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Thursday, January 18, 2018

PMB and Southern Kaduna Crisis

You can see the difference.... Jonathan kept quiet as Muslims were massacred in Southern Kaduna. Governor Yakowa said nothing. As God would have it, both the governor and the Commissioner of Police who oversaw the 2011 massacres would die violently in different plane accidents after their Pyrrhic victory. (The CP who was transferred from Benue just before the elections was rewarded with a promotion to DIG (operation) after the killings. It took just some few months before his helicopter crashed in Jos). Allah ba azzalumi ba ne.
Earlier, Obasanjo had allowed the Plateau massacres to go on with the military drafted each time only after the damage is done. No culprits were ever arrested. Instead, they enjoyed government sponsorship and protection even when they could be identified in pictures and videos.
Jos started enjoying some level of peace only after late President Yaradua ordered a permanent presence of the military on the streets of the capital. And the environs knew some semblance of peace only when an egalitarian balance of terror was attained through reprisal attacks, even in the presence of a heavily biased military sector commanders.
For the first time, we have a President that said something about the destruction of lives and property in Southern Kaduna, instructing the military to end the crisis. A permanent presence of the military in form of JTF may be necessary there. We hope their commanders will not be from one section of the population like in Plateau.
The bitter lesson that Muslim populations of this country have learnt since the advent of this millennium is that they will hardly get justice from others. They saw how Boko Haram crisis was allowed to linger as a strategy to decimate the region. They witnessed how for fourteen years whole villages and towns massacred on ground of ethnicity and religion and not a word of condemnation came from the Christian community or individuals.
This common feeling of victimhood, more than anything else, made many northerners to lend their support to Buhari against Jonathan in 2015. They believe only their own can save them from the legion of atrocities.
True. Buhari has not failed northerners in this respect. He has seriously downgraded Boko Haram and he is ready to put off the fire that has been allowed to tarry for two and a half decades in Southern Kaduna.
The Senate on its part has resolved to investigate the Southern Kaduna crisis. Nigerians hope that it will start from 1987.
Let peace and justice reign. That is our appeal to all Nigerians in that area. Those that incite you to take up arms against one another have nothing to lose. They are too remotely connected to you in blood and geography.
Please embrace peace and rid yourself of hate. Learn to tolerate and respect one another as citizens of the same country. Only then can you prosper.
Aliyu

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