By Abba Adakole<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the 2011 presidential election, it was General Muhammadu Buhari, candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), who sowed the wind by telling his supporters to go on a lynching spree if the result did not favor him.\u00a0 Confronted by newspaper interviewers later, he had declared that \u201cthere may be no Nigeria\u201d if the election was rigged, drawing a curious parallel with the events in Somalia.\u00a0 Though he eventually lost in a contest adjudged free and fair, it did not stop the post-election violence that arose from that careless pronouncement. Gangs of irate supporters of the CPC in Bauchi, Gombe, Katsina and Kaduna states tracked down and murdered defenceless members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), most of them Christians of different ethnic groups, from the Southern part of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The presidential panel that investigated those outbreaks of violence, headed by Sheikh Ahmed Lemu, was on target by submitting a report that largely indicted the former Head of State for making inflammatory comments that contributed to the violence.\u00a0 From little acorns, the mighty oak has since grown, and innocent Nigerians are now reaping the whirlwind from that \u2013and similar — irresponsible utterances.\u00a0 Today, by coincidence or design, Buhari\u2019s prediction appears true as Nigeria is fast heading down the road to Somalia with the ravaging carnage dressed as insurgency.<\/p>\n
Last week, his political soul mate and fellow All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, followed in his footsteps.\u00a0 The Asiwaju who was only a boy when Operation Wetie turned his Yoruba homeland into the Wild Wild West, is on the verge of re-enacting the scenario once again.\u00a0 At his investiture as the Chancellor of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso and award of honourary Doctor of Science in Management Science on him, the former governor of Lagos threatened fire and brimstone should the forthcoming governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti states be rigged.\u00a0 From the old ashes of Operation Wetie that led to killings and maiming in the old West, Tinubu may be preparing them for a much bigger Rig and Roast. From his queer political dictionary, rigging means when any other party different from the APC is returned as winner of the poll; when that happens, as it is increasingly becoming obvious, roasting will commence.<\/p>\n
If Buhari’s reckless utterances have contributed to the ongoing spate of violence, Tinubu\u2019s threat of violence by roasting his fellow citizens may make Operation Wetie of the 1960s look like child\u2019s play.\u00a0 When you add the scenario to the insanity being displayed of recent by the Adamawa state governor, Murtala Nyako, you wonder what really is up the sleeves of these APC leaders.\u00a0 Nyako\u2019s consistent attempts to incite the North against the Federal government have not only rattled Nigerians, it has set their teeth on edge.\u00a0 The April 16, 2014 letter by the retired Chief of Naval Staff, addressed to his colleagues in the Northern Governors\u2019 Forum, has all the trappings of incitement to violence.\u00a0 The Satanic letter which accused the Jonathan administration of \u201cfull-fledged genocide\u201d against Northern Nigeria, was not only incoherent, it was shameful coming from an elected governor, a retired Admiral who once held the enviable position of Chief of Naval Staff and Deputy Chief of Defence Staff.<\/p>\n
It was not the first time Nyako had made such incendiary statements that have the potency to incite the citizenry to violence.\u00a0 Earlier in the year, while on a visit to the United States, Nyako had poured all sorts of invectives on the Jonathan administration, stopping short of calling his Northern kinsmen to take up arms against the state.\u00a0 It still surprises many why he has been consistent in preaching violence when solutions are being sought from all quarters to douse the tension in the land.\u00a0 His unguarded utterances over the activities of killers posing as Fulani herdsmen, give him away as a man who is out to promote violence and divide the country along regional, ethnic or religious lines.<\/p>\n
His is yet the most irresponsible outburst by an elected official in Nigeria.\u00a0 For such a high-ranking state official to make such sweeping characterisation of the counter-insurgency as \u201cgenocide\u201d without any shred of evidence is baffling. More baffling is that his Northern colleagues and especially his party members in the APC have not bothered to disown him.\u00a0 The general interpretation is not just that he was out to incite the governors of the region to rise against the government, but to set the nation ablaze with his evil-intentioned actions.\u00a0 Retired military officer, Colonel Abubakar Umar, said the other day that Nyako\u2019s statement coming from a retired military officer, \u201cis shocking and worrisome,\u201d and hoped people like him should not put the nation on fire.<\/p>\n
True, for every practical reason, Nyako appears to be on the brink of sanity.\u00a0 That such an experienced military man who should understand the need for non-partisan approach towards our peculiar security challenges could abandon sobriety and play to the gallery of political partisanship is most absurd.\u00a0 More absurd is that he fails to realize that as a retired military officer his ranting disposition has the potential to provoke mutiny within the military.<\/p>\n
While Nigerians were still chewing over the incoherent accusations from the Adamawa state governor, another colleague of his in the APC broke his years of deafening silence over the violent acts of the Boko Haram sect.\u00a0 Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, former Governor of Borno State during whose tenure the violent Islamic sect came to national limelight, came out to condemn the group.\u00a0 His statement in which he described the group\u2019s activities as \u201csheer madness and an affront on all Nigerians,\u201d comes after years of silence, considering the rumour that his role in nurturing the sect was less than honourable.\u00a0 Sheriff\u2019s silence on the rising spate of Boko Haram violence was as loud as Buhari\u2019s before the later bowed to public pressure and issued a public condemnation of the sect\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n
The questions that keep agitating the minds of Nigerians is: why does the ongoing cycle of violence that has gripped the nation revolve around known leaders of the main opposition party? At a time that some of them are making amends and retracing their steps \u2013 which is what Buhari\u2019s volte-face and Sheriff\u2019s condemnation of the sect\u2019s activities are \u2013 why does the party not sanction the Tinubus and Nyakos who are still beating the drums of violence? These are questions begging for answers, which if not provided, will lead to a conclusion that both men are speaking the minds of the party that violence is an option in seeking political power in 2015.<\/p>\n
Adakole contributed this piece from Abuja via abbaadakole@gmail.com
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