“In the absence of a cat,
the house becomes a
playfield for rats”, so goes a Yoruba saying. Another like it notes that “The return of
a cat from a long sojourn always restores sanity and
ends the free run of rodents and their destructive
activities in a house”. President Muhammadu Buhari may not be a cat, but he
has proved that his being symbolically likened to the
wild specie and king of the jungle, the lion, by his wife,
Aisha, is no fluke at all. While away on his prolonged
medical vacation in London, Nigeria’s corporate
existence floundered and tottered on the brink, as all manner of groups took the opportunity to intensify hate
rhetoric, agitations and agenda believed to be inimical
to the corporate existence of the nation. Although his
deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, who acted for Buhari in his
absence, tried to douse the tension, his pacifist methods
and dialogue with leaders of ethnic nationalities, as well as his own perception as a ‘dove’, coupled with
power play believed to have hamstrung his decision
making hardly went far in containing the state of
anomie. However, signaling hope in the improvement of her
husband’s health and his mind on goings on in the
country, which, Buhari himself hinted in his Monday
broadcast to the nation he monitored closely, albeit
with distressed mind, Mrs. Buhari had assured a
despairing citizenry of normalcy being restored, with far-reaching measures, once the ‘lion king’ was back in
the country in her parable of the ‘hyenas and the
jackals’. His condemnation and threat to deal with the threats to
national security and stability, in his terse broadcast,
which drew mixed reactions from the populace,
followed by his recent order to security agencies to
crush ‘trouble makers’, notably the Indigenous People of
Biafra (IPOB) and Boko Haram are simply in line with the character of President Buhari as a strong leader. Although it is viewed in certain quarters as overkill, the
President’s directive has been fully backed by the
Northern Elders Forum (NEF). Chairman of the
organization, Dr. Paul Unongo in an interview with
Saturday Sun’s WILLY EYA, explained that if the Nnamdi Kanu-led IPOB was allowed to carry on with its activities
as it had hitherto done, it would drag the nation back
into civil war. This, according to the NEF chief, would be
disastrous, when Nigerian leaders including Ikemba
Odumegwu Ojukwu and Buhari, who were actors and
also fought in the 1967-1970 armed conflict in which 3 million souls perished, regretted ‘Biafra’, had made up
and agreed on national unity. President Buhari has given the security chiefs marching orders to crush the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB), Boko Haram and other groups that pose a threat to national unity. What do you make of his directive? I know Buhari very well. It was in my hometown, Gboko
that Buhari and Ojukwu met for the first time after the
war. I arranged for Buhari and Ojukwu to meet in Gboko.
So I could feel Buhari’s pain. You feel pain when young
men that were not even born when we went and
suffered so much and inflicted so much suffering on our people are using such verbiage and such type of
rhetoric. They cannot even talk in such a sophisticated
and philosophical manner like Ojukwu. They cannot
match Ojukwu in any way. Remember all the troubles
that we went through to try and say look if we make
ourselves to fight a war, we are going to come back to the same basic problems that we would sit down, talk
about it and sort out. Ojukwu said let us go to Aburi and
I would stand on Aburi and everybody said take Aburi;
then something changed and he said give me
confederation now or give me war. They were young
people; both Ojukwu and Gowon were colonels. They told Ojukwu take federalism, let us dialogue and Ojukwu
said no, let us fight and they now said, okay, if you fight,
I would respond. And we saw these things for two years
between 1967 through 1968. Then you have young
persons who did not see what happened going around
and matured people making the young boy feel that he is something special. They are using half the idioms that
Ojukwu used. They speak half the English that Ojukwu
spoke and they are delivering the message less than the
way Ojukwu delivered it and people are saying let us go
to war. So, I can understand Buhari, a man who was a
commander in the warfront, fought against Ojukwu and three years they never talked nor greeted, and after the
war, they refused to greet, until I arranged and brought
them to Gboko; Ojukwu from Nnewi and Gen. Buhari
from Daura and we met at St John’s Catholic Church,
Gboko. I think it is annoying. What kind of country is
this? What sort of human beings are we to now prove that man does not learn from history? Shall we,
Nigerians, start all over again and not move forward.
After 50 years, we come back to the same rhetoric to
abuse people and heat up the polity with tribal feelings
right to the pitch and we fight a war. Last time, we lost
3million people. If we go with Nnamdi Kanu now, how many millions are we ready to part with? Maybe 15
million and we wait for another 50 years and the cycle
continues. I support the position of Professor Ben
Nwabueze who is one of the constitutional lawyers in
the world. The position is, please, let us come and sit
down in a Sovereign National Conference; we are all very educated; even our children have become professors.
Nigerians can sit down and talk over their differences
very coolly. They can shout and abuse themselves if they
want, but I do know one thing, the state of friendship,
and love that was shown during the Nigerian civil war
proves that Nigerians can reach agreement on every single thing, but the insensitivity of people who do not
know the trauma of those who participated in the war
are going through is the problem. They are talking as if
there was never a Biafra. We fought a war for three
years, very serious and devastating that you can’t
imagine. People sought for food and anything. In fact, it got to a stage that people could have consumed human
beings. The people out there who saw this horrific
suffering, how are they allowing these young children
to do what they are doing? We that are old have an
obligation to tell the young people that we cannot go
back to war. The issue of Biafra was sorted out on the battlefield and about 3million Nigerians died in the
process. I understand when Buhari talked about it with a
little bit of anger. I say it softly; I beg you my brother,
Kanu. We do not want another Biafra. We settled the
issue of staying together with 3million people. I am 100
per cent with Buhari on that. With less than two years of his administration left, what do you think Buhari should do to douse tension in the country? I think that Buhari, as a politician now, has spelt out the
orientation of his government and his political party has
an agenda. Three items of the agenda are central to his
administration. These terrorists called Boko Haram were
contesting the Nigerian territory; they seized a huge
chunk of the Nigerian territory. Let me give you a graphic illustration of the territory for Boko Haram. You
know Borno State, in relative comparison, is seven times
more than the whole landmass of the South East and
Boko Haram captured almost 90 percent of that. Boko
Haram successfully captured 80 percent of the state and
hoisted their flag on the territory. They captured land as big as the whole of South East. They were administering
that land when Buhari took over power. They were
threatening to capture Adamawa, which is two to three
times the size of South East and they were encroaching
into Gombe and also Bauchi. And Buhari said he was not
going to tolerate anybody. He said he was going to chase them out and crush them. He made security his
first priority. He also said he would fight a war against
corruption and fix the economy too.