By Emmanuel Ogbeche
In Nigeria, deep thought is an anathema. Though Nigerians lay claim to piety and are religiously zealous, it is all a smokescreen to what lies beneath the sinister and foreboding in majority of them. All you need to do is to look at the well-built hospitals, paved roads, functional schools and great probity and accountability in their institutional and even private affairs.
It is a crime to interrogate “facts” and hold those they deify to scrutiny so that indeed such a one can be the “best of us.” It is little wonder you find many a times their surprise and angst when a high crime is committed, and or permitted if it is not of their ethnic and religious origins.
Not to kowtow to the baying crowd, when all one needs is a little clarity, is hara-kiri. Over the past few weeks, the Nigerian ecosystem; political, religious and economic, has been stretched to the seams by contending puritans and their likes.
From the unholy murder of Deborah Emmanuel in Sokoto, to the hideous slaughter of Fatimah and her children, to the abduction of two Catholic priests in Katsina state and the resignation of Mr. Peter Obi from the Peoples Democratic Party and his berthing in the Labour Party, the hypocrisy of Nigerians stands as sure as the Cedars of Lebanon.
Over the past couple of months, terrorists aka bandits have laid siege to the whole of Northern Nigeria without as much of a whimper from the Jama’atu Nasil Islam (JNI), the apex Muslim body in Nigeria.
In May 2021, 136 pupils of the Islamic school in Tegina, Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State, some as young as two years old, were abducted by bandits. These young, helpless kids will not be released until August 27, 2021, almost three months after their sickening abductions. There was dead silence from these later day arbiters of justice and sanctity for life. The JNI was unaware of this.
Also, the lynching of Deborah in Sokoto by her classmates and fellow students was not worthy of the attention of these conciliators. How convenient! Before this, a more egregious crime was committed in 2007 in Gombe state when one Mrs Christiana Oluwasesin was lynched by Islamists, dragged, stoned, and stabbed to death, her body was also set ablaze because her killers believe she didn’t deserve a befitting burial.
Her crime? A female student in the school she was teaching accused her of touching the Quran during an examination she was invigilating.
Investigation would later prove she was innocent. Even though her killers were arrested during the uproar, and even confessed to killing her, they were later set free. Hypocrisy blinded our latter day angels to seeking for justice.
In the East, Fatimah was murdered by some beasts of no nation. The outcry was muffled, while there was thunderous wailing in the north. Suddenly, the JNI found its voice as if it was a pastime for fellow Nigerians of northern descent to be murdered by other Nigerians held hostage by a rogue group.
The irony to the whole muckraking by the JNI and others in the North is that within that same period, 67 farmers were MURDERED in no less gruesome manner in Katsina and Zamfara.
There was no angst, no revulsion. It is our crime committed by our own, they seem to say.
It comes to the political front, there are those who wish that their best aspirant should not be put on the pedestal of inquiry. Little wonder we were once told that a man many a Nigerian held in opprobrium, rightly or wrongly, was the best of us. Hypocrisy!
Our genuflecting before the Cathedral of Hypocrisy could be because as a people, we live for the moment; no collective memory of what had happened, or we simply believe the past does not count in shaping the future.
At the moment, delegates of the various political parties are selling not just their heritage for a mesh of pottage, but our collective destiny. It will be of little wonder to see these same individuals complaining of non-performance tomorrow when those they gave us get elected by the rest of us. Hypocrites!
The Nigerian situation can change when we shrink the space for those given to Chameleonic tendencies. We cannot continue to yield ground to mass hysteria and poor reasoning and shut out those who exert a little more effort in seeking for meaning beyond the cosmetics of popular opinion.
• Ogbeche is the Chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists, Abuja Chapter.