By Jude Opara

Then, in most African communities there used to be a situation where a citizen or better still an indigene could be banished indefinitely from the land. In such a case, the person would be told in clear terms to leave the community and never to return.

He would be told never to have any dealings with any other indigene of that community forever.

However, such extreme positions and judgments are not frivolously and freely pronounced.

Before it gets to that level, it must have been proven that the person has committed a heinous crime against humanity and God.

The culprit must have carried out an action which the community strictly abhors like willful murder, malicious arson and kidnapping and selling of compatriots.

Again, even if somebody commits any of such crimes like stealing and sexual offences like incest and sleeping with a brother’s wife, the extreme position of banishment will only come after series of warnings and lesser punishments have failed to tame the offender.

I must say that in my life, I have never witnessed or heard where such level of punishment has been visited on anybody, except what we watch these days in movies.

This means that communities may have resorted to addressing such issues in other ways other than outright banishment.

This brings us to the burning issue of the controversial and vexatious quit notice given to the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan Kukah by the Muslim Solidarity Forum (MSF) over his 2020 Christmas message where he accused President Muhammadu Buhari of dividing the country along ethnic and religious lines and running the nation as if it was only the North and the Muslims that possess the country. 

Bishop Kukah in his message worried about the endless woes which has more or less become the lot of the country in recent years to the extent that Nigeria is gradually being classified as a failed state.

He worried that lives have become so cheap that on a daily basis there is always one devastating story of killings with little or no efforts by government to stop the killers who have been given all manner of names like herders, bandits and kidnappers.

“The prospects of a failed state stare us in the face: endless bloodletting, a collapsing economy, social anomie, domestic and community violence, kidnappings, armed robberies etc.

Ours has become a house of horror with fear stalking our homes, highways, cities, hamlets and entire communities. The roads to the graveyards are busier than those to the farms.

Amidst the wails and laments, I hear the congregants saying; the world is coming to an end, it has never been so bad.”

Perhaps what angered the Muslim group to ask Kukah to apologize or leave Sokoto is where the cleric stated that a non northern and Muslim president would not have gotten away with a fraction of what President Buhari had done which many analysts have continued to say is highly contributory to the problems the country is facing today. 

“President Buhari deliberately sacrificed the dreams of those who voted for him to what seemed like a programme to stratify and institutionalize northern hegemony by reducing others in public life to second class status. He has pursued this self-defeating and alienating policy at the expense of greater national cohesion.

Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it. There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war.

The President may have concluded that Christians will do nothing and will live with these actions.

He may be right and we Christians cannot feel sorry that we have no pool of violence to draw from or threaten our country.

However, God does not sleep. We can see from the inexplicable dilemma of his North.”

I am not here to rationalize or to criticize what Bishop Kukah said about what could have happened if a non-Northern Muslim were to be in power today and do exactly what the current president is doing in terms of appointments, infrastructural developments and all that.

I don’t know if everywhere would have been quiet if a Southern Christian president were to sign a contract to extend a rail line to Benin or Cameroon when the North West was completely left out.

My concern is the way radical groups have been audaciously issuing quit notices to other citizens to leave their areas of abode and the government of the day will not take any stern action to caution them so that such will be a deterrent to others.

Recall that on the 6^th of June 2017, a group known as the Coalition of Northern Youth woke up one morning to order all Igbos living in the 19 Northern states and Abuja to vacate their areas of abode within three months.

The group then claimed that their extreme position was taken because of the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) seeking self determination of the Igbo nation.    

Interestingly, till this day, almost four years after not one of the brains behind such outrageous statement was questioned not to talk of being arrested to explain where they got their legitimacy to issue such quit notice from.

Honestly, I don’t know what the security operatives would have done if it was a group in the South East that had woken up one morning to issue such quit notice to the Hausa-Fulanis living in their region to leave within three months. We all saw how fast and easy it was for the present government to rush to pronounce IPOB a terrorist organization even as it is on record that they have never been known to have carried firearms.

But curiously, the same government has refused to classify the killer herdsmen who have a track record of killings across the world as a terrorist organization.

Ironically, while the rest of the world sees the marauding herders as terrorists, Nigeria sees them otherwise and conversely, while Nigeria sees IPOB as terrorists, the rest of the world see them as freedom fighters.

Many analysts believe and rightly so that it is this seeming double standard on the part of the federal government when it concerns the two divides of the country that fuels such fears that there may be a clandestine plot to supplant others.

Perhaps, if the quit notice giving-Northern youths were adequately treated in line with the relevant laws of the land, the MSF may have had a second thought before giving their own quit notice to Bishop Kukah.

If the group really wanted to seek a redress, they ought to have sued the cleric and in the court they would have the opportunity to point out the version of the message that offended them instead of unnecessarily overheating the system with their outburst. Interestingly, Bishop Kukah has accepted to apologize as soon as they show him the portion of the message that profanes Islam.

Again, just like in the case of the Igbo quit notice, nobody is going to be called to answer questions where they got the power to give the quit notice to Bishop Kukah even as he has not been seen to have committed any heinous crime against the state.

Nigeria must tread carefully with religion and it is much more worrisome when those in power will be seen to be inadvertently playing the dangerous ethnic and religious card.

If we have all accepted that we are one Nigeria, I don’t see the reason why anybody or group will have the impetus to issue a quit notice on another person and yet the state operatives will pretend they don’t know what is happening.

For Nigeria to grow, we must learn to paint every one with the same brush. If we have laws and they are applied in all cases, nobody will accuse any government of nepotism and favouritism.

As Nigerians were trying to come to terms with the kukah saga, the presidency has warned the Ondo State government against the quit notice it earlier gave to herdsmen to vacate the Games Reserve in the state within seven days.

That seven days expired yesterday and we await what will be the situation given that the federal government has said that the governor does not have such rights to ask the herders to vacate the forest. Also, the Miyetti Allah has said they will not heed the directive.

While that was going on, last Friday another disturbing news of the quit notice and in fact attacking of some Fulani herders in Igangan in Ibarapa Local Government Area of Oyo State.

One Sunday Adeyemo popularly known as Sunday Igboho was said to have led the alleged onslaught on the Fulani settlement.

Typical of Nigeria, the issue has since taken an ethnic dimension as the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Yoruba Socio-political group, Afenifere has been engaged in a war of words.

The two groups are without let supporting the actions of the group they believe are of their own stock.

While, we agree that every Nigerian has the constitutional right to reside in any part of the country of his choice, does it also include hiding in the bushes to commit all manners of crimes against humanity? These herders have over the years been accused of constituting the forests into killing fields where they also rape and assault hapless local women who have strayed there.

Again, it is the primary responsibility of government to protect lives and property and unfortunately, in recent times it appears that the federal government of Nigeria has given up on that responsibility as Nigerians are daily killed and maimed by these marauding herders.

Also, it is on record that at one time even the presidency had claimed that the herders killing Nigerians were those from across the borders, so why is it difficult to send them back to where they come from?

Does being a herder grant anybody from any part of Africa the unfettered right to come into Nigeria and do whatever the person likes?