SIR: Unless urgent steps are taken to address myriads of discordant tunes now dominating our socio-political space, the country may be fast gravitating towards war. We have in this country witnessed how a small gang led by late Mohammed Yusuf in Borno State which constantly gushed out vitriolic criticisms against the state government degenerate into the hydra-headed monster called Boko-Haram today.
Our government is obviously deficit of the proactive approach in forestalling crises situation; ours is always at the reactionary side. For instance when Boko-Haram abducted Chibok girls, the government then dismissed it as a farce. It took the concerted efforts of civil society groups both home and abroad to galvanize it to the reality of the situation.
Today many separatist groups have sprung up clamouring for secession, organizing and mobilizing supports from both local and abroad; still we feel they are pursuing their fundamental rights to self-determination.
With quit notices generously released and retrieved at will across the two sides of the divide of the Niger, we carry on as if everywhere is just bright and right.
Now with hate-speech being elevated to songs concurrently rendered in Hausa and Igbo lyrics against themselves, are we not on Rwanda’s gory lane? As tribal animus is gradually being entrenched in the fabric of our consciousness, should we still pretend as if nothing is wrong? Must we wait until we are trapped in the looming conflagration? Recession, hunger, unemployment and even marginalization can be controlled and managed, but certainly not war.
It continues to baffle my imagination, when l see a Nigerian like Femi Fani-Kayode championing the course of hatred in the country. Many have wondered what could be his mission and reasons for such actions. We understand, the party that he served as its election publicity committee chair lost at the centre during 2015 elections but won at some of the federating units. Why should a man who has benefitted so much from this country be the one fanning embers of disunity and acrimony? If he truly hates this country this much, why did he serve as a minister during Chief Obasanjo’s administration? What has suddenly gone awry in the structure of the country that he did not see when he was in power? We can recall that he was so loyal to his boss and was irrefragably committed to the unity of this country to the extent that, he could not brook any dissenting view from anybody, no matter how highly placed. Was it a case of one not being able to talk while eating? Now that someone has decided to talk long after the meal, of whose interest and for what advocacy should we ascribe this to?
May we stroll along memory lane; we could draw a remarkable analogy thereafter. In 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s publicized anti-Semitic views inflamed a universal hatred against the Jews in Germany, culminating in the infamous Holocaust.
Events that built up to the 1967-70 civil war among many factors were aggravated by hate-speeches churned out by the then Radio Biafra which urged Easterners to see Northerners and indeed Nigeria as their enemies.
In 1993, a broadcast station called Radio Mille Colline sponsored by Hutu extremists launched a massive verbal attack against their Tutsi brothers and the corollary pogrom that followed reportedly claimed more than 800,000 lives in Rwanda.
Since Radio Biafra has been resurrected and repositioned as a major platform for dissemination of animosity, the proposed bill by the Minister of Interior, Abdurahman Dambazau against hate-speeches is a step well directed.
- Itaobong Offiong Etim
Calabar, Cross River State.