Nigeria Insecurity: War in the East and Dialogue of Civilization.
By Elempe Dele.
I think it will suffice to suggest that both General Buhari and the self a claimed Supreme Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, would need some tutorial by notable professors on the Basic Philosophy of Education. This will act as spiritual and ethical reminder that their provocative timing for declaration of hostilities is not only unnecessary, but immoral.
Buhari has called for the civil war style reprisal attack against IPOB (if as usual, he was not quoted out of context) and that the people of the East should be prepared for a lesson and language in sorrow and remorse.
The president actually chorused a threat and crusade of vengeance during a live telecast and went on to tweet it. With it, he has lost his ethical mooring with the unnecessary hysteria.
This is not what the nation was willing to see for a supposed president who was supposed to come up with invigorated possibility for amicability.
What he succeeded in doing was that he branded himself as the sectorial president as he has always been accused of how much of the same vented anger has he been able to muster against Fulani killer herdsmen?
If he listens to good advice from good advisers, that orchestrated mood for violence wound not have been necessary.
On the other hand, Nnamdi Kanu has grown from being a passionate revolutionary fighter for justice to being a fanatical extremist with murderous commands.
To me, Kanu is a remarkable zealot plagued with the manifestations of violent approach. He is a man with that unique social taste for blood and illegalities – his self styled supreme purpose. His chosen protest does not come to me as ideological, so he presents the visible credentials of a fundamentalist with the pregnancy of self-righteousness that only secession can cure.
General Buhari has created another fanatical base in the East through his ineptitude and clannish ways of handling thematic and security issues.
The IPOB separatists were ones unarmed but only depended on the hysteria of sentiments and hopes. They were being murdered while conducting their peaceful protest and Buhari quickly proscribed them and designated them a terrorist group. Today, they are armed like the bandits and terrorists in the other parts the country. According to Wole Soyinka, there is no regulatory mechanism for a fanatical mind once is set in motion.
Trapped within the killing territory, fanatics and terrorism has progressively expanded to the region of traditionally peacefulness, thanks to General Buhari and Supreme Kanu.
Even when both live within their close societies and in isolations from dialogue, critical stakeholders and original thinkers must call for a convocation to address these issues with nationwide concerns like a pandemic it is.
Series of contacts within and outside non-governmental bodies, religious bodies and other busybodies must bring these issues to a negotiating table – even the devil can be assuaged.
As a matter of fact, what this very government lack is philosophical minds – I mean great thinkers. The monologue of this government’s lackluster decisions and unilateralism is part of what the problem is, same with the conduct of Nnamdi Kanu, the disillusioned. They are not looking for solutions, or at the very least, try in solving the problems.
Rather, both parties parade congregations of charlatans and the willing which further dichotomize the points of agreements with dire consequences.
From both the president and Kanu, dialogue seem to be loosing out to the resolve of anger and fanatics. It’s only the mainstream rational members of the country that can bring peace through dialogue, if not, what and where would all these get us?
What will the killings of unarmed civilians for whom the IPOB separatists said it’s fighting for amount to if the same IPOB kill them in their own lands?
What will it amount to if policemen who are also silent victims of the failed state are killed in their posts and public infrastructures are being burnt and destroyed?
So you can see that the ‘grey area’ between fanatics and revolutionary passion for change has been effaced by Kanu himself since he has taken terrorism as his latest tactic, to which Buhari as vowed to crush like the civil war.
