I was in my village on Saturday when I received a text of a letter
written to the eighteen Northern state governors by the Governor of Adamawa
State, Vice Admiral Muritala Nyako (rtd.), complaining of genocide against the
North by the federal administration under President Goodluck Jonathan. In
normal circumstances, I would have immediately forwarded the letter either to The
Sun newspaper’s Managing Director, Femi Adesina, or to one of the editors.
But the letter was so hateful, so unbelievably inflammatory, rambling,
convoluted, divisive, subversive and in my layman’s view, even potentially
treasonable I decided not to forward it to Sun editors for fear that they might
mistake my doing so, as perhaps, a vicarious endorsement to use it at its face
value.
In these crazy days where men and women are walking on their heads, doing
unimaginable things, I was skeptical that Admiral Nyako, a long-term member of
the Nigerian ruling class, right from the Nigerian Civil War days where he
fought as an officer, to his days as a member of the Armed Forces Ruling
Council, could actually write such a letter. Could a fifth columnist not have
forged such a toxic trash and foisted Nyako’s name on it, waiting for a gullible
audience to swallow it?
It is difficult to forget, for instance, that in a bid to score political
points, a bogus online article, bearing the name of an American author, which
linked the suspended Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, with funding
of Boko Haram insurgents, was alas, traced to the president’s Special Assistant
on New Media, Reno Omokri. The ominous silence of the Presidency since that
infamous snafu had meant that you must be most circumspect in what you believe,
that there is so much disinformation going on it is no longer safe to rush to
conclusion on any material, either online or in print. When barely hours after
Nyanya bombing that killed 75 people in Abuja, PDP’s National Publicity
Secretary, Olisa Metuh, rushed out a press statement, accusing opposition APC
of being behind the attack, it became evident that in these times, decency and
order have left our shores.
But all these infractions pale into insignificance beside the toxic letter
purportedly written by Nyako. To my greatest shock, it turned out that Admiral
Nyako actually wrote the pernicious memo. Not only has Nyako not denied the
letter dated April 16, the Presidency has already reacted to it, even when it
appears that a large section of the media had initially applied self-censorship
in publishing it. How are the mighty fallen!
According to Nyako, the military campaign to check the atrocities of Boko
Haram insurgents was in fact a “full-fledged genocide” against the North; that
Northerners are being massacred by federal forces at the instance of President
Jonathan; that it was part of a plot to eliminate Northern elite, noting that
already, attempts were made to eliminate Senate President David Mark (a
Northerner) in Imo State; two Northern governors, Shehu of Borno and Emir of
Kano, all by those sponsored by federal authorities; that majority of those
security forces being massacred in the war against Boko Haram were Northerners,
who are trained only to be eliminated by the agents of the federal
administration or security agencies; that Boko Haram is a grand pretext for
these genocidal onslaught against the North, including the kidnapping of school
children, going to write exams, that Fulanis are being uprooted by the military
from their ancestral domain where they had lived in for the past 100 years,
among other unprintable garbage, which Nyako certainly knew to be total
nonsense.
Reading the attack on security agencies, it is difficult to believe that
Nyako was once the Chief of Naval Staff and retired as the Deputy Chief of
Defence Staff, the second topmost military post. Nyako leaves us confused on
whose behalf he speaks. Is he speaking for Nigeria or Boko Haram?
Perhaps, in a clever attempt to drag in the perennial and periodic whipping
boys of Nigerian ethnic slaughters, the Igbo, Nyako declared that President
Jonathan was from the old Eastern Region, rather than South-South, as if he was
not already a military officer in 1967 when the military regime of General
Yakubu Gowon carved Nigeria into twelve states in a bid to excise the old
Rivers State (comprising today’s Rivers and Bayelsa States) and Cross
Rivers State (comprising the present Cross River and Akwa Ibom States) from the
Eastern Region.
In a crafty effort to link Jonathan’s alleged sins to the Igbo, Nyako wrote:
“Nigerians, this is the first time we have collectively elected a citizen of
this country from the former Eastern Nigeria, as a President. Dear citizens of
Eastern Nigerian origin, please, note that this Federal administration under
your son is giving you a bad name.”
Nyako ultimately compared what Jonathan was doing to the North to what Adolf
Hitler did to the Jews! He wrote:
“The issue now is not between the North and the South or Northern Nigeria
vs. Eastern Nigeria or Western Nigeria. We must save our communities, state and
Nigeria from the Hitler-like evil-mindedness of a few. Let me remind ourselves
that when Hitler walked out of the 1938 Olympics because a blackman was winning
all his events, humanity pretended it did not notice the beginning of genocide;
when he started tracking and killing the Jews, it talked glibly about it, as if
it did not concern us; when he embarked on his racial cleansing, humanity then
began to shiver but it was too late to avert disaster that engulfed the
world…We have a duty not to allow our country to be taken to abyss…One is quite
sure that if you (the Igbo) had condemned the cold-blooded murder of the
political and military leaders of Northern and Western Nigerian origins in the
night of 15 January, 1966, by your sons, it would not have led to the massacre
of the innocent and the Nigerian Civil War.”
Read: Igbo beware, another massacre is on the way, unless you start
condemning Jonathan each time the Boko Haram insurgents strike! In invoking the
1966 coup, the killing of the Northern and Western leaders as a justification
for the massacre of the Igbo that followed, culminating in the genocidal
Nigerian Civil War against the Igbo, what Nyako is doing is to once again wave
the ethnic red flag to the charging bull of extremist Islamism, Boko Haram and
ethnic irredentists, as a target for the next slaughter. Assuming that the
governors in the Igbo states are not too busy, picking their toes, this,
perhaps, is the time to stand up to Nyako’s evil designs.
In a most wicked and deliberate manner, the sins of Boko Haram would now be
blamed on Igbo, and then Christians everywhere. I am, of course, aware of the
genuine concern of Northern leaders that there might be attempt by the ruling
party to politicise the Boko Haram insurgency for electoral benefits. But
whatever the merit of such argument, it should clearly be noted that between
PDP and APC leaders, there are no saints on the one side and demons on the
other side.
The real lesson of the metastasis of Boko Haram in the North East states is
that those who are riding on a tiger’s back at one point ultimately end up in
its belly. The Niger Delta militants started, as a political tool created by
politicians for extortions and partisan gains until it ultimately morphed into
a Frankenstein’s monster, which sought to consume its creators. Until President
Umaru Yar’Adua came up with his amnesty programme, none of the former leaders
from the Delta region, as excellently articulated by the former Deputy Governor
of Akwa Ibom State, Patrick Ekpotu, in his book, Lifting the Peril,
could return home or sleep with both eyes in their ancestral homeland.
Pretending that President Jonathan created Boko
Haram is so silly it is unbelievable that any leader could actually suggest
that in writing. But, perhaps, it is the same thing, as suggesting that General
Sani Abacha actually formed NADECO in order to give the opposition a bloody
nose! This again is beyond politics.
Dimgba Igwe is of THE SUN
