Why does Britain obstinately believe that by pulling and shoving, they might be able to correct ‘the mistake’ and imperfection of the northern and southern amalgamation? It will never work.
By Peter Omonua
Britain, Nigeria is lying prostrate under your weight, it is choking and can no longer breathe. We are aware you have always been the enabler of Fulani, even now as they ravage southern and Middle Belt Nigeria. Nigerians also know that when you pretend to promote good governance, you actually profit from ineptitude in our governance structure. You seek for misgovernance because a stable and well managed Nigeria would block the loopholes that benefits your economy.
This is why you are “pulling strings” to ensure the agitation for independent Nations of Biafra and Oduduwa don’t materialize. If it takes the sacrificing of every human in southern Nigeria to ensure the agitation is silenced, you are ready to support the killings. Your ambassador, Catriona Laing is criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country trying to convince political, traditional and religious leaders that the “unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable”. It begs the question if Nigeria is still a colonial entity. An African proverb says “if you present the gift of a goat to a friend, you must also let go of the tether”; why is Britain holding on to this “tether” after independence? Why are you keeping Nigeria on a leash?
While you will not tolerate to see a strand of hair drop from British citizens, it is okay for thousand to be killed in Southern Kaduna, in Benue and in Plateau. That is a fair game as far as you are concerned.
Catriona Laing and other British officials can concoct stories about how “these killings are results of conflict between farmers and herders”, even when there are incontrovertible evidences that this is all about land dispossession from the native owners. As long as the killing is of black people, it is acceptable to the British government. It did not start today. Even your Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, during the Biafra genocide was recorded to have said ‘…I would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took’? Any persons or groups that will obstruct the free flow of Nigerian resources to Britain must be crushed.
Is Britain pretending not to be aware of the activities of their Fulani cronies that have brought unprecedented misery, starvation and deprivation to southern Nigeria?
It’s about time the charade stops. Southern Nigeria wants out of the Union of death. Even the Middle Belt, (a region you disingenuously annexed into Northern Protectorate against their wish) want out of the Union. They want their own country. They are done being used as the “willing tools” of the Fulani. They have found their voices; they want to breathe; they want sovereignty. Lift your knee off their neck. They are suffocating under your yoke.
If you genuinely care for the wellbeing of Arewa people, what have you done over the last 60 years to improve their lots? How many industries has British corporations set up in Arewa Nation to address unemployment? How many schools has British organizations built in that nation to address educational backwardness? How many hospitals and healthcare facilities has Britain built to address the healthcare challenges? You know you don’t really care about the ordinary people of Arewa Nation. You are only interested in continuing your indirect rule, a system that gets their political leaders to act as your surrogates, the conduit pipes through which to continue your drain on the Nigerian economy. Like the proverbial tree which continues to vote for the axe, the leaders of Arewa moronically think you are their savior. If only they knew that with a friend like you, they don’t need any more enemies. If only they would listen to wise counsel that the reason for their backwardness is what the bible termed the British “counsel of ahithophel”; prescriptions which real intent is to perpetually keep Arewa Nation undeveloped.
Why does Britain obstinately believe that by pulling and shoving, they might be able to correct ‘the mistake’ and imperfection of the northern and southern amalgamation? It will never work. Oil and water do not mix. It is time to unshackle the different countries chained together within this space called “Niger Area” and let them blossom as separate Nations. Each of these countries, individually, are bigger, more populous and more viable than many European, Latin American and Caribbean countries. Healthy rivalries between them will foster rapid growth of infrastructure, industries, Agriculture and Commerce. Are you obstructing it because it would become a threat to your economy and domestic interest?
We know it was to shoot down kites propagating sovereignty of Biafra and Oduduwa that Britain instigated Kenya to “rendition” Nnamdi Kanu. It was for same reason you sentenced Adeyinka Shoyemi (“Adeyinka Grandson”) to harsh length of imprisonment for what should ordinarily call for light reprimand.
Looking back in retrospect, you may now realize the folly of your amalgamation experiment. You must now be convinced it was a bad decision but too embarrassing to admit. The true mark of leadership is owning up to mistakes, making amends and learning from them. It does not necessarily diminish you; maybe a bruise on your ego and reputation. Come down from the high-horse, own up to the mistake and let’s have a reset. Why struggle to hold on to Nigeria when you should be focused on repositioning your troubled economy? You imagine that without Nigeria you could not possibly survive and that your economy could be on tailspin.
I recently came across the below artistic impression, which depicts the three major ethnic groups in a combative posture. As trivial as it may first appear, nothing illustrates the unhealthy rivalry and mutual destruction of the three tribes better than this. While the artist may have intended it as a comic, it aptly captures the true state of affair that has persisted in the relationship between these three ‘Nations’ since their un-negotiated amalgamation.
How do you, Britain, expect any progress to be made under such open distrust and mutual disdain for each other? Theirs have been a zero-sum game, with Nigeria being the ultimate loser.
It is the reason an Oduduwa person would not willingly support rejuvenation of a Port Harcourt or Warri Seaport (because what Port Harcourt or Warri gains is perceived as a loss to Tin-Can or Apapa Port). It is why a Hausa man will prefer all the refineries to be moribund than the Warri refinery to work and Kaduna does not work; It is why an Ibo man thinks he has a higher intellectual prowess than the other two. Any compromises these different tribal Nations have made to collaborate is usually a matter of situational convenience and momentary exigency.
Seeing this, why must you insist they must be yoked together in the same country despite overwhelming evidence that these are totally different peoples? How do you, if not for self-serving motive, expect to have progress under such a “crab theory” environment of “if I can’t have it, neither can you”?
The ethnic coloration of their current presidential candidates (Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu) has led to suggestion that these men be automatically elevated to the position of Regional Premiers of their respective regions of South East, Core North and South West. This proposition is borne out of the ethnic sentiment of the supporters of their candidature. Perhaps that would have been a consideration if the south had not had the fortune of unravelling the true intent of the Fulani race in Nigeria. Any arrangement that will give the Fulani unfettered access and egress through the territorial borders of Biafra or Oduduwa is off the table.
The rumor mill is rife with how Britain is working behind the scene to perpetuate Fulani hegemony by manipulating the electoral process. Pictures have emerged in the past few days showing Catriona Liang in meeting with the frontline Fulani candidate, in what could be construed as act of “anointing”.
It would serve the UK government well to know that the last thing Southern Nigerians will accept is another Fulani at the helms of their affairs. There is general apprehension in the entire southern Nigeria about an ‘islamization and fulanization’ of the country. These fears are not unfounded. The suspicion has been called out by no less personalities than Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen Theophilus Danjuma (Rtd), all of whom are elder Statesmen, well versed in the political history of Nigeria.
During the 1993 election in which the will of the people was mindlessly subverted, there was no doubt where the British government’s interest lied. Your then envoy, Sir Christopher Macrae admitted to Prof Omo Omoruyi that your “government’s first choice for the rulership of Nigeria would certainly have been a Northerner and would definitely not have been Chief MKO Abiola…”- see “The Tale of June 12” (page 126).
Your sentiment, which culminated in the eventual annulment of that election and the subsequent ‘assassination’, through poisoning of the winner of that election, set the country ablaze, from which it had barely recovered. You aided and abetted in the killing of the winner of that election. Are you planning a repeat episode exactly 30 years later?
I am sure the British officials and its people have seen pictures and videos of Fulani terrorists slicing human throats as you would an animal; yet you use your propaganda machines to paint a picture of Farmer/Herder clashes; how callously inhuman!!
How about the videos where terrorists who kidnapped the Abuja/Kaduna train passengers were flogging their captives? Swap the pigmentation of those passengers and imagine those were white British being flogged. That may help you to imagine the level of barbarism and how subhuman the elements you have yoked us with.
You cannot pretend not to have seen the pictures and videos of the vicious massacre of babies, children, women and men that are going on in Christian communities throughout Nigeria. You saw how Fulani terrorists capture women, young, old, married or unmarried, rape them and then kill them, all while video-recording. Yet, you try to convince the world otherwise. When an attack happens within the UK territory, you project it to the entire world and all we hear thereafter is “I STAND WITH BRITAIN”. Catastrophes, the scale of genocide is happening in Nigeria, yet your greedy quest for its resources will not allow you to “STAND WITH THE CHRISTIANS OF NIGERIA”. You continue to downplay the impending conflagration; you would rather have these warring natives in the same territory, if that is what it takes to preserve your hold on it and its resources.
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We know that Britain derives tremendous benefit from an unsettled Nigeria. That is one sure way to have Nigerians see Britain as an escape haven, that “Heaven”, they must continually aspire to go for a respite. You want them to keep coming to pay exorbitant tuitions at your educational institutions; which helps to reflate your economy and bolster your currency. A stable polity in Biafra, Oduduwa and the Savanna Nations would deprive you of that. You always had a rabid fear for the regenerative spirit of the Yorubas and the Ibos; a fear that the redemption and blossom of these two countries could signal the dwindling of the British economy. Might that also explain why, in cohort with your Fulani partners, you have orchestrated the near collapse of the southern economy with its attendant mass migration of southern Nigerian professionals?
Did it have to get to the level where the Fulani terrorist cut off the hands of five months old babies? How much ferocious must it get before you come to the realization that these countries don’t belong together? Do you want the Bosnia experience in Nigeria? Do you want another Rwandan experience to happen in Nigeria? Our people say when you pursue a goat until it reaches a brick wall, it turns back to face it pursuer. The Fulani have pursued the Southern and Middle Belt people to that point that they are starting to look back to face their pursuer; it would not be pretty. Do you want to push this land to the path of Sudan? How much more calamity do you want to see happen before you accede to the clarion calls for dissolution of the Union?
Was Catrina Laing sent to Nigeria to become a Kingmaker or to carry out Consular duties? Since when did her job description include the selection and imposition of a president?
Could there be truth in the claim that she is in fact “an Undertaker”? Those who have followed her career path tell us she is sent to countries earmarked for destruction. They point to Sudan, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan as the most recent location of her ‘tour of duty’, all of which collapsed after her tenure. There is no doubt that Nigeria is on the path to Afghanistan and just as the Western Coalition made a tactical withdrawal for the Taliban to move in and take over, that Nigeria may have been programmed for similar handover to Islamists.
Why was the UK at liberty to exit membership of the European Union, because she felt the EU does not further her strategic interest but Catrina Laing is criss-crossing the length and breadth of Nigeria, trying to dissuade agitating groups from seceding from Nigeria? Why is UK so bent on keeping Nigerian one, even if the price is the blood of her citizens?
Remove the Strait of Dover on the English Channel that divides Dover (UK) with Calais (France); what you will find is a people, not only different dialectically, but also in values and culture. We are at a loss as to why Britain prefers a failed ‘monolithic’ Nigeria rather than unions of potentially very prosperous smaller units of countries; Nations with cultural and social affinity, whose individual unity and progress will be propelled by their shared values, common aspiration and the homogeneity of its citizens.
I will conclude by reminding Britain that you have facilitated the destruction of the lives of southern and Middle Belt of Nigeria for the past 100 years. Do you want to repeat the same thing for their next 100 years? Ab initio, the comingling was done in bad faith and was wrong. It could never have worked and it would be delusional to think what has not worked for over 100 years will suddenly make an about turn. There is an unprecedented level of ethnic consciousness and to put it bluntly, ‘this genie can no longer be put back in the bottle’.
Already, different communities have started to arm their citizens in readiness for the next Fulani invasions. That is their last option in the face of the failure of the central government. We would have assumed it was a case of wilful blindness but thanks to Gen T.Y Danjuma, we now knows the central government is both complicit and the de-facto facilitator of the invasion and the killings.
There are already internecine wars in Biafraland, Benue & Plateau. Your flagship Station, the BBC did a documentary on Zamfara and you could see the scale of atrocities Fulani terrorists have committed against the peaceful Hausa people. The sky over Oduduwa Nation is rumbling; it is ‘looking misty and cloudy’. When that rain starts to fall, the scale of its surface runoff (agbara oojo) will most definitely sweep the Oduduwa land clean of any traces of Fulani. They might soon realize, as the Yoruba would say that “Yi yo tekun, kin se bi t’ ojo” (The slow movement of a tiger is not because of fear). As some have predicted, this might really spell the end of Fulani history in Nigeria and by extension, in West Africa.
It may have become too late to pull the country back from the brinks but better late than never. Most southerners want out of the union, except perhaps those still benefitting from the lopsided structure, Fulani patronage and inept leadership. Even within those beneficiaries, they themselves want out of the union but will not admit it for now because, as they say, “a bad system does not appear so to those who benefit from it”.
They mostly all have relocated their families abroad, waiting for any sign to jump ship and flee to join their families. And by the way, we are not unaware of the orchestration to force southerners out of the country to aid the Fulani in the takeover bid. Those secret plans have also come to the open.
Your attempt to superimpose the Fulani as dominant forces over the other tribes has only succeeded in alienating the Fulani even further. The natives are now more aware that the Fulani does not have traceable ancestral history to Nigeria. There is nowhere on the map of Nigeria where you would say this is where they call their ancestral home. They were, and remain itinerant migrants and pastoralists. Given what has transpired these past few years and the revelations therefrom, there are doubt if any other ethnic group would ever trust a Fulani as a tenant, employee or co-worker post-Buhari administration. They would have become more or less a “Pariah”, Persona Non Grata in every part of southern and Middle Belt Nigeria. Their only immunity for the time being is the fact their brother and patron is still seating as the overseer of the Nation’s security affairs. The end of his tenor signals an automatic end to that immunity.
We can see your unflinching support for Ukraine on its war with Russia. Our hope is that when the time comes, when Biafrans and Oduduwa exercise that same option to determine their future and exit Nigeria, that the fact they are not ‘blue eyes and blonde hair’ will not play a role in your decision to stand with them or against them. We hope that what you will see are another set of humans, a people who want to be free of Fulani hegemony and subjugation. We hope that you will see a people who want the same kind of freedom for which you are standing with Ukrainians.
Sovereignty should not come by boots of soldiers on ground. It should be by the expressed wish of the people who own the land and have lived on it for centuries. That wish is a fundamental right, and it must be respected.
- Peter Omonua lives in Ontario Canada (pomonua@yahoo.com)