[2019] Etakibuebu asks Buhari: Is the River of blood flowing in Nigeria worth your ambition?

By Godwin Etakibuebu

3rd Letter to President Buhari

This letter series was suspended last week to accommodate issues relating to the fast approaching Ekiti governorship election, slated for July 14, 2018, which was properly flagged off by your Political Party; the All Progressives Congress in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. We can now come back to complete this exercise but not without wishing you and your party; the APC, best of luck in the incoming election.

You need the good wishes my dear President, given your investment and show of solidarity on Dr Kayode Fayemi, whom you expect to deliver Ekiti State to the APC, as such would be a befitting proper reward for your endeavours of glorifying June 12, MKO Abiola and the South/West. It is only by delivering Ekiti State to your kitty that the Yoruba would be able to say “adupe Baba Buhari”.

That must be your expectation and there is nothing bad in thinking that way. However, and this is the big “but”, the issue that will decide this Ekiti State incoming election might be going over and above June 12 and your magnanimity of decorating MKO Abiola with the highest honour of the land. Ekiti ‘dede’ may yet speak from the angle and definition of “a refined queen’s english speaking gentleman who lives aloof over his people” in one hand and a “not too educated ‘agbero-like’ rascal who lives within the hearts of his people”. Let us wait for Ekiti peoples’ verdict on this while we move to the more germane issue that concerns you please.

In order to answer the question posed above [Sir, is the river of blood flowing in Nigeria worth your ambition?] sagaciously, we need to do two things first and urgently. The first of these two things is defining what your ambition has been from the beginning, while the second exercise is a trial in construction of those characteristics you will be willing to deploy in bringing your ambition to fruition. And these assignments are not going to be an easy task for anyone, not the least for this author. Yet, we owe it a responsibility and duty to identify your ambition and try marching them with the sanguinary atmosphere we currently operate in Nigerian.

Nigerians know of your long cherished ambition to govern over Nigeria; an ambition that was once achieved when you emerged as Military Head of State in the early morning of January 1, 1984, after that coup-d tat which dethroned the Second Republic. Of course, the story told to Nigerians was that you were not involved in the planning of the coup but the planners and executors came to ‘beg you to head the government because of your integrity and honesty”.

Many did not know that this claim was a fallacy because the fact remained that the seed of the coup, which terminated Shehu shagari’s democratically elected government, was sown and nourished to germinate at the Chief of Army Staff Conference of October 1983, which held in Jos at the headquarters of the Third Armored Division of the Nigerian Army and you were the General officer Commanding [GOC]. Ab initio, you were part of the whole arrangement that truncated the Second Republic hence it was appropriate that you emerged to lead that Military Government. This speaks about your ambition and reveals a little about the type of machinery of crudity you could deploy in prosecuting it.

The second window of peeping into your ambition is the tenacity of “regaining your mandate of political leadership” in our democratic set-up since 1999 when the Military handed back to the Civilian Community the baton of the polity. One recalls how you threw everything at your disposal into the ring to secure the presidency vide the route of political electioneering and how all those efforts failed. Yet, you were not tired as you focused vigorously, with military regimented attention at your goal. You even cried bitterly; an emotional action that underscore your ambition.

But you were never deterred at pursuing your targeted ambition. Even at a point you threw caution into the wind when you said that “If what happened in 2011 [alleged rigging] should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.” The import of that statement was not lost on Nigerians, ditto the International Community. Many concluded in fear that blood shedding might likely be one of the tools of prosecuting political end-meet hidden in your kitty.

You don’t have to blame the people for drawing this conclusion because in 2011 when your Political Party; Congress for Progressive Change, failed to secure the presidency for you during that year’s general election, blood of many, not “dogs and baboons”, but actual human beings, including many youths from all over Nigeria serving their fatherland under the National Youth Service Corps in some States up North, was spilled.

My dear President, what the people are questioning is what next in your kitty of ambitions that would warrant shedding of blood all over the land. Or succinctly put, which ambition of yours remains unfulfilled that would justify another blood-soaking of “dog and baboon” on Nigerian landscape? This question is very important as well as answer to it is essentially mandatory and for only one reason. You have conquered the first ambition – that of becoming Nigeria’s President; a great feat that is rare in the annals of history.

Could it be that the same ambition, elongated into second tenure though, be any reason why blood must be flowing over the land again? There is great doubt about this because having being voted to become President as the Nigerian people did in 2015 general election, securing the second and final tenure, as rightfully provided for by the Nigerian Constitution, does not need peoples’ blood.

All that is needed to give you this second tenure is nothing but your performances within this first four years of this first term. The determinant factor for you to continue into another four-year-tenure is you and what you offered Nigerians. The point being made here is that except there is another ambition hidden from the electorate, there would be no sense in the type of killing and shedding of blood going on in the Country. What remains to be done therefore at this point is to search out from your unspoken words or what l would want to call your “real body language” to enable us come to the vital conclusion if there is another ambition [hidden agenda] you may want to forcefully prosecute in the typical military way of adventurism.

To get to identifying this, we need to look at the instruments being currently deployed in the sanguinary ventures going on all over the country but heavily concentrated in the Middle-Belt geo-political zone. First facto of evaluation obviously would be the Fulani herdsmen Militia system of killing as this may be able to establish a nexus between any hidden ambition and the means of achieving it.

Acrimony between herdsmen and farmers/landowners is as old as human history on earth but at any given time when such acrimony is in contention, the demarcation between the landowner and the invader is never compromised. The owner of the land remains what he is – the owner, while the herder nomadic remains what he is – a stranger. But that is not the case in Nigeria where the Fulani herders [being the stranger] would invade other peoples’ lands, kill the landowners, burn their houses down, occupy the “annexure” and in some places, change the name of the village or town to their own chosen names, like some cases in Plateau State have shown.

Again, in the Nigerian situation, since your ascendancy to the presidency and by the default of your appointment’s structure, the security apparatus of our country tend to be in favour of the Fulani herdsmen militia. There is no doubt about this as you have outspokenly exonerated the Fulani militia from culpability of the heinous crimes at most times while all your top security appointees; which by default of planning, are from only one section of the country with one religion, would never see anything bad in the murderous actions of the Fulani herdsmen militia.

It is in this interpretation that the conclusion is being reached, justifiably anyway; not only by Nigerians but also the International Community that your next ambition is to ensure that the “sword of Islam that took off from the desert must come down to the coast”. Isn’t it a fact of history that Jihad can only be achieved by massive killing of the infidels? And who are the infidels in this Nigerian situation? Having conquered the country’s presidency, could it be true that the next ambition of my most cherished President Buhari is to Islamize Nigeria?

My dear Sir, if this is even an ambition you are keen in achieving, permit me to tell you that it will fail at the end, and even at that, it is not worth of the blood flowing across the Nigerian landscape. It is because of my love for you that l am begging of you to shelve it – that is if it is true that there is an agenda like that. It is with my greatest joy that l am drawing the curtain on this exercise except to forward to you the contents of the British House of Lords’ deliberation on Nigeria last week for your comfortable perusal.

Trust me sir, it will help you to further appreciate my efforts and show of love and loyalty to your very good person because the deliberation details all events about the Fulani herdsmen militia and its modus operandi, ditto Nigerian high government functionaries, mostly those in control of security, lukewarm attitude towards the catastrophe .

I must thank you with all respects for reading all my letters.

I remain,

Your co-citizen, in search of a better Nigeria; where equity, equality and justice prevail to the honour of humanity and glory of God.

Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.

[email protected]