The relentless killing of innocent Northerners in the South-East is absolutely condemnable.
Events of the last few years call for the need to review the future of this country as one nation. It is high time we reviewed the arrangement called Nigeria.
With the spate of killings, especially of innocent Northerners, and the burning of their goods in the South-East by IPOB terrorists, perhaps we should consider the China-Hong Kong arrangement of one nation, two systems at best.
If the China-Hong Kong arrangement doesn’t work, then everyone should just go their separate ways. This abusive union has already failed woefully, and it would not take us anywhere.
I’m cocksure, without any doubt, if the north is a husband and the South a wife or vice versa, no one would tolerate one another for this long, having been forced together into a union full of ethno-religious hatred and intolerance along many fronts by Lord Lugard.
As it stands in Nigeria, there are regions a Hausa-Fulani Northern Muslim can’t comfortably visit for fear of being profiled and killed by cannibalistic terrorists who kill innocent people, mutilate his or her body parts and subsequently eat his or her body parts. If, as a Nigerian, you can’t comfortably visit places across your own country to exercise your freedom of movement, then this union isn’t worth it.
Loquacious politicians and pseudo social media influencers who are hitherto very vocal about happenings in the North are deliberately silent about what is happening in their immediate backyard.
If you have the temerity to condemn happenings hundreds of kilometres away from your zone, then courtesy demands you also expend the same energy towards the happenings in your immediate environment, if at all your outrage is guided by altruism.
Whenever there is any killing or trouble in the North, those from the other side of the Niger are usually the loudest. However, if, on the other hand, the issue is about their immediate zone, which in this case is about IPOB nefariously brutal killings, they completely ignore. Until we invest on the media and conduct our own propaganda, nobody will tell our story for us.
For many years now, IPOB terrorists have been killing innocent Northerners in the east, burning their trucks and properties. The government has equally not done anything to tackle their parallel government in the east. In the midst of all these killings, South-East leaders are not saying anything. Many of them prefer to turn blind eyes and deaf ears to the happenings in the South due to their politics. Nonetheless, when the silence becomes too much, it may be rightly interpreted as a tacit endorsement.
Quite surprisingly, even Peter Obi, who is seeking to become Nigeria’s President and has been busy traversing the nooks and crannies of Nigeria to solicit for votes and support, is silent about the activities of his people. Yet, this is someone that wants to govern a complex, multi-religious and multi-ethnic country like Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, our Northern leaders need to come out to strongly condemn the ugly activities of IPOB in the South, especially the part where innocent Northerners are the victims. Things can not continue to deteriorate while they watch with an i-don’t-care attitude.
At this juncture in our country, Northerners living in the South either for residential purposes or business are not safe. They have become endangered species, constantly profiled to be eliminated by terrorists in their own country.
Muhd El-Bonga Ibraheem writes from Abuja
