By
Felix Oboagwina
Whether officially acknowledged or ignored, the fire of genocide, truth be told, burns today through the Savannah sands of the North, consuming Christians, their homes and their churches, while steadily sweeping towards the Atlantic beaches of Southern Nigeria. Its tool is terrorism. Its foot-soldiers are Fulani militants, Fulani bandits and Fulani herdsmen armed and bankrolled by privileged Alhajis in starched Babanrigas, with crowns of Lawani headgear perched on their unholy heads.
Counting just pastors, the Jihadist fire has consumed over 5,000 ministers of Jesus Christ in Northern Nigeria. Counting only pastors! The figure of ordinary Christians and non-Muslims slain by Jihadists soars past 250,000. And you have even undercounted. This is war. In this cowardly, one-sided war, Allahu akbar-chanting Fulanis go for soft targets. These cowards get away with such killings because the authorities look away, lend them a helping hand, disarm self-defending victims and fail to bring perpetrators to justice.
A book, Nigeria’s Silent Slaughter, documents the killings. Published in 2020, it already has a sequel, updated with fresh tales of the unprovoked genocide by Jihadists against Christians. Today, world statistics indicate that 80 percent of Christians slaughtered globally happens in Nigeria. In addition to being the poverty capital of the world, this country now wears the evil reputation of most dangerous country for Christians globally.
Curiously, Islamic clerics who dare to preach moderation and good neighbourliness get targeted and killed, with their mosques razed to the ground. Security authorities continue to shield these Muslim victims’ well-known killers.
Very recently, 19-year-old Miss Hamdiyya Sidi Sharif, tearfully narrated her ordeal at the hands of the Sokoto State Government. Her offence? Hamdiyya took to social media to condemn the prevailing terrorism and sued for peace. The Sokoto State Government promptly arrested her. Upon being released from that ordeal, Hamdiyya found herself captured and raped by terrorists. This teenager is a Hijab-covered Muslim. Hers epitomises the treatment that Muslims calling for peace towards Christians get from fellow Muslims.
Even then, Hamdiyya would count herself more fortunate than the Christian girl, Deborah, whose killers in 2022 videoed themselves killing and burning her; yet the state cannot prosecute her murderers, even with verifiable camera evidence. Some 32 Muslim Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, formed part of the 54 lawyers who showed up in court to represent the two Muslim men arrested for her killing. The case froze.
Such lawyers formed the bulk who haunted a poor Christian commoner Sunday Jackson to the Supreme Court and to the gallows. And what for? Working in his own farm, Farmer Sunday Jackson fought back when one Fulani terrorist attempted to kill him, gained the upper hand over the attacker and used the assailant’s own weapon to finish him. Now even the Supreme Court has sentenced Jackson to death for surviving the terrorist’s attack. They have criminalised the self-defence killing of terrorists attacking citizens. Na wa o!
These evil SANs and lawyers represent the hidden motley crowd of Muslim elite egging on and bankrolling Fulani foot-soldiers to target Christians, burn churches and martyr pastors, in genocidal screams of ALLAHU AKBAR!
Their foot-soldiers have shed Christian blood in Agatu, Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno, Niger and other Christian enclaves in the North and the South. What fuels the terrorists? They breathe on the organic oxygen of State collusion and political correctness. Even now, the State calls them bandits not terrorists, even when the world categorises these Fulani beasts as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the universe.
This terrorism has wasted the lives of thousands of police and soldiers. Despite official denials, the Military is overwhelmed, discouraged and (or) compromised. Indeed, our Military can do with international assistance from ECOWAS, AU, UN, US, UK, EU and everywhere.
However, the question remains: Why do the Fulani kill Christians? Killings by Fulani herdsmen, jihadists, bandits are far from random. These killers kill:
- Because sponsors continue to arm them.
- Because sponsors assure them that when they kill, they will be protected.
- Because someone guarantees that when caught, they will walk away free to kill again and nothing will happen.
- Because they have the assurance that overzealous law enforcers who refuse to look away will have the tables turned on them, be sacked, jailed or murdered.
- Because someone assures them that Nigeria is theirs for the taking.
- Because someone assures them that if victims fight back, victims will be in soup, disarmed, jailed and killed. Cite Sunday Jackson as a case in point.
Precedent shows that indeed nothing ever happened to killer Fulani, even when apprehended. So far, none has been tried and executed. Not one!
Things would have been far worse were it not for the fight fought singularly by Late Ondo State’s Governor Rotimi Akeredolu SAN in defiance of Late President Muhammadu Buhari media attack dogs (Lai Mohammed, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu). But for Akeredolu and fellow Southern governors, regional security initiatives marshalled against Fulani killers (Amotekun and Ebubeagu) would have not seen the light of day. In fact, but for Akeredolu and co, Buhari’s “media three” and their pan-Fulani boss would have forced Ruga settlements down the throat of Nigerians and given these killers far easier access to their victims today.
In the face of extreme persecution, killing and existential threat against them, Gospellers have refused to fight back. Their longsuffering bows to the teaching of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. However, He also teaches that sometimes the sword will be necessary.
Lu 22:36 “…and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.”
Just how much bloodletting can a restrained, long-suffering people take, before resorting to the sword?
When Imperial Japan bombed a neutral America’s Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto predicted: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Time proved Yamamoto right. The attack drew America into World War 2, redefined the cause of the war and brought Japan to its knees.
Fulani terrorists’ genocide against Nigerian Christians has finally caught the attention of America and Donald Trump. Trump represents a significant support. He has undertaken to speak the language of bullets, guns and missiles the Jihadists understand! Steps have been taken in that direction. Not only has Trump declared Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, CPC, he has sent a delegation led by Rep. Riley Moore for firsthand info. The last leg, that of robust US Military engagement against the terrorists, should follow naturally. That appears to be the only language the killers understand.
Albeit, no one should doubt that Nigerian Christians can speak that same language. Nigerian Christians can hold their own, fight this war and end the danger -FOREVER! Oh, yes, they can.
Now the superpowers, US, UK, Canada, etc. have raised the battle cry on behalf of the multi-faith South, the Christian Middle-Belt and Christian North. That means added advantage and more firepower.
Maybe the final solution to this raging terrorism lies in a balance of terror through the force of arms, since that looks like the language Jihadists understand. Like the ancient Fulani Jihadist, some of today’s generation of Northern leaders view their Christian neighbours with bile. They deny them appointments, scholarships, education, force them to dress Muslim-style and force Christian mission schools to break their secular dress codes to permit students wear the hijab. They dream to wipe Churches and Christianity off the map and make the entire North forbidden “ba shiga” territory to anyone of a parallel faith. They prefer to import killers and terrorists from the Sahel rather than embrace their very pacific and accommodating Christian cousins.
And to think that Sultan Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, whose office (by omission or commission) oversees this Jihadist project, retired in 2006 from the Nigerian Army as a Brigadier-General. Shame!
What are we even saying? Is he any different from President Muhammadu Buhari, who retired as a General in the Nigerian Army? Yet this two-time Nigerian leader allowed his pan-Fulani bigotry and Islamic fundamentalism to flood Nigeria with foreign Fulani warriors and finally land him wherever the Hitlers of this world end up.
Now they want to sweep under the carpet the massive killing of Christians, something even Buhari could not but acknowledge. Yes, Buhari recognised genocide against Christians. On October 11, 2022, he awarded the national honour of Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) to Imam Abdullahi Abubakar, a Fulani Muslim cleric who saved 209 Christians during a 2018 riot in Plateau State. indeed, Abubakar shows that Fulani harbour good ones among them.
Jihadists kill Muslims too, don’t they? Such killings constitute an aberration. A departure from the pale. Dr. Mojeed Dahiru on X puts it this way: “The Muslims Boko Haram are killing are Muslims they don’t consider to be Muslims; but the Christians they are killing are people they are killing because they are Christians. If Boko Haram believe you are a Muslim, they won’t killing you.”
But the Caliphate and Jihadists had better not wake up the Sleeping Giant that is the Christian North, the Liberal Fulani and the Multi-Faith South. These sets have chosen the pacifist route –so far! Should they be forced to grab sword for sword, AK-47 for AK-47, and balance out the terror, it may just settle the matter once and for all.
William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night said: “If music be the food of love, play on.” If violence for violence will bring peace, rest assured Christians can echo the music, with or without any Donald Trump. They have the manpower and the resources.
In the meantime, if violence for violence is the only language that will tame Fulani death merchants and their sponsors and stop the genocide against Christians, Trump, come to Nigeria and play the music so Jihadists will dance. Come, Trump, speak to these Jihadists in the language they understand.
OBOAGWINA IS A JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR AND WRITES FROM LAGOS
