Singers, Swingers by Mohammed Adamu
This week’s column is devoted to readers’ reactions mostly on the title: ‘Kanu: A Parody’. As always, when readers feel strongly about any views expressed in this column and they endeavour to send especially subject-related, non-vulgar reactions, we avail them a chance to be heard. This is what they say:
On ‘Kanu: A Parody’
‘Kanu or No Kanu….!’
-“Mr Adamu, the cause of this crisis is not Kanu actually but Buhari who was playing ethnic and religious politics. Yes, I am proudly Igbo. Before now majority of Igbos do not take Kanu serious until Buhari started implementing his 97% and 5% political formula; then people started believing Kanu. When his kinsmen the Fulani herdsmen were murdering innocent people, he looked the other way.
In fact he was even defending them. Don’t forget that Buhari sacked many Igbos from their position and replaced them with his people. Is that a mark of good leadership? When he stopped the work on second Niger Bridge, did you ask why? When he appointed all the chiefs without any Igbo did you talk? When he threw away the federal character, did you say a word? I can go on and on but for space.
Now tell me, if an Igbo president committed such injustice against the North, what would you say? Mr. Adamu, South East may be the smallest in landmass, but huge in population. I am not an advocate of Biafra. But instead of this impunity and this horrible injustice against the Igbos, Yes to Biafra. Don’t worry yourself about our survival . Let us worry about that.
The South East leaders are handicapped. How can they convince the ordinary man on the street to have faith in Nigeria when all he sees around him are injustice, hatred, nepotism and favoritism . IPOB in Igboland is strong because of Buhari’s hatred towards the Igbo. Army cannot stop it because it is now an ideology. Let Buhari change or IPOB will get stronger. Kanu or no Kanu.” -+2348033776685
‘The Game is Up!’
-“Ihedioha Chimezie is my name. Igbo to the core. On your ‘Kanu: A Parody’. Today your brother Lai Mohammed, on a Radio Nigeria Programme told us what efforts your Emirs and elders made to dissuade your youth from reprisals for the killing of Northerners in South East and South-South. We could imagine what would have happened if just one(body) was brought back but for the prior intervention of the Emirs to whip up sympathy for the Northerners and cast them as always the wounded. But the truth as you know is that ‘half truth’ is more wicked, more destructive than lies. Who restrained Gideon Akaluka’s, Esther Agbahileme’s and other Igbos’ killers? We have been bringing slaughtered bodies home since 1948 and no reprisals anywhere in Igboland. Now to your obtuse Arewa logic.
When the table is laid out every month you ask where is the oil money from Imo, Abia, Anambra states gone to? It has been forcibly appropriated to Kano, Katsina,Kaduna, Niger states by the roguish allocation formula imposed on us by the Arewa-dominated past military governments. Where else in this world does this happen? Igboland is larger than not less than twenty sovereign nations in the UN. Finally the game is up: You can cheat some of the people some of the time, never all the people all the time. Now to your gloating and express joy over the forced takeover of oil money due to Igboland by the Northern states; particularly the ‘K’ states via a wicked obtuse formula devised by past Arewa-dominated military governments…. I am surprised that you seem to be justifying this dictatorial action by your tacit support in your first and second articles…. ” -+2349081696745
‘No to ‘Appeasement’ Policy
“For puncturing the balloon of ‘appeasement policy’, the criminal silence of those who were waiting in the wings to hijack Biafra to your journey into the fascinating world of pythons and their cousins, you have said all there is to say about the Kanu misadventure. The biggest mistake the central government would’ve made was to appease an implacable bandit who left you with no options. As a policy, appeasement, at whatever level it is applied, is counterproductive. It did not cut ice with Adolf Hitler and his fellow race-conscious, Aryanized Naziz. Back home, Nigeria was destined for the precipice the day a wrongly-headed compassionate-driven appeasement policy threw up Goodluck Jonathan. If Kanu is sign that we have resolved to banish, there must be a way of punishing those who sang the weird tunes Kanu danced to. That way, we may avert repeating the mistakes of January, 1970 when, instead of swinging the axe, government gave separatists an unmerited red carpet treatment” –Abdulrazaq Magaji, Online
‘Let my people go!’
“You gave an illusion of python killing crocodile. You have never watched DSTV’s Nat-Geo Wild, Channel 182 where a python killed a crocodile and swallowed it but it got stuck in its throat, and it could not regurgitate it. Of course your python died. Same for your anaconda! Kanu is literally the crocodile! Kill him and swallow him and quench! Better start preaching restructuring now or be swept away by the impending hurricane IPOB, Niger Delta and Odua Republic. Your northernisation and Islamisation of Nigeria has to stop. Are you comfortable with the appointments of service chiefs/NNPC? You should be ashamed of your hate writings. Why do you like controlling other peoples resources? Let my people go!” –Riversman Nandi, +2348035456749
‘You are Igbophobist’
“Mohammed, why are you an Igbophobist? You and Buhari still have civil war mentality worrying you. Go and crush the rebels! Yet for eight years now your Hausa/Fulani Nigerian Army has not defeated rag tag Boko Haram fighters. Your Muslim armed jihadists are taking the North East as a caliphate and you are killing unarmed Biafran agitators; aggrieved youths without jobs. Okay, do your python dance and turn them into guerrilla freedom fighters. Hope you will send your sons to come and fight them.” +2348035456749
‘Too much imbalance’
“Mr. Mohammed Adamu, I read beyond the lines of your write-up on ‘Kanu: A Parody’. I got to find out that the points you raised could not address anything to portray the rare facts on the ground. Look, I am from Bonny Island in Rivers; frankly speaking the imbalance and marginalisation are too much. There are many things that need to be corrected. To me I feel the whole nation is slave to the North.” -+2347031923255
‘God keep Nigeria’
“My dear Mohammed Adamu, may you never be short of knowledge. Your piece is rich and well articulated. I hope Kanu and his like, and indeed the generality of people will read and understand your write up. I and the good people of the nation are proud of you. May God bless you and your family, and may God continue to keep Nigeria together because the benefits of our diversity cannot be qualified. God bless”. -+2348058403026
‘Adapt or Die!’
“Mohammed, your Biafra madness has to stop. You forgot your Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen with AK47 killing and maiming innocent Nigerians? You forgot Niger Deltans. You suck their natural resources. Or OPC that you shortchanged on their call for Oduduwa Republic. Can you manage war fronts from Calabar to Lagos? Your feeding bottle is gradually falling off your mouth! To you and your ilk I say adapt or die! The game is up”. –Nandi PH, +2348035456749
‘Do not trouble trouble…!’
-“Hmm! Mohammed, though a very long message, I read it line by line and through the lines. What captured my attention was the supposedly ‘peaceful rhetoric Kanu portrayed to the world’. If I may ask how can rhetoric of warmongering be peaceful? Provocative and bullying words cannot be said to be peaceful. The Hitler of their time (Kanu) at the verge of the python dance disappeared into thin air. We are no longer seeing the allies from Turkey spitting fire again. Maganin shege dan abu kazan uwa! Hmm mm. Do not trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. I read the comments by those fanning the embers of war. Be warned, nobody sensible will want war and destruction. Let’s resolve every issue amicably, pursue peace, love one another, not war. Please ask yourselves sincerely, did what Kanu cause to happen change anything? Rather it has brought distrust and serious hatred amongst Nigerians at this point in time. So be wise please. Don’t be used by politicians, especially the sore losers and looters” -Victoria Tabak, Online
Others
“Don’t talk yet; it is too early. it’s just starting. Your opponent is smatter. The Fulani Army should be ready to last the distance. There must be resource control whether you like it or not.” +2348033925533:-
“Your write-up has shown that you are one of those Igbo haters from the North.” -+2348101638169:-
“What you wrote made no sense. What do you mean by the East needing leadership? This is what you get from an inept government”. -+2348056547060
“You are a poor student of history and talk out of ignorance. You don’t use landmarks to distribute amenities. You use population”. -+2348065138956:
“God bless you for your write-up on Nnamdi Kanu entitled ‘Kanu: A Parody’. Keep it up. The sky is your limit’.” –Brigkins, Niger Delta, +234903712707
“I share your views on Kanu. Well done.” -10FM Jos”. -+2348036040602
On ‘All Hues, All Flavours’
Watch dogs or lap dogs?
“When you put it this way, Mohammed, you almost make the journalist’s job as bad as the lawyer’s taking briefs however odious the client, however heinous the crime. In truth, while the lawyer is constrained by law to offer representation to anyone who comes to him, the media man has no such compulsion. Because a lawyer can be sanctioned for denying representation, he has little leeway in the matter of who he defends.” It is almost ethical for a lawyer to defend a bad case, a vermin. Nothing so compels a media man. So media men who jump from client to client, offering their services to the same person they spent years lampooning, castigating, denigrating, merely do so because they want, not because they have to. They are compelled by factors less pure, less ethical, more pecuniary. Of course it is not right for a politician to keep changing parties and allegiances as the wind blows. It suggests that, ultimately, he has no ideological leaning or personal principle that cannot be triumphed by greed for power. Or money. Can you really trust such a man? Well, it is even worse for those media men who follow such people like lap dogs, cleaning up after their mess. I know you try to coat this attitude with a veneer of professionalism, as if it is all in a day’s work for the media man, but it is not right sir. The politician is on the whole not a trusted fellow because people know, ab initio, that in a power grab he would turn coat. But a media man or journalist is supposed to be on the side of truth always, reporting the facts. People tend to believe what they read in the newspapers, believing that no one would deliberately feed them falsehood as news. The kind of manipulative dart game that you have so eloquently exposed here is the kind that can kill trust in the media as an independent arbiter of free and fair reportage, making the job of honest journalists impossible. Indeed, it can bring down the very foundations of the Fourth Estate of the realm!’ –Olu Jacobs, Online:-
Others
“Your write-up on ‘All Hues, All Flavors’ is one of the best articles I have gone through in recent times. I always read you, but this is simply magic. Thanks”. -Hon. Gary Eneh, +23480033306605
“My weekend is made by this wonderful piece of yours, Uncle Mohammed”. –Nnamdi Ikeh-Akabogu, Online.
QUOTE: You have never watched DSTV’s Nat-Geo Wild, Channel 182 where a python killed a crocodile and swallowed it but it got stuck in its throat, and it could not regurgitate it. Of course your python died. Same for your anaconda! Kanu is literally the crocodile! Kill him and swallow him and quench! Better start preaching restructuring now or be swept away by the impending hurricane IPOB, Niger Delta and Odua Republic.
