On Twitter, Facebook and other social media, a topic was trending but I paid no heed to it. This persisted for some days. My father came to ‘gist’ with us and asked me how my Governor was doing. I went into a tirade about his inefficiency and his general lack of developmental policies. My sister chimed in by saying he had released a memo to the Northern Governors, showing the height of his foolishness. At this point, I knew I had to read the memo.
Governor Murtala Nyako is the Governor of Adamawa state, a former P.D.P member who threatened all sorts of drama if Bamanga Tukur was not removed from
his position as the P.D.P national chairman. He eventually decamped to A.P.C, along with other Governors. He is the oldest Governor of any Nigerian state and should be the wisest. But alas, that is not the case!
In his memo, he said the Federal Government was systematically trying to kill Northerners, citing attacks on his person, the Governor of Benue state, two Royal highnesses etc. Now, he knew that would not shake anybody because in truth, the masses could care less about the upper echelon dying, because they were more worried about themselves. The masses were killed almost daily, so their thought wouldn’t have been on the rich dying. Nyako went further by saying the Federal Government was trying to create a divide between Muslims and Christians in the North. If you are a Nigerian, you know that statement already has people on the defensive. The wars between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria is always more bloody than any other society based crisis.
He went on to sound off like the Federal Government was the South, trying to use genocide (his term) to flush the North out. Since he is an old dude, he was around when the North systematically killed Igbos every time there was a clash, from 1945, to the era of the Maitatsine. I’m no Igbo but I got my history right. The Maitatsine reign of terror bordered on ethno-religious lines and Igbos suffered the most. The Kaduna riots, which I saw, created a huge divide between Muslims and Christians of this country and especially of Kaduna state. The slightest provocation can agitate these two groups into the dance of attack and defense. Yet, our ‘wonderful’ Governor didn’t feel anything wrong in broaching the subject.
And because he is a Fulani man, he said his people were uprooted from lands they had been on for over 100 years by the Federal Government, via the military. He went on to say Fulanis were nomads and since that is true, why are they killing other tribes who own their own land? Why did they use chemical weapons to attack a village in Benue? Why are they causing communal clashes in Taraba? Unless of course the definition of a nomad changed in the last week.
Nyako wants the North to heed to his ‘call to action’ . Does he want the North to take up arms and fight the Federal Government, which is run by ‘a son of the South’? Does he want Northern Nigeria to fight the Southern part? Is Nigeria’s division his ultimate goal? Are Christians assured that if we heed to his call, we will not be slaughtered eventually? Will the North be an Islamic state or a free state? Where is the place of other tribes that might not want to associate with this Northern call to action, yet have to because of geographical zone?
Furthermore, Nyako seemed to absolve the insurgent group of any wrong, saying the Federal Government was the perpetrator of all the insurgents had done, only laying the blame at them. This brings me to my topic. APC, do you have the same ideology? Is your newest decampee speaking your thoughts? Are these the premises on which you want to run your activities? If not, why has there not been an outcry about his call to Nigeria’s division? Why do you allow him utter such profound statements without reining him in? Why has there been an usual silence about this from your camps? As for the military, I do agree that the way they are handling this crisis is poor at best, what with an open lie about the girls of Chibok fed to the media, but the disunity Nyako is fostering in the ranks has only one solution and that solution will be a repeat of 1966-1970.
Age doesn’t in anyway mean wisdom and Nyako has just displayed his lack of it in his memo. I will wait to see if the Northern Governors take his memo seriously.
We Northerners are waiting.
