‘Christian Genocide’ In Nigeria, Real Under Buhari (1)

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

Buhari – a masked religious fundamentalist

 I do not believe in blind patriotism; nei­ther will I bury my head in the sand like the ostrich, pretending that all is well when all is not well. I do not wish to court some undue approbation. I neither condemn nor endorse Donald Trump’s statements against Nigeria.

We live in an age when the power of ICT has obliterated national boundaries such that events in Nigeria reverberate in the US and elsewhere across the world with the same tone and tenor, and vice versa. The Internet and social media have integrated all the continents into one global village…

For the most part of the Buhari ad­ministration, I was in Abeokuta, South West Nigeria. One Sunday in 2021, I re­member crying out openly in my place of worship in the Yoruba language, saying: “Buhari fe gba Jesu lowo wa ni” (Buhari wants to take away/ snatch away – by force – Christianity from us/ from our lives!) By then, one of our church members was afraid of going to his big livestock farm because of fear of kidnapping by herdsmen. There were many atrocities committed in Abeokuta, here in the South, let alone in the North Central! A major livestock farmer in Abeokuta axis sold his farm, leaving hundreds of workers jobless because of herders. Herdsmen burnt some farms around Abeokuta, apart from killings and kidnapping for ransom.

On another Sunday in 2022, I sound­ed a warning openly in my then place of worship. Close to the church were teeming youths transported by trailers to the Southern Nigeria during the Covid lockdown in 2020, when movement was supposed to be restricted! They had cut­lasses, diggers, machetes, etc. The Owo church massacre had taken place by then; so also the killing of the daughter of the Afenifere leader, among other atrocities. I told other worshippers: “Here we are without guns, machetes or even cutlasses. What if these boys without any discernable job decide to attack us; how do we protect or defend ourselves?” Such was the palpable fear experienced by worshippers here in the South West, far away from the Middle Belt, the epicenter of herdsmen’s atrocities! The same fear permeated the entire Southern Nigerian, where AK-47-wielding herders had taken over the forests with impunity.

Under the Buhari administration, you dared not report the herdsmen at any police station. No Divisional Police Officer (DPO) would move against herd­ers for fear of backlash from the top.

Fed up with the killings, kidnapping, raping, maimings by herdsmen in the South West, the then governor of Ondo State and Chairman, South West Gov­ernors’ Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu (may God bless his memory), summoned the courage to at least challenge the intol­erable situation with the inauguration of the Amotekun Corps in the region. The Buhari government spat fire and made attempts to emasculate the outfit. Besides, Buhari and his herdsmen were already smarting from the resistance, especially in the Middle Belt and South­ern Nigeria, to his National Water Re­sources Bill and RUGA (Rural Grazing Area), both aimed to give strong foothold, unfettered land access to herdsmen in every hamlet, village and town all over the country, especially in the South. The herdsmen reacted not just by mere open threats; they raised the scale of impunity through high-profile killings in the South West.

And when some socio-cultural groups, especially Afenifere, called on Nigerians to defend themselves against the mortal assault by herdsmen, Bu­hari issued orders asking Nigerians to surrender their licenced firearms at the nearest police station, leaving them more vulnerable, while at the same time plan­ning, allegedly, to issue a radio licence to his herdsmen, who openly brandished prohibited guns and other assault weap­ons… One of the leaders of the herders declared openly, under the watch and protection of the Buhari government, that every land in Nigeria belonged to the Fulani and that they would enforce their will on every community and every forest in the country. Earlier in 2017, he vowed to defy the anti-open grazing law (Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranch­es Establishment Law) duly enacted by Benue State government. Herdsmen defied the law with impunity and blood!

Christianity and Christians were under siege under the Buhari admin­istration. Although this is a matter for another day, it suffices to say that the cur­rent President, Bola Tinubu, lost Lagos and some parts of South West in the 2023 presidential election principally because of the Christian protest vote, not against Tinubu (religion is never an issue among the Yoruba), but against Buhari. Chris­tians wanted to protect their religion that was then under constant attacks, threats of annihilation by Buhari’s foot-solders, the gun-toting herdsmen.

It was my own personal analysis then that the Buhari regime brought disasters upon this nation – widespread killings and social displacements – in order to dip Koran in the sea at all costs, thereby fulfilling the “ancient prophecy.” Dip­ping Koran in the sea (that is, imposing by force their own version of Islam from the North to the South/ Atlantic Ocean) was an “ancient prophecy!”

No one knows exactly who gave the so-called “prophesy.” On page 16 of his au­tobiography, My Life, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only Premier of the North, a descendant of Usman dan Fodio, made reference to how “the ancient prophesy, that the Fulani would dip the Holy Koran in the sea” was aborted in Ibadan:

“These wars went on with varying success and at one time it appeared as though the the ancient prophesy, that the Fulani would dip the Holy Koran in the sea, would come to pass. A Fulani column penetrated south of Ibadan, but the for­tune of war turned against them…”

Finding himself in control of the state machinery of force as President, it was Buhari’s personal aspiration to carry out the fulfilment of that “prophecy” through force, guile and by all deceitful means – herdsmen’s killings, maulings, maimings, displacements of farmers from their lands, RUGA, Water Resourc­es Bill, etc. All the measures failed but at a huge cost in blood, suffering, famine, economic hardship and widespread in­security.

I should mention in passing that Sir Ahmadu Bello, despite being a powerful figure and the real man in control of pow­er in the First Republic, did not attempt to “dip the Holy Koran in the sea.”

I should also mention in parenthesis that the current general insecurity, in­cluding the now infamous banditry in the North West, stemmed from the impu­nity of herdsmen condoned by Buhari. Insecurity was largely confined to the North East before Buhari gained power in 2015. But by the time he left in 2023, the entire country had been turned into a killing field!

The problem, I must declare emphat­ically, is not about Islam. Long before the campaign of Usman dan Fodio in the 19th century, perhaps long before the so-called “ancient prophesy,” Islam was already firmly established in the South West. Even if the fortune of war had not turned against the Fulani column, they would have had nothing to teach the Yoruba about Islam. Contrarily, Islam in the South West, with all due respect, should be a model for its adherents in the entire country.

Adherents of Islam in the South West do not believe in or engage in jun­gle justice, such as the mob murder of Deborah Samuel Yakubu, among many other such gory incidents in the late 80s, 90s and 2000s. One deranged element cannot plot a cartoon against Islam in far away Norway, and Southern Mus­lims will then, in reaction, turn on their Christian brothers and begin to burn their properties, loot and commit mur­der! What religious ideology will cause a man to rip open with a machete the womb of a pregnant woman or slash the throat of a fellow human being like a goat? If Nigeria is truly a secular state, the lawlessness in the name of religion must stop without further ado. The Fed­eral Government must end this menace forthwith with all lawful measures at its disposal.

Again, the problem, I must state, is not about Fulani or any particular race. Bu­hari was not the first Fulani to rule this country and won’t be the last – he was just an exception! Indeed, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua – while he was in good health and effectively in charge of affairs of this country – ranks among the best Heads of State this country has produced so far, if not the best. That has been my open impression about him, and nothing has changed that. Yar’Adua was Fulani, and a Muslim!

Buhari was just an exception; a re­ligious bigot, a masked fundamentalist who, unfortunately, found himself at the helm of affairs of this country.

Regrettably, I was among the com­patriots that openly promoted the can­didacy of Buhari for President in 2015 and even supported his government for a couple of years, up to the point the scale fell from my eyes! I did not know by then that Buhari was a dissimulator. I shall return to this point anon.

One of the dilemmas of a writer is having many plates on their tables at the same time. You have begun your of­fering on a topical issue or still in deep contemplation about it, another matter of public interest breaks out to displace it altogether – a recurring decimal.

However, following the shocking de­cision of the Supreme Court on local government autonomy, delivered on July 11, 2024, this writer was determined to shunt aside every other topical matter that might challenge or displace the com­prehensive review of the consequential judgment. He went back in time to study the lengthy apex court’s decisions on the same or related suits in 2002 and 2005 to highlight the flaws in the latest judgment. And for six consecutive weeks, between October and November 2024, he featured the series in this column under the title, LG Autonomy: Supreme Court Got It Wrong, Completely.

While I dissected the apex court’s decision, I did not anticipate in any way that the immediate past president, Mu­hammadu Buhari, would pay the debt of nature so soon afterwards – one year after the judgement.

*To be continued next Thursday

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