On the matter of the dog named ‘Buhari’
August 25, 2016
TAGS Abimbola Adelakun buhari dog Ogun
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Abimbola Adelakun
When the Ogun State Police arrested Joe Chinakwe after his neighbour reported him for naming his dog “Alhaji Buhari”, and for walking the same dog in their “Hausa dominated neighbourhood,” they did not try to mask why they took that line of action. Accord
ing to media reports, they charged him to court because his “provocative” act could cause a breach of peace, and that was because “an average Northerner would feel bad over such a thing.” Underlining their motive is the reality of our socio-political environment. When law enforcement admits to arresting a man to preserve the feelings of his accusers who can launch gratuitous violence, they mean the evil we are dealing with surpasses their level of efficiency.
History has taught us that whenever the “average northerner” says he “feels bad over a thing”, the rest of us are supposed to hurriedly rearrange our manners. We are told to take heed of invisible limits that “infidels” are not permitted to cross. Alarmingly, a number of us have restricted ourselves to this emasculating avoidance of wrath. We have mapped out “no-go areas” of public discussion that we trespass at grievous risks to ourselves. We have seen the repercussions of trespassing these bounds and they are not pleasant. From Gideon Akaluka’s killings to the Reinhard Bonnke crusade violence, the Miss World riots, the Danish cartoons saga, and many other instances of unwarranted violence that have occurred, we have long realised we are dealing with a short-tempered evil spirit who demands a sacrifice of our collective dignity so he can let us live.
The trouble is that this evil spirit of violence who has a chokehold on our society is implacable. He has tasted vats of blood of the innocent and assumed a proprietary right over our lives. Violence in Nigeria happens, not because of intrepid and insensitive people who say things that make others feel bad. Rather, they stem from a cultivated attitude of those who think others’ lives are theirs to take, and they have no regard for any law that attempts to restrain their execution of mindless violence.
Otherwise, what did anyone say or do that warranted the post-election violence of 2011? What did a simple exchange between Mrs. Bridget Agbahime and them result in her death? What of the four killed in Niger State in May? What of the eight burnt to death in Zamfara State just three days ago? Who thinks their victims, people who live in close proximity with them, did not know not to upset them? So why did they still end up dead? Is it not because the state, by never redressing these incidents of violence, has indulged the idea that whoever makes them feel bad deserves what it gets?
Rather than challenge those murderers when they resort to meaningless violence over some offense, Nigerian leaders have blamed the victims instead. When Mrs. Agbahime was killed in Kano, the Presidency issued a press release that suggested people should know better than do things that make these killers feel bad. Over the years, religious and political elite have imbibed the language of justifying violence and it feels very natural when they express certain worrisome ideas. For instance, a man goes to the police station to report a neighbour who supposedly named his dog after his father and certain well-meaning Nigerians say, “At least he tried. You know what would have happened if it had been Kano or Kaduna?” That kind of thinking is dangerous because it suggests that these murderers are ferocious beasts whose raw sensitivity needs to be larded with our self-restraint. Since they cannot be tamed, the rest of us had better put ourselves in a cage so we do not get bitten. Whereas they are savages precisely because Nigeria has failed to tame them.
Whether “Trader Joe” was right (or not) to have named his dog “Alhaji Buhari” is an open argument that would be moderated by cultural and religious sensibilities. What is far more important is for the law enforcement not to react based on fear and curtail another man’s freedom. We cannot claim to live in a free society if the best we do is contain ourselves out of fear of what certain rogue elements can do to us. Freedom is not freedom if its limits are not tested every now and then. It is up to the law to enforce its legitimacy without merely pandering to malevolent threats.
In the account of the incident, those who lodged the claim against “Trader Joe” threatened to kill him if he returned home. Now, if the police arrested the man due to the threat of violence his action could have caused, why then did they overlook the threat of violence to his life? Why is the threat of violence Chinakwe’s traducers could have caused against the entire society considered more egregious than the one they threatened against him as an individual?
If Chinakwe truly named his dog President Muhammudu Buhari as he claimed, and it matters less whether his motive was admiration or disrespect, then arresting him would be setting a bad precedent. There is no one who is, or seeks to be president in the age of social media – where the distance between people’s sometimes unrefined thoughts and their fingers on their mobile devices grows shorter everyday- who will not suffer harassment from the populace. Former Goodluck Jonathan endured so much insult -from ethnic slurs to malicious wishes against himself and his family- such that at some point he labelled himself the most criticised president in Nigerian history. At no point did his rabid followers ask anyone to be arrested because they “felt bad” about the insults to their hero. President Barack Obama and his family suffered some of the most vitriolic insults any American First Family president has ever received but the sky did not collapse on anyone’s head.
The Republican contender for the US presidency, Donald Trump, is not yet president (and he may never be) but he already deals with similar insults hauled at him from various corners of his country. Lately, some artists put up nude statues of him in five busy cities depicting him in the most inelegant manner. People have virulently protested such distressful artistic expressions but that is as far as it goes. In universities this fall, Trump’s nude statue will be a topic of discussions in classroom as people try to give a philosophical slant to the artist who has “disrobed patriarchy”, “undressed male white hegemonic power” and laid bare the libidinal energy that the oppressor has used to keep the rest of the society subjugated.
Do we imagine that these societies attained such level of restraint overnight? No, it is an attitude that is bred into people and sustained with the state’s efficient judicial structures. As a matter of fact, the various social crises erupting in a place like the US should teach us that what is called civilisation is not a destination but a journey. Every country faces the possibility of regression to its Hobbesian state; their citizens just do not let it happen.
Ogun State Police can go ahead and convince themselves they acted in the best interest of the state, that they arrested “Trader Joe” to protect him from the marauders who wanted a taste of his blood, and that he needs to be seen to be punished by his would-be killers. Eventually, they will realise that this evil trait cannot be appeased. When he is thirsty for blood, he simply goes for it because the Nigerian state has let him get away with it too many times. The police should know that the fear of the killers’ petulance is not the beginning of wisdom, it is the very definition of moral cowardice.

This has to stop!
Northerners are not sacred cows!
They are not elites nor nobles, while we commoners-------we are equal! We Southerners are contributing more to the economy than these ignorant, religiously intoxicated illiterates!

Op..adjust the post..

....

Yea,..according 2 our afonjas who work tirelessly 2 have the rest of us bow down and dance 2 evry whims of the abbokkis. They gleefully remind us dat wot befelll us in 1966 will definitely befall us in 2016 if we don't learn 2 respec(worship) abbokkis!

okay

The truth is always straightforward. ..southern Nigerians have been conditioned as slaves to the core northern Nigerians

No

Hmm

Try making sense in Naija where being logical is the stupidest thing.
Same attitude that allowed northerners to practice sharia led to Boko Haram today.
Same attitude that has overlooked child-marriage and almajiris has given us millions of BH recruits and sympathizers

evilapc:
The truth is always straightforward. ..southern Nigerians have been conditioned as slaves to the core northern Nigerians

Not us Igbos! We fought a war against them to prove it. If you are looking for the ones that have been conditioned to be slaves, look westward.

Who went into Coalition with them in 1960?

Who was vice to a Northerner the second republic?

Which party did Ojukwu join on his return from exile?


I think when you answer all those questions you'll find that it's not really credible to for an Igbo to be calling any other Southerner a slave to the North

The monsurudeens of yorubaland have sworn to fight for a country where fulanis must be worshipped no matter what and they will have that country very soon and there will be no Igbos and Nigerdeltans within it.

Words speaks louder than stick, abuse me and I'll celebrate with you. Foolish write up. How many Hausas and Muslim were killed Un knowingly and without any redress. What happen in Zango Kataf, Tafawa
Balewa? Just few to mentioned. You so much forgotten to mentioned them in your bias write up. Who killed Tafawa Balewa, sir Ahmadu Bello etc what was the action taken by the immediate government? Who started the coup in Nigeria? Why first coup plotters were not put on trial? Who substituted unitary system of government? You are now feeling the heat and you will continue to feel it . less you write a complete history, indicate the problems then you can figure out the panacea. Im not in support of any killing yet I'll not succumb to sycophants.

Gods of the arena buhari must be Zeus of the north

obailala:
The last time Hausas were arrested in Lagos, it took Sen Kwankwaso to come down all the way to Lagos to release them, that's called 'brotherhood.'

- Is someone trying to tell me Chinakwe doesn't have a member representing him at the HOR?
- Or does Chinakwe not have a senator representing his constituency at the Red Chambers?
- Finally, does Chinakwe not have a governor in his state who happens to even be from his own ethnic group?

How is it the fault of the northerners or Buhari if the southerners (both leaders and followers) refuse to get their acts together but instead, choose to wail everywhere like kids deprived of akara balls?

You think the police released those hausa miscreants juts because their governor came around?

They were relased because the said senator(kwankwaso) is hausa/fulani.

That is the diference.

Even Wole Soyinka has said that in Nigeria today the hausa/fulani are first class citizens, others are just there.

i don't know why AFONJAS wants the rest of us to join in bowing to their masters. Political alliance is good but using the blood of your own people to sustain such alliance is stvpid and highest level of cowardice. abokki can not kill someone in the East and go free unless in the hit and run terrorist style or backed by govt forces. It doesn't even matter if the person killed is from Jupiter. i even marvel the level with which they concede a part of ogun as an abok.ki town and are begging them to spill blood of their fellow southerner on it the way the do in the north, Northerners now own Ogun just because they want an "enemy" killed, please go ahead and install and Emir of Abeokuta so that he can kill all igbos for you

The fact that Sen Kwankwaso has to come down to Lagos to release his "brother" shouldn't be a justification for evil.

Chinakwe's so-called HOR/Governor, etc. need not get involved in this matter b4 the state apparatus will perform its responsibilities appropriately. BTW, all these talks about governor/HOR are secondary and simply unnecessary.

The primary issue here is why would the state (police) deprive its citizen of its right to freedom just because some violet-prone people feel bad about a citizen's right to freedom.

At what point do we as a people put a stop to all these nonsense?
Among all the people that insulted GEJ/Obama/Trump, can you show us anyone that has been arrested just because the supporters of these politicians felt/feel bad about all the uncountable insults heaped on GEJ/Obama/Trump.

And they will be the first to shout One Nigeria even when they know things are not being done well.

Northerners -the reason why Nigeria CAN NOT be one

For things to move in the right direction your assets should be more than your Liabilities. In Nigeria its the opposite

We all know who all the Liabilities. In the case of Nigeria the Liabilities are being protected more than the asset

RedTarantula:


You think the police released those hausa miscreants juts because their governor came around?

They were relased because the said governor is hausa/fulani.

That is the diference.

Even Wole Soyinka has said that in Nigeria today the hausa/fulani are first class citizens, others are just there.

It is called mental slavery; you and most other southerners are presently entrapped in this mental slavery of believing the northerners are first class. From the example I gave, I don't know what you're all about by saying the governor of Lagos is Hausa/fulani, when did governor Ambode of Lagos become Hausa/Fulani?

The only reason the police would release northern suspects is because their leaders normally intervene; senator Kwankwaso came down from Kano to Lagos to release hausa suspects in Lagos. If Okowa sends just a simple text message today, Chinakwe would be released instantly; likewise if Senator Nwaoboshi makes a call today, Chinakwe would be instantly released and that case would die a natural death. But NO! southerners don't do that, we sit in our homes and lament how we are being enslaved by northerners; we would rather run online and lament and weep and wail at how the northerners are winning on all fronts because of their unity.

I don't know why we are always too sentimental in our judgements. Why is there campaign like #saynotoracism in the western world, is it not to prevent breach of peace. Why would u deliberately want to provoke ur neighbour in the first place. This is jst mental slavery southerners are exhibiting. Nobody is enslaving u...

khSteel:
The fact that Sen Kwankwaso has to come down to Lagos to release his "brother" shouldn't be a justification for evil.

Chinakwe's so-called HOR/Governor, etc. need not get involved in this matter b4 the state apparatus will perform its responsibilities appropriately. BTW, all these talks about governor/HOR are secondary and simply unnecessary.

The primary issue here is why would the state (police) deprive its citizen of its right to freedom just because some violet-prone people feel bad about a citizen's right to freedom.

At what point do we as a people put a stop to all these nonsense?
Among all the people that insulted GEJ/Obama/Trump, can you show us anyone that has been arrested just because the supporters of these politicians felt/feel bad about all the uncountable insults heaped on GEJ/Obama/Trump.

The impunity will stop at the very moment when leaders from the south begin to live up to their responsibilities of protecting the interest of their people.

obailala:
It is called mental slavery; you and most other southerners are presently entrapped in this mental slavery of believing the northerners are first class. From the example I gave, I don't know what you're all about by saying the governor of Lagos is Hausa/fulani, when did governor Ambode of Lagos become Hausa/Fulani?

The only reason the police would release northern suspects is because their leaders normally intervene; senator Kwankwaso came down from Kano to Lagos to release hausa suspects in Lagos. If Okowa sends just a simple text message today, Chinakwe would be released instantly; likewise if Senator Nwaoboshi makes a call today, Chinakwe would be instantly released and that case would die a natural death. But NO! southerners don't do that, we sit in our homes and lament how we are being enslaved by northerners; we would rather run online and lament and weep and wail at how the northerners are winning on all fronts because of their unity.

I meant to say that the senator that came to meet the police on their behalf i.e. kwankwaso is hausa fulani.

I never meant ambode please.

obailala:
The last time Hausas were arrested in Lagos, it took Sen Kwankwaso to come down all the way to Lagos to release them, that's called 'brotherhood' and that isn't the first time we've heard of such stories. Now I have questions for southerners:

- Is someone trying to tell me Chinakwe doesn't have a member representing him at the HOR?
- Or does Chinakwe not have a senator representing his constituency at the Red Chambers?
- Finally, does Chinakwe not have a governor in his state who happens to even be from his own ethnic group?

How is it the fault of the northerners or Buhari if the southerners (both leaders and followers) refuse to get their acts together but instead, chose to wail everywhere like kids deprived of akara balls?

The Chinakwe man is a useless idiiot. He speaks Igbo and has Igbo names but has been busy all his life denying his ethnucity. I wish Police didn't save him so that we have one less of the people that created hatred for Igbos and deny us afterwards.

The article just stated the sad truth in Nigeria. Split this country already. There can never be peace were muslims are. Their religion just has to play and no one can stop it. Try to curtail it, it erupts into untold violence with human blood shed ofcourse. To them, they are the almighty faithfuls and you are the infidels that can be dealt with at will.

bjdon:
Who went into Coalition with them in 1960?

Who was vice to a Northerner the second republic?

Which party did Ojukwu join on his return from exile?


I think when you answer all those questions you'll find that it's not really credible to for an Igbo to be calling any other Southerner a slave to the North

What a warped logic from a supposed university graduate and how do these allegations make the Igbo slaves to the Abo.kis? Ilorin is a Yoruba land yet an Emir rules, Ibadan is the largest city in West Africa and a Yorubaland yet it was overran by the Jihaddist and even Oyo-Ile was razed to the ground by these same Jihaddist which spread their religion all over these conquered Yoruba territories ....in case you didn't know, they intended to have their Emirate at Oyo but for the timely intervention of the British by now Oyo and Osun will be another Caliphate now that's SLAVERY.... I hope you understand now.

obailala:
The impunity will stop at the very moment when leaders from the south begin to live up to their responsibilities of protecting the interest of their people.

What exactly is South and North in a civil case involving 2 adults? The truth is that the people we call North are people from more than 8 Muslim countries that speak Hausa eiher as 1st or 2nd language while the South is largely divided along ethnic lines because of people like the idiiot Chinakwe that has spent his entire life denying Igbo.

Pure madness at display on daily basis. Jonathan even endured worst scenarios I wondered what is wrong with this President of ours who enjoys picking on every soul just to score a political cheap point. Naming him after a dog is even elevating, we have more irritating animals that he should have been named after.

RedTarantula:


I meant to say that the senator that came to meet the police on their behalf i.e. kwankwaso is hausa fulani.

I never meant ambode please.

Okay noted... But then are you insinuating that if senator Nwaoboshi who represents Chinakwe goes to a police commissioner, or even calls the commissioner that he would be ignored?... That is exactly what I'm pointing out here.

bjdon:
Who went into Coalition with them in 1960?

Who was vice to a Northerner the second republic?

Which party did Ojukwu join on his return from exile?


I think when you answer all those questions you'll find that it's not really credible to for an Igbo to be calling any other Southerner a slave to the North

That is called political alliance, its not slavery. Get your medullas right man.