Politics
By Anayo Ezugwu
RENOWNED Nigerian historian, Prof Banji Akintoye, has raised alarm over the worrying moods in the country. Akintoye, who is the leader, Assembly of All Yoruba Groups Worldwide, said that he has “good reasons to fear today that the character of the affairs in the country these days, and the prevailing mood among Nigerians, are chillingly similar to the character of the affairs in the nation in the months leading to the civil war”.
Speaking in Lagos at the “Never Again Conference” organised by the Nzuko Umunna and Ndigbo, Lagos, to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Nigerian Civil War, Akintoye noted that the federal government is being managed in ways that make it look like an exclusive preserve of a particular minority. “There seems to be an agenda being pursued to establish this minority in all positions of command in the Executive, Administrative, Judicial and Security Services of our Country.
“The voices of the majority register protests continually and are continually disrespected and ignored. The state of law is patently being subsumed to the needs of that agenda, with seriously damaging effects on human rights. These situations are inevitably fostering, among the Peoples of the Middle Belt and South of our country, the feeling that they are being reduced to the status of conquered Peoples in Nigeria.
“Meanwhile, some persons belonging to the would-be minority conquerors are loudly threatening to overrun and seize the ancestral homelands of the said Peoples of the Nigerian Middle Belt and South, and are actually pushing for that conquest with their acts of destruction of farms and villages, acts of wanton killings of people, acts of kidnapping, acts of intimidation and the act of bringing of masses of their ethnic kinsmen from countries beyond Nigeria to seize and possess land by force and intimidation in Nigeria.
“And meanwhile, the Government of Nigeria seems to be purposed, not to defend the threatened peoples of Nigeria, but to aid the processes of the conquest. The outcome of all these, as we assemble here today, is that our country is divided into two hostile parts – the minority that seems bent on conquest and ethnic cleansing, and the majority that is striving with great handicaps to preserve their Homelands and their existence and integrity as peoples.
“Meanwhile also, as a manifest corollary to these fearsome developments, the dreaded fundamentalist terrorist movement, ISIS, after being vanquished in the Middle East, has established its new strong base in a part of Nigeria, and from there has proclaimed West Africa as its new province by way of ISWAP. The probability has become high therefore that ISIS might make a junction with the minority pushing for the conquest of the majority in Nigeria, that Nigeria might thus be ravaged by ISIS, that Nigeria might soon be the base from which ISIS will push to conquer West Africa and all of Africa, with the purpose of turning Africa into a mighty base of fundamentalist terror against the rest of the civilized World,” he said.
Akintoye called on the government to terminate all this descent towards horrific war and speedily move the country into the state of law, the state of mutual respect among hundreds of nations and the state of order and peace.
“The steps needed to accomplish this new order of existence for our country are obvious. First, the Nigerian ethnic nation that has been threatening other Nigerian ethnic nations, that has been engaging in invasion, destruction, disruption and barbarous rampages in the homelands of other Nigerian ethnic nations, and that has been mobilizing external forces to assist the conquest, subjugation and ethnic cleansing of other Nigerian ethnic nations, must now, immediately, stop and renounce this agenda to the satisfaction of all of Nigerians, and to the satisfaction of the civilized World,” he added.
– Jan. 14, 2020 @ 9:19 GMT |
Tags: Prof Akintoye raises alarm over worrying mood in Nigeria
