Kano. I might add that his views do not represent the thinking of the majority of Hausa-Fulani people but it does represent a tendency which is, more often than not, kept as hidden and as secret as possible.
The fact that it is not often spoken or publicly expressed does not mean that it is not there. Whether we like to admit it or not there are some individuals, like Gwarzo, in our country that fully espouse the doctrines of apartheid and who honestly believe that they were born to rule and that Nigeria was bequeathed to their fathers and ancestors. Wining and dining with such people is like making merry with a cult of vampires: one must do so with a very long fork and knife.
To them the return of power to the north, and when they say north they mean the small cabal of ultra conservative Fulanis and no-one else, is an imperative that must be achieved by any and every means necessary. To them cheating, lying, killing, maiming, deceiving and pretending is fair game providing that objective is achieved.
It is an insidious, deadly and dangerous agenda which, sadly, many from outside the north that have aligned with the opposition and particularly the Buhari presidential aspiration are unknowingly feeding into.
Luckily for us, the Aliyu Gwarzo’s of this world do not speak for or represent the thinking of the ordinary working class Hausa-Fulani, or indeed northerners, who are as much of a victim of this chronically racist cabal as anyone else.
Neither do they speak for the more enlightened, progressive and civilised elements within the northern ruling class that are silently rising up like the Kashim Ibrahim Imams, Abubakar Umars, Nuhu Ribadus, Sambo Dasukis and Ahmed Muazus of this world, who are doing their very best to swim against the tide and establish a new northern Nigeria where racism and ethnic bigotry has no place and where all men, regardless of tribe or creed, are regarded as being equal before the law and before God.
Unfortunately I cannot vouch for some of the leading members of the opposition and particularly the Buharis of this world in the same way. One of the strategies that the hegemonists have employed to achieve their objectives is the insidious attempt to use the Nigerian chapter of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign group (BBOG) to undermine and rubbish the attempts of the present government to get the Chibok girls back home.
It would be interesting to know who funds this group and who the hidden forces, foreign or otherwise, that gives them orders really are. Are they involved with the CIA? Are they linked to the South African intelligence agencies? Are they in bed with M16?
These are questions that need to be answered. Every single Nigerian yearns and prays for the return of the Chibok girls but when this otherwise laudable initiative and noble activism becomes a rallying point for everything that is anti-Jonathan, anti-government and anti-military it gives cause for concern.
In their determination to denigrate the efforts of our intelligence agencies and our armed forces, the leaders of the BBOG campaign seem to forget that men and women of the Nigerian military and security agencies are being killed every day in their attempt to protect us against Boko Haram.
These courageous and patriotic Nigerians are risking their lives for us and they are giving their today so that we may have our tomorrow. It is as a consequence of their gallant and courageous efforts that many of us can sleep well late into the night in the knowledge that we are safe and secure. Yet the leadership of BBOG do not appear to appreciate this and instead of commending our armed forces and security agencies for their noble sacrifice they constantly ridicule their efforts on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and elsewhere. Worse still they are clearly in bed with the opposition.
If it is true that the Nigerian wing of the ”Bring Back Our Girls Campaign Group” is the political wing of APC as Chief Audu Ogbeh, the Director General of the Buhari for President Campaign Organisation, has said then some of its leading figures have some hard questions to answer.
Whatever happened to their claim of impartiality and neutrality when it comes to political matters? This has proved to be the lie of the century. Some of us knew all along that they were manipulating the system and using the Chibok tragedy just to embarrass the Federal Government and the PDP.
I smelt a rat right from the beginning when it was brought to my attention that virtually every single key figure in the Nigerian wing of the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign is an APC member or sympathiser and when I noticed that they constantly shied away from attacking or criticising Boko Haram itself.
Instead of doing that, they have channelled all their anger and toxic frustrations towards the Federal Government and saved all their vitriol and hate for the president.
One would have thought that they would blame the terrorists, kidnappers and abductors as much as the security agencies who failed to find the girls and rescue them but this is not the case.
As far as the key figures behind the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign are concerned, the Federal Government, who have not been able to find the girls and return them home safely, are the demons whilst Boko Haram, who are the ones that actually abducted the girls and subjected them to rape, slavery, torture and the most extreme and brutal form of physical abuse, are the angels.
This twisted logic is a manifestation of their sheer perfidy and a reflection of their confused minds. They are a handful of heartless people that will do and use anything or any situation to gain some political mileage for their friends in high places.
This is so even where the liberty, welfare, future and lives of innocent little children are involved. The truth is that those behind the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign in Nigeria are shedding crocodile tears and they have been doing so for the last few months.
They do not mean what they say and they do not want those girls to be found and brought home because the political party that they represent are getting so much political mileage out of this whole sordid episode.
This is sad and unfortunate but it is the bitter truth. It is utterly despicable to use the plight of those poor girls for political purposes.
Worse still, it is clear to me that Boko Haram, the military wing of the APC, are working closely and in tandem with its political wing which, according to Audu Ogbeh, is the BBOG campaign organisation.
The former are a bunch of sadistic murderers, psychotic beasts, perverted child rapists and reprobate sociopaths who actually carried out the kidnapping and stole our girls from their school in the middle of the night whilst the latter are a bunch of sanctimonious ”holier than thou” pretenders who have an insidious and dangerous political agenda, who do not give a hoot about the welfare or well-being of the girls and who take pleasure and delight in gloating over the fact that the Federal Government has been unable to locate, find or rescue them.
If the BBOG group really want those girls to be brought back they should talk to their associates in the military wing of their political party, the APC. Audu Ogbeh has confirmed that they are all working together in the same party and for the same evil cause.
From what he has said one thing is clear to me: if enough pressure is brought to bear on the leading figures behind BBOG by our security and intelligence agencies they will eventually crack and they will be compelled to bring their immense influence to bear over their associates in Boko Haram to free those girls and return them safely to their homes.
It is time for this motley group of malevolent and politically-motivated personalities to stop using the tragedy of the Chibok girls for their own subterranean agenda and for gaining cheap political mileage.
As an addendum to this series of ugly and unfolding events, permit me to end this contribution with the following observation. The Australian negotiator Stephen Davis, a man that was widely celebrated by the opposition and the BBOG group when he alleged that Alhaji Modu Sheriff, now a leading member of the PDP and Major General Ihejirika, the former Chief of Army Staff, were sponsors of Boko Haram, has now alleged that elements in Nigeria’s opposition do not want the Chibok girls to be freed and that they are frustrating all attempts to get them released.
This is indeed grave news but I am not surprised. Some of us have been saying it for the last few months but few would believe it or even listen. I wonder what the leading lights of the opposition have to say about Davis’ latest allegation and I would be interested to know whether they still love and admire him as much as they once did.
I wonder if they still believe that he is the modern day hero whose intentions for Nigeria are noble, who can tell no lies and who can do no wrong. Most important of all, I wonder how the leading lights in the BBOG campaign, who clearly have a strong affinity with and empathy for Stephen Davis, feel about his latest allegation. May God deliver us from these pretenders and may He bring our girls back home at the soonest.
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 is a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) having returned to the party following a brief stint in the All Progressive Congress (APC).
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
