By Erasmus Ikhide
Yesterday, I watched little kids from age five and above in the streets of Sokoto city, Northwest Nigeria; destroying, looting, setting schools, churches, southerners’ homes and businesses alight, protesting against the arrest of a few monsters who burnt alive Miss Deborah Samuel who was accused of blasphemy as they chanted ‘Allah akbar’, meaning God’s Great. Interestingly, one twelfth of the protesting toddlers in their thousands were the children born at the time President Muhammadu Buhari came to power seven years ago!
It’s on record that President Buhari and his APC minders actually used many more of such irritants, Islamically manipulated fundamentalists minds, who are adolescents from that part of the country and their religiously conquered cousins from the neighbouring African countries to rig 2015/2019 Presidential election. No question has been asked about what Buhari, like his previous Northern leaders in office have been doing with power? Is power only useful to the Northern political elites when it comes to allotments of all the national institutions’ and commonwealth solely to the Northerners in government agencies and parastatals.
It’s self evident that a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation wracked by an endemic crisis of identity led by divisive, polarizing leaders like Buhari without any organic vision of the multi-national commonwealth is bound to become hostage to religious insecurity. The image of humans, being roasted alive in Sokoto State yesterday and several other parts of the North on a regular basis is an apocalyptic glimpse of hell on earth. Any leader who cannot protect life and property, secure the political, economic and spiritual integrity of the nation is a waste to power and humanity. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who deleted his earlier tweet, condemning the barbaric act of burning Miss Deborah Samuel alive, who valued power more than humanity will be worst than Buhari if elected Nigerian President. Atiku is one of the Northern political elites who sends his numerous kids abroad to be educated while education in Nigeria is ruined.
Painfully, those abandoned kids who fill the streets of Sokoto yesterday in protest, who were born at the eve of Buhari’s Presidency in 2015, aided by the Fulani militant arm of Buhari’s cult followers, who are now radicalised and indoctrinated without basic education, who made up twenty million out of school children, according to global statistics, are the ones setting the city of Kano on fire as we speak. Videos of dirty, malnourished, riotous toddlers, tripping out in enraged from ramshackle hideouts, brandishing guns, cutlasses, knives, bow and arrows have now engulfed Sokoto in flames!
Since yesterday afternoon, the entire world have been watching more horrendous scenes where Christian homes and churches were invaded in the city, slaughtering women, children and men like cows in defence of their Prophet and Islamic religion. These abandoned religion vampires by the ruling class who have been defending their religion are always timid to speak out when it comes to defending their rights. Ironically, when it comes to religion, Nigerians fight for their God. But when it comes to their rights, they leave it for God to fight for them. It is even worst when the citizens find themselves in nations where the rulers behave like conquerors or ancient emperors who see other tribes as annexed fiefdom.
Regrettably, Sokoto State prides itself as the head of Islamic religion in Nigeria where the Sultan resides. The same city is currently convulsing because a college undergraduate allegedly insulted an Islamic Prophet. If we may ask, what kind of religious leadership is the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar providing amongst the Muslims adherents in Northern Nigeria?
How does insulting Prophet Mohammed or otherwise assuage the given and deliberate poverty the Northern political elites foisted on their people? What’s the Sultan of Sokoto and Northern political leadership doing to rein in violent Islamic preachers who are manipulating the minds of the youths, if truly Islam is a religion of peace, as they claim? How is the Sultan of Sokoto and Northern political leaders addressing the issue of population control? Glimpses of videos from the revolting Islamic thugs revealed that the Sultan of Sokoto and his Palace narrowly escaped their wraths if not for the Nigerian Soldiers’ timely intervention as they overpowered Civil Defence Security Operatives. That’s a daring warning that those who ride on the tiger’s tail will end up in its stomach, sooner or later!
The other day, an Islamic Mullah peeled off the skin of an Almajiri in Kano for not bringing enough alms from his begging expectations and the Northern ruling class didn’t see anything wrong with that. The same Imam who did that to someone else’s child has his own children in private schools in Kano, yet using other people’s children to beg for alms to take care of his own children in private schools! No bi juju bi that?
In all, this is President Buhari’s legacy for seven years in office and the Northern political elites who seek political powers at the detriment of the debased humanity of their own people who they use repeatedly as foot soldiers in each election year as agents of domination. Surprisingly, these Northern oligarchs who encouraged the poorest amongst them to marry four wives because their religion say so, keep moderate homes with one wife while their families are having the best of existences.
It is safe to say that the mismanagement of ethnic diversities that we are witnessing, the proliferation of ungoverned and ungovernable spaces, the rise of the gainfully unemployed and the constant but futile attempts of regional and religious hegemonic groups trying to impose their dominion on the rest of the country for a length of time, including the burning alive of Deborah Samuel is one of the programmed annual event for that purpose.
Why President Buhari and his family members go abroad for medical treatment, attend high breed universities globally, the poor who give birth to tens of hundreds of children who are hypnotized about ‘Allah will take care of you here and hereafter’ are denied access to basic education and other basics of life. There’s no Northern Governor, Senator or House of Representative members who ever thought of making education free, compulsory or criminalizing illiteracy. If they do so, they wouldn’t have the poor denizens to manipulate in the following election years.
For the Northern political elites, that would mean the reduction of poverty, erosion of unemployment, end of oligarchs subjugation and total liberalisation from shackles and manacles of political and religious predators who have been holding the nation and millions of brilliant Northern youths down for several decades.
It’s yet morning for the Northern political elites and their religious leaders. The dehumanizing atrophy of priding over religion without humanity, poverty over prosperity, illiteracy over education, begging over industry, religious slaving over civilisation that have imposed the worst form of human misery on the people is a swift and irreversible descent into anarchy.
Erasmus Ikhide wrote from Lagos Nigeria and can be reached via: ikhideerasmus@gmail.com
