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Yakasai is prejudicial against Awolowo

By Editor
03 November 2016   |   2:44 am
Sir: Nigeria has rarely had good news since the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua/Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan (GEAJ) decided to attack Boko Haram in 2009 ...
Alhaji Tanko Yakasai

Alhaji Tanko Yakasai

Sir: Nigeria has rarely had good news since the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua/Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan (GEAJ) decided to attack Boko Haram in 2009, for no justifiable reason. The former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ), tried to intervene in 2012, but it was too late. The injustice suffered by Boko Haram was absolutely unacceptable. How can you kill somebody, extra-judicially, in Police cell, handcuffed and leg-chained? Is that the mark of a country run by civilised rulers? Yes, it is in tandem with Christian and Muslim civilisations of crusade and jihad.

Christianity and Islam thrive on demonisation of other people’s religions; it is a matter of divide and rule; rivalry and do-or-die. Why? It is because Christian and Muslim clerics live on clericalism. Daily and weekly, with particular reference to Sundays, Christian clerics drain Nigerians of their earnings. Muslim clerics have their own ways of feeding on their followers also.

The latest bad news is that of a so-called elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, a Fulani like the President Muhammadu Buhari. He sees no reason why Nigeria should be restructured, since the present structure favours Fulani Muslim hegemony. Yakasai exposes to Nigerians why Buhari is unwilling to restructure. He said “the agitation for restructure is aimed at denying the North the benefit of the population and land mass it occupies”, and so, “a gang up to deprive the north the benefits it is getting for being richly endowed”. If the north is “richly endowed”, why is it afraid? And, for how long will the north hold the south to ransom because of its “population and land mass”? Isn’t that a population and land mass terrorism?

Buhari paid homage to “Shehu Usumanu Danfodio”, a jihad warrior, on the day he was sworn-in as Nigeria’s President, on May 29, 2015. He confused Nigerians by paying homage also to the drivers of the defunct Oyo and Benin Kingdoms. Yakasai thus let the cat out of Buhari’s bag, when he said “the agitation for restructure is not driven by patriotism, rather it is driven by envy and hatred, and this campaign started with some politicians in the southwest way back in 1959.”

What type of nonsense is that? Yakasai’s mention of the southwest and 1959 is a clear reference to Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Pa Awo) who emphasised that the differences among the diverse ethnic groups could not be wished away, and that unity in diversity would be much more practical than uniformism.

• Oyeniran Abioje,
University of Ilorin,
Kwara State

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