First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemoller
Benue in my blood
I was one of the youth corp members deployed to Benue State in 1983. We had our camping at Mkar-Gboko and I lived some of my best days in Benue State in that one year. I therefore confirm that I may be biased in favour this state.
Linked humanity
Yet, we are all linked. Our humanity is incomplete without the next person’s. Societies invest in religion and education because they unite people and make it possible to rally them around a common cause. Knowledge links generations shaping how societies evolve. Without a shared humanity, we are collectively endangered to amnesia and mutual destruction.
The tragedy of Benue State is double fold. They were some of the most active and vociferous when Gowon ran his armoured tanks through the hungry pile of dying Eastern children in the 1960’s civil war. They’re great producers of food stuff and border all areas straddling over Cross Rivers, Ebonyi, Enugu and Anambra. They are actually larger than Enugu, Ebonyi and Abia states combined in landmass. Yet, when the children of the East cried for food, Benue denied them help because they trusted in the Fulani dream of a united North.
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
John Stuart Mills
The second part of this is that a lot of Southeastern people think it’s time to pay Benue in their own coins. I see this as a purblind view of the situation. Though we should be angry with the bad behaviour of the last, we shouldn’t stay hooked there. After all our individuality is what is at stake. If indigenous populations are to be forcefully subdued, then it’s just an instalment decimation that’s going on. Without a united front, there’s no way any other tribe can match the funds and motivation of a jihad fuelling this insurgencies disguised as banditry.
Bad men of the 1960s
The people of Benue are not the only bad men of the 1960s. China Achebe, the world famous writer of Igbo origin once said that nothing united the other tribes of Nigeria than their mutual hate and fear of the Igbo. This is the dominant tribe of the Southeastern part of Nigeria. Therefore Nigeria has been invested towards holding the people down. But the approach has now unravelled.
The reality that has been cloaked as Nigerian unity was a disguise for Fulani colonial irredentism. The collective investment in restraining the progress of the East has unfortunately resulted in the total collapse of virtuous living and resulted in the unbridled brigandage of the whole Fulani bad elements in a furious rape of Nigeria’s indigenous population: from the core North down to the South. The General Muhammed Buhari government now has positioned itself as the emblem of what is worst with Nigeria by its failure to rule in truth and fairness. So the rule of the bad men started in the 1960s has reached its climax in 2021.
Caveat Emptor
I voted Buhari in 2015 as president because I felt he was better than the nearest candidate, who was another colossal failure in the chain of tragic leadership that Nigeria has witnessed. It has turned out to be a huge mistake. I refused to vote in 2019 because Oby Ezekwesili, whom I thought was serious chickened out of the hot kitchen at the last minute.
Having said that, it should be clear that I have no ill motivations against the administration. I just look at my friends in the North and only one or two have impressed me because they have remained honest to a collective dream I shared with them in the 1990s. And just like one of them, Buba Galadima, I am horrified that we didn’t see the tragedy that Buhari has become. So the North is not one hopeless case: but Buhari is.
Having made these clarifications, it is important that we do not pay Benue with abandonment. As I have just shown, we all make mistakes. Every human does. Majority of our citizens made a mistake with Buhari. Does that mean we should not forgive ourselves? No. It means that we should see the harm that the brand of unity we have pursued assiduously since 1960 is faulty. Unity does not mean uniformity. No.
What’s upon Benue?
Map of Benue State in Nigeria
- It is genocide. Nothing else describes what Benue is going through. The history of genocides show that one group drunk on an exaggerated sense of divinity always sought to dominate all others. When they are not checked they become monsters. The coterie of bad Fulani’s in power are that intoxicated. They’re dangerous.
- The same insanity visiting Benue is what the indigenous populations in Kaduna, Plateau, Bornu and Zamfara States are experiencing. The sentiments I have for Benue are the same if not more for Zamfara. But the cloud of ignorance about the latter makes it impossible for other parts of the country to understand this.
- Buhari has lost touch. He has been in and out of hospitalized since he came into power. He is obviously suffering from a debilitating ailment that should have invalidated his suitability for office but the bad men must have a leg inside the Rock. So they have held him a prisoner of their avowed emanate holy writ. We now run a delegated administration where even the Vice President is a stranger in the government in which he should be an insider.
- Benue is a vast farm land fertile and fecund beyond description. Their inability to farm will not only cause starvation to their subsistence farmer population, it will cause food scarcity in the whole of Nigeria. Yam, potatoes and cassava are amongst the major farm produce from this state. So abandoning Benue would be like cutting our nose to spite our face. American lives are expended in far flung parts of the world to ensure an uninterrupted flow of essentials of living. If we have to support Benue financially, every Nigerian should.
- It is the height of shortsightedness to think that a highly motivated marauding bad gang will stop at Benue. It will be myopic to so think.
- The war in Benue is only a variety of the larger war in kidnapping bleeding other parts of the country at the same time that the federal government is embarking upon an unbridled unbudgeted spending including senseless borrowing. So it appears that we have an army of locusts plundering every part of the country to weaken the financial power of every other part of the country. Why is it the same tribe that is benefitting from official profligacy and brigandage flourishing everywhere? Think about it.
- Finally, without peace, there’s no financial progress anywhere else. Foreign investment is a shy girl. It does not date a trouble, unsettled clime.
Renegotiated Friendships
Nigeria is like the French society with hundreds of cheeses. Charles DeGaulle once wondered “how can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Nigeria is that diversified. So the terms of friendship has not worked that’s why everyone else is complaining except the Fulani.
Whenever my wife tells me that “we need to talk”, I take it seriously because it means something is not working out well. If the relationship between a man and his wife can be subject to regular review, why should that of Nigeria not be. If Nigeria can review the value of her currency why should it not reevaluate it’s association?
I believe that the whole argument of most parts of Nigeria over restructuring is just posturing. What are you restructuring? Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, and Kebbi are contiguous and can work out agreements on cooperation amongst themselves. There’s nothing stopping that.
Intellectual laziness is not an exclusive Buhari affliction. It is a global political problem in Nigeria.
I do not see why Rivers, Cross Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Abia can not having a joint arrangement for industrialisation. I don’t know what stops them except their lack of imagination. It is this vacuity of thoughts that allowed Aba to disappear as an industrial power that has stopped these States from cooperating, not the Fulani. What about the South Western states joined by one language and common ancestry? Even they have failed woefully to forge any known form of collective progress. Intellectual laziness is not an exclusive Buhari affliction. It is a global political problem in Nigeria.
If the relationship between a man and his wife can be subject to regular review, why should that of Nigeria not be.
We are invested with intellectual Lilliputians everywhere. When Nigeria was expousing a Concert of Medium Powers, Akinyemi was powering our country towards the realisation and of vision that it was possible to build greatness but what do you see everywhere today? Shallowness in every corner. Then they turn and blame the central government.
So, our renegotiated friendship should start at the lowest possible state of physical proximity and then proceed to the larger centre. Otherwise, we are just on a ride to Armageddon.
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