Truth about the nation’s crises

The first time I came to know that falsification of historical facts by those in power is responsible for the inability of the international community to know the truth and address it as such was when I met a South Sudanese in Leipzig, Germany, in 2009 or so.

He said ordinary Sudanese people saw themselves as a people, North-south, Arabs/Africans, and this reflected in the level at which they inter-marry. He was a mixed blood and he saw that the international community was subjected to a kind of invincible ignorance by what it is fed with by those in power.

Look at what even South Sudanese people are doing to themselves, based on the leadership deficit we are talking about! I also came to know, through some other life experiences that many of those called “diplomats” are usually among the most easily compromised human beings. They rarely tell the truth as it is; they are rarely straightforward; they are made to feel fine by those in power. Yet, Jesus says thee shall know the truth, and the truth shall make thee whole.

Luru and ashapa are too kinds of soup in Yoruba land. Whenever people want to lump issues together, to create confusion, the Yoruba will say, don’t mix-up luru with ashapa. That is what President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and his supporters are doing – trying to lump the Boko Haram of the killed Muhammed Yusuf (2009) with the political Boko Haram that emerged in 2011 after GEJ was pronounced the winner of the presidential election, which should have gone to a northerner, if he didn’t truncate rotational presidency.

Ghana is a peaceful society. But even in Ghana, I heard of chieftaincy crisis; then consider the weight of national presidency, to know the extent a people would go to protect or defend that interest. Some zones felt marginalised regarding Nigeria’s presidency, and rotational presidency was introduced by leaders who cared in 1999. Why truncate it? Throughout 2010 up to when GEJ became the elected President of Nigeria in May 2011, what Boko Haram uprising did Nigeria experience, to justify tracing the terrorism of his presidency to 2009? We had the Maitatsine uprisings in the 1980s with wanton destruction of lives and property, basically intra-Muslim. Did we ever use the term “terrorism” to describe any of the intermittent uprisings?

Until the Boko Haram of Yusuf was provoked by some of his fellow Muslims in 2009, the group was in seclusion, as peaceful as monks.

The seclusion was actually what some Muslims saw as satanic, whereas the group wanted a life away from the corruption which, in their view, Western literacy imported. You may agree with boko haram (book corruption) if you know the extent our oil wealth is stolen through paper-work fraud. But today’s Boko Haram is not Yusuf’s Boko Haram; the current one is out to fight political disorder. Nigeria must mend its cracked political wall.

Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph. D,
University of Ilorin, Ilorin