Three days ago, Nigeria's chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, who is pictured above, was on his way to attend some official functions in Zaria, Kaduna State, when his convoy was allegedly attacked by a crowd made up of shia muslims led by the controversial Ibrahim Yaqoub El Zakzaky. Mr El Zakzaky is a shia muslim cleric and the leader of the Iran-backed Islamic Movement which introduced shia islam into Nigeria around 1980. Majority of Nigeria's muslims are sunni.
The soldiers in General Buratai's convoy, retaliated to the pelting of their convoy with "dangerous objects" and killed an unspecified number of civilians, while losing 10 of their own. They then stacked the bodies of their victims in the streets and left the scene of the carnage. The Nigerian Army has accused the sect of an assassination attempt on the army chief. The video below shows a number of people who proceeded to rob the dead. Please be warned that the video contains disturbing scenes.
Nigerian soldiers have always considered themselves to be above the law, and even to this day, they still openly break traffic rules, arbitrarily beat civilians with horsewhips, illegally arrest and detain, torture, maim and even kill their fellow citizens at the slightest provocation. Nigerians still live in fear of the military, a hangover from many years of military rule. It is this same military that enshrined the pervasive corruption that has obliterated Nigeria's enormous potentials, and is pushing the country towards the status of a failed state.
The video above is a representation of what the Nigerian youth have become: a wasted generation. The governments of the northern states of Nigeria, many of which have adopted sharia law, are not keen in investing in education and infrastructure. The state governors and their families and friends steal most of the monies that is given to them by the federal government, give themselves fat allowances and bonuses, sponsor pilgrims to Mecca (another avenue through which they steal more money), and at the end of the month, they complain that they cannot pay the wages of civil servants, including teachers. This simply drives the youth, who cannot jobs because they are uneducated, and also because there are no jobs or an enabling entrepreneurial/business atmosphere, to crime, and deeper into religion. In the mainly muslim north, it is sects such as El Zakzaky's and even Boko Haram, and in the mainly christian south, it is to the new generation churches run by prosperity preachers who promise an eternity in a heavenly paradise, while fleecing their congregants of the little money they have. They promise miracles to the dying, giving them so much (false) hope, and even make those who are very ill stop their medication. One of the 'miracles' in a 'testimony' at the just concluded 'shiloh 2015', the annual convention of the Living Faith Church Inc, run by the megalomaniac David Oyedepo, was by a woman who claimed that she has been cured of sickle cell anaemia, and that her haemoglobin type head been changed from the 'SS' of a sickle cell anaemia sufferer, to the 'AA' of a normal, healthy human. Such ludicrous and verifiably false claims are the reasons the oppressed, uneducated or poorly educated, and gullible masses troop to these churches. They expect their own miracles of jobs, money (promised to them if they "sow a seed" by giving money to the church, believing that the more one gives, the more one receives) and a cure to an assortment of illnesses for which they cannot go to hospital, not only because they cannot afford to, but also because the hospitals are not equipped (in terms of manpower and facilities) to handle a lot of cases.
In all of this, Nigeria's government has been silent, the same way it took the government of former president Goodluck Jonathan two weeks to acknowledge the kidnap of the Chibok girls. Nigeria's president Buhari is a sunni muslim, and in keeping with the tradition in Saudi Arabia, where the minority shias are oppressed, he has, by his silence for 3 days, shown a tacit approval for the killings of dozens of Nigerians by Nigerian soldiers. In July of 2009, Mohammed Yusuf, who was the leader of the Boko Haram sect was killed by policemen while in detention; today, Boko Haram has become a thorn in Nigeria's flesh. I hope El Zakzaky, who is currently in the custody of the Nigerian army with (as yet) non-fatal bullet wounds, does not become another Mohammed Yusuf.
Kudos to saharareporters.com
No comments:
Post a Comment