A part from the immeasurable national impact he made with just 198 days (less than seven months) in office, what is decidedly affirmed to be the late General Murtala Muhammed’s most famous speech set the stage for Africa’s epochal confrontation with colonial, racist and settler regimes in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe), and South Africa. At the Extra-Ordinary Summit of African Heads of States under the Organisation of African Unity, held in Addis Ababa, the political capital of Africa, on 11th January, 1976, Africa’s Martyr General Murtala Muhammed, put the world on notice. The speech aptly titled “Africa has come of age” declared that our countries, and by extension all their social and political organisations, “would not take orders from any extra-continental power however powerful.”
Extra-continental powers
He, General Murtala Muhammed of blessed memory, further stated that “Africa is capable of resolving her own problems without any presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers, which more often than not, have no relevance for the problems at hand…”. 41 years after General Murtala expressed this bold vision, we must ask ourselves, is it that Africa has now retrogressed below the threshold of positive consciousness bequeathed to us to this moment when “extra-continental powers” like ISIS or Al-Qaeda are directing Boko Haram to turn its lethal weapons on social progress, with poor people as the undeniable victims of their insurgency?
For a succession of Nigerian leaders going back to the first republic under Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, through General Yakubu Gowon and General Olusegun Obasanjo who succeeded General Murtala Muhammed, the willingness to deploy resources to secure the basic rights to life and happiness, not just in Nigeria but all over Africa, was deeply rooted in the psyche of the true leaders of our people. For again, in his famous speech, General Murtala Muhammed, minced no words in stating why it was necessary to fight evil wherever it occurred in Africa: “When I contemplate the evils of apartheid, my heart bleeds and I am sure the heart of every true- blooded African bleeds.”
Most researchers believe that the cradle of apartheid in South Africa was in 1948 and lasted till 1994 when Africa’s legend, Nelson Mandela of the ANC had to be released from prison to assume the democratic leadership of the country. But in the age or era of apartheid a total of 21,000 persons were murdered according to reports published by the Human Rights Committee of South Africa which conducted extensive investigation into the atrocities of the Boers against Africans. At the time General Murtala’s heart bled over atrocities of apartheid, the number of murders was less than 7,000 in the run-up to 1976. However, a majority of the assassinations and murders totaling 14,000, actually took place between 1990 and 1994.
Your Excellencies, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, how much more would General Murtala’s heart have bled today if he were around to know, that while it took South Africa’s apartheid 46 years to take 21,000 lives, it took Boko Haram only seven years to cause the murders of 100,000 innocent people, largely women, children and old people in Nigeria?
If General Murtala Muhammed were alive today, imagine how his heart would have bled most profusely! Certainly, his fate would have been no better than Egypt’s General Gamel Abdel Nasser’s in September 1970, when his heart failed over a lingering worry that fellow Arabs, Jordanians and Palestinians, were killing each other. I cannot resist such a comparison, for it stands to be argued that General Murtala Muhammed was to Africa, what Gamel Abdel Nasser was to Arabia. It was a heart failure that did in Gamal Abdel Nasser, whereas a black African consciously planned and carried out the assassination of Africa’s martyr, General Murtala Muhammed! May his soul rest in peace!Amen.
Ladies and Gentlemen, immersed, as I often find myself in thoughts over the greatness in General Murtala Muhammed, I was thoroughly bemused when Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, replied my SMS of acceptance to this event, by saying the Murtala Muhammed Foundation was so honoured.
Boko Haram atrocities
I laughed at her humility as I considered myself to be the one who’s truly honoured. What an honour to be a keynote speaker at the memorial of one of Africa’s liberators, a man so immeasurably endowed with eternal greatness that contemporary African History credits him with hastening the collapse of apartheid South Africa and its surrogate regimes in Southern Africa. His name was one of the words that rolled off the tongues of Nelson Mandela when he regained his freedom. Africa remains grateful that in its hour of great need, it had General Murtala Muhammed. Again, may his soul rest in peace! Understandably, from July 1975 to date, a lot of Nigerians have more admiration and respect, indeed nostalgia, for the days of General Murtala than they have for some of us holding public offices today and in recent times. ‘Fellow Nigerians’ as Murtala often addressed citizens, would normally stand up for leaders who truly served them.
I must express my profound appreciation to the Board and management of Murtala Muhammed Foundation for giving me the platform to narrate the story of Borno’s struggle with the evil that has continually wrought death and destruction in our state.
Greatness in General Murtala Muhammed
I came into office in the midst of the Boko Haram crisis in 2011. As at that time, the insurgents had began serial assassinations and planting of IEDs mainly in Maiduguri metropolis, which was, and now even more so, the most populated part of the State.
Last month, my predecessor Governor Ali Modu Sheriff issued a political statement. In it, he implied that as at the time he handed over to me in 2011, Boko Haram had asserted territorial control and carried out its atrocities within Maiduguri only. According to him, Boko Haram wasn’t in control of local government areas. His statement, designed as it were to aim a cheap political shot, simply stood down both the facts and internal dynamics of the Boko Haram terror strategy.
The thesis, yet to be punctured, is that the spread of Boko Haram was a consequence of creating and nurturing the enabling environment that started it in the first place, and that consciously carved out niches for it in governance and society. Two years before I came into office, specifically, in July, 2009 when Boko Haram launched its first (major) concurrent attacks in Maiduguri, its cells carried out similar attacks in Damasak, headquarters of Mobbar Local Government Area in Borno State. Cells, then yet to become active, existed alongside visible followers in other local government areas.
In fact, the Boko Haram which spread to Bauchi (Bauchi State) and Potiskum (Yobe State) from Borno State attacked targets in these states within the same July, 2009. Boko Haram was by this time everywhere in Borno State. I have restrained myself from blaming the previous Governor but the fact of the matter is that Governor Ali Modu Sheriff allowed his ego to override his actions by failing to amicably settle the violent disagreements that ensued between a group of armed forces and followers of the Boko Haram sect in 2009, who at that time were known as Yusufiyya.
Between 2008 and 2009, the late Mohammed Yusuf was a regular critique of Sheriff’s administration in some of his sermons, I do not know the basis of their problems. Then, in June, 2009, there were disagreements between Yusuf’s followers and an anti-robbery squad code named, ‘Operation Flush’.
Operation Flush‘
The disagreements were over the use of crash helmets in Maiduguri which resulted in one of the armed personnel in Operation Flush firing at 17 followers of the sect. I think the security agent said they attempted disarming him or so. It is true that the Boko Haram members had clear disregard for the policy on motorcycle safety (anti-crash) helmet and didn’t wear it.
But after a serious incident involving armed forces and a radical Islamic group, a Governor in his normal senses would at least visit victims of the shooting, even settle their medical bills to lay foundation for peaceful resolution and also set up a panel of Inquiry over the shooting of 17 radical sect members.
We all saw how Governor Nasiru El-Rufai quickly set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry over the Shiites crisis with the Army in Zaria, and a white paper has since been issued. But in the case of the June, 2009 Boko Haram crisis with Operation Flush in Maiduguri, then Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff mismanaged the crisis by blatantly ignoring the entire incident.
The Governor was in Maiduguri when the incident happened but he neither set up at least a Commission of Inquiry after the incident nor did he visit those shot and hospitalized while he also didn’t send anyone and didn’t settle medical bills of victims. Sheriff acted as if nothing happened. At the end, he played into the hands of the insurgents.
Hi. I’m Sana ur Rehman Designer of This Blog. I’m CEO/Founder of Pak Zest. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.
0 comments:
Post a Comment