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RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT MULLAH
OBASANJO'S EASTER ADDRESS TO NIGERIANS
By
NDRM
It was inspiring to many of us from Nigeria who glued our eyes to the London
televisions during the Easter holidays and watched Nelson Mandela’s dramatic
release from thirty years of jail. The sight was like an earthly edition of
the type of wonder that gripped the world two thousand years ago on the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mandela was flown in glory from
his
30 years prison island to the jubilant and excited crowds of South
Africans
and the liberal world. An we listened to him as he spoke of the ANC’s
struggle against the evil regime of apartheid. He said ‘The ANC
was forced
to resort to violence because the apartheid regime arrogantly refused to
talk with the people over their demand for justice, humanity, oppression and
democracy’’.
Those of us from Islamic Nigeria living in the United Kingdom watched him;
and we later spoke to one another, comparing the Nigeria’s bloody regime of
today, with the South Africa’s stubborn apartheid regime. Like the
apartheid regime of South Africa, the bloody regime of Nigeria headed by
Mullah Olusegun Obasanjo is stubbornly refusing to talk to Southerners
demanding a Sovereign National Conference to discuss the nature of Nigeria
in the present age so that each of the tribes forcibly merged for colonial
purpose and given the name Nigeria, 90 years ago, may freely decide for
itself. This is the meaning of democracy; not the system whereby a
number
of tribes in an enforced union, ganged up and rob a few others of their God
given resources. That’s an abuse of democracy. No civilised
country does
that.
Obasanjo talks of peace while he holds on to the enforced country. He
wants
to continue robbing the Niger Delta peoples of their God given resources
without them protesting in any way. His intimidation by stationing
troops
and killing thousands has not succeeded. That his bloodthirsty regime
kills
more than fifteen thousand each year is a well known fact. Now he thinks he
could use the Holy period of Easter to frighten our people on talking of
peace only to continue robbing them of their wealth and killing them to
silence them. Obasanjo is so bloodthirsty that he wants us to fight
bloody
wars for separation like the people of Yugoslavia.
Obasanjo’s appetite for killing people has become even sharper since 1999
when the Islamic North freed him from Abacha’s death cell and made him
president. In this respect some of us can understand his dilemma when
one
considers that he might not have fully recovered from the mental torture
inflicted on him by Abacha. From inside Abacha’s primitive death cell
he
was hooked out like ikili(Kalabari name for mudskipper) from the mangrove
swamp to dry land. The Northern Arewa then cleaned him up and made him
president. He still feels grateful to some of Abacha’s own
contemporaries.
In Europe hostage prisoners like Paul Macartney and Terry Waite who were
taken hostages in Lebanon during the seventies, were rehabilitated for quite
a long time after their release. In Africa Obasanjo from the most
primitive
death cell in the world, was allowed to mix with free men and women seconds
after his released. He undertook no rehabilitation. On this
account God
may punish him lightly for his killings in the Niger Delta. It may be
due
to his mental condition.
Humans reactions to circumstances are often dictated by their experiences
and knowledge acquired through events they witnessed or the information they
received. At about the period when Mullah Obasanjo was partly out of
the
this world; that is in Abacha’s cell, including the time when his lawyers
were fighting to free him, several historical events took place; and they
changed the minds of several peoples in the world including Nigeria.
Here,
we remember the statement of Sir Peter Smithers, the often quoted British
Cabinet Minister who expressed apology in the creation of Nigeria by forcing
diverse racial entities under one single administration. In
exculpation it
must be said that we did not then have the examples of the collapse of
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union before our eyes.
The events in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union happened around 1990.
They
enabled millions in Europe to realise that communities that were forced to
become one country can never have the peace necessary for development.
And
that looking at the advanced nations in the world, one sees that one
attribute is common to all of them. In Europe, America, Asia and the
Middle
East, that attribute is that each of their nations comprises communities of
like minded peoples. It is only in the new nations of Africa created
incautiously by the colonial system that countries comprises communities of
Unlike minded peoples. And that accounts for their never ending bloody
conflicts that keep them ungovernable and unable to enjoy the degree of
peace necessary for development. The example of India and Pakistan can
refresh our minds. There, at independence in 1947, the Islamic jurist
Mohammed Jinnah demanded the separation of the Moslems from India by
creating an exclusive nation for them, so that they might comprise
communities of like minded peoples that can live in peace and develop.
So
Pakistan was created. Today both India and Pakistan enjoy internal
peace;
and they are as developed as many nations of Europe and America.
Unfortunately for Mullah Obasanjo, the above events happened at the period
when he was battling over Abacha’s criminal litigation and conviction in the
most primitive death cell in the world. They therefore could not register on
his mind. He knew more of the world before 1979 and a bit of the world
before 1998 when he was trying to make money by himself, and without the big
patronage of Nigeria’s revenue. The world of nineteen nineties were
lost to
him. On top of that, as we have said earlier, he also spent several
years
in Abacha’s primitive death cell eating very little besides badly cooked
food. And he lived a tormented solitary life that brought out the
naked
features of his face. Even on his freedom, he walked out of his cell
like a
three legged mammal. It is not surprising that he is as bad as he had
always been, still bloodthirsty and contemptibly ignorant. He cannot
know
what can bring peace to the more than 200 disparate tribes that were
forcibly merged to become colonial Nigeria. So he rejects the
discussion on
Sovereign National Conference in the same way as the apartheid regime
rejected discussion on freedom proposed by the ANC. Wherefore; as far
as
the Niger Delta is concerned, to act on separation after we have convinced
the liberal world, is the one and only solution.
Aliyi Ekineh.
Niger Delta Republic Movement (NDRM).
April 2004
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