The Ebora Owu, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, just latched on to an opportunistic West African “Fulanization” and African “Islamization” theory.
Only those unfamiliar with the Obasanjo ever-humming factory of mischief would be surprised — which is a big wonder, how many who should know better, are falling for Obasanjo’s latest racket, of crying wolf.
Well, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Information and Culture minister, has issued a fitting retort — something about divisive tendencies from a former military head of state, two-term elected president and the receiver of the Biafrian surrender in 1970, beating the drums of division, based on ethnic and religious baiting.
Except Alhaji Mohammed was damning Obasanjo with feint praise, the statement itself was based on a grand illusion. With his pettiness and his petulance, Obasanjo had never been a “statesman”, except when there is something in there for him. So, for the minister to have roasted Baba Iyabo on the altar of statesmanship is rather rich. You can’t be rid of what you never had!
Ebora cares for nobody but Ebora himself. Still, those who want to be deluded are free to claim their democratic rights. With Obasanjo’s latter-day perpetual misjive, however, that famous Greek saying floats in the air: the truly happy are those that are dead. One second to the grave, you just still might unravel! But it just might be morning yet on Obasanjo’s unravelling.
Speaking of unravelling: the real riposte to Obasanjo’s “Fulanization” theory was from Sule Lamido, the Jigawa Obasanjo protégée. Short and sharp, Lamido told Obasanjo not to turn bigot, just because Nigeria had some current challenges. But didn’t the psychologists say folks reveal their true selves in moments of crisis? So long for the self-named “founder of modern Nigeria” — whatever that means!
The fact is Obasanjo’s latest screech is not only a gambit but a fraud. Take the link between Boko Haram and “Fulanization”. Boko Haram started as a Kanuri conflict, result of a former Borno governor using and dumping some political roughnecks. Even if that has snowballed into some Islamic State of West Africa (ISWA), what is the connect between that and the so-called “Fulanization”?
Is Obasanjo suggesting every Fulani is a bandit; and his so-called “African Islamization” a sole Fulani business? What terrible ethnic slurs, from the so-called Mr. Nigeria!
Besides, what stake do the Fulani have in Islam, that other ethnic groups — Hausa, and the Kanuri, the North East pillar of Nigerian Islam — don’t have? It’s the all-too-common folly of contemporary Nigeria: to ethnicize criminality instead of attacking its root.
In any case, when did Fulanization suddenly become evil? Before making Obasanjo military head of state, “against my personal wish”, as he claimed in Not my Will? Or after the same Fulanization packaged him as willy-nilly candidate to placate the Yoruba in 1999, even if Obasanjo was right at the heart of the conspiracy to negotiate away MKO Abiola’s sacred mandate for Ernest Shoknekan’s doomed Interim National Government (ING)?
MKO! That explains everything, in the Ebora’s latest excitability. June 12 is about to shame May 29 (Obasanjo’s contraption) as National Democracy Day. So, the Ebora is obliged to try another gambit to divert attention from his shame!
But as Obasanjo does his ethnic-and-faith baiting, and other bigots go berserk dancing to the ruinous music, just know that Obasanjo is on his departure lounge.
Let him and his orchestra beware of sowing the wind, which could snowball into a whirlwind, to plague an innocent future generation, after Obasanjo is conveniently gone.
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