THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS IN NIGERIA BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE
In all my writing, I have never said that Nigeria is a perfect society without any troubles. Nigeria should challenge us to proffer solutions that will work.
Choosing good leadership should be one of our solutions. The issue of terrorism has been there since the time of Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. Compared to that time, I can say, improvements have been made and a clearer picture of what is happening is there for everyone one to see.
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It is disingenuous for anyone to use pictures of about ten years ago to paint today’s realities. The thorny locations in Nigeria today are the Northeast, Northwest and the Southeast. Did the Igbo soldiers forget to tell Trump that they cannot visit their homes unless under heavy army escort? Some of them use that to brag here as a status symbol.
Things were actually improving, when the United States invaded Libya and the region became flooded with arms. Libya is an example of an American invasion. How are the good people of Libya enjoying their new American freedom? That is the freedom your Igbo brothers in the US army want for Nigerians. The Biafrans may enjoy it because anarchy is their staple.
Nigeria is still a young country and still experiencing growth and pains. It is impossible to see the progress when colonizers left their Trojan horses.
Imagine a child trying to walk and is struck by paralytic polio. How can he get his balance if his caretakers constantly tell him he will have another bout of polio? Balance will scare him and he may refuse to walk. This is what the Igbo and Fulani people are doing to Nigeria with their mutual hatred.
Unfortunately for us, these groups have managed to upend our collective struggles as they are fighting for their various masters. They will not allow the peace and rule of law that fosters development. Their document of union has stood the test of time. The founding fathers were very wise because they kept the emotive issue of religion in the private realm. These people were flawed but the document that runs America was a masterpiece of poetry that put dictators and monarchs to shame.
The American constitution has been described by people as a system of government that was designed by geniuses for idiots. No tyrant can take over America. Nigeria was barely being born when the Igbo people told us they had a better idea. Kill everyone. Since that time, Igbo people have never shown any zeal to engineer the document they destroyed. The whole of Nigeria has become the prisoners of Igbo haughtiness. The constitutions worked for America because they were wise enough to let their men of intellect craft it. The document is so simple that it has withstood 250 years in spite of war and turmoil. The most religious nation in the world has no room for religion in their founding documents. That is to be applauded.
In this our rickety journey to freedom, the Igbo people are again calling the world to destroy this nascent system. They wear blind folds and are deaf and impatient. The long process of the evolution of Nigeria is mired by illiteracy and religious bigotry. They have the answers to Nigerians’ problems. All they need is weapons from America to turn Nigeria into a kingdom of anarchy that will serve them well.
We must reject their duplicity. That great American document, today, made it possible for a Muslim to be elected as the Mayor of New York City today. Muslims in New York are less than 9%. The Jewish population is about 10%. No doubt, it is the greatest city in the World. You cannot help but love America. The mayor of Donald Trump’s hometown is a Muslim. Trump told New Yorkers and his extreme right wing Christian Zealots that the guy is not qualified. He used every pejorative that his brain permitted except directly telling Yorkers that the new Mayor Mandan is the son of Osama Bin Laden. New Yorkers ignored him and cast their ballot for the Muslim guy. New Yorkers gave him a 10-point victory over Andrew Cuomo who was the former governor of New York and the son of a former governor of New York. You cannot be a New Yorker than a Cuomo. Cuomo can say his dad built the city and New Yorkers will agree with him. That Night New Yorkers told Cuomo that they are hiring a new decorator. Andrew Cuomo is a Christian.
While we kill ourselves in Nigeria for their religion, they are celebrating a victory together in New York. Muslims and Christians are celebrating this victory together in New York in a country where religion is not in the constitution. That is superlative. That is my America. Even the president could not stop the election of the guy he hates.
If you try to construct such a document in Nigeria, the two extremist groups that will oppose it will be the Fulani and Igbo. One takes direction from Rome and the other from Saudi Arabia.
I made an allusion to this when I wrote about the similarities of the Igbo and the Fulani. In spite of our woes, we have travelled farther than America was when it was sixty years old. We are evolving. We must do more. No soldier from anywhere is competing to save us. All we need is love of country. This evolution should make us see what is right and wrong with us.
As a Nigerian, I would like to address our issues without any external military threat. Love of neighbor and love of country are seriously in abeyance in the North and East of Nigeria. The hatred from these two groups has poisoned Nigerians. This hatred is what is pushing the Igbo people to invite foreign soldiers to come and kill their fellow citizens.
Are the Lucians better off today? The answer is no. Ask the Libyans who called Gaddafi the oppressor, and opened the gates of hell to their country, how they feel now.
“It is strange and oftentimes the instruments of darkness win us with honest trifles and betray us in deeper consequences “Shakespeare.
In my writing about the Igbo and the Fulani in Nigeria, I pilloried the Fulani, and I said people like Gumi should have no space to comment on public issues. I almost called him the devil incarnate when he suggested reformed terrorists should be admitted into the army. I was aghast that a man of that religious status could be that obscene. I was more furious when I learned he used to be an officer in the Nigerian Army.
What kind of education would make a man think that the army is a repository of criminals? This is a man who is preaching sharia law. The hypocrisy is glaring when you consider that sharia stipulates cutting of hands and limbs for stealing and this so-called religious bigot wants the Nigeria army to recruit rapists and murderers. When does he want them to join the Nigerian army? Is it before or after the amputations?
The Nigeria army should get ready for the Special Olympics. I have argued that the two religions tearing Nigeria apart are foreign religions. There are no African traditional religions that compel compulsion. Nigeria is the epicenter of the Islamic and Christian religion in the world.
Nigeria is a representation of what is happening in the Middle East. The struggle between the Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is actually the struggle between the Jews and Palestine. The Muslims are extremists for Palestine, and the Christians are extremists for the Jewish state of Israel. When Nnamdi was a fugitive from Justice, the first place he was seen was at the wailing wall of Jerusalem. That was a way of showing his allegiance to the Jewish cause. This is the undertone of the hostility between the Igbo and the Fulani.
As an African, I have my position. None of the quarrel between white people should be of any concern to me. There is nothing holy about these foreign religions. The Arabs and the European used their various religions to justify the enslavement and torture of black people. The fact that Africans are being used in their proxy wars is nauseating to me. The African elite are to blame for this. In the trauma that was visited on Africa, they confused their divinity with that of their various oppressors who captured and occupied the continent.
How can I pray to the same God as my enslaver? This is the spirit of some of those who were sold into slavery in the Americas. They never wavered in their worship of Orissa deity. Today, Orissa is the second or third religion in Brazil, Cuba, Suriname and other South American countries. This is the God that saw them through the middle passage and the torture chambers of slavery. Majority of these people are from western Nigeria, and they come to Nigeria for the annual Orissa pilgrimage every year. You will not hear about it because Orissa, an African religion, does not command any of them to kill their fellow man to prove his manhood.
Stupid black people will kill each other because some gods from the Middle East want to show his erection. Why can’t he do the killing himself? What will Amadioha do?
DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM HOUSTON, TEXAS
