THE NORTH UNDER SIEGE!!! ADAMU MUHAMMED MUHAMMED Many still believe that Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer (guiding spirit) of the National Socialists dubbed the Nazis, and the Reich Chancellor of the German Third Reich had lost the War long before the allied forces closed in on Germany in 1945. The argument proffered was that Hitler was fighting on many fronts at the same time. Thus Hitler was engaging much of Europe and some parts of Africa at the same time. But for that fact, Hitler could have sustained the war longer than 1945 if he had concentrated his attacks on the Russian capital instead of diverting his attacks to less prominent places. If Russia had fallen to German might, the United States of America would have thought twice before joining the war. Only the opposite of the submission made above can be said of Northern Nigeria. Ever since the bloody clamp down on Boko Haram by the Government of the late president, Umaru Musa Yar’adua, the north has become under sustained attacks from mainly four fronts namely; boko haram, the Federal Government, the South and the Northern elites! Whereas the first three could be said to be in cahoots, the last is guilty of cold complicity and sheer indifference to the plight of the Northern Masses! Boko Haram as it is well known by any objective observer is far from being a religious sect. The sustained intensity of its attack in the northern states among a largely Muslim population will debunk any claim of its religious character. The weapons and cars they use in their deadly attacks is a pointer to the fact that they are sponsored financially and logistically by some elements that are hell-bent on shattering the corporate existence of this country. Those that still insist that boko haram is carrying out an Islamic agenda are doing so in order to cover their own culpability or better put, their own participation in the destruction of the north. For those that are sceptical, what further evidence do they require besides the fact that many a times Christians were caught trying to set churches ablaze in Bauchi, Gombe and even Bayelsa states! Had they succeeded, all that is required is for a faceless person to claim responsibility on behalf of boko haram! These attacks were carried out in order to trigger reprisal attacks from some unsuspecting Christians, our Brethren who have also suffered from this grand conspiracy. The assault of the sect on the economic capital of the north is also a proof that the agenda is “let us kill the population and economy of the north and then tear the country apart; let us bring the north more poverty and misery so that should the country be divided, the northerner will be a beggar”. Anyone with a rudimentary common sense will appreciate that the activities of the sect are not geared towards accomplishing any religious agenda but towards the agenda of their foreign and local sponsors which is the disintegration of the Nigerian state. This brings us to the next point. The United States of America made a dangerous prediction few years back that the entity called Nigeria will disintegrate before the year 2015. If we had not known the West better, then we would have dismissed that statement as a mere shenanigan! But those that are familiar with the conspiracy of the West will treat that statement with the seriousness it deserves. For the West it was that caused the internal scruples that led to the disintegration of Korea into North and South Korea, with one as its ally and the other its enemy. The same could be said of Sudan. It was necessary to divide the country into the Christian South with the oil reserves and the Muslim North; if at all the West is to get control of the oil. The same conspiracy is to be applied in Nigeria and in our case, it is necessary to impose an incompetent president who is nothing but a local tribal champion and thereby cannot see beyond the smoke-screen. With the unfortunate emergence of a clueless person as the president, every activity of the Federal Government has been towards the achievement of that grand agenda and the die has been cast. No attempt has been spared to cause unnecessary chaos and to heat up the polity. Achievement of this kind of agenda is possible only in a tensed up society. What better place is there to plant mayhem than the region that poses the greatest threat? Of note is Jonathan’s shameless denial of the zoning agreement in PDP’s constitution, regardless of the violence that could cause and did cause in the North! With that came the cries of the Edwin clarks, and the Asari Dokubos of the South-South for secession. Suddenly, the entire South rose up in unison to condemn and blame the North for what is happening in Nigeria and to demand for a Sovereign National Conference of all ethnic groups to determine their future which merely is a prelude to secession! It has since become the stock in trade of the Southern media to bash and ridicule the north with concocted facts and figures and one cannot but wonder at the brunt of such vituperations. Articles have been written, conferences have been held, propaganda has been employed, terror has been unleashed, abuses have been rained, hatred has been shown and the agenda has been laid out! It appears that the South of the country and the West of the world are in cahoots, all driving to the same direction, trying desperately to take the North to the land of political oblivion! I had a discussion with my colleague at the Nigerian law school and he did not mince words in submitting that the North is the cancer of the country and therefore needs to be severed! They have engaged in every calculated move to undermine the North. The Federal Government under the grossly incompetent president has not been left out in this assault against the North. From the moment Jonathan became acting president, he has not missed out any opportunity to denigrate and further extirpate the North by sharing National projects in a lopsided manner. Jonathan is nothing but a fifth-columnist or more appropriately, the title of a Trojan Donkey (to borrow from Adamu Adamu), for he has fallen short of being the legendary Trojan Horse. Jonathan stopped the dredging of the River Niger which is favourable to the North. He sent a budget virement proposal to the National Assembly to approve billions to be given to the Niger Delta militants and their ministry. The budget for the Amnesty Programme alone for the 2012 budget is higher than that of Agriculture. We cannot know for sure the number of Niger Delta youth that have been sent to the United States and South Africa on scholarship. As much as we have no objections to such, we demand equal opportunities for all Nigerian youth. It is irresponsible for a president to appear as a tribal champion. Everything the Jonathan administration does is only favourable to the Niger Delta. This is even evident in the latest “gittogate” scandal where a contractor carrying out projects in the Niger Delta built a church as a gift to the president in his native Otuoke upon the solicitation of the president! What the clueless president does not know however, is that it is a Trojan gift. The Northern Masses live under the threat of boko haram and the merciless assault of the joint task forces, who as at now are competing with boko haram with the number of deaths they have recorded! Civilians are caught up in between the bullets of two barbaric forces that altogether have no regard for human lives. One finds it extremely difficult to draw a distinction between the JTF and boko haram except that one wears a uniform and the other does not. Northerners have nowhere to find refuge. It has since become the tactics of the JTF to kill anyone around an area that has been attacked as if the attackers are sitting around waiting for them! We can easily recall the call by the Borno Elders Forum urging the president to withdraw troops from the streets of Maiduguri on charges of indiscriminate killing by soldiers. Recently there was a report that soldiers deployed in Kano killed two Women including a young lady who was about to get married. Such killings can only be tolerated by the federal government because they are being perpetrated in the north. The recent bomb explosion on Sunday morning in Kaduna state makes the heart of any concerned citizen regardless of his or her primordial identity, to be very heavy. Anyone that had the opportunity of watching the video coverage of such a dastardly act will feel nothing but tears rolling down his cheek. What readily comes to mind is that the victims of this attack are not benefitting in any way from the Nigerian Government! There is no electricity, no clean water, no good schools; the roads are suicide zones, no adequate healthcare facilities, no subsidies, nothing! In actual fact, it the blood and sweat of the masses that is been used to run the extravagant life style of this irresponsible government. The government steals their mandate and assault anything that leads to common good! Why should these poor souls who have assembled so early in the morning to have their regular breakfast of “koko” and “kosai” be the targets of these heartless vampires? I make bold to repeat that they get nothing from the government except poverty and misery! There are better places for these bastards to attack if they really want to be heard. Of course the writer does not support such. As long as the attacks are against the ordinary northern masses on the streets that are largely poor, then the government will continue only to issue press statements condemning the acts but nothing more! At this, one calls to mind a disease that has eaten deep into the veins of the so-called nothing leaders who are nothing but unwitting accomplices in the mass murder of the northern populace. The disease, verbal diarrhoea, makes them to do nothing but assemble in Arewa House to discuss the problems of the region. I say without any fear of contradiction that most of them belong to the PDP, which presently remains the major the stakeholder of the bad governance that has led us to this plight. They have altogether conspired to serve their selfish interests which they mask up and present as the interest of the North. Were we not alive when the so-called northern leaders refused to support Buhari because of the danger of him tampering with the existing status quo which is sharing the National largesse among themselves and their cohorts? They know quite well that the occult fellowship of our dear General has remained unmatched in the political history of the north. The fact is simple and straight forward; they refused to render him support because he represented the real interest of not just the northern masses but Nigeria and therefore, he is a threat. Since their interest is at variance with ours, they must ensure that theirs prevail. No group in the North should claim to speak on our behalf because in the first place, they never sought our mandate! Even the so-called Arewa Consultative Forum which is tagged the umbrella body of the North is without legitimacy to speak on behalf of the entire North. We do however recognise the fact that everybody has the right to join any association of his choice. Therefore ACF has the right to speak on behalf of their members and their interests but they should never again make the mistake of speaking for the north! Besides what have they ever done for the north and its teeming population? What have they ever done for the Northern youth? The ACF,The Northern Governors Forum etc are all made up with a bunch of people who do not have the courage to face the challenges of the region. For all we know, more mugs and kettles should be provided for them to take tea at their useless conferences and meetings to discuss their family affairs! Some southerners have written on the supposed problems of the North and one of them is the controversial Alabo George that recently wrote an article on why the north is poor. As much as we appreciate his exposure of northern ownership in the oil sector, we must also condemn his hypocritical concern for the North. I make bold to assert that he is not concerned with the problems of the ordinary people in the north but with the stakes of the Northern thieves in the oil sector. That is his major concern and no amount of colouration will conceal that fact. I will simply say do not cry more than the bereaved! Let all the forces of destruction conspire against the North. Let them launch their heavy artillery. If it must, let the Nation fall apart! The North will always rise against their concrete backdrops! Adamu Muhammed Muhammed is a student of the Nigerian Law School and can be reached at dsmall09@yahoo.com or 08069074553