.

In 6yrs, Buhari has spent over N20 trillion

And this is what we have:
-N32 trillion debt
-2.01% GDP
-23.1% unemployment rate
> 3000 megawatts of electricity
-100m extremely poor people
-13m out of school children
-18% inflation

Nobody can beat such incompetence and callousness!

Everyone, pay attention to this part, now take a step back and imagine what is going on in the country
Doesn't it ring any bell

We should be very very worried.

Cancel culture is taking over most social media platforms, especially Facebook, IG and YouTube.

I really took my time to read and I encourage everyone to read to the end. There are mountains of evidence against this Jihadist called Pantami. The scary part is, there are millions of Pantamis in Northern Nigeria and at the corridor of political power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CTtYdT8pgM&ab_channel=MarkazBukhari

It is no longer a conspiracy theory. There is now hard evidence.

Nigerian Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Ali Isa Ibrahim Pantami is a man of many descriptions. To some, he is a bright-eyed, relentlessly intelligent and academically competent Young Turk, who has found his way into the topmost level of Nigeria's government at the relatively young age of 48.


To others, he is a symbol of how deeply held and unapologetically public religious faith can coexist and interoperates with modernity and cosmopolitanism without contradiction.

His Twitter handle proudly displays his impressive academic credentials side-by-side with his proud elementary educational background at an Islamic Tsangaya (non-Hausa readers might be more familiar with the term 'Almajiri').


Despite his impressive credentials and his reportedly genial personality which have endeared him to many however, several whispers and rumours about an allegedly dark past have continuously swirled around him at every point in his 5 year-old career as a public servant. From his 2016 appointment as DG/CEO at the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), through to his appointment as a cabinet minister in 2019, these rumours have refused to go away.

Today for the first time ever, NewswireNGR can authoritatively lift the veil on Dr. Ali Isa Ibrahim Pantami and establish his strong and indisputable connections to - and deeply held sympathies for - the dark world of Salafist Islamic terrorism. It is a story that starts in Pantami Ward in Gombe State; meanders through extreme controversy at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University in Bauchi State; takes a notable detour through a Saudi Arabian university known as a global hotbed for Salafist terror recruitment; and eventually ends with a known terror sympathiser and ideological 'gradualist' sitting in Nigeria's federal cabinet.

Pantami's Educational Controversies

Variously known as "Dr Isa Pantami," "Sheikh Ali Ibrahim," and "Shaykh Isa Ali Pantami" he has the unique distinction of being one of the very few people to achieve very high levels of academic achievement in both Western and Islamic education. Following a non-standard education path that included 4 years at a Tsangaya and 2 years of independent Islamic study after primary and secondary school, Pantami gained admission to the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) in the late 1990s where he studied Computer Science. He graduated with a BTech in 2003, followed by an Msc in 2008 and this is where the story gets interesting.

His official Twitter handle includes a bio link to his Wikipedia page, which is poorly referenced and light on detail. On further examination of the sources attributed on his Wikipedia page, it becomes evident that much of what is written there was in fact lifted word-for-word from an official government press release sent out to the media.

Both straightforward accounts of his educational career make no mention of any controversy during his academic career. Keep this in mind for later. While digging into his academic qualifications, I was able to confirm that he did in fact obtain a PhD in 2014 from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. His impressive PhD thesis is linked here. It was impossible to verify his claims of attending Harvard, MIT, IMD Loussaune and Oxford university independently, although the nature of short certificate programs makes it necessary to extend the benefit of the doubt. We can assume these claims are all true.

The neat cover story starts to fall apart however, when a reference from a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked in 2009 by Wikileaks suggests that in his prior iteration as an academic at ATBU, Pantami was in fact a radical extremist cleric whose views were so repulsive that he was kicked out of the university and from a mosque in his native Gombe State.

It gets more interesting.

Where his personally-approved Wikipedia profile makes no mention of a stint in Saudi Arabia or what happened there, a bit of digging turns up information that significantly changes the clean-cut picture he is eager to present. According to multiple verifiable online and offline sources, Isa Pantami in fact spent a number of years learning and lecturing at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia.


This information is very important for two reasons. First, the Islamic University of Medina (IUM) is globally recognised as a hotspot for Salafist Islamic terror recruitment. While it does not itself teach or openly condone terror, it is the undisputed global headquarters of Salafist fundamentalism. The below excerpts from a UK Guardian article from 2001 illustrates how IUM serves as a recruitment pipeline that feeds extremist groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.


The second reason that we should be very interested in Pantami's undisclosed sojourn within the world of Islamic education is that according to multiple sources, he studied the teachings of hardline Salafist scholars including Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Uthaymeen. For those who do not know Sheikh Al-Uthaymeen, here is a collection of quotes and fatwas issued by the man described as a "Giant of the Salafi movement."


Sheikh Al-Uthaymeen says that peace between Muslims and non-Muslims can only be temporary because "jihad is the highest form of islam."

A transcription of the video above goes as follows:

“If someone was to say; is a treaty permissible between us and the Mushrikeen (variously translated as disbelievers/idolaters/atheists), so that we don’t fight them and they don’t fight us? The answer is yes. If we need this, then it is allowed. For instance if the Muslims are in a state of weakness and they are not capable of fighting the enemy. So there is nothing wrong with carrying out a treaty between us and them. However, would the treaty have to be restricted to a limited time period or not?

We say the treaty is of three types: The first type is the restricted treaty meaning that we (the Muslims) say to the disbelievers, “Between us and you is ten years, or five years or eight years (of the treaty).”[…]The second type is the endless treaty which stipulates that we never attack. This is prohibited and I think it is by consensus because this necessitates abolishment of Jihad, and Jihad is the peak of Islam. There will be no power for a nation except by way of Jihad, if it is capable of this.”

For good measure, Sheikh Al-Uthaymeen also specified that his definition of 'Mushikreen' (disbelievers/people without God) also includes Christians and Jews.

Just a Series of Coincidences?

So far, we have established that Isa Pantami has a side to his past educational pursuits that most people are not aware of. However, it is tempting to dismiss these links to Salafist terror and extremism as merely circumstantial. Apart from what is essentially gossip from a Wikileaks cable, the documented views of the teachers he studied with, and the well-earned teror-recruitment-hotspot reputation of the Islamic University of Medina where he taught, there is no actual evidence so far to suggest that Isa Pantami himself is an extremist. Right?

He himself has tried to present himself as the unfortunate victim of such circumstances beyond his control. Commenting on a recent viral video that depicted him in debate with Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, he claimed that he was in fact a moderate Islamic scholar taking on the self-imposed and heroic task of de-radicalising Salafist extremists using his superior Islamic education and his ability to debate.

https://twitter.com/DrIsaPantami/status/1381584099010347012

He is apparently the victim of bigotry perpetrated by people who do not understand Hausa or context. How on earth could a STEM PhD holder with academic achievements spanning Harvard, MIT, Oxford and Cambridge be a lowkey Islamic extremist and terror apologist? What a ridiculous thought.

Or is it?

Cross Section of Isa Pantami's "Suwaye Yan Taliban" ("Who Are The Taliban?" Public Lecture

In his prior iteration as Imam Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, our hero has been accused of making several incendiary utterances and expressing support for violent jihadists around the world. With the exception of a Wikileaks cable, there has been precious little to substantiate these claims. Until now.

For the first time, readers can listen to Imam Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami in his own words expressing deep support and admiration for Osama bin-Laden and the Afghan Taliban, even praying "May God help us to imitate their good." The following recording is from a public lecture Pantami delivered on September 12, 2006 in Bauchi State, titled "Suwaye Yan Taliban" ("Who Are The Taliban". The recording is also freely available on the Nigerian Islamic community website DawahNigeria.com.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxRDUXF-EU

The following translation was made by Andrea Brigaglia PhD, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Islam at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. It can be found in her 2019 paper "Debating Boko Haram."

"

Osama Bin Laden is mentioned in various instances in this section, with his name always followed by the formula haẓahu ’Llāh (may God preserve him). At the same time, however, the government of Saudi Arabia is also the object of unreserved praises, being described as “our qibla” and “the original abode of faith.” The author mentions the Saudi and Pakistani involvement in the Afghani conflict as starting only after the end of the Afghani war, in a section titled “the post-Soviet era.” It was the leadership of the Arab mujāhidīn, Pantami continues, who invited Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to be involved in the post-war peace agreement, and not Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who, in coordination with the United States, had funded the mujāhidīn for years.

References are made to a meeting held between all the leaders of the Afghani factions in Medina, with quotes from a book authored by the Saudi scholar Mūsā al-Qarnī, who is one of Pantami’s main sources (and who would later, in 2011, be handed a 20-year prison term by the Saudi government). Similarly, the anarchy that followed the end of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan is not attributed by Pantami to the contrasting agendas of the various political actors involved (the Afghani factions, the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab foreign fighters), but to the “divide and rule” policy of the kuffār (unbelievers).

[Pantami then says that] it was in response to this anarchy that “the Commander of the Believers, Mullah Mohammad Omar, may God preserve him,” entered the scene. The formation of the Taliban, on 1st Muharram 1415, corresponding to 24 June 1994, is reconstructed through accurate historical detail fused with some hagiographic data: the 313 scholars who first established the Taliban, for example, correspond to the 313 companions who fought the Battle of Badr (624) alongside the Prophet. The ultimate goal of the Taliban was to bring peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan by “establishing an Islamic leadership, a Caliphate and the Sharia, as every Muslim is commanded to do.”

Here Pantami relies not only on the book by al-Qarnī but also on ‘The Rise of the Taliban’ and on a book by the Nigerian Salisu Shehu, ‘Who are the Talibans’. Pantami [says] that the Taliban are not immune from error. His particular concern is that “about 5% of them” have a penchant for Sufism, which obviously is, in his eyes, an imperfection in their credentials. The remaining 95%, however, are rooted in the “purest Sunni doctrine” (tataccen aƙidar Sunna): “they are people raised in the religious way, may God enable us to imitate their good” mutane masu tarbiya ta addini, Allah ya ba mu ikon koyi da alheransu). In particular, Pantami says that the Taliban are to be praised and imitated in three respects.

The first is the destruction of the two “idols of the Buddha” at Bamiyan. In imitating them, the Nigerian Muslims should long for the day in which every “idolatrous image” will be erased from the Nigerian currency, and no picture will be used on passports and electoral posters, for photos and images are contrary to the Sharia. The second is their effort to impose a strict adherence to the Sunna in the dress code of Afghani women (full face-veiling) and men (st-long beard and trousers cut at the length of the ankle). The third is the protection offered to Osama Bin Laden after the Americans rushed to accuse him of being responsible for the events of 9/11, by arguing that not only was there insufcient proof of his involvement, but also that “even if he had done it, according to the Sharia he should not be handed to you.”

The section concludes with a quote from Safar al-Hawali which is also a favourite scare-quote in the reservoir of contemporary islamophobes, according to which “hating America is part of our creed.” This is followed by prayers for the success of the Taliban; new comparisons between the Taliban and the Prophet’s Companions; and prayers for Bin Baz, al-Albani, Ibn al-‘Uthayimin and Azzam. Finally, there is an invitation to learn from the Taliban’s experience by studying hard “medicine and engineering” while patiently preparing for the moment when Nigeria will be ripe for a leader of the stature of Mullah Omar.


The first questioner asks how one should respond to those Salafis who reject Osama Bin Laden because of his killing of innocent unbelievers; this is probably a reference to the quietist and Saudi-loyalist strand of Salafi thought in Nigeria, represented by scholars such as Muhammad Sani Umar Rijiyar Lemo.

Pantami responded to the questioner by saying that yes, these scholars have some truth, for Bin Laden is liable to make mistakes, but “I still consider him as a better Muslim than myself.” “We are all happy whenever unbelievers are being killed,” continued Pantami, “but the Sharia does not allow us to kill them without a reason.” “Our zeal (hamasa) should not take precedence over our obedience to the sacred law.”

The second questioner asks how a jihad could take place in Nigeria when there is no consensus over a leader, in contrast to the consensus that (if one has to believe to the lecture) existed in Afghanistan around the gure of Mullah Omar. Pantami answers that this was precisely the goal of his lecture; in other words, to point out the need to establish in Nigeria an overall Islamic leadership similar to Mullah Omar’s, before moving to the next step.

In Nigeria, continued Pantami (emphasis added), this is the time for correction (gyara) and preparation (isti‘dād): “How can you start a jihad,when your father is still going around without a beard? When your mother is still going around with a mere transparent veil (gyale) rather than with a full-length hijab?

“Any effort to start a jihad without having established correct Islamic practices is doomed to failure, and this is precisely the main lesson to draw from the Afghan Taliban, whose success was established upon their unwavering attachment to the Sunna. This is the reason, concludes Pantami with a new reference to the “Kanamma affair” and to his critical engagement with Yusuf, why “any attempt to start a struggle that you have seen me rejecting so far, [it was because] it was not led by scholars and there was no understanding of the Sunna.” Thus the second question, focused on the possible implementation of jihad in Nigeria, was answered with a call for postponement (irjā’, Yusuf would say).

The third questioner asks how to make sense of the alliance between Saudi Arabia and the western countries fighting Al-Qaeda, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. Unfortunately, the recording stops before one can listen to Pantami’s answer.

"

Isa Pantami - A Jihadi Gradualist in Sheep's Clothing

According to a 2017 paper published by the US Institute of Peace and the Wilson Centre, Al Qaeda's jihadi tactics have morphed over the years from "shock and awe" events like September 11 to a strategy known as "gradualism." Explaining the subtle difference between open terrorism and gradualist terrorism, the paper says:

"ISIS is a political extremist actor, while al-Qaeda has become an extremist political actor. In other words, ISIS is more of an extremist movement with political goals. ISIS is unwilling to compromise; its behaviour is unlikely to change whatever the incentives. In contrast, al-Qaeda is now more of a political organisation with extremist beliefs, although that does not mean it can be co-opted. Both ISIS and al-Qaeda have long-term strategies to create a Salafist utopia. ISIS's core strategy is to pursue a Salafi state through continuous confrontations both within Muslim-dominated countries and outside them. ISIS believes muslims can be held to an interpretation of Sharia today.

[…] Al-Qaeda's strategy is more gradualist. It believes that Muslims must be educated first on Sharia, that the idea of jihad must be popularised, and that Muslims must be convinced to take up arms as the only method of emancipation. It is less exclusionary. It has forged alliances and quietly entrenched itself and its ideas within local communities with the aim of eventually building a pure salafi one."

The irrefutable evidence of Isa Pantami's own pronouncements, hitherto hidden behind what he considered to be the veil of the Hausa and Arabic language tells a very clear story about exactly who Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami is, and what his existential goals are. It is no longer a conspiracy theory. There is now hard evidence.

At this point, the only course of action left is for President Muhammadu Buhari to quickly and unceremoniously fire Dr Pantami from his sensitive job where he sits on the National Executive Council and has access to the personal data of tens of millions of Nigerians. Nigeria can definitely do better than have an openly self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda sympathiser as its Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.

NB: In the few hours between announcing that I would publish this story and when it went live, my Google account was hacked, and an unknown entity tried to hijack control of the working document I used to draft this story.

I have reached out to Isa Pantami for his comment, if any, on the story.

http://saharareporters.com/2021/04/15/unmasking-jihadi-masquerade-many-faces-isa-ali-ibrahim-pantami

Education doesn’t stop extremism! A lot of educated Muslims are also extremists but do a better job at disguising it! That’s is why all of them remained mute when Dubai traced Boko Haram funds to them! They showed more outrage on the Pantanmi expòse, than the Dubai revelation!

You’re printing billions of Naira to spend and share anyhow (both the one we know and the one we don’t know). And you’re wondering why young people are buying dollars and Crypto to save themselves from your irresponsibility.

blackpanda:
[s][/s]


Bad belle lubbish

If u say u don't want Tinubu, then be ready for continuation of fulani rule. Dimwits

You need to give your head thorough shake

Anyone who has watched Bola Ahmed Tinubu closely and dispassionately can’t help but notice that the man is not well. He is a walking psychedelic calamity. His endless verbal miscues and nonverbal cues constantly conspire to construct the profile of a man who is battling a troubling internal turmoil, who is held hostage by disablingly malefic inner demons.

He appears to revel in his own self-created alternate universe that is always lightyears away from ours. When he speaks and walks, he strikes the observer as a man in a daze, in a cripplingly drunken or narcotic stupor. He slurs his words, slacks his attention, blanks out, has awkward gaits (which caused him to trip at Arewa House in Kaduna recently), and seems impervious to the world around him. That, for me, is the outward manifestation of an inner turbulence.

For instance, during a speech on April 8 in Abuja on the occasion of the launch of Aisha Buhari’s biography titled “Aisha Buhari: Being different,” Tinubu misidentified Dolapo Osinbajo, wife of Yemi Osinbajo, as the “wife of the president.”

“Your Excellency President Muhammadu Buhari, ably represented by the chief of staff; His Excellency the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo; Her Excellency first lady Dr. Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari; Your Excellency wife of the president, Dolapo Osinbajo,” he said.

The slip-up was cringeworthy not just because Tinubu was reading from a prepared speech but because even after an awkward pause and a dazed gaze, he failed to correct himself. That was not the picture of a man who was in control of his mental or sensory faculty.

Ten days earlier, on March 29, he betrayed an even more disturbing dissociation from quotidian reality during a speech in Kano on the occasion of his 69th birthday celebration. He suggested that an effective way to fight unemployment in the country and demobilize bandits in the North was to employ 50 million youths into the military

“To recruit from the youths who are unemployed—33 percent are unemployed?” he said followed yet again by an uncomfortably stuporous 12-second silence. “Recruit 50 million youths into the army and errr [indistinct]. Take away from their [i.e. the bandits’] recruitment source. What they will eat— cassava, errr, agbagdo, errr, corn, yam in the afternoon… it is grown here. You create demand and consumption for over five million army of boot camps.”

Although his press aides later issued a statement saying he meant “5 million youths,” not “50 million youths,” this was another wild, public performance of hyperaroused dissociation from reality. The clumsily uneasy silence, the dazed gaze, the inelegant repetition (egbado and corn refer to the same thing, but they are different in Tinubu’s alternative world), and the illogic that punctuated Tinubu’s speech appear to be only symptoms of a more insidious inner struggle.

This suspicion shows up every time Tinubu departs from the professionally dexterous mediation of his inventively resourceful media team.

For another recent example, go back and watch the incoherent and illogical video of his October 2020 response to the Lekki Massacre. As I pointed out on social media at the time, he appeared to be either in a bacchanalian daze or a somnific trance—or both.

Tinubu has one of the, if not the, most sophisticated propagandists and mind managers in Nigeria, but he sometimes overrules his media minders and rants in public while in an unflattering mental state. A proverb says, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” The inverse is true for Tinubu. Through expert media manipulation by ingenious spin doctors, we have come to associate Tinubu with political and cognitive sophistication and admirable intellectual heft.

If he had remained silent, he would have nourished and sustained this myth, but his unceasingly scatterbrained and unhinged public performances show us a man who is incapable of a basic presence of mind or a coherent thought-process for a sustained period.

We now know his only strength is that he has excellent speech writers, artful PR professionals, and an army of well-paid, overzealous social media and traditional media battering rams. Not all wealthy people hire the best, so he deserves credit for that.

Now Tinubu is expending every imaginable financial, political, social, and symbolic resource at his disposal to become president. With Abba Kyari out of the way, he just might sleepwalk his way into the presidency while the rest of the country laughs at his gaucheries.

In previous columns, I wrote with cocksure certainty that Tinubu would never be president. For instance, in a September 21, 2019 column titled “Why Bola Tinubu Can Never Be Nigeria’s President,” I pointed out, among other things, that “the most important reason Tinubu can never be present is that the people who currently wield political power, to whom he is a witlessly obsequious bootlicker, won’t hand over power to him—or to anybody—in 2023.”

I also revealed that “Before the 2019 election, a friend of mine who is close to Abba Kyari confided in me that after the election they would ‘deal with Tinubu and his people.’ He bragged that by the time they are done with him and his underlings, he would be so damaged that he won’t even be an option for the 2023 presidency. It’s already starting.”

Well, Kyari died and the old cabal no longer exists. Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, is now the head of a reconfigured Aso Rock cabal who takes presidential decisions. Although he is as determined as Kyari was to stop Tinubu’s presidential ambition dead in its tracks, he isn’t nearly as ruthlessly shrewd as Kyari.

For one, INEC’s purchasable chairman isn’t as indebted to Malami as he was to Kyari since Kyari singlehandedly put him in his position and dictated his every move. Tinubu can deploy his enormous war chest to buy up INEC.

For another, Malami has no control over APC’s fissiparous factions. Although he controls the dominant faction of the party, he is challenged by the Fayemi/El-Rufai faction and by the Tinubu faction. But he doesn’t have the sobriety to realize that being a surrogate president who hires and fires people while the man who pretends to be president withers away in silence isn’t enough.

Most importantly, though, although Malami and Tinubu are Nigeria’s fiercest political enemies today, they are actually more alike than unlike. Like Tinubu, Malami lives in his own little world. I have watched videos of his media interviews and noticed that his eyes are almost always bloodshot, his body shakes uncontrollably, and his limbs whirl involuntarily. These are telltale signs of something more profound. No surprisingly, like Tinubu, he also lives in an alternate universe.

I am now prepared to be open to the possibility that Tinubu can become president if no one outsmarts him. But it would be a tragic presidency.

After eight years of Buhari's vacant, dementia-plagued presidency, the last thing Nigeria would need is even a single day of another presidency that is ensconced in an alternate universe and that would be conducted through press releases and public opinion manipulation by devious mind managers.

If Nigeria is to have a chance at survival, it shouldn’t make the mistake of replacing a dementia-ravaged Buhari with an emotionally and mentally troubled Tinubu. At the minimum, we need a sober, self-aware, cosmopolitan person who respects and shows sensitivity to our diversity.

https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/04/tinubu-presidential-disaster-waiting-to.html?m=1#.YHEkPmJYLgs.twitter

By Farooq A. Kperogi

By the time Lagosians finally understand that Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his political progeny are to Lagos, what Buhari is to Nigeria - a lazy, extractive, mendacious parasite - I hope he won't have completely devastated Lagos and its economy.

How can you not see it?

There's no "mystery" to him. He's literally Buhari but Ikoyi-flavoured.

Maintains his political order using thuggery and feudalist tactics, has spent most of his life living off public money, has no ideas for governance beyond expanding the state and raising taxes...that's it

Lagos is literally the engine of Nigeria's economy and benefits from having the productive capacity of the entire country poured into it - it runs itself!

What exactly have this fraud and his successors actually accomplished?

How is this not obvious?!

- David Hundeyin

https://www.nairaland.com/6494453/18-hours-encounter-fulani-kidnappers#100548333

The story was already shared yesterday see it here.

The chickens have come home to roost.

We warned that the situation might get out of hand.

The government paid deaf ears.

Now anarchy reigns.

I fear for this country.

Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.

GOD SAVED ME

I tried to sleep but I was waking up intermittently as heavy trucks hunk pass, blowing heavy cold breeze over my naked body. Once and again I still try to wave for help as the vehicles drive past, I did not get up, I couldn't even see the vehicles coming because I was lying down opposite to the direction of the oncoming vehicles, I just wave when the cars get closer.At one time, I woke up hearing the sound of a heavy truck.

But somehow I noticed that the headlights of the vehicle was much brighter than normal, I just managed to raise my head to look and to my greatest shock, there were two heavy trucks driving side by side, one was trying to overtake the other and was already about todrive through me on the road. How strength came upon me to swiftly roll away from being crushed, I don't know. My broken ached more but I did not pay any attention to it. I was just imagining how I have survived everything only to have been run over by a heavy duty truck.


The next time I woke up it was early morning, about 6am. I could still see cars with their head lights on. I waited till the lights were turned off; that way I knew the day had become brighter. I quickly resumed waving my shorts again but no vehicle stopped even when they could see me clearly now. I mean, who wants to really pull over for a stack naked fellow lying down on the Highway, covered in blood. Except you're a military personnel. Yes, that's it, I put my weak hand down and just said a simple prayer Lord, these cars won't stop for me in thisstate, except for a military escort; please lord, send me a military escort. 2 minutes after my prayer, there came a military vehicle. As I flanked them, they drove a little further away and stopped. 5 heavily armed soldiers came out of the vehicle, still somehow suspicious of me... Who wouldn't be?


"Who are you!" The leader shouted. I said my name loudly and told him that he could search my profile on Facebook. They drew a bit closer and he asked me why I was lying naked on the floor. I managed to explain to him.

He asked if I am married and if I know My wife's phone number. I called it out to him. He then called my wife, the phone was on speaker. He politely introduced himself and asked my wife some questions to confirm my identity.

Satisfied with my wife's response he immediately ordered one to put my shorts back on, and todivert on coming vehicles from getting close to me. He told me that they have been ordered to come to the barracks but that he'll get a car or ambulance for me to go to the hospital. Shortly after, a Volvo ambulance was passing by.


He stopped the vehicle and ordered that I becarried in and taken to the hospital. The driver obeyed and drove me straight from Benin bypass to LASUTH. The officer kept on calling from time to time to ensure all is well. I was immediately admitted in the surgical emergency unit and well attended to. The doctors said Isuffered a broken tibia, a left meta carpal bone. My cuts were stitched and some scans were done. To the praise and glory of the Most High God, it wasn't more than that.

The soldiers called 2 days later to inform me that my car has been found in a police station.A week later I was discharged.I typed this post with one hand because my left hand and leg are covered in plaster cast (POP). I'm healing fast but doctors say my leg will be like this for at least 3 months.To God alone be all glory, and honour, and power, and all praise, Amen

Culled from @AmechiMark. On Twitter

@lalasticlala @seun - This event deserves a front page.

I stayed there for a while breathing heavily. I couldn't imagine how come I was still alive. I was still facing up, lying down. I managed to remove my shirt to tie my head, removed my trousers to tie my leg. I had just my inner short. I was still there for about 10 minutes trying to know how to navigate the forest once I get a little strength.


I remembered that the high tension pole lead towards the side of the road. So I looked up to the moon and said "so long as I can see the moon, the blessingsof the Lord is here". I got up and faced the direction of the high tension, using my elbow and knees to Crawl.

I knew I'll have to first come out to the open space where the tractor graded, crossing it again into the other side. I would crawl a few length and stop to catch somebreath. Not long afterwards, I could see the open space under the high tension from where I was, but little did I know that it wasn't over. As I was trying in pains to make my way out to the open, I just lifted up my head and behold, the guy I fought with was already standingbefore me, with the guy pointing towards me. He just laughed that kind of laugh that says "I got you now!" and cocked the gun to fire. The hope I had managed to gather within my few minutes of crawling vanished immediately.

I was just stifled in my position waiting for the soundof the gun, imagining the bullet entering wherever in my body. In a twinkle of an eye, I saw the leader swiftly standing and blocking me from the gun. He held it to the side and was talking to the guy in his ear. That shouted that they should leave him to just waste me. I then said "but una say una no go kill me na!" The leader then shouted with authority "Nobody go shoot you here, come outside, I say nobody go shoot you here!" He then spoke to the guy authoritatively and the guy just walked away angrily.


The leader then asked me to come out. I crawledout. He then asked if I knew my way, I said I would find it. So he gave directions to follow, warned me against the side must not go to, that they'll kill me if they see me there. I thanked him and they walked away, never to be seen again.


SURVIVING THROUGH THE NIGHT As they disappeared into the forest I continued with my crawling across the High tension into the other side of the Bush.

I could hear sound of cars louder as I Crawl closer. I had to even remove my trousers which I used to tie broken leg because itwas holding up the bushes as I drag my way through. I really can't explain the pains I was feeling but I needed to get to the road so I was just focused on that. Little by little, stopping and breathing a few times, before I knew it, my hand was touching the road.

This should beabout after 9pm.A lot of heavy duty trucks were passing through in very high speed with their bright lights. I immediately took off my inner boxers so I can use it to wave down any vehicle. At that time I became totally naked in very cold night. I tried waving as trucks and few Cars pass by but no one was stopping for me (well, even I wouldn't stop for anyone also). I later noticed that I was on the side of the road going towards Lagos. I managed to cross the road to the side going to Warri.


On getting there, I started waving my boxers with my handscontinuously hoping that at least one of the vehicles would stop for me. I did the waving till my hands grew very weak that I couldn't raise it any more than my elbow on the ground. I also needed to position my broken leg to reduce the pain. I remembered the leader of the Kidnappers telling to get to the road and sleep till the next day. So I stopped waving and tried to sleep by the side of the road.

I said it over and over and over again until he freed himself from me and I justfell back down. He said so I was fighting with him, I said no that I was afraid I didn't want to die that was why I ran. He said for fighting with him, I have killed myself. At this moment I was too weak, badly injured and bleeding out to do anything.

I could only say"please don't kill me" when I find the strength to do so. He ordered me to lie down flat which I did and he walked away from me looking for his gun or something. And I just laid there breathing.

PREPARING FOR WHAT COMES NEXT As I laid there, thousands of thoughts ran through my head, the whole activity played again in my mind, from how I was caught, to how I got injured and lying down there. I was trying to make out a possible conclusion. I could only come up with one - I'm dead. I didn't know what he went to do but I can tell what he'll do when heor they come back to meet me.


So right then, I knew there was only one thing left for me to do. I lifted up my head, still lying down because if I try to sit up, it's like the earth wants to spin. I looked up, opened my mouth and in a very mild and smiley tone, I said...Lord, thank you for bringing me this far in life. I've never reached this point where you know you're going to die. Having attempted an escape, fought with one of these guys, I guess I have done everything humanly possible.

Right now my leg, hand and head are badly injured, I can't run. I know what these guys will do when they return. They will kill me. I don't really know how a person dies, or how the soul leaves the body, I don't know what is going to happen to my spirit. But please Lord, I don't want to miss heaven. I'm a sinner, forgive me all my sins, I acknowledge you again as my saviour and I commit my spirit into your hands. But, if you would ask me, I don't want to die; I want to live, see my wife and children again. As I'm praying to you now, my wife is doing same, other people are praying on my behalf. If you won’t hear me, at least hear them. Please Lord, if you will, you can make me live. With you all things are possible. What you cannot do does not exist. Thank you Lord for everything, Amen.


GOD'S INTERVENTION It should be about 8pm, Shortly after my prayer, I was getting weaker.My mouth was totally dried up and sticking against each other. I've never felt like that before o. I was just breathing fast fast. I saw flashes of torch lights and the leader was shouting where is he. I then said in hausa that I'm here. The leader and some of the guys holding torches pointed it towards me helplessly lying down bleeding profusely. Somehow the leader wasn't happy seeing me in that state.

He asked what happened, I said I was afraid, I did not want to die so I tried to escape. He said but I've killed myself now. He was very disturbed.He examined me again. The guy I fought with just came out from no where and said since I fought with him, he'll make sure I don't come out from the Bush. I started begging that they shouldn't kill me, that they shouldn't be angry that fought him, that it was out of fear.I said I had some money in my account that they can take.


The leader said "we don't want anything from you again, you have spoilt everything, you just have to go!" He then asked me about the gun that guy was holding, I saw some of them checking the bushes. I said I didn't see anygun, that the guy only came to meet me with a machete.

The leader then asked if I can walk, I said yes. He asked me to walk, I stood up and fell down back. He said if I can't walk they'll just waste me there in the forest. I assured him again that I can walk. He walk a fewdistance away and picked up a long stick, cut it to size and gave to me to try and walk with it. I took it and got up but fell back again to the ground. He then said if I can't get up, that's the end for me. I said I will get up. I held the stick again and tried once more to get.I got up and fell down again.

There and then I knew that it's over. Then next thing I heard was "we'll leave you here o"I quickly said "better! Don't worry about me, I'll find my way." he said I'm I sure, I said if they promise not to kill me then I will find my way out.. He agreed and said "Toh we're leaving" And they left.

THE LEADING AND THE FIGHT It was around 6pm when I heard regrouping footstepsand one saying in Hausa, let's start preparing to leave. So they tapped the ones asleep, including the leader. He woke up, examined everything and said, pointing at me: "this one, we will kill him."

He seemed disappointed somehow. I could tell by the heavy punch he laced on myface as he was passing. 5 of them went ahead and 2 behind with me in between. I was ordered to carry their bags, containing ammunition, water bottles, kegs, clothes, oil, etc. I followed them looking down. We walked for about 30 minutes. I started to hear cars from far away andI was a bit calm; at least we're approaching the road, that for me was a kind of relief.

Inside the forest as we walked, there was this clearing by a huge tractor directly under the high tension that ran through the forest. It was about 35 to 50 meters wide, dividing the forest.We had to cross that open land under the high tension to enter into the bushes again but we will be closing down on the road. As we approached the other bushes we stopped. They gathered themselves away from me, talked for a while. By now it was getting dark. They divided themselves again into 5 and 2. The 5 were to go to the road and I was ordered to follow the 2 guys into the Bush, again.


As we turned back towards the Bush, crossing the open land, my heart just skipped. Why are we going back into the Bush? I just settled my mind on theonly thing I could think of; they're going to kill me. We walk a few distance into the forest and I was asked to keep going inside while they stopped.

They now told me to stop and put my head down. I put my head down, my heart rate had tripled, it was dark. I tried to see whatthey were doing. I saw that very angry Fulani guy looking at me with gun and machete. I saw that the other guy wants to say the Muslim prayer. I looked around and was waiting for an opportunity. Opportunity for what, I don't know I have to just do something.

So the guy turnedhis head away from me, I leaped from my position into the Bush and started running. He shouted and chased after me. Unfortunately I was caught up by the Bush I couldn't run at all. As I turned my head around, see this guy dey follow me with full drawn machete. Having no where to go, what just popped into my head was "FIGHT".

I ran towards the guy, caught his machete in the air. Both of us started dragging it. In my mind I just said if I get a hold of it, he's gone, and the same will happen to me the other way around. He hit my head with his head,I returned the head, he tried turning me to the ground, I rolled him over. As we were struggling, he called on the other guy, but he could not leave his prayer position. Somehow I noticed he was overpowering me, I was getting really weak and afraid of myself. I knew he wasGaining control of the machete and I had to struggle a little bit with him. But I was already too weak to continue. He just removed the machete from my hands, pinned me to the ground and started swinging the sharp metal my way. I struggled free and defended myself from it. As he continued swinging I just saw myself blocking the sharp with my bare hands and elbows. I didn't care about the cuts, I just don't want him to touch any sensitive part of my body.


But not long he hit my head and I felt blood gushing out, but I was still busy blocking. Again, another hit my palm bone, and the next to my tibia bone. Oh boy! My leg was broken, I felt my head aching and blood running down, but he was still swinging the thing. As I looked up I saw his arm returning towards me for another slice, I just managed to get up and embraced him tight that he could not return the machete. He struggled to free himself, but I held him and was repeating these three words in Hausa:

God is great All praise be to God Please don't be angry.

Continue....

MY 18 HOURS ENCOUNTER WITH FULANI KIDNAPPERS On MY WAY TO WARRI
Friday 19th February.

It was just a very normal early morning, but with a little bit of excitement in the air. I and my family just moved in to our new apartment after making all necessary financial and legal agreements, clean ups and unpacking.As a matter of fact, Thursday night was the first night we slept together in the new apartment.

So I was supposed to stay much much longer in bed so as to catch up with my strength. But I had to make this one necessary trip to Warri.A lot of people who know me didn't know I have relocated to lagos. Having secured a new apartment, I needed to go back to Warri to pick up some of my household stuff, return, settle and get back to work.

THE JOURNEY In Nigeria, When you are about to hit the highway on a trip,especially with your own car, alone, you want to first settle in your subconscious that you will be meeting over 20 police, FRSC, Army and Customs check points. So your particulars must be in tact, or else... As early as 5:30am I was already on lekki Epe express way.

The moment I made it passed Ijebu Ode, like role calls, I had already gone passed 3 check points, and faced with the ones ahead. As I made it through the last one, where I was delayed for over 20 minutes, I just called my wife and informed her that I'm entering the Benin Bypass.FULANI KIDNAPPERS About 1:15pm.

For those who know the Benin bypass area well, I have barely made the round turn coming from Benin Ore express way to settle on my speed ahead, when I heard what seemed like a car tyre burst. It sounded quiet but repeatedly so I looked at my rearmirror and in front to be sure. I also observed the other cars in front of me hitting the breaks in very swift succession. So I knew we all heard the sound. I had to also apply my break thinking something is happening up ahead. But no, it's already happening in my very before.As I looked to my left I just saw 4 gunmen coming out of the bushes, heavily armed with sharp machetes and AK47s. Several rounds where shot in the air. There were two of them already in our front and back with 4 cars: mine, a Mercedes in my front and two trucks, trapped in the middle.


As the gunmen came close, the Mercedes car just picked up acceleration and made a swerve into the Bush on the right. Immediately I heard a voice that ordered one to follow the car, as if they knew he had no where to run to. As one of them was coming close to meI could see the one that seemed to be the leader speaking with the drivers of the two trucks in Hausa language. He then told his men to let them go.


By now I was out of my car with both my hands raised up and one entered into my car and was just searching everywhere.OK, everything was just happening very fast that I wasn't able to first comprehend the entire situation. I just knew at that moment that I was out of my car, lying face down on the road with a machine gun pointed at me, and someone else is in my car searching it.

In my mind I just assumed that these guys will just search my car, maybe take whatever they want and let me go. What was I thinking? What can I even think at that moment. As my mind was going through this confusion, I just heard the leader say..."take this one inside, he has family; they'll pay for him". What?! Did I just hear "take him inside...., pay for him"? Immediately I heard the tall one close to me saying I should get up or he'll shoot me. So quickly replied in Hausa language that he shouldn't shoot me that I'llcooperate. He then asked me to put my hands slowly inside my pocket and empty it.

As I was about to do that, he warned me that if I make a foul move, "one bullet to your head". He took the money with me and threw away my wallet without considering anything else inside.He then faced the gun at me and in a very malicious tone, said: "oya, dey go inside now or I fire you!" Turning towards the forest where he directed me to enter, I just said to myself, "that's Fulani accent". It was at this point it became dawn on me that I have been Kidnapped.

INTO THE FOREST WITH FULANI KIDNAPPERS For us here in the southern part of Nigeria it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a Fulani and a Hausa person. But having done my NYSC, stayed and worked in kano and Jigawa state, I could tell the difference in their staturespeech and mannerisms. The Fulanis have been known to appear naturally hostile to their neighbours. And here I am, in between two of them leading me through the thick forest in barefoot (I can't really remember how I became barefooted sef).That was how we were just going inside inside the forest. As we're going I could still here faint sporadic gunshots as the others were still operating.

For over 30 minutes we've been walking in through the forest, stopping in between for them to either carry out their bags whichthey kept in well secured holes along the path, or argue about the right way to go - I was just using my little knowledge in Hausa to know their conversation. After much walking, we finally stopped at a small opening. This should be about an hour now. I was asked to squat withmy head to the ground. One of them was holding my phone and asked for the password which I gave him without hesitation.

The other came close to me and asked me if I knew who were, I said no. He then asked if I've heard of Kidnappers I said yes. So he said I've been KidnappedAnd only money can get me out, and if no money, "one bullet to your head, animal go chop you here nobody go see you" He then asked me if I have money, I said yes. He asked how much, I said he will see it in my account balance in my phone. He said he's not interested in my accountBalance but what I have to say. So he asked again how much do I have. I said #70, 000. He came close to me and the next thing I heard was a heavy punch on my face. Really whether it was a punch, or a slap I couldn't tell because the impact was like dry hard wood on my face.He started shouting at me. "Do you think we're ordinary Kidnappers? " "Fifty million naira, ten kobo no comot, or else, one bullet to your head". He then asked me again, how much do I have. I didn't know what to say at this point, #70, 000 will attract another heavy punch on myface, keeping quiet will anger him. So I told him I really don't want to offend him by saying what he doesn't want to hear, and I also don't want to lie.

So the guy going through my phone started asking me about certain pictures in the phone. He showed me the pictures I snappedby a big car and said I own the car. Another one I was standing by a building and he also said I own the building and I'm lying not to have money. He just said OK let's wait for the leader to come.


THE NEGOTIATION

I laid down in that position for another hour or more.Both of them were taking turns in going and coming. I couldnt see much because my head was down. But I was making a lot of meanings with the sound around. I could tell their position and distance, I knew one probably was pointing a gun at me, I could tell when they switched turnsetc. Later I began to hear more footsteps, coming closer and closer. About 3 of them stepped on me as they walked past, another just hit my face, shouting at me to keep my head down.


From the voices they were seven guys, just wearing simple clothes and very hard boots.All on face caps and covid 19 face mask. From their accent, 5 were Fulanis, 1, being the leader is Hausa, and 1 to my greatest unbelief is Urhobo.After a little chit chat amongst themselves about the day's going, the leader sat close to me and asked me my name, my job, and howmuch I bought my car. As I was responding I deliberately replied in Hausa. So he asked if I'm Hausa, I said I only learned a few while serving. He quickly returned to the subject on how I could raise 50 million naira for my release.


He then instructed the Urhobo guy to comeand negotiate with me. The guy came close and really talked calmly. He first told me that those guys in the Mercedes car that tried to escape, have been killed, and if I don't meet their demands, I'll be next. So calmly he said he can help me negotiate for 30 instead of the50 million they asked for. Is there someone I can call, he asked and said I can call my wife. So they gave me my phone to call my wife, but there was no network. I tried it a few more times at their command but still nothing.


The leader then instructed 3 guy to take me to wherenetwork could be found. We got to 3 different locations in the thick forest but still no network. So we got back and told the leader. He just said "hmm this one, we will just kill him." and relaxed himself to rest. I heard 2 guys lighting cigarettes and walking away.

The leader dialed a number on his phone and started talking to the lady at the other end of the phone. He called her my baby in Hausa, spoke really innocently and said many loving words to her, apologized that he could not come to see her the day before, because he didn't closeearly from work and then promised another date.

Later there was calm. I heard snoring from at least two guys. 2 others were whispering. Right there a lot was running through my mind. Is it the end for me? I've heard a lot about those who couldn't meet up with their demands andHow they ended up. Some people even met their demands and still were killed. Will I get out alive, how will this be, what will my wife be thinking now, she knows I should have arrived by now. At a point I asked why I took the bypass.

I remembered my Google map showed only 12 minsdelay if I avoid the bypass. So because I wanted to avoid a delay I will now pay with my life. My heart was beating faster than normal. I was really afraid, not knowing what would happen to me next. Lying down there still, I remembered a Facebook video of Archbishop BensonIdahosa, when he said all through his years in ministry, he's never seen God denied help from those who said "God help me!" Then quietly I just said "God help me!" I said it a few times and stopped.

LMAO
I love Malami. Take out all your enemies before letting known your intentions.
Take out Tinubu, Yahaya Bello, Atiku. Why did he even add Yahaya Bello, is that one serious?

1. Non-State Actors & ethnic militias is almost 95% downloaded upon Nigeria. We have Nnamdi Kanu’s ESN in the South East, Sunday Igboho’s Oduduwa in the South West.

Sheikh Gumi & Shekau in the North West & North East. It is a religious & economic war, as much as it is political.


2. Then again we have the Fulani ethnic militia with undefined agenda, crisscrossing the entire length of Nigeria, unchecked

Nigeria since became a fertile ground breeding carnage & gunpowder, a FAILED STATE if you like. Makes it more interesting this was achieved under 6 years.

3. While Nnamdi Kanu & Sunday Igboho’s men is asking for separation, vis-à-vis economic empowerment, call it RESTRUCTURING if you must

Sheikh Gumi & Shekau on the contrary; are simply enforcing their ethnoreligious supremacist + economic sabotage agenda. And it doesn’t end there

4. Cultism, arson, prison breaks, wanton killings & kidnappings, have completely taken over Nigeria. This is all thanks to ☝️MAN!

Where there is vacuum in leadership, non-state actors & ethnic warlords are always going to rise & fill the void. Nigeria could splinter before 2023.

Obadiah Mailafia said & I quote; “they will start a war by 2022.”

I am not a doomsday prepper, I hate to be the one echoing this, but it must be said. There is still time for Muhammadu Buhari & his enablers to retrace their steps. Save Nigeria & Nigerians from the inevitable.

The idiots are covering their faces with mask

I remember in 2016 when I traveled to Ekwulobia via Asaba airport for a Nigerian Breweries activation and I passed through Onitsha.

There were snipers with flak helmets stationed above the Niger Bridge and military roadblocks with sandbags on the main road through Onitsha.

There were assault rifles peeking out above the sandbags and sniper rifles on tripods pointing at ordinary passenger vehicles going past.

You would have thought these guys were scanning for IEDs in a hot zone in fucking Fullujah, not cosplaying GI Joe near Onitsha Main Market.

You could hear comments from people in the vehicle and their tone, and you could feel a very deep sense of resentment at being treated like they were subjects under martial law in a territory under hostile occupation.

I didnt even live there and I felt oppressed!

Wouldn't have taken a genius to figure out that all of this was doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of weakening Nnamdi Kanu, but was actually helping him to make his point and recruit more people.

But to semi literate cattle herders, every problem is solved by hitting a cow with a stick.

This is why electing smart people is paramount. A smart president, or at least a president smart enough to surround himself with those smarter than him, would have known that arresting Nnamdi Kanu or prescribing IPOB in the first place was the stupidest possible move.

But hey, this is what Nigeria voted for.

Testosterone and bullets.

Adolph Hitler but without sense.

- By David Hundeyin

baralatie:

if only you know what those consequences are?

Whatever the consequences are... the people have been pushed to the wall for far too long, at one point or the other something gonna give.

JidennaJason:
Call me rude, but I don't get along with this Tunde Bakare and I feel he is one of the most foolish pastor's in this country and nothing will ever make this vulture come close to being the president.


He and Mbaka are one of the problems rocking this country, deceiving their congregations.

He is not only foolish, he is fake, an imposter, a charlatan, wicked and avaricious. His days of reckoning is fast approaching.

Nigeria is ruled by a guy who prefers building a standard gauge railway to Niger Republic and investing in a refinery in Niger Republic, to doing anything remotely similar for Port Harcourt and Aba.

I consider this to be meaningless "patriotic, de-tribalized Nigerian" twaddle.

By Farooq A. Kperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Danladi Umar, the notoriously vain and sickeningly skin-bleached chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, was caught on camera on March 29 physically assaulting a security guard identified as 22-year-old Clement Sargwak.

Umar flew into a tempestuous rage because Sargwak besought him to not park his car at a spot that obstructed traffic in Abuja’s Banex Plaza in Wuse 2.


In the aftermath of the swift, across-the-board social media denunciations that his cowardly physical violence against a lowly security guard roused, Umar caused the head of the Press and Public Relations unit of the Code of Conduct Tribunal by the name of Ibraheem Al-Hassan to issue an agonizingly dreadful and error-ridden press release that, among other things, singled out nameless “BIAFRAN Boys” for blame in a show of shame in which he is the main villain.

“As the few policemen in the complex were apparently overwhelmed by the mobs, consisting of BIAFRAN boys throwing matches [sic] and shape object [sic] to his car, which led to deep cut [sic] and dislocation in one of his finger [sic], causing damage to his car, smashing his windscreen,” the statement said. “At a point he attempted to leave the scene, these same miscreants, BIAFRAN boy [sic] ordered for [sic] the closure of the gate thereby [sic] assaulting him before the arrival of police team [sic] from Maitama police station.”

Notice that the press statement, which Al-Hassan later told ICIR he wrote “on instruction” from Umar, spelled “BIAFRAN” in all caps and called the unnamed protesters against his barbarity “boys.” Calling men “boys” is often a linguistic marker of notions of their inferiority and subservience. So the expression “BIAFRAN boys” was designed to simultaneously provoke revulsion and disdain in certain demographic categories in the country.

Sargwak, whom Umar physically assaulted, is a northern Christian from Plateau State. But the people who heckled and caught Umar’s violence against Sargwak were spontaneous, amorphous, anonymous, and multi-ethnic bystanders. Why did Umar invent the trope of “BIAFRAN boys” when it was practically impossible to determine the ethnic identities of the people who recorded and heckled him?

Well, it was because Umar wanted sympathy even when he was the top dog who tormented an underdog. Although he is obviously cognitively stunted, he is smart enough to know that anti-Igbo hysteria unites a surprisingly large number of Nigerians.

Chinua Achebe captured this well in his famous 1984 booklet titled The Trouble with Nigeria. “Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo,” he wrote.

When I read this years ago, I was enraged with Achebe. I thought he was overly sensitive and paranoid because he didn’t describe me or many people that I know, but upon deeper reflection and more sober observation, I realized that there’s some truth to his claim.

Many individual Nigerians don’t resent the Igbo, of course, but to deny that there is a reflexive, Civil War-inspired antipathy toward the Igbo as a collective group is to wallow in denial, which psychologists say is an instinctive ego defense mechanism. It is the collective unconscious national antipathy toward the Igbo that Umar was exploiting when he gratuitously invoked mysterious “BIAFRAN boys” to mitigate and explain away his shameful conduct.

Fortunately, the tactic backfired precisely because the absurdity of its ethnic scapegoatism was too nakedly self-evident to be effective. But Umar is not alone. More than any other administration since the Civil War, the Buhari regime takes Igbophobia as an unofficial state policy. Watch the rhetorical maneuvers of the regime’s aides and paid propagandists, and you will find that it often revolves around stoking anti-Igbo frenzy.

Perhaps because he was serially rebuffed by the Igbo after many attempts to court them (even after choosing Igbo running mates two times in a row, he never won the Igbo vote), Muhammadu Buhari himself makes no pretenses about his deep-seated loathing of the Igbo.

For instance, during a Q and A session at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC in 2015 shortly after he was sworn in as president, Buhari said there should be no expectation that he would dispense favors to people who gave him only “5 percent” of their votes.

The “five percenters” were, of course, the Igbo—and Southern minorities. So, instead of magnanimity in victory, Buhari chose to declare hostility against the Igbo from the get-go.

During his first and only presidential media chat on December 30, 2015, Buhari infamously asked, “What do the Igbos want?” As I wrote in a previous column, it wasn’t the question in and of itself that was the problem; it was the raw, unvarnished animus he exhibited in asking the question. “No president should speak so contemptuously of any constituent part of the country he governs,” I wrote.

In his interview with Aljazeera’s Martinee Dennis in Qatar in March 2016, Buhari also became manifestly agitated when the interview questions shifted to Biafra. He curtly declined to view a video of military officers shooting defenseless Biafra agitators and even countenanced the Nigerian military’s extra-judicial murders by saying Biafran demonstrators were “joking with Nigerian security and Nigeria will not tolerate it.”

Again, on September 13, 2016 when youth corps members who served in Katsina State paid him a courtesy visit, Buhari singled out the Igbos among them for censure over Biafra. “Tell your colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it,” he said. That was unpresidential and invidious, particularly because, at that time, Biafra didn’t even enjoy as much sympathy in the southeast as it does now.

What Buhari did was akin to requesting a group of Muslim well-wishers to tell their terrorist co-religionists to stop terrorism. Or telling innocent Fulani well-wishers to tell their “colleagues” to stop kidnapping. That’s unfair stereotypical generalization.

American eugenicist Arthur Jensen invented a concept he calls the “stereotype threat” by which he means that people who feel stereotyped tend to act according to that stereotype, or inadvertently authorize it, often in spite of themselves. This has happened with the renewed agitation for Biafra. Up until mid-2016, Biafra was on the fringe even in Igboland. Buhari has ensured that it has now moved to the forefront.

There is a chicken-or-the-egg type causality dilemma about the collective resentment of the Igbo in Nigeria. Is the collective antipathy toward them as a group a visceral response to the 1966 coup and the subsequent attempt by the Igbo to secede from Nigeria or were these events triggered by the incipient antipathy toward the Igbo?

In my opinion, that’s a pointless debate because it resolves nothing. The reality is that there is now undoubtedly a mutually reinforcing cycle of recriminations, which needs to stop if we are as interested in national unity as our leaders perpetually proclaim to be.

A good first step to demonstrate sincerity in the quest for national unity is to fire Danladi Umar for unwarrantedly stereotyping an entire ethnic group without evidence. If not, preachments about “national unity” will sound even more hollow than they’ve always been.

Most people know that “national unity” is only invoked as a rhetorical cudgel to squelch dissent. But Umar has presented an opportunity to show that it means more than that.

Doctors are on strike nationwide and the president is in a foreign country for medical check-up. How do you defend this uselessness and insensitivity? I bet even an idiot won't attempt defending such discordance.

CRITICAL!!!!!!!!!!

Look closely at this photo.

Do you know any heavy-duty truck logistics and haulage company that can rent out these kinds of trucks to move road construction materials between states?

We need between 20 to 40 of these trucks!!!

For 2 very juicy jobs!!

Preferably companies based in Lagos or Ogun AND Calabar?

If you know any youth who runs a heavy-duty logistics business kindly tag him here!!

I want this contract to go to one of us!

So this is the job:

My first client needs to transport clickers(a residue of coal which resembles asphalt and tar) from Ogun state to Apapa in Lagos.
We pay your company in full and the job ends.

My second client needs to move Granite from Ogun state to Ewekoro in Calabar offload the granite, and then load limestone to be moved back down to the site in Ogun state.

A complete round-trip journey that can start from any of both states:

The trip can begin with the limestone being moved FROM CALABAR by a truck/haulage company in that city down to Ogun before loading the granite in Ogun and conveying to Calabar, OR FROM OGUN where the granite is loaded and conveyed down to Calabar, where it is delivered and reloaded with limestone to be transported down to Ogun state.

NOTE:

(1) My clients will provide the fuel for the duration of all trips(round-trips and direct).

(2) Negotiation terms are open to either price per day charging or as an entire project contract.

(3) A company with over 20--40 trucks and sufficient number of drivers can handle both jobs simultaneously.

(4) The truck weight/load capacity after taking cognizance of the state of axle, tyres and shock alignment should be between 40 to 45 tons.

Help someone you know who is into this business whom you know this job can massively help by tagging and mentioning them here!

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Call me directly on 08088046333 or send me a WhatsApp message on 07063384676 so we begin immediate negotiations and signing of agreements!

☆Ivan The Machine■

Copied from Ivan Lawsons Facebook page.

If the " Biafran Boy" statement by the Code of Conduct Tribunal shocked you, then you have not been paying attention.

This is the Nigeria many of you voted for in 2015.

APC used open ethnic dog whistles against Igbos and Ijaws..stop pretending to be shocked.

A man that cannot be honest with something as basic as his age can't be trusted with our common good. Never a billionaire prior to delving into politics, today bullion vans transport his cash.

Don't allow affliction to rise the second time!