Saturday letter2
Pillorying President Olusegun Obansanjo for his insights into the vexing security issues plaguing us today, as was delivered at that Anglican Synod at Oleh in Delta State, does not do any good at all if the intentions of these directed criticisms are to hide the truth from general consideration. Universal truth is so absolute that the act of truth-bending ultimately destroys the truth-benders. Why won’t the federal government “shame” Obasanjo by curbing the Fulani menace and fixing Boko Haram for good? No, the mindset of this APC-led government is the end justifies whatever means these roving foreign terrorists can adopt to get a slice of the “national cake” of Nigeria the way late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua “settled those Niger Delta boys.”
A point of note here: “those Niger Delta boys” weren’t mindless killers in their righteous agitations for resource-sharing and that was why they could be convinced to forgo potentially destructive armed conflicts and go for skills acquisition. But this is not so for those who are driven by religion, and that was why Obasanjo strongly emphasised the term “Islamisation.” It is actually scary about the spectre of a repeat of violent religious proselytisation aided by the sword, and that is why the world is sitting on edge right now and right-wing politics is growing in societies that feel directly threatened by alien religious invasion. The black man, and by extension Africa, have suffered immensely under the banner of religion that does not even regard the black man as “man” in the true sense of the word but rather as some infra-intelligent ape-like being who should be “cleansed” of his “black soul.”
Otherwise, why is it that it is the black man and his descendants who had to do the dishonourable job of chopping off the heads of condemned criminals in a place like Saudi Arabia just like his slave forebears did? Olusegun Obansanjo fears for Africa, and we should all be concerned too; when a sitting, very religious president is failing in his duties with regard to national security, the Saudis would immediately intervene by propping him up as a “living saint” in the media so that criticism directed at him are deftly deflected. This should not be so at all.
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State
