For the governor of Adamawa State, retired Admiral Murtala Nyako and some people who have adopted this new and weird line of thought, President Goodluck Jonathan is responsible for the ongoing carnage in the Northern part of the country, being inflicted indiscriminately on the nation by Boko Haram terrorists. The logic of this twisted thinking being espoused by Nyako, is that as the genocide is caused by terrorist attacks on the population, the president must also be responsible for the ongoing terrorism.
It hardly matters that before Jonathan came to power, the Boko Haram menace had grown into a major security threat to have enabled the late president and Jonathan’s predecessor to decide to deal with it with a decisive response that so devastated the Boko Haram that many claim that the mayhem that the group has subsequently visited on the country might have been as a way of avenging the Yar’Adua response to the their ascendancy.
People like Nyako have conveniently forgotten the genesis of the scourge, as well as the widespread accusation that the accentuation of the terror was part of the resolve by some irredentists who had vowed that no stone would be left unturned to stop Jonathan from holding and wielding power, after they had vowed that he had no right to seek presidential position after he had acted at Yar’Adua’s death, not to allow a breathing space to him. There is no doubt that from the recent body language and statements of former Nigeria’s navy chief, not only Jonathan, but also his supporters deserve to be punished for what he claims is their act in brining genocide to the North.
This was the summation of Nyako’s thinking espoused trenchantly through his recent memo to his colleagues in the North: President Jonathan is the author of the ‘genocide’ in the North and he is egged on and supported by people from the former ‘Eastern Nigeria’ who constitute his political base and support. According the Nyako, this same people were massacred in 1966 in the North because they had refused to restrain their military boys from killing Northern leaders during the first-ever coup in the country. Even though he did not say so in clear terms, reading between the lines, his memo was suggesting that not only should the North deal with Jonathan, but should also decisively repeat the type of pogrom that took place in 1966.
It is necessary to peep into the psychology of people like Nyako who harbour a deep-seated and perhaps an unconscious feeling of cruelty and hatred to the extent that they are willing to twist history in order to achieve a psychological state of mind to wreak havoc on a people he has no reason to, but is being prodded by some unconscious impetus, to hate so deeply, as to want them harmed. (It does not matter if some of the people to be incinerated were his close relatives by marriage; just as Emperor Nero did not bother who was burnt in Rome).
Because Nyako is not just any other Nigerian next door, but who as a man who had bestrode the affairs of the nation to the extent that he headed its Navy, he is not a man to make mistakes about his understanding of our national history. Supposing Igbo people who he is referring to as Easterners – as they were the people who were massacred because their military ‘boys’ had killed Northern leaders – were, indeed, the core of Jonathan’s supporters, in an election which Nyako and other Northern political leaders led the voters to massively vote for Jonathan at the expense of their own Adamawa candidate who flew APC’s flag and after rubbishing Atiku at the primaries. Why did Nyako single them out for the 1966 pogrom treatment?
Definitely, Nyako knows that the notion of ‘Eastern Nigeria’ ended on May 27, 1967, when the Yakubu Gowon administration created the 12-state structure in order to expel the wind out of the sail of the former Eastern Nigeria government that was gyrating to secede. On that day, the minority elements of the region heaved a sigh of relief as they earned their ‘independence’ from Ndigbo who they felt had been oppressing them in that region. The creation of Rivers and Cross Rivers states in 1967 ended the existence of the Eastern Region to which Murtala Nyako is alluding to in 2014 – 47 years after! In fact, most of Nigerians today did not live in the era of regions in Nigeria. And yet, that is what Nyako is talking about in 2014 just with the pretext of finding a reason to rope Ndigbo into genocide he is most probably dreaming or hoping for them.
Even if Nyako were a man who lives in history and therefore insists on tethering the Igbo supporters of Jonathan to the Eastern region heritage to which they belong with the Ijaw, Jonathan’s ethnic group, Nyako’s efforts would still be inane. He should have known that between the Ijaw and Igbo of former Eastern Nigeria, there was no love lost. He should have known that so displeased were the Ijaw with their situation in Eastern Nigeria that one of their illustrious sons, Isaac Adaka Boro put together militants that for 12 days in January of 1966, tried to pull out the Niger Delta out of Eastern Region and Nigeria, and to form the Niger Delta Republic with the capital at Yenagoa. Isaac Boro who is today, the foremost hero of the Ijaw was released from the prison where he was serving term for his 12-day revolution, to join the federal army and fought fiercely against Biafra, before he was perfidiously killed. Is this the type of history of a relationship that should, in Nyako’s estimation, qualify Ndigbo to be sent to a Holocaust for their affinity with a fellow Easterner from Ijawland?
It might well be that, as many people believe, Nyako is merely beating about the bush and groping for a pretext to unleash mayhem on the ‘Easterners’ after Jonathan might have won the elections in 2015. Or better still, others are suggesting that it might be a ploy to make Ndigbo run away from the North before the election, for fear of a post-election pogrom, and thereby deplete the population of voters that would have voted for Jonathan. It is really hard to reason with people with the mindset of Nyako as whatever reasons one adduces, he would still, like in the Aesop’s fable of the lion and the lamb, look for and find a pretext to maul the innocent lamb.
While we are at this, it is important to draw the attention of all those people, especially those who are enthused by the prospects of Nyako’s mindset and are preparing to garner the spoils that would ensure when the ‘former Easterners’ would have been attacked, killed and despoiled, that such an opportunity is very remote in Nigeria. Nigerians of all ethnic areas, religions and educational levels know that Nyako’s aspiration is a daydream and one need not elaborate on this further, so that one does not get some people unduly excited. Murtala Nyako’s inlaws, which is the Osita Agwuna family of Enugwu-Ukwu in Anambra State, whose daughter, Dr. Njideka, should remind him of an Igbo proverb which says that even a lame-man is not consumed by a war that had been declared. Nyako should realize that the overwhelming feeling is that he has declared an open war against the former Easterners and from what I hear, they have accepted his challenge.
Moreover, as I said last week, most Northerners do not think like Nyako and are in fact, nauseated with what was a clear way of diverting attention from the untold misgovernance which is going on in Adamawa State under Nyako. You do not have to have gone to that state to notice a systematic deterioration in the human and physical condition of a state where politics defines everything that happens. Adamawa would have counted itself lucky to be blessed with some of the most prominent Nigerians but the fact is that instead of using these big weights to develop the people, people like Nyako have turned everybody into political minions or enemies.
It should be noted that this sudden angst of Murtala Nyako against Jonathan was occasioned by the feeling that the president had enthroned the likes of Bamangar Tukur over and above him in political influence. Things were not made any better by the fact that after abandoning PDP for APC, Nyako who, according to political minds there, does not condone any other cocks crowing in the yard, soon had Buba Marwa to contend with in his new party. It is obvious that the rolling stone has not gathered any enduring political moss and that can be very frustrating.
On January 14, last year, in Kaduna, while addressing an enlarged meeting of political, traditional and religious leaders from the North, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto, made a very salient observation which was internalized by the wise among those present. He said, “Whatever that is happening in the North is our own doing, because we did not do what we were supposed to do. And since we know that, we have to solve our problems ourselves. Let us sit and talk freely and articulate positions that will bring us out of the quagmire we put ourselves in. It is important that the religious and traditional rulers from our various states sit together so that each and every one of us will talk freely…”
There were others who would refuse to ponder on those words and continue to look for elusive scapegoats that can never ameliorate the situation of their people. There are clear-headed Northern political and religious leaders who are not interested in sabre-rattling as a way of creating impressions that hardly exist but have pulled up their sleeves to render services to the people they have been elected to lead. One does not need to search very far afield to see such states like the nearby Gombe state where the leaders are daily thinking positively, day in day out, for the development of the people and the environment. Or a state like Sokoto state where the government has ensured massive development amidst peace and amicable co-existence of all the people that are resident there. In these states, you notice very high quality of life and thought because their leaders have learnt how to look inwards to discover to what extent the errors of the past would be eliminated for brighter presence and future. And it shows very clearly.
Somebody should please tell Murtala Nyako and the people who think like him that Nigeria does not have to go up in flames because some people want to massage their bloated egos. More importantly, they should, as the erudite Sultan enunciated, look inwards and see to what extent they are part of the problem rather than the solution in the quagmire that is facing their people.
It is fortunate that Nigeria has come to the stage where such people like Murtala Nyako can no longer be our teachers.
(Concluded)
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