Farooq Kperogi : Why the North suddenly cares about northern lives

It should be made clear from the outset that I am overwrought with immense grief by the heartbreaking but unintentional killing of 126 innocent men, women, and children celebrating Maulud at Tudun Biri village in Kaduna State on December 3.

Nothing can compensate for this. No excuse can rationalize it. And the outrage that this issue has generated against the Tinubu government is richly justified.

But it’s oddly hypocritical that there are suddenly vocal elements from the North—particularly the Muslim North, which went into a dreamless slumber during Buhari’s reign of bloodshed—carrying on as if this cruel, indefensible, even if involuntary, killing of innocent Muslims in the name of fighting outlaws is unprecedented.

Well, on January 17, 2017, the Nigerian Air Force also “mistakenly” dropped two—yes, two— bombs on an IDP camp in Rann, Borno State, which killed 236 innocent men, women, and children, according to Human Right Watch Nigeria’s revised estimate as reported by the Voice of America on January 24, 2017. The Nigerian military said it mistook the poor refugees for Boko Haram terrorists.

There was pin-drop silence from the Muslim North—and from the same people who’re—or pretend to be— outraged by and bent out of shape about what happened at Tudun Biri. Those of us who ranted and raved in righteous rage about it because Muhammadu Buhari showed scant concern for the lives that were snuffed out by the military he was commander-in-chief of were hushed up, harassed, attacked, and defamed.

In a January 21, 2017, Daily Trust column titled, “Buhari’s Gambian Gambit As Borno Burns,” I wrote the following words that have now somehow materialized, except for the little fact that Tinubu isn’t a southern Christian:

“Imagine for a moment that Nigeria’s current president were a man called Goodluck Jonathan (or, for that matter, any southern Christian), and the military ‘mistakenly’ dropped a bomb on hapless internally displaced Boko Haram victims, killing scores of them and critically injuring many more. Imagine again that such a president didn’t deem it worth his while to visit the state where this grievous tragedy happened, but instead chose to go to another country to resolve the country’s political differences. What would we northern Muslims be saying by now?”

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Several of my fellow northern Muslims attacked me for this. My traducers were particularly incensed that I inserted scare quotes around the word “mistakenly.” They thought it implied that I meant Buhari had deliberately ordered the murder of civilians in Rann. But I merely inserted quotation marks because I was acknowledging that the military owned up to the killing and called it a mistake.

When Mubi, Adamawa State’s second largest town, was overrun by Boko Haram terrorists in 2014 and then President Goodluck Jonathan decided to visit Burkina Faso to resolve the country’s political crisis, he was roundly condemned in the country, particularly in the North. I wrote a stinging column on this myself.

“Amid the heartrending humanitarian disaster that Boko Haram has wreaked on Mubi, the president chose to travel to Burkina Faso to ‘resolve’ the country’s political crisis. Which sane person goes to put out another person’s fire while his house is up in flames?” I wrote in a November 8, 2014, column titled, “State of Emergency Amid Worsening Boko Haram Insurgency.”

But when I wrote to condemn Buhari for ignoring Rann and, like Jonathan, choosing instead to visit the Gambia to resolve the country’s political crisis, I got rhetorically violent pushbacks from the very people who should be hurt by Buhari’s blithe indifference to the tragedy in Rann.

All that Buhari did after more than 200 civilians were killed by two Nigerian Air Force bombs was to delegate an aide to issue a familiarly stereotyped expression of “regret” through his Twitter handle. Neither he nor his deputy physically traveled to Borno State to condole with and comfort the people.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s response to the Tudun Biri tragedy is comparatively better. Within a few days of the disaster, he delegated Vice President Kashim Shettima to visit the community and express his condolences.

“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent us to commensurate with the people of Kaduna over this tragic incident. The calibre of people that are here with me is a testimony [to] how deeply touched the president was by the incident,” Shettima said during the visit, as if to draw a contrast between this government’s response to a horrendous tragedy and the previous government’s response to a similar but more horrific involuntary mass massacre.

There’s always more that can be done, but that there was a presidential visit to the site of the tragedy—unlike in the past—is worthy of acknowledgement. I have advocated for this sort of empathetic leadership for years. I would be a hypocrite not to acknowledge it when I see it.

In condemning Buhari’s symbolic unconcern over the unintentional killing of IDPs in Rann, I wrote, “Now, a presidential national broadcast to mourn this tragedy and a personal visit by the president to give emotional strength to the bereaved won’t bring back the lost lives, but it would show respect for the dead and show that the president cares and takes responsibility for the fatal error of the people he is commander-in-chief of.”

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There has been no presidential broadcast from Tinubu, but there was a presidential visit to bereaved families, yet the Tudun Biri tragedy has attracted more attention and anger in the North than the Rann one did. It’s obvious what’s responsible for the double standards: the ethno-regional identity of the president.

Had Buhari—or, for that matter, any northern Muslim—been president when the Tudun Biri Maulud merrymakers were involuntarily killed by the military, there would have been no expression of indignation from most of the people who are hyperventilating now.

Although Sheikh Ahmad Gumi was consistently critical of the Muhammadu Buhari government for eight years, which he undermined with his curious defense of bandits, he is increasingly coming across as merely using the Tudun Biri as an outlet to ventilate pent-up ethno-regional anxieties about a southern presidency.

That’s also true of former National Health Insurance Scheme DG/CEO Professor Usman Yusuf who became critical of the Buhari regime only after he was fired from his position. He is now furtively religionizing and regionalizing the Tudun Biri mass deaths.

”This is a religious procession,” Yusuf told Channels TV. “What would have happened if a religious Christian Procession in Plateau or Kaduna was bombed? Big Churches from the South specifically would have raised their voices all over Nigeria.”

This seems to me like an underhanded religious incitement because what the villagers were doing at the time of their unfortunate death was incidental to the fact of their death. They could very well have been at the marketplace selling goods.

Yusuf knows that the most effective way to rouse the raw passions of northerners, whether they are Muslims or Christians, is to make appeals to religion. Except that Yusuf’s attempt at religious manipulation is undermined by the reality that both the president and the vice president—and, to complicate things further, the two ministers of defense— are Muslims.

Why would they be interested in killing fellow Muslims? This same logic undermines Gumi’s claim that the Tudun Biri killing was “deliberate.”

Finally, Bashir Ahmad, former special assistant on digital communications to Muhammadu Buhari who saw no evil during Buhari’s reign suddenly went into an amnesic, conspiratorial frenzy over the Tudun Biri tragedy on Twitter.

“Haba! You can’t kill 126 innocent souls — a hundred and twenty-six civilians, and just call it a mistake. I can’t even remember a time when the troops killed such a number of terrorists anywhere in this country at once. @HQNigerianArmy, Nigerians are waiting to hear from you how this ‘mistake’ will be corrected and what measures you’d put in place to prevent a recurrence,” he wrote.

Thankfully, people shut him up by reminding him of Rann where 236 Muslims in IDP camps were mistakenly bombed to a cinder when Buhari was president and Buhari didn’t deem it worth his while to visit the survivors.

When your sense of rage and outrage is activated or suppressed by the primordial identity of the person in power, you have no conscience.

Farooq Kperogi : Why the North suddenly cares about northern lives

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian newspaper columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism. 

The fastest route to poverty is marrying a woman who believes her family is also your responsibility – Reno Omokri

Reno Omokri is of the opinion that the fastest route to poverty is marrying a woman who believes her family is also your responsibility.

Posting via X, Reno stated that any girl who believes that her man is meant to take care of her family as well, is a liability and should be avoided.

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He wrote;

‘’The fastest route to poverty is marrying a woman who believes her family is also your responsibility. From time to time, you can help only if you can afford it. But, accepting a DUTY to look after in-laws is not responsibility. It is stupidity! Any girl with that type of mentality is a liability. And her family will result in your instability. Do not be so carried away by the thought of ravishing your wife to be that you do not notice that her family is waiting patiently for their lavishing at your expense! ‘’

Oyinlola keeps his promise despite Tinubu’s victory (2)

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, December 8, 2023)

After reading the first part of this article last week, Oyinlola called me, and as my phone was ringing, I was tempted to fetch the bitter kola in my hunter’s pouch, take a bite, gargle some aromatic schnapps and chant the incantation, “Ohun ta wi fun ogbó, l’ogbó n gbo, ohun ta wi fun ogbà, l’ogba n gba, kóse kóse ni ti ìlákòse, á sùn má párádà ni ti igi àjà… tùèh!”

I wasn’t going to harm Oyinlola with my chant. Far from it. I was only going to safeguard the kill that Ògún Lákáayé Ósìnmólè, the god of War and Iron, had secured for me, a gunless hunter, from a gunnery old soldier. I didn’t want to hear, “Tunde, I mistakenly sent some bags of cowries to your vault. I’m sorry; they’re not meant for you. They’re meant for Tunde Kelani, the world-renowned cinematographer.”

Well, if Omo’ba Lagun had tried to recall the ancient legal tender aka cowries in my possession, in the manner Bible-loving Godwin Emefiele recalled the naira, I wouldn’t have been sheepish like the Nigerian masses. I would’ve stood up to him and reminded him of the epic Battle of Òrè during the Nigerian Civil War.

Oyinlola knows the art and science of war. He knows why the intensity of the Òrè Battle is prefixed with the phrase ‘O Le Ku’, Ija Òrè. It was in Òrè, Ondo State, that Biafran forces were turned back by federal forces.

I would’ve refused to return the cowries because in vain the moinmoin seeks escape after entering the house of agidi corn meal. The bracelet is cast on the wrist of Olóòsà, nobody can pull it off! I’ll remind Oyin that the Kelani that directed Ò Lé Kù also directed Agogo Eewo, which affirms the efficacy of African traditional powers. I have the full support of the Awise Agbaye, Prof Wande Abimbola, and the Araba of Osogbo, Baba Yemi Elebuibon.

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When I picked up Oyin’s call, his voice was unmistakable, “Young man, you want to reveal what we did in secret, abi? I’m going to sue you and press for damages because people are going to bombard me.” I protested, “They’ve been bombarding me too, despite my incantations, sir.” “Na you sabi di fake incantation you’re chanting. You’re muddling ‘Ohun ta wi fun ogbó, l’ogbó n gbo’, and ‘Fírí, fírí loju n ri, bòhùn, bohun làgùtàn ń wò’; the two serve different purposes. One is to make you do what you wouldn’t do, the other is to render you powerless,” he said. Hmm, I could see Oyin doesn’t know Ifa has gone digital.

Oyin belongs to the rich cultural past when mothers exhaled thrice ‘ha! ha! ha!’ before slicing open the gizzard of a freshly killed fowl, nowadays, ‘ha! ha! ha!’ could indicate delirium or the commencement of cult war. Nowadays, everything is muddled up.

Oyinlola continued, “I was the one God used to end the Ife-Modakeke War, not Chief Bisi Akande, as contained in the first part of your article. When I became governor, they were still fighting, albeit on a low scale. So, I went to Ooni Sijuwade Okunade. I told him, ‘Kabiyesi, you’re the only one who can put a permanent end to this crisis’. I said he should cooperate with me. Thereafter, I went to Baba Ogunsua, the late Chief Francis Adedoyin. I told him of the need to put a permanent stop to the war. I pleaded with him to follow me to Ife. And he agreed.

“It was on a Sunday. Modakeke people said Ife people were threatening that Ogunsua should not come. I said the Ogunsua should come in my car, that anyone who wants to kill or harm him would have me to contend with first. When we got to Ife, we entered the palace, and Ogunsua was given a seat, but he refused the seat and sat on the floor.

“At the meeting, I suggested to Oba Sijuwade that all the lands of Modakeke seized by Ife should be returned, and he agreed. I also urged him to upgrade Ogunsua, who was a baale, to a king. Sijuwade also agreed. Also, I implored Sijuwade to pay all the salaries accruable to Ogunsua, which had been seized, during the war. Oba Sijuwade agreed to that, too. That was how the war ended permanently. So, when people ask what my greatest achievement was as governor, it is ending the Ife-Modakeke war, not the Osun State University, not the numerous infrastructural projects. Human life is sacrosanct.”

Never dig the hole of antagonism deep because you might find yourself in it, counsels a Yoruba proverb. I was the Lagos State Governor’s Office/Lagos State House of Assembly reporter when the letter transferring me to Osun State as correspondent came. Some of my Alausa colleagues I shared my impending destination with warned me of virtually everyone on Oyinlola’s media team. “Ha! Lasisi will want to control you.” “Oh! Oladeji is cunning. You can never know where he’s going.” “Salam is manageable, but don’t trust him totally.” The advice came in torrents. But I never allowed what I had heard about the trio to affect my relationship with them.

I cherish and nurture friendship. An ex-Osun House of Assembly Speaker, Chief Adejare Bello, was the first politician I met when I got to Osun. His enigmatic Press Secretary, the late Olumide Ajayi, (my ‘aburo’) saw me the day I arrived and insisted I must see his ‘oga’ in Ede. I complained it was getting late, but Olumighty begged. He was such an irresistible soul. I succumbed.

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When Bello left government, I still kept in contact with him. Bello, now the Ambassador to Mexico, loves football. His team is Real Madrid and his favourite player is Ronaldo. Hardly a day passes without me needling him about the inability of Ronaldo to win the World Cup like my favourite player, Messi did. In return, he would remind me that Real Madrid are superior to Barcelona, my team.

During the Qatar 2022 World Cup, I was rooting for Argentina while Bello was seeking their ouster. When Argentina got to the final and I started to diss Bello, he said in annoyance, “Argentina will never win the cup.” “The cup is already in Bueno Aires,” I fired back. “Do you want to bet?” “Yes, sir, I want to bet.” “How much?” “N100k.” “OK?” Ok!”

When the referee blew the final whistle and I was jumping about the house, thanking God for crowning Messi’s stellar career with a World Cup, my phone rang, it was Bello, “Tunde, congratulations! Send your account number, please.”

“N100k just like that? Why have you been wasting your time in journalism? Why don’t you become a pundit and make money, Tunde?” I wondered.

I don’t like to bet. The few times I have betted in my life, I returned the won bet. But what’s N100k to an ambassador? Did I ask for the win? Tunde, send your account number jo! I did and heard an alert shortly afterwards.

In 2011, inside PUNCH newsroom, I predicted the outcome of the 2011 Osun governorship election. Saturday PUNCH had on its cover the map of Osun, showing the 30 local government councils. The election was a straight fight between the incumbent, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and the challenger, Chief Iyiola Omisore. Saturday PUNCH Editor, Mrs Bisi Deji-Folutile, predicted victory for Omisore.

The Executive Director, Publications, Mr Adeyeye Joseph, now Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, asked if I was the one that shaded each candidate’s areas of strength on the map. He was told I wasn’t. He called for me and directed that I handle the map.

On election day, Aregbesola won in all the 22 councils while Omisore won in the eight I predicted, though there were one or two councils where I predicted victory could go either way. When I got to the office on Monday, Segun Olugbile, the news editor, told me Saturday PUNCH editor was looking for me. When she saw me, she was full of praise for me.

I speak regularly with General Oyinlola. After the 2023 presidential election, I called Oyinlola to get his view. He said Alhaji Atiku Abubakar would win but I said Tinubu would win. He said, “Do you want to bet?” “Yes,” I said. “How much,” he asked?” I said, “Sir, let me stake N500,000.00 to you N5m.” He said, “Which type of betting is that?” Are you betting or not,” he asked with a military finality. I said, “Yes.” “How much?” he asked again. I said, “If I bet N500,000, I’ll win N5m.”

Last Monday, I got an alarm from a microfinance bank. I called Oyin. He said, “I am a soldier. I keep my word.”

• Concluded.

Oyinlola keeps his promise despite Tinubu’s victory (2)