A joint press conference was last week addressed by former Abia State governor, Orji Kalu and a delegation of Arewa youths led by Shettima Yerima. It was the outcome of a meeting between Kalu and the group on how to douse the tension generated by the notice issued to the Igbo to quit the north by October 1.
The meeting which was at the instance of Kalu, was part of his personal contributions to the peace-building process in the country following the tension generated by hate speeches especially since the Arewa youths came out with their threat. Kalu is within his rights to show concern to the potent danger which that unfortunate order poses to the peace and unity of the country. It is also in keeping with peace initiatives by acting President, Yemi Osinbajo and other well meaning people of this country.
As a key figure in Igboland, Kalu should be very concerned about what the order portends for his people should the Arewa youths make good their threat to quit them from the north and confiscate their properties. They had while issuing the threat, ordered commencement of inventory of all properties owned by the Igbo in the north possibly to appropriate them albeit, illegally. Should they make good their threat, the Igbo and possibly other southerners in the north are bound to suffer immeasurably. It could also come with deleterious consequences for the continued existence of this country.
So Kalu is in a good stead to engage the youths especially if they will listen to him as their meeting appeared to have shown. Who knows where the saviour will come from? But his intervention should be rightly seen as his personal contribution to the raging discussions on how to get the nation out of its current impasse. He is entitled to it more so in a democracy. That is the much credit that can be ascribed to that parley for now.
From the utterances of Yerima, it would seem the parley achieved a direct opposite result. It struck at once, as a counterproductive engagement. The erroneous impression conveyed was that the meeting centred round a plea to the so-called coalition of Arewa youths to rescind their threat to quit the Igbo by the threatened deadline. And if one may ask, is it in the place of those threatened to go cap in hand begging a faceless group not to resort to lawlessness in appropriating challenges to the Nigerian state that are clearly outside their competences? Are we not according undue recognition to that group and their resort to lawlessness in addressing perceived grievances even when they are yet to demonstrate how the subject matter solely affects them?
At a time people are still at a loss as to why Yerima is still walking the streets free despite the order to arrest him by Kaduna State governor for his incendiary statements, it is an irony of sorts that we are now playing host to such a character. No doubt, Yerima and his co-travellers committed a grave offence against the peace and unity of the country. If Kalu had met with them in private and confined their discussions as a personal affair, nobody would have bothered.
But to have organized a joint press conference whose outcome ended up massaging the ego of Yerima, amounts to an insult to the sensibility of the Igbo he unfairly disparaged in that ill-fated outing. He neither sounded conciliatory but rather displayed such arrogance that suggests the fate of the Igbo in the north is in his hands. He was neither remorseful nor did he sound sufficiently reconciliatory. And one begins to wonder if his posturing at that press conference was a true reflection of the outcome of their discussions with Kalu.
Hear him, “I do not remember specifically saying we are going to finally withdraw the quit notice. No certainly not. But you can be rest assured that those who believe in Nigeria should remain where they are and be assured of their safety. But to those who don’t believe in Nigeria, we cannot guarantee their safety”. If this was the outcome of the meeting, it is better it never held.
If Kalu acquiesced to the joint press conference with the hope that his intervention has yielded positive result, he must have been shocked by the pigheadedness and arrogance of Yerima as clearly shown above. Kalu must have felt sufficiently embarrassed by the rant of Yerima that he had to advise southerners living in the north not to entertain any fear about their safety. The advice is a clear indication that nothing was achieved and southerners needed to be reassured about their safety in the north. But that changes nothing as Yerima has said unequivocally that those dubbed non believers in Nigeria are at grave risk in the north.
One then begins to wonder what that press conference was intended to achieve. It struck as another window for Yerima to reinforce his earlier threat. If he needed to reinforce that threat, it was patently inappropriate to use a forum provided by an Igbo leader to do that. He has told everybody that his group will not guarantee the safety of those who do not believe in Nigeria. That should not be treated with levity. It is a reinforcement of the earlier threat and he may have been emboldened by the inability of the security agencies to bring him to book just as they did to Nnamdi Kanu whose activities Yerima and his group are seemingly protesting.
We have had all manner of rationalization as to why Yerima and his co-travellers have not been arrested. We have been treated to all manner of theories on how to de-escalate the tension in the land and how further arrests would not serve the best interest of this nation at the moment. That can as well be. But we are yet to be told the effect of such a standpoint in reining in purveyors of hate speeches and division. And as we have seen, such a posturing has had the net effect of emboldening the likes of Yerima to carry on as if they are above the law.
Yerima said his group will not guarantee the safety of those who do not believe in Nigeria. By interpolation, at the expiry of his deadline, Arewa youths will set the machinery in motion to sieve those who believe in Nigeria from those who do not. Perhaps, after that exercise, they will now sack the non believers from the north and confiscate their property. There could be other consequences since he talked of their inability to guarantee the safety of the latter.
The first problem with this posturing lies in the propriety of the powers they intend to exercise. On whose behalf and under whose authority does the group intend to appropriate the powers to begin the questionable voyage into sieving believers and non believers in Nigeria? What right if any do they have to dabble into such normative questions? And what are the parameters for such a nebulous engagement?
It can therefore be discerned from the inherent contradictions in these posers that the Yerima-led group is a bunch of confused people who do not need to be dignified they way Kalu did. This is Yerima who boasted soon after the ill-fated Kaduna outing that his image in the north soured after his threat order. Will he not see this as another evidence of his revved up image?
Yerima is looking for cheap popularity and if he must get it, it is not for those he threatened and abused to provide him that platform. It is not for the Igbo to dissuade the Arewa group from sacking them and taking advantage of their property. If they intend carrying out their order, it is for them to determine. You cannot threaten to take what rightly belongs to me as a citizen and I go on my knees to beg you not to do so. No! It cannot go that way.
Kalu may not have foreseen these contradictions. But, that is where the situation has now left us especially given the arrogance and non conciliatory posturing of the character that he had in audience. If he must continue in this direction, then he should open new windows of discussion with his contemporaries and other leaders in the north whom Yerima and his group are drawing strength from. But the issues are so weighty and fundamental to be handled single-handedly.
