Mohammed Bello Mustafa
As a pan Nigerian and advocate of unity, some times I pause to ask myself if the cause for which I’m fighting will ever yield fruitful results.
Those ragtag armless and harmless army of youth who call themselves Northern Youth Leaders issued what many call empty threats in form of a quit notice to the Igbos and before you know it the media was awash with condemnations, with some northern politicians calling for their arrest. Ironically the same leaders keep mum while thousands of Fulanis and the cattle are being slaughtered like Sallah sacrificial lambs by the Mambila Ethnic militias.
Few months ago, Hausa/Fulani went through the same experience in Ile-ife Osun state, albeit on a much lower scale. Save for Sen. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso none of the so-called northern leaders had the nerve and audacity to even speak up let alone visit the scene of the massacre. Must Nigeria remain one at our own detriment?
If Fulanis are not safe in northern Nigeria where they are descendants, where do we expect them to find peace? Already, they have been declared the Tutsis if Nigeria. They are today persona non grata in the SE/SS and even some part of the SW, particularly Ekiti State. In the NC the prohibition of open grazing bill is being passed by many states House of Assemblies without alternative ranches made for the Fulanis to rare their animals.
I was downhearted when I heard GOC of the 3rd Division, Brig-Gen Benjamin I Ahanotu, painting the horrific and poignant picture of the Mambilla pogrom. He called it genocide but I call it pogrom because it was officially planned by the Taraba state govt. According to him only those residing in the main town and those that have fled the crisis survived. The rest were massacred by the coldblooded Mambila Ethnic militias, coordinated by the Local Government Chairman and the Speaker of the State House of Assembly. Not the children, not the elderly, not even the pregnant women were spared. The GOC said the killers are worse than Boko Haram fighters. And yet police in their usual hypocritical modus operandi could arrest only seven suspects.
Where are the so-called Northern leaders? Where is this midget, dubious character called El-Rufa’i who ordered for the arrest of Shettima and his team for issuing the Kaduna declaration? Where is the emir of Katsina who promised to protect Igbo residents in Katsina with his life? Where is the vocal Emir Sanusi of Kano? Why the silence? Is time for you to speak up against Gov. Darius Dickson Ishaku before he finished off the Fulani race in Taraba state .
Darius was planted by TY Danjuma with the help of Orisejafo’s led CAN to continue from where Suntai stopped in an attempt to execute their so called “COVENANT”! Go to Taraba and see the real marginalization. A state with more than half Muslims and less than half non-Muslims population but the former got only four commissioners and three local government chairmen out of sixteen. In the state civil service its ten to one against the Muslims.
Now there is silence from both the mainstream media and the politicians. But when the Fulanis, who constitute the most widely spread ethnic group in the West African Coast from Northern Senegal to Northern Nigeria, launch a reprisal attack in their own way (which they are sure to do if no justice is seen to be done on this matter), how many of the Mambila ethnic group will be left? Then, that will be when the media will reactivate their gadgets. This is sheer hypocrisy.
Enough is enough. Our leaders must speak up before we turn our back against them.
