[OPINION] Buhari is guilty as hell (part one) by Peter Shande

There has been a spate of furious activity on Facebook by our detractors, some of whom, unfortunately, their dubious claim to some affinity to the Tiv that we know and have always known, is highly suspect. Such kinship we must review in the light of these activities and with the benefit of recent history, but first, let us first examine the sudden burst of activities aimed at discrediting the governor of Benue State, Dr. Samuel Ortom, after he had openly challenged a President to rule decently with an even hand and rule as the President of Nigeria and not as patron of Fulani herdsmen as it would appear.

Various actors have suddenly surfaced from the wood work playing super patriots, absolving Buhari of all blame, and by implication, Fulani herdsmen, who are now gone past masking their desire to take over ancestral lands of the native Nigerians to settle their kith and kin from all over West and Central Africa. All Fulani socio-cultural organizations recite it in all public space unfettered. Their kinsman, a man who has in his hands all the instruments of coercion keeps mum. He couldn’t be bothered to stretch himself to protect other Nigerians apparently.

While money pours into the North East from the North East Development Commission, the North West crowds are busy extorting money from the rest of Nigeria after the initial N100billion handed out, which was with the understanding that banditry would be no more as the fighters would go home. But this is Nigeria and someone could have shortchanged the bandits. Every week, they are paid ransoms in hundreds of millions. One wonders where they keep such large loot without it showing. In the bushes you think?

These misguided quasi-Tiv hobos quote all kinds of figures as the amount Gov. Ortom collects without a word about the billions of dollars Buhari has collected since he rode into power on a promise that he would end insurgency, only to, after six years, puerilely inform us that Boko Haram insurgents have been albeit, “technically” defeated. Whatever that means.

What a “defeat” when the chaps, who are now hoisting flags in Niger State, 30 minutes from the Federal Capital of Abuja, as the bird flies, have regained the lands Idris Deby, formerly of Chad’s army, had driven them from in the North East Region and in many areas, they are once more the de facto government! Alongside these Boko Haram terrorists are the ISIS and ISWAP and other motley assortment of cutthroat veterans of Fulani misadventures in Central African Republic and other troubled spots in North Africa.

When a Commander-in-Chief a country’s armed forces, her Police, the Civil Defence, with all the paramilitary under him, suddenly goes mute when the Fulani herdsmen attack others and advises against retaliation when women, children and the infirmed are butchered like fowls, everything is amiss. This was the case when his kinsmen raided the Abagana IDP camp in Benue killing 7 inmates. No arrests, nothing. The most that could have been expected and gotten from him was some bland statement from his aides restating the military’s commitment to safeguarding lives and property while blaming Benue’s Anti-Open Grazing law for the attack.
This is the rubbish some set out to defend. One can understand the sentiment of a Northern Nigeria’s Muslim but when a hungry bladifuu who claims to be Tiv begins to hold forth on the issue bizarrely and use stupid terms to describe Ortom’s cry to the world in the face of an imminent genocide, which Buhari, from every indication seem to be aiding and abetting, we now understand where the products of our maidens’ misadventures of the early sixties disappeared to. These offspring can only be of an Ibrahim, Saleh or Musa.
How can you expect that as you accuse Ortom of not doing enough, you strangely, forget that it stands to reason that had Buhari applied enough wisdom and even halfhearted commitment, Boko Haram and bandits would not be a thing of the past? Why do they, up till this moment, freely kill and maim and yet are called “brothers” by the Northerners?

I must end this with part of a post I made a few years ago doubting if our choices in hitching up with such wooly minds was likely to bear worthwhile fruit:
10 points to ponder on where we are heading:
Education is expected to enlighten a society. Europe came out of the dark ages through heavy investment in and dependence on educational enlightenment which helped it throw off shackles of superstition and unfounded religious mysticism that had plagued their society and held it back for centuries.

In time, the quest for knowledge had those who had earlier called for the head of people like Archimedes and Galileo were made to hold their heads in shame. Because they ventured into intellectual realms, ocean-going ships came to be made from metals with higher density than water and chaps like Amerigo Vespucci were confident they were not likely to sail off the edge of the earth and consequently adventured far afield to land on the coast of a new continent that has taken the name of the latter.
How can an almajeri education compete?

1. Why does it seem so hard to make the African to come to terms with these truths?

2. Why do we insist that people who in negation to all these, remain in the wild tending very timid and compliant and almost docile animals (cattle and sheep) like the Fulani herdsmen have answers to the question of our advancement?

3. Why do we pretend that these chaps are adorable as human beings that can stake a claim to leadership on our shores?

4. Why do we hold education in so much contempt in Africa in preference for such brutal, brain-fogging shit such that a man with no known qualification is allowed to rule?

5. Why do we have to compromise and bend over backward so much to accommodate the backward-thinking Africans rather than challenge them to shape up?

6. Why do they so hate to measure up but prefer that we slow down to their pace and abilities?

7. Why are they permitted to issue out threats in such tones as could be said to be laced with acid?

8. Why do we have to keep tolerating and pacifying people whose moral character is just short what God gave a cockroach?

9.  Why do we choose to be held captive by people with such slip-shod spiritual and moral values?

10.  Why doesn’t someone tell them that they could only just be experiencing their moment of epiphany here that is making them notorious but will soon ruin them and worse, all of us?
Before some toe in the sand, grass-chewing, arrogant ambi-ken-tyo hiding behind the hate-speech façade level accusations, let him point out where I have gone wrong on any material particular.
It is only in Nigeria that a man still exists who thinks a keen knowledge of archaic form of cattle rearing is a sign of his social progress and so he deserves to lead.
Come on, go ahead and defend that man as you demonize decent folks.

• Shande, a public affairs commentator writes from Makurdi
08064091237