Fani-Kayode: The March For Freedom And The Monster From Futa Jalon
By Femi Fani-Kayode
The greatest crime that man has inflicted on his fellow man in the last 50 years is the evil concept of unrestrained globalisation coupled with the incremental evolution, unacceptable espousal and wholehearted acceptance of the artificial, man-made, mongrel nation-state which is made up of ethnic and religious incompatibles.
Yet thankfully there has been a backlash.
The forces of the far-right and ethnic nationalism are marshalling and are on the rise all over the world. Consequently a laudable, unprecedented and irresistable counter-offensive has begun.
We see this in Trump’s United States of America, Putin’s Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Israel, France, Holland, Hungary and many other parts of the civilised world.
We have witnessed it in Catalonia, Biafra, Scotland and Kurdistan where the oppressed are fighting for the establishment of their own nation.
All over the world we hear the cry of those that are struggling for their emancipation and deliverance from alien and foreign oppressors with whom they share no history or have any cultural or religious links or affiliation.
Throughout the comity of nations we hear the desperate lamentations and compelling words of those great and noble patriots and souls who take pride in their history, cultural heritage, ethnicity and religious faith and who refuse to allow their identity to be redefined, watered down, eradicated or decimated in the name of unrestrained and unfettered racial integration with those that they have nothing in common.
We hear the voices of those who refuse to be robbed of their heritage and persona by a godless horde of ranking unbelievers, murderous religious extremists, barborous aliens and desperate usurpers who come from a distant land and we acknowledge the concerns of those who refuse to be ensnared by false, bogus and long-discredited notions of political correctness and the wholesale adoption of discredited and nonsenical liberal values and philosophies.
The bottom line is as follows: there is no crime in flying the flag of ethnic nationalism, in rejecting the idea of a nation of hybrids and in wanting to take your nation back for its people. There is no sin in the desire to re-establish pure and unpolluted ethnic bloodlines and racial stock.
There is no shame in chanting “blood and soil” whilst marching in the streets with torch in hand as others once did many years ago.
It is indeed the procession of the faithful: it is the march for freedom and the song of liberty.
It is an attempt to restore, defend and preserve the very essence of who we are. It is an attempt to break the shackles of bondage and the chains of slavery. It is an attempt to liberate us from those with whom we share no history, no heritage and no values and yet who insist on imposing their will on us, controlling and dominating our very lives and insisting that they were born to rule.
This is all the more so given the fact that, in the Nigerian context, we are saddled with the most bloodthirsty, sadistic, sectional, extreemist, bigoted, tribalistic, vicious, bitter, narrow-minded and ignorant President that our country has ever known.
This is a man that was once a profoundly good man but that has now become one of the worlds greatest ethnic cleansers. I say this because under his watch more Shiite Muslims, northern Christians, Igbo youths, Middle Belters and southerners have been slaughtered and butchered than at any other time in our history other than during the civil war.
Worse still, this is a man who, according to the
President of the World Bank, Kim Yong Jim, said that his organisation should concentrate their efforts on developing northern Nigeria alone as if the rest of our country does not even exist.
Yet why am I not surprised? After all as far as Buhari is concerned the people of southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt are nothing but low-lifes, vassals and slaves who are only relevant at the time of a presidential election.
This is a man who had the sheer effontry and nerve to insult us all by addressing the entire nation in the Hausa language on the occasion of the Islamic Ramadan observance.
This is a man who boastfullly and openly told the world that he would favour those who voted for him in the 2015 Presidential elections (meaning his core Muslim northern base) and that he would not favour those who voted against him (meaning the predominantly Christian south).
This is a man who the celebrated writer Bashorun Akin Osuntokun rightly described in his latest column as a President “who is firmly wedded to the politics of division and of pan northern Nigerian Muslim irredentist politics”.
This is a man under whose watch as Minister of Petroleum in 1977 $2.8 billion dollars went missing.
This is a man under whose watch as Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund in 1997 $500 million dollars went missing.
And this is a man under whose watch as President of the Federal Republic and again as Minister of Petroleum and Energy in 2017 $26 billion dollars has gone missing.
A leader must put the good of his country before his own inclinations and that of his party. This is something that is clearly lost on Muhammadu Buhari and his core northern Hausa Fulani supremacist supporters.
Nigel Farage MEP, the founder and former leader of Great Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and one of the most formidable and potent
voices behind BREXIT recently said,
“The establishment media across Europe and the West despise me. They cannot accept that people still believe in the nation state”.
I know precisely how he feels. The walk of the ethnic nationalist in todays globalised world is more often than not a lonely one. Farage places his english heritage and identity before he does his British one. He also places his British heritage before his European one and he outrightly rejects the concept and notion of a fully integrated and amaglamated European super state where various and disparate ethnic nationalities are merged into one.
I share his vision and ethos and I superimpose it on the Nigerian plain. I am an Ife before being a Yoruba, I am a Yoruba before being a Nigerian and I refuse to have it any other way.
This is especially so when one considers what has been going on in the last two years in our country. A monster from Futa Jalon has been foisted upon us. And that monster uses misplaced notions of ethnic supremacy, religious bigotry, intellectial intolerance, radical islam, selective justice, hidden agendas, vicious coercion, secret and ruthlesss cabals and state-sponsored terrror to impose his will and effect his purpose.
Consider the events in Plateau state a few days ago.
No less than forty (and according to some reports as many as one hundred) innocent and defenceless indegenous Christians, including women and children, were butchered in their homes by Muslim Fulani herdsmen.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who is himself a Muslim, a Fulani and indeed the Life Patron of the Fulani Herdsmen Association (Miyetti Allah) has offered no commiserations to the families of the dead, has refused to visit the state, has expressed no genuine regrets or remorse, has failed to arrrest any of the perpertrators and has refused to declare the Fulani herdsmen as terrorists. Instead of doing any of the above he said there must be no reprisals against his Fulani kinsmen after which he promptly flew off to Turkey for a D8 meeting.
Is that the behaviour of a President of Nigeria or the heartless and insensitive actions of the imperial master and overlord of a conquered people and a subjugated vassal state?
That is where Buhari has brought us. One is compelled to ask, is this the kind of leadership and country that we deserve. Is that what Lord Lugard’s amaglamated super state with its annointed Fulani overlords have to offer? Is that what I am supposed to subsume, supress and sacrifice my Yoruba heritage and my Christian faith for? I think not!
One thing I know is this: Buhari is a man-made President and not a God-made President. He is the biblical Saul. And like Saul, he will end in defeat and shame and his wickedness shall not go unpunished.The good news is that with every Saul comes a David and I have little doubt that sooner than later David will appear on the scene and he will rise and rule.
Permit me to end this contribution with the words of Sir Winston Churchill, an Old Harrovian (like yours truly) and the greatest Prime Minister that Great Britain ever had. He said,
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never: in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparantly overwhelming might of the enemy”.
These words inspire and I commend them to every man, woman and child in our country who refuses to bow to tyranny and be enslaved and who takes pride in who they are, where they come from and what their ethnic heritage, bloodlines, racial stock and true nationality is.
Though Buhari’s darkness has covered the light and glory of Nigeria and his evil empowers cruel men, heartless women, troubled souls and evil spirits it will soon come to an end because joy comes in the morning.
I conclude with the following counsel.
There will be times that we are powerless when we face evil, injustice and tyranny but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
This man Buhari is a cancer that keeps growing and the only proper thing to do is to cut it out.
Some say that the path of uncompromising and relentless opposition that we have chosen is a dangerous and unpredictable one. They forget that the wounds of honor are self-inflicted.
If you want to be set apart and regarded as a man of courage, truth and honor or the champion of the oppressed and the voice of the voiceless you must be ready to take the blows, wounds and oftentimes dire consequences that go with it.
William Shakespeare wrote “cowards die many times before their time but the valiant die but once” whilst our very own Wole Soyinka wrote “the man died in him who remained silent in the face of tyranny”.
The great American patriot and hero of the war of independence, John Mchenry, told King George 111 of England to “give me freedom or give me death” whilst George Washington, the leader of the American forces in that war and the first President of the United States of America said,
“the thing that sets the American Christian apart from all other people in the world is that he will die on his feet before he will live on his knees”.
To top it all one of the most courageous souls of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, who is the American spy that defected to Russia two years ago, wrote “speak not because it is safe but because it is right”.
Given the circumstances that we have found ourselves in Buhari’s Nigeria, EVERY single person in our country has much to learn from the profound words of these deeply courageous men.
Some of us have chosen to be courageous and valiant and have refused to remain silent. We made a choice to stand up and resist the chicanery and wickedness of this administration and we are prepared to pay the price for the choice that we have made.
I for one would rather live a short life and die as a free man than live a long life as a slave. The Bible says “he who holds on to his life will lose it and he who is ready to give up his life for my cause will gain it”.
I do not fear any man or any circumstance because I know the God that I serve. I am a servant of truth, a warrior of light and a child of the Living God: I bow to no man and I do not tremble before tyrants.
I will endure anything and pay any price to liberate my nation and deliver my people from the chains of perfidy, ignorance and oppression and from the tyranny, evil, manifest corruption and double standards of the Buhari administration.
Finally I will resist the inequalities, cruelty and bondage of the unconscionable vassal state that Nigeria has been transformed into in the last two years with every fibre of my being in the full knowledge that in the end we shall prevail.
