NIGERIA: AS RICH IN DIVERSITY AS POOR IN SINCERITY — Maiwada Dammallam

“I repeat once again without apologies, Rivers is a Christian state. That is why nobody can touch us. When it mattered most, the Christian community prayed and God heard your prayers.” — Governor Wike

Above was a declaration made by Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, during a crusade organised by the Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Church in Port Harcourt, My review of Wike’s overt and flagrant non-compliance to Nigeria’s federalism, a hobby anyway, is less about Wike’s rascality, negative exuberance and indecorous methods and more about our collective hypocrisy and seeming susceptibility to blackmail worsen by also a seeming desire not only to be politically correct but seen to be politically correct.

Try to imagine the backlash should a Governor Masari, Ganduje, El-Rufai or Badaru of Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Jigawa respectively, dare make such a declaration in the deepest recess of their minds and it escaped out and make it into public domain. Sure you will agree CAN, by default, will step-in and suspend every legitimate and civilised method of conflict resolution to hang the “culprit-Governor” while insulting the collective dignity of the North.

Governor Wike would get away with this no doubt. My motive is not to stop him anyway. It’s just to nudge the North into a critical realisation that it’s almost “quarter pass” FIRE-FOR-FIRE on the sluggish clock timing Nigeria’s developmental progress. It’s quite unfortunate that the North has allowed itself to be undeservedly reduced into some sort of a laboratory for any retard to experiment his relevance and stupidity. Federalism is a concept built on the noble principles of trust, mutuality and respectability and it survives on nothing less.

The North has wasted more than enough time playing the good boy in a situation where goodness is more a liability than a virtue. For having both the numbers and the resources to negotiate or blackmail its way through the complexity that’s Nigeria, I will blame the North more for the unpatriotic boldness of clowns like Governor Wike which, like it or not, is what keeps Nigeria in diapers long after its peers are full grown adults.

Let me put it this way, petrodollars, thieving leaders, crumb-picking elders, ungodly religious leaders, compromised political class, subdued and confused citizenry and all, Wike will think thrice before facing TV cameras in a Church to declare Rivers State a Christian state regardless of motive and context. If Wike was satisfied that Masari, Ganduje, Badaru, Tambawul and El-Rufa’i would accept his challenge and declare all citizens of Rivers State in their domains as nothing less than citizens of a Christian state, he won’t entertain the silly idea voicing his nonsensical thoughts even if high on expired kain-kain mixed with the finest ‘ganja’.

Sadly, this is not the case. Each time clowns like Wike authored a new nonsense and release to the public, leaders in the North will be running from pillar to post trying to outdo one another with the best medication to heal the new wound. The North’s method of turning the other cheek has left it with almost no space on its face for a new slap.

Actually the North has since adopted a new method of preemptive medication for periodic nonsense of people like Wike. Almost simultaneously with Wike’s Christianisation of Rivers State, Emir Muhammad Sanusi of Kano was somewhere declaring all indigenes of Kano as citizens of the State. Quite a civilised signal but a very wrong one in Nigeria’s situation if I may say.

The lavish tolerance the North always bring to the Nigerian table is as unhealthy as the blackmails of irreversible bigots like Wike. Only recently Bishop Hassan Matthew Kukah, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, floated a proposal to train 10 million almajiri street children in vocational skills using his outfit, The kukah Centre, a non-governmental agency to achieve this. Quite a laudable albeit unworkable and mischievous initiative if you ask me.

However, I’m less concerned about the motive of Bishop Kukah’s ambitious initiative or the source(s) of funding such an ambitious project, the socio-political and legal encumbrances not to mention the inter-religious huddle he need to cross given that “Almajiri” is an entirely Muslim affair while he is not only a Christian but a Christian leader, a Bishop, in charge of a suspicious Diocese seen to be strategically located in the heart of the Sokoto caliphate for a specific purpose. That nobody will donate 10 million Muslim children in their formative years to him to do as he wish is his arithmetic to resolve.

My arithmetic is just to calculate the backlash should Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi, Gumi, Bala Lau or Jingir decide to float a proposal to rescue and rehabilitate the thousands of Nigerian prostitutes on the streets of various countries in Europe, especially Italy, entirely daughters of Nigeria’s Christian South South, South East and South West. No gainsaying, then, CAN and clowns like Wike ably supported by Christian leaders like Kukah will roll out their divisive and irritating drums of ISLAMISATION to demand for the head of the Sheikh behind the initiative.

Ditto, the ongoing scandal of Senator Elisha Abbo in which the Senator was caught on video beating the daylight out of intimacy gadget’s shop attendant dutifully supported by his police orderly. If it were a Katsina, Kaduna, Kano or Sokoto Senator caught on video committing half of such demeaning infraction, by now CAN and a coterie of unscrupulous Christian leaders would be halfway pulling down the roof. And while at it, no Northerner would be spared a share of the punishment for the sin committed by the randy Senator.

Why should I expect anything less when the same gang are accusing a President of Northern and Muslim extraction of efforts to Islamise Nigeria even when it should be obvious even to a retard that he lacks the political and legal tools or the military strength to do so. Even worse, when he was once a despotic and adventurous military ruler that didn’t attempt such nonsense. I’m just trying to highlight the Nigerian hypocrisy viz-a-viz the u healthy tolerance of the North and I hope I’m speaking loud enough to be heard.

I’m not against one Nigeria but neither am I an advocate of a Nigeria built on unrealistic, skewed, unsustainable and bigoted terms of characters like Wike. Painting Northerners as leeches and liabilities is bad enough but nothing could be worse than Northern leaders agreeing with such insidious profiling by always turning the other cheek just to keep the union alive.

An average Northerner is as much a victim of the destructive activities of a small community of thieving leaders in Nigeria as any citizen of any region hence, scapegoating and profiling Northerners as devils in addition to their sustained sufferings is the worst conceivable injustice whether the purpose is to negotiate legitimate rights or just to check the region’s numerical advantage to resolve a democratic situation that may be awkward to some.

Our laws were designed to accommodate both our realities and to some extent, even our sentiments. It’s clear that these laws are at best obsolete hence, the need to review and upgrade them to accommodate our new sentiments. It’s just not workable to continue living these lies with the assumption that Nigeria may still hit it big.

The longer we keep ignoring common sense, the longer bigness would keep eluding Nigeria. For instance, If it’s too much for Nigerians to calculate the benefits of housing and modernising cattle rearing vis RUGA settlements for the overall benefit of the nation, then it will silly for Nigerians to expect bigness out of Nigeria. Great nations are built by sacrifices and mutual cooperation never by blackmail — the type that saw to the hurried suspension of the voluntary RUGA settlements by the Federal Government. No nation was developed on terms like this and Nigeria will not be the first.
The earlier we wake up to this reality the better our chances for achieving first, a Nigeria, then a great Nigeria.

Me: We must star

The earlier we wake up to this reality the better our chances for achieving first, a Nigeria, then a great Nigeria.

Me: We must start speaking to people in the language they understand. Nigeria is not a divinely "revealed" nation; she is "our" formulation. We either live with mutual respect or we part ways peacefully!

Kagarko:
The earlier we wake up to this reality the better our chances for achieving first, a Nigeria, then a great Nigeria.

Me: We must start speaking to people in the language they understand. Nigeria is not a divinely "revealed" nation; she is "our" formulation. We either live with mutual respect or we part ways peacefully!

Whoever wrote this piece is living on planet Jupita. We Igbos want our own separate country and not this nightmare of a contraption called Nigeria that was foisted on us by the greedy British

Nigeria is not Rich in anything apart from Tribalism and every kind of corrupt practices.
We should stop lieing to ourselves

Do you want water for your cattle? It seems they are thirty.

Wike said he is ready to pipe water from Bonny Ocean to your cattle colony. Have you considered his gesture? In view of the global warming, water is scarce in the Sahara desert, you better make up your mind now before it crosses their mind to charge for it.

Meanwhile, Wike didn't institute Sharia law in 12 states of the federation.

Wike wasn't the one who promised (promising) to spread Sharia law to all the states in Nigeria.

Your kind of entitlement and emperor-like characteristics cannot work on every Nigerian.

Nigeria has survived on mutual tolerance and understanding of and respect for each other's lifestyle and culture through moderate and civilized leaders who value human lives, until you brought out some of your third-century-minded fellows - under the cover of deception of fighting corruption - who feel they can stretch the fabric of the country to any limit and you want everyone to keep quiet?

The unfortunate thing about people like you is that you think everyone operates under an almajiri system.

An innocuous gesture by a non governmental organization to help train your wards in modern living, inside your territory under your supervision, was viewed with extreme suspicion and vehemently rejected, for obvious reasons (more like the suspicion and rejection of polio vaccination).

But the same you sees nothing wrong in a government land grabbing policy of importing cows and their rearers planted firmly on people's ancestral land, with the potential (and/or aim) of claiming those territories in the future. How do you think? Does that make any sense to you?