Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
#Tokyo2020: THE CUBAN REVOLUTION IS A LIVING IDEAS THAT CANNOT BE KILLED
THE WORTH OF A SOVEREIGN NATION WHO KNOWS THE TRUE MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE!
DESPITE THE US CRIMINAL BLOCKADE AGAINST THIS ISLAND OF 11.3 MILLION IN POPULATION, CUBA WENT WITH A DELEGATION OF 70 AND COMPETED IN 16-SPORTS & SHE IS 14TH AT THE #Tokyo2020 OLYMPICS (HELD JULY 23RD - AUG 8, 2021) WITH 15-MEDALS :7-GOLD
3-SILVER
5-BRONZE
*THE CUBAN REVOLUTION IS A LIVING IDEAS THAT CANNOT BE KILLED!
By: Comrade Abiodun Aremu
Seven Caribbean nations appear on the final medal table from the Summer Olympic Games which ended here yesterday, with Cuba topping the list.
The Spanish-speaking Caribbean country won 15 medals as Caribbean nations finished with 15 gold, seven silver and nine bronze.
For the Cubans, their gold came in boxing through Andy Cruz, Julio la Cruz, Arlen Lopez and Roniel Iglesias, along with three-gold medal performance in rowing, allowing them to end in 14th place on the overall medal table.
The other Caribbean nations on the medal table were Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Grenada. All but one of the medals won by this group of countries came in athletics.
Gold medal winners Elaine Thompson-Herah and Hansle Parchment of Jamaica, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, along with Puerto Rican Jasmin Camacho-Quinn all made history.
Thompson-Herah became the first to complete a 100-200 metres ‘double-double’ and Parchment made Jamaica the first country other than the United States to win the 110 metres hurdles in successive Olympic Games.
That feat was last accomplished by the USA in 1988, when Roger Kingdom retained the title he won in 1984.
Miller-Uibo and Gardiner gave the Bahamas the honour of being the first Caribbean country to win both 400 metres gold medals in the same Games since 1984.
Camacho-Quinn is Puerto Rico’s first Olympic champion in athletics.
Jamaica’s medal haul of four gold, one silver and four bronze earned Thompson-Herah and her compatriots fifth place on the athletics medal table, behind the United States, Italy, Kenya and Poland.
The USA won seven gold, 12 silver and seven bronze medals.
The much-maligned games, postponed from last year due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wrapped up yesterday with the closing ceremony in the country’s capital.
With rising COVID cases, the Games proceeded behind closed doors, with athletes forced to undergo extensive testing throughout the showpiece.
“There are no words to describe what you have achieved,” said Tokyo 2020 president, Seiko Hashimoto.
“You have accepted what seemed unimaginable, understood what had to be done, and through hard work and perseverance overcome unbelievable challenges.”
The closing ceremony showcased parts of Japan culture, amidst fireworks at the Olympic stadium, as the curtain came down on the Games, with France’s capital Paris set to take the baton in 2024.
“For the first time since the pandemic began, the entire world came together,” said International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach.
Nobody has ever organised a postponed Games before.”
Final medal table
TOKYO, Japan, CMC – Assorted medal table from the Tokyo Olympics which ended here yesterday:
(GOLD – SILVER – BRONZE)
1 United States 39 – 41 – 33 = 113
2 China 28 – 32 – 18 = 88
3 Japan 27 – 14 – 17 = 58
14 Cuba 7 – 3 – 5 = 15
21 Jamaica 4 – 1 – 4 = 9
42 The Bahamas 2 – 0 – 0 = 2
63 Bermuda 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
63 Puerto Rico 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
68 Dominican Republic 0 – 3 – 2 = 5
86 Grenada 0 – 0 – 1 = 1
Cuba tops Caribbean medal tally as Olympiad winds up
Seven Caribbean nations appear on the final medal table from the Summer Olympic Games which ended here yesterday, with Cuba topping the list.
The Spanish-speaking Caribbean country won 15 medals as Caribbean nations finished with 15 gold, seven silver and nine bronze.
For the Cubans, their gold came in boxing through Andy Cruz, Julio la Cruz, Arlen Lopez and Roniel Iglesias, along with three-gold medal performance in rowing, allowing them to end in 14th place on the overall medal table.
The other Caribbean nations on the medal table were Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Grenada. All but one of the medals won by this group of countries came in athletics.
Gold medal winners Elaine Thompson-Herah and Hansle Parchment of Jamaica, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, along with Puerto Rican Jasmin Camacho-Quinn all made history.
Thompson-Herah became the first to complete a 100-200 metres ‘double-double’ and Parchment made Jamaica the first country other than the United States to win the 110 metres hurdles in successive Olympic Games.
That feat was last accomplished by the USA in 1988, when Roger Kingdom retained the title he won in 1984.
Miller-Uibo and Gardiner gave the Bahamas the honour of being the first Caribbean country to win both 400 metres gold medals in the same Games since 1984.
Camacho-Quinn is Puerto Rico’s first Olympic champion in athletics.
Jamaica’s medal haul of four gold, one silver and four bronze earned Thompson-Herah and her compatriots fifth place on the athletics medal table, behind the United States, Italy, Kenya and Poland.
The USA won seven gold, 12 silver and seven bronze medals.
The much-maligned games, postponed from last year due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wrapped up yesterday with the closing ceremony in the country’s capital.
With rising COVID cases, the Games proceeded behind closed doors, with athletes forced to undergo extensive testing throughout the showpiece.
“There are no words to describe what you have achieved,” said Tokyo 2020 president, Seiko Hashimoto.
“You have accepted what seemed unimaginable, understood what had to be done, and through hard work and perseverance overcome unbelievable challenges.”
The closing ceremony showcased parts of Japan culture, amidst fireworks at the Olympic stadium, as the curtain came down on the Games, with France’s capital Paris set to take the baton in 2024.
“For the first time since the pandemic began, the entire world came together,” said International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach.
Nobody has ever organised a postponed Games before.”
Final medal table
TOKYO, Japan, CMC – Assorted medal table from the Tokyo Olympics which ended here yesterday:
(GOLD – SILVER – BRONZE)
1 United States 39 – 41 – 33 = 113
2 China 28 – 32 – 18 = 88
3 Japan 27 – 14 – 17 = 58
14 Cuba 7 – 3 – 5 = 15
21 Jamaica 4 – 1 – 4 = 9
42 The Bahamas 2 – 0 – 0 = 2
63 Bermuda 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
63 Puerto Rico 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
68 Dominican Republic 0 – 3 – 2 = 5
86 Grenada 0 – 0 – 1 = 1
THE WORTH OF A SOVEREIGN NATION WHO KNOWS THE TRUE MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE!
DESPITE THE US CRIMINAL BLOCKADE AGAINST THIS ISLAND OF 11.3 MILLION IN POPULATION, CUBA WENT WITH A DELEGATION OF 70 AND COMPETED IN 16-SPORTS & SHE IS 14TH AT THE #Tokyo2020 OLYMPICS (HELD JULY 23RD - AUG 8, 2021) WITH 15-MEDALS :7-GOLD
3-SILVER
5-BRONZE
*THE CUBAN REVOLUTION IS A LIVING IDEAS THAT CANNOT BE KILLED!
By: Comrade Abiodun Aremu
Seven Caribbean nations appear on the final medal table from the Summer Olympic Games which ended here yesterday, with Cuba topping the list.
The Spanish-speaking Caribbean country won 15 medals as Caribbean nations finished with 15 gold, seven silver and nine bronze.
For the Cubans, their gold came in boxing through Andy Cruz, Julio la Cruz, Arlen Lopez and Roniel Iglesias, along with three-gold medal performance in rowing, allowing them to end in 14th place on the overall medal table.
The other Caribbean nations on the medal table were Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Grenada. All but one of the medals won by this group of countries came in athletics.
Gold medal winners Elaine Thompson-Herah and Hansle Parchment of Jamaica, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, along with Puerto Rican Jasmin Camacho-Quinn all made history.
Thompson-Herah became the first to complete a 100-200 metres ‘double-double’ and Parchment made Jamaica the first country other than the United States to win the 110 metres hurdles in successive Olympic Games.
That feat was last accomplished by the USA in 1988, when Roger Kingdom retained the title he won in 1984.
Miller-Uibo and Gardiner gave the Bahamas the honour of being the first Caribbean country to win both 400 metres gold medals in the same Games since 1984.
Camacho-Quinn is Puerto Rico’s first Olympic champion in athletics.
Jamaica’s medal haul of four gold, one silver and four bronze earned Thompson-Herah and her compatriots fifth place on the athletics medal table, behind the United States, Italy, Kenya and Poland.
The USA won seven gold, 12 silver and seven bronze medals.
The much-maligned games, postponed from last year due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wrapped up yesterday with the closing ceremony in the country’s capital.
With rising COVID cases, the Games proceeded behind closed doors, with athletes forced to undergo extensive testing throughout the showpiece.
“There are no words to describe what you have achieved,” said Tokyo 2020 president, Seiko Hashimoto.
“You have accepted what seemed unimaginable, understood what had to be done, and through hard work and perseverance overcome unbelievable challenges.”
The closing ceremony showcased parts of Japan culture, amidst fireworks at the Olympic stadium, as the curtain came down on the Games, with France’s capital Paris set to take the baton in 2024.
“For the first time since the pandemic began, the entire world came together,” said International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach.
Nobody has ever organised a postponed Games before.”
Final medal table
TOKYO, Japan, CMC – Assorted medal table from the Tokyo Olympics which ended here yesterday:
(GOLD – SILVER – BRONZE)
1 United States 39 – 41 – 33 = 113
2 China 28 – 32 – 18 = 88
3 Japan 27 – 14 – 17 = 58
14 Cuba 7 – 3 – 5 = 15
21 Jamaica 4 – 1 – 4 = 9
42 The Bahamas 2 – 0 – 0 = 2
63 Bermuda 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
63 Puerto Rico 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
68 Dominican Republic 0 – 3 – 2 = 5
86 Grenada 0 – 0 – 1 = 1
Cuba tops Caribbean medal tally as Olympiad winds up
Seven Caribbean nations appear on the final medal table from the Summer Olympic Games which ended here yesterday, with Cuba topping the list.
The Spanish-speaking Caribbean country won 15 medals as Caribbean nations finished with 15 gold, seven silver and nine bronze.
For the Cubans, their gold came in boxing through Andy Cruz, Julio la Cruz, Arlen Lopez and Roniel Iglesias, along with three-gold medal performance in rowing, allowing them to end in 14th place on the overall medal table.
The other Caribbean nations on the medal table were Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Grenada. All but one of the medals won by this group of countries came in athletics.
Gold medal winners Elaine Thompson-Herah and Hansle Parchment of Jamaica, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, along with Puerto Rican Jasmin Camacho-Quinn all made history.
Thompson-Herah became the first to complete a 100-200 metres ‘double-double’ and Parchment made Jamaica the first country other than the United States to win the 110 metres hurdles in successive Olympic Games.
That feat was last accomplished by the USA in 1988, when Roger Kingdom retained the title he won in 1984.
Miller-Uibo and Gardiner gave the Bahamas the honour of being the first Caribbean country to win both 400 metres gold medals in the same Games since 1984.
Camacho-Quinn is Puerto Rico’s first Olympic champion in athletics.
Jamaica’s medal haul of four gold, one silver and four bronze earned Thompson-Herah and her compatriots fifth place on the athletics medal table, behind the United States, Italy, Kenya and Poland.
The USA won seven gold, 12 silver and seven bronze medals.
The much-maligned games, postponed from last year due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wrapped up yesterday with the closing ceremony in the country’s capital.
With rising COVID cases, the Games proceeded behind closed doors, with athletes forced to undergo extensive testing throughout the showpiece.
“There are no words to describe what you have achieved,” said Tokyo 2020 president, Seiko Hashimoto.
“You have accepted what seemed unimaginable, understood what had to be done, and through hard work and perseverance overcome unbelievable challenges.”
The closing ceremony showcased parts of Japan culture, amidst fireworks at the Olympic stadium, as the curtain came down on the Games, with France’s capital Paris set to take the baton in 2024.
“For the first time since the pandemic began, the entire world came together,” said International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach.
Nobody has ever organised a postponed Games before.”
Final medal table
TOKYO, Japan, CMC – Assorted medal table from the Tokyo Olympics which ended here yesterday:
(GOLD – SILVER – BRONZE)
1 United States 39 – 41 – 33 = 113
2 China 28 – 32 – 18 = 88
3 Japan 27 – 14 – 17 = 58
14 Cuba 7 – 3 – 5 = 15
21 Jamaica 4 – 1 – 4 = 9
42 The Bahamas 2 – 0 – 0 = 2
63 Bermuda 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
63 Puerto Rico 1 – 0 – 0 = 1
68 Dominican Republic 0 – 3 – 2 = 5
86 Grenada 0 – 0 – 1 = 1
How Nigerian Muslim Activists Wear #BuhariMustGo T-Shirts To Juma'at Prayer In Abuja
The activists, who had earlier observed their prayers inside a mosque near Aguma palace, later joined other muslim faithful at the overflow of the Central Mosque to observe the Juma'at prayer.
A group of Muslim activists on Friday attended a Juma'at prayer at the Central Mosque Gwagwalada Area Council of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, wearing T.Shirts with inscriptions #BuhariMustGo.
The youths decried the inadequate water supply and electricity in the area as well as the corruption, insecurity and bad governance ravaging the country.
The activists, who dared security operatives in the area, insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari must resign from office for his incompetence and hardship he had brought upon Nigerians.
The youths were seeing exchanging greetings with their friends shortly after the prayer.
It would be recalled that five activists and worshippers were arrested and brutalised at the Dunamis International Gospel Centre (Glory Dome) by the church security on July 4.
They were thereafter handed over to the operatives of Department of State Services for wearing #BuhariMustGo T.Shirts.
The overzealous security operatives seized their mobile phones and forced them to delete the Facebook live stream.
They were detained in an underground cell at the DSS headquarters for more than 30 days and also prevented them from seeing their lawyer and families.
The activists insisted that they committed no offence for wearing the T.Shirts.
Global human rights body, Amnesty International, had called for the release of the activists saying that they were exercising their rights as enshrined in the 1999 constitution.
PHOTOS:
The activists, who had earlier observed their prayers inside a mosque near Aguma palace, later joined other muslim faithful at the overflow of the Central Mosque to observe the Juma'at prayer.
A group of Muslim activists on Friday attended a Juma'at prayer at the Central Mosque Gwagwalada Area Council of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, wearing T.Shirts with inscriptions #BuhariMustGo.
The youths decried the inadequate water supply and electricity in the area as well as the corruption, insecurity and bad governance ravaging the country.
The activists, who dared security operatives in the area, insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari must resign from office for his incompetence and hardship he had brought upon Nigerians.
The youths were seeing exchanging greetings with their friends shortly after the prayer.
It would be recalled that five activists and worshippers were arrested and brutalised at the Dunamis International Gospel Centre (Glory Dome) by the church security on July 4.
They were thereafter handed over to the operatives of Department of State Services for wearing #BuhariMustGo T.Shirts.
The overzealous security operatives seized their mobile phones and forced them to delete the Facebook live stream.
They were detained in an underground cell at the DSS headquarters for more than 30 days and also prevented them from seeing their lawyer and families.
The activists insisted that they committed no offence for wearing the T.Shirts.
Global human rights body, Amnesty International, had called for the release of the activists saying that they were exercising their rights as enshrined in the 1999 constitution.
PHOTOS:
#FreeDunamis5: Contempt Proceedings Filed Against the DG of Lawless DSS - #RevolutionNow movement
We have filed initiated contempt proceedings this afternoon against the Director General of DSS for refusal to comply with Order of the Federal High Court given on the 26th of July 2021, ordering the DSS to release the 5 applicants forthwith.
By dictionary meaning, forthwith means immediately.
They were served with the Order on the 29th of July 2021. Today is August 2nd, 2021, the Dunamis 5 are still held by the DSS in flagrant flouting of the order of Court.
When a nation is slipping into dictatorship, the first feature is that the organs of government will begin to flout court orders.
That is exactly what the DSS is doing today by their refusals to respect and obey court orders. The Dunamis 5 are still kept by the DSS despite being served with the order of a Federal High Court, for them to be released forthwith. This is our tragedy as a nation.
#RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo
We have filed initiated contempt proceedings this afternoon against the Director General of DSS for refusal to comply with Order of the Federal High Court given on the 26th of July 2021, ordering the DSS to release the 5 applicants forthwith.
By dictionary meaning, forthwith means immediately.
They were served with the Order on the 29th of July 2021. Today is August 2nd, 2021, the Dunamis 5 are still held by the DSS in flagrant flouting of the order of Court.
When a nation is slipping into dictatorship, the first feature is that the organs of government will begin to flout court orders.
That is exactly what the DSS is doing today by their refusals to respect and obey court orders. The Dunamis 5 are still kept by the DSS despite being served with the order of a Federal High Court, for them to be released forthwith. This is our tragedy as a nation.
#RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo
#FreeDunamis5: Lawless DSS, AGF MALAMI served with court orders ordering the unconditional release of 5 captives in their custody
#FreeDunamis5: Lawless DSS, AGF MALAMI served with court orders ordering the unconditional release of 5 captives in their custody
On Thursday, the Nigeria's Lawless DSS and the AGF Abubarka MALAMI were been served with court orders given by a Federal High Court ordering the unconditional release of 5 youths who wore #BuhariMustGo T-shirts to Dr. Paul Enenche’s Dunamis International Gospel Centre church on July 4 2021 in Abuja.
The youths were first arrested and brutalized by @dunamis church security before they were handed over to the DSS.
Upon realising they’ve gone to the Federal high court to enforce their fundamental rights the DSS rushed them to a Magistrate court in Mpape where they backdated the time and date of filing the charges.
The impunity of Major General Muhammadu Buhari regime is unprecedented and anyone partaking on it now should be reminded will not go unpunished, including the three lawyers at the DSS that took them to a lower court in violation of the orders of the Federal High Court.
#RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo
On Thursday, the Nigeria's Lawless DSS and the AGF Abubarka MALAMI were been served with court orders given by a Federal High Court ordering the unconditional release of 5 youths who wore #BuhariMustGo T-shirts to Dr. Paul Enenche’s Dunamis International Gospel Centre church on July 4 2021 in Abuja.
The youths were first arrested and brutalized by @dunamis church security before they were handed over to the DSS.
Upon realising they’ve gone to the Federal high court to enforce their fundamental rights the DSS rushed them to a Magistrate court in Mpape where they backdated the time and date of filing the charges.
The impunity of Major General Muhammadu Buhari regime is unprecedented and anyone partaking on it now should be reminded will not go unpunished, including the three lawyers at the DSS that took them to a lower court in violation of the orders of the Federal High Court.
#RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo
#NnamdiKanu Trial: Over 20 IPOB Members arrested in Abuja as the case adjourned till 21st October 2021
#NnamdiKanu Trial: Over 20 IPOB Members arrested in Abuja as the case adjourned till 21st October 2021
Also arrested by the DSS but later released at the Court is the AAC National Chairman Omoyele Sowore whose statement also confirmed the incident against the IPOB Members and supporters of the Nnamdi Kanu.
Sowore said: I have been released by the Nigerian Police force and now in another Federal High Court for a proceeding regarding 5 young persons illegally detained by the DSS for wearing #BuhariMustGo Tshirts to Dunamis Church. Will keep you all updated. Thank you for your support!
Also arrested by the DSS but later released at the Court is the AAC National Chairman Omoyele Sowore whose statement also confirmed the incident against the IPOB Members and supporters of the Nnamdi Kanu.
Sowore said: I have been released by the Nigerian Police force and now in another Federal High Court for a proceeding regarding 5 young persons illegally detained by the DSS for wearing #BuhariMustGo Tshirts to Dunamis Church. Will keep you all updated. Thank you for your support!
#RevolutionNow: Sowore’s treason trial starts afresh as judge abandons case
Sowore: AGF Abubakar Malami, DG DSS Yusuf Bichi shopping for pliable judges, putting pressure on one of my sureties so that they can revoke my bail, re-arrest and detain me
The Major General Muhammadu Buhari ledled Fede government trial against the convener of Revolution Now movement Omoyele Sowore, and Olawale Bakare has suffered a setback at the Federal High Court in Abuja, according to reports by the national dailies.
According to the Punch newspapoers, the presiding Judge, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, has been transferred to Calabar and has informed the Chief Justice, Justice Tsoho, that although she would continue with other cases, she would no longer preside over Sowore’s case.
By the regime tactics, this implies that the case marked, FHC/ABJ/CR/235/19, will have to start afresh for the second time as they have nothing to prove against the activists.
This is just as two other judges have refused to take up Sowore’s case due to its ‘sensitive nature.’
Nigeria' Department of State Services had arraigned Sowore and Bakare before Justice Ojukwu for treasonable felony for organising the ‘Revolution Now’ protest on August 5, 2019, which the government saw as an attempt to disrupt peace in the country.
Justice Ojukwu subsequently ordered that Sowore and Bakare be released on bail but the DSS disobeyed the order for several weeks. After granting him bail, the DSS re-arrested Sowore inside the court, causing commotion which made the judge flee.
He was, however, released following nationwide condemnation.
In February 2020, the Office of the Attorney-General took over the case, amended the charges and re-arraigned Sowore and Bakare.
The judge ordered the Federal Government to pay N200,000 as the cost to the defendants for the frivolous application for adjournment and adjourned till February 13.
Following Justice Ojukwu’s transfer to Calabar, lit waa learnt that she was given the option of continuing some other cases. A court official said the judge picked a few cases and returned some others to the CJ including Sowore’s case.
“It seems some of these judges feel intimidated. They don’t want Federal Government trouble. The case is high profile and controversial. So, they have been avoiding it,” she said.
Also it was informed that another criminal defamation case instituted by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), involving Sowore, which is being handled by Justice Taiwo Taiwo, will also have to start afresh as the judge has returned the case file to the CJ.
“The case, Incorporated Trustees of Global Integrity Crusade Network – suing on behalf of Abubakar Malami – VS Omoyele Sowore and three others which is pending before Justice Taiwo Taiwo has also been returned to the Chief Judge for reassignment despite the fact that all the parties have filed all the processes and ready for final hearing before judgement,” the court official said.
Accordinf to the PUNCH reports, it was learnt that a fundamental human rights suit instituted by Sowore against the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/ 1469/2019 for unlawful detention, which is pending before Justice Inyang Ekwo, has also been returned to the CJ for reassignment after several adjournments.
“I have never seen this sort of thing before despite serving in this court for many years. No judge is willing to sit on Sowore’s case. This never happened even during the military era,” the court official said.
Sowore in a confirmation statement has said Federal Judges retiring and returning his case files in droves.
He alledged that the Nigeria's AGF Abubakar Malami and the DG DSS Yusuf Bichi are shopping for pliable judges and the duo are putting pressure on one of his sureties so that they can revoke his bail, re-arrest and detain him.
Sowore said that they’re scared but they can’t escape the upcoming revolt of the massively oppressed people of Nigeria.
"Federal Judges retiring and returning Sowore case files in droves, meanwhile AGF Abubakar Malami and DG DSS Yusuf Bichi are shopping for pliable judges and putting pressure on one of my sureties so that they can revoke my bail, re-arrest and detain me. They’re scared! But they can’t escape the upcoming revolt of the massively oppressed people of Nigeria! #RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo"
Sowore: AGF Abubakar Malami, DG DSS Yusuf Bichi shopping for pliable judges, putting pressure on one of my sureties so that they can revoke my bail, re-arrest and detain me
The Major General Muhammadu Buhari ledled Fede government trial against the convener of Revolution Now movement Omoyele Sowore, and Olawale Bakare has suffered a setback at the Federal High Court in Abuja, according to reports by the national dailies.
According to the Punch newspapoers, the presiding Judge, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, has been transferred to Calabar and has informed the Chief Justice, Justice Tsoho, that although she would continue with other cases, she would no longer preside over Sowore’s case.
By the regime tactics, this implies that the case marked, FHC/ABJ/CR/235/19, will have to start afresh for the second time as they have nothing to prove against the activists.
This is just as two other judges have refused to take up Sowore’s case due to its ‘sensitive nature.’
Nigeria' Department of State Services had arraigned Sowore and Bakare before Justice Ojukwu for treasonable felony for organising the ‘Revolution Now’ protest on August 5, 2019, which the government saw as an attempt to disrupt peace in the country.
Justice Ojukwu subsequently ordered that Sowore and Bakare be released on bail but the DSS disobeyed the order for several weeks. After granting him bail, the DSS re-arrested Sowore inside the court, causing commotion which made the judge flee.
He was, however, released following nationwide condemnation.
In February 2020, the Office of the Attorney-General took over the case, amended the charges and re-arraigned Sowore and Bakare.
The judge ordered the Federal Government to pay N200,000 as the cost to the defendants for the frivolous application for adjournment and adjourned till February 13.
Following Justice Ojukwu’s transfer to Calabar, lit waa learnt that she was given the option of continuing some other cases. A court official said the judge picked a few cases and returned some others to the CJ including Sowore’s case.
“It seems some of these judges feel intimidated. They don’t want Federal Government trouble. The case is high profile and controversial. So, they have been avoiding it,” she said.
Also it was informed that another criminal defamation case instituted by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), involving Sowore, which is being handled by Justice Taiwo Taiwo, will also have to start afresh as the judge has returned the case file to the CJ.
“The case, Incorporated Trustees of Global Integrity Crusade Network – suing on behalf of Abubakar Malami – VS Omoyele Sowore and three others which is pending before Justice Taiwo Taiwo has also been returned to the Chief Judge for reassignment despite the fact that all the parties have filed all the processes and ready for final hearing before judgement,” the court official said.
Accordinf to the PUNCH reports, it was learnt that a fundamental human rights suit instituted by Sowore against the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/ 1469/2019 for unlawful detention, which is pending before Justice Inyang Ekwo, has also been returned to the CJ for reassignment after several adjournments.
“I have never seen this sort of thing before despite serving in this court for many years. No judge is willing to sit on Sowore’s case. This never happened even during the military era,” the court official said.
Sowore in a confirmation statement has said Federal Judges retiring and returning his case files in droves.
He alledged that the Nigeria's AGF Abubakar Malami and the DG DSS Yusuf Bichi are shopping for pliable judges and the duo are putting pressure on one of his sureties so that they can revoke his bail, re-arrest and detain him.
Sowore said that they’re scared but they can’t escape the upcoming revolt of the massively oppressed people of Nigeria.
"Federal Judges retiring and returning Sowore case files in droves, meanwhile AGF Abubakar Malami and DG DSS Yusuf Bichi are shopping for pliable judges and putting pressure on one of my sureties so that they can revoke my bail, re-arrest and detain me. They’re scared! But they can’t escape the upcoming revolt of the massively oppressed people of Nigeria! #RevolutionNow #BuhariMustGo"
#August5Protest: Our DEMANDS are clear and non-NEGOTIABLE! - Sowore
Join the August 5th Nationwide PROTEST against Corruption and Tyranny in NIGERIA . Enough is Enough!
You’re Shiites, IPOB, ODUDUWA, #ENDSARS, Students, Market men and women, citizens who can’t cope with rising food prices, workers whose miserable salaries are cut in half, business people whose businesses have been ruined by economic mismanagement, Farmers whose farmlands have been destroyed...come out on August 5th 2021. It will be a total lockdown at home and abroad! shops, schools, businesses are advised to observe strict closures. Only essential services will be allowed!
Our diaspora citizens are advised to take their protests to the nearest Nigerian embassy or consulate where they don’t exist, take it to the UN office around you. Let the world know we can’t continue like this anymore!
Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari came to destroy everything: Your farms. Your Schools. Your Businesses. Your Liberty. Your Beliefs. Your Families. Your Cultures/Traditions. Your Self Esteem. Your Jobs. Your Homes. Your Dignity. Your Creativity. Your Laws. Your Treaties and Conventions. Your Rights. Your Democracy...
#ResistanceNow
#FreeNnamdiKanu #FreeZakyZaky #FreeDunamis5 #FreeEndsars #FreeObigbo #FreeNigeria from the grip of tyrant Muhammadu Buhari
#nogoingbacknow
#August5Protest
#BuhariMustGo
#RevolutionNow
Join the August 5th Nationwide PROTEST against Corruption and Tyranny in NIGERIA . Enough is Enough!
You’re Shiites, IPOB, ODUDUWA, #ENDSARS, Students, Market men and women, citizens who can’t cope with rising food prices, workers whose miserable salaries are cut in half, business people whose businesses have been ruined by economic mismanagement, Farmers whose farmlands have been destroyed...come out on August 5th 2021. It will be a total lockdown at home and abroad! shops, schools, businesses are advised to observe strict closures. Only essential services will be allowed!
Our diaspora citizens are advised to take their protests to the nearest Nigerian embassy or consulate where they don’t exist, take it to the UN office around you. Let the world know we can’t continue like this anymore!
Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari came to destroy everything: Your farms. Your Schools. Your Businesses. Your Liberty. Your Beliefs. Your Families. Your Cultures/Traditions. Your Self Esteem. Your Jobs. Your Homes. Your Dignity. Your Creativity. Your Laws. Your Treaties and Conventions. Your Rights. Your Democracy...
#ResistanceNow
#FreeNnamdiKanu #FreeZakyZaky #FreeDunamis5 #FreeEndsars #FreeObigbo #FreeNigeria from the grip of tyrant Muhammadu Buhari
#nogoingbacknow
#August5Protest
#BuhariMustGo
#RevolutionNow
IGBOHO As A Freedom Fighter /Ethnic Liberation Agitator: How We Arrived Here
©Adeola Soetan
I smile when guys create impression that there was once a "perfect struggle" in the students movement or human rights struggle in Nigeria that anti-people government did not raise its finger against it, shoot, maim, arrest and at times, kill like army of occupation..
Please tell me one example of that "perfect struggle" and its processes you or we had partipated in. I don't know of anyone because for over 3 decades I have been involved at various levels of movement. Please tell me one to learn from. Since 1978 "Ali Must Go" mass student protest that I was involved as a secondary school student to the anti-fuel price hike protest we did at Ojuelegba in 2020 and the recent ENDSARS protest that I partly addressed in 2020, the brutal state has always been crazy to suck blood at different levels of state terrorism. So, let the perfect activists or , the do-nothing revolutionaries, the egregious protests post-mortem "anatomist" , the automated Abobakus and the lousy voluntary idiots remind us of one. I beg and let's us debate it. Tyrants are bad, but supporters of tyranny are worse because in them, tyranny thrives and with them tyrants became monsters to devour all.
Beko, Gani, Aka Bashorun, Falana, Segun Sango, Odumakin, Arogundade, Aturu, Olorode, Awopetu, Jingo, Femi Aborisade, Joe, Biola Akiode, Sawaba, Balarabe Musa, Fela, Tony Fash, Aremson, Soweto, Sina Odugbemi, Sowore, MKO, Gani Adams, Ken Saro Wiwa etc were not Igboho, not roughnecks and never conducted the protests they organised and led in any "uncivilized" "illiterate" "warlords" versions.
They spoke good English, they never spoke "Yoruba Nasion" of your derision. We all know the hell they went through in the hands of tyranny, military & civilian dictatorship. Today, they are our heroes and part of our history of struggle for better and secure nation. Gani was never a secessionist but a detribalised freedom and human rights fighter, yet the tyrannical State invaded his house & office, arrested & detained him for over 30 times. Beko, a medical doctor from elite family like his blood brother, Fela, he's a dedicated human right activist only spoke for us before the State sent him to jail illegally after several detentions and physical attacks
Wetin Fela do? Fela only sang about Zombie soldiers beating civilians for streets, (which has increased now). Fela sang about corruption, commercial religionism, poverty in the midst of abundance, suffering & smiling, no much rally except analysis, interview, music & yabis, yet, Obasanjo regime burnt his house, Kalakuta Republic, killed his ideological mama, Mrs Funmilayo Kuti, raped his wives, torture Fela & his boys. Buhari regime jailed him and Babangida finished the job.
Dele Giwa was just a patriotic investigative fine journalist, he was bombed. Nigerian bourgeois state under military or civilian government is a criminal state of power bandits and hoodlums who will always resist protests, but like Reggae music, protest can't stop because it's a right to resist tyranny. So, let the "perfect activists" the "Oluaye of struggle" and all the self acclaimed custodians of organised protests without government attack, that was massive, principled & uncompromising, that the State received with red carpet applause, come out and say it. . No event, no history and no heroes and no advancement to human race. Mistakes are bound to be made, corrected and learnt from them. But we must never justify State Terrorism and Gestapo - like invasion of citizens home to steal, raid, rape and kill at night.
What gave birth to Igbohos?
Igboho is spontaneous situational leader created by the ineptitude & nepotism of Buhari regime to critically & timely address the violent Fulani herdsmen invasion of people's land, who kill, maim and do all that with impunity with Miyetti Allah openly claiming responsibilities & threatening to do more. What did government do? No Miyetti Allah leader who openly claimed responsibility for invasion of farmland and killings was ever invited by DSS or police for questioning. So, what message is government passing to the citizens and the victims? Fulani race superiority over others and all lands are grazing land with no ownership right?
When 78 citizens were slaughtered in Benue state by herdsmen and less than 24 hours Miyetti Allah Kanti claimed responsibility, what did Buhari do and say when the bereaved visited him? His response was that "the Benue people should go and learn how to live peacefully with their neighbors".
Over 20 villages were sacked in Yewa by some violent Fulani herdsmen including the foreign Fulanis and the Oba of Isanlu and other kings cried out that soldiers also assisted some Fulani herdsmen to graze on their lands by force, what did Buhari and Gov. Abiodun do? Many villagers fled to neighboring Benin Republic as refugees. Buhari himself had declared that many of these herdsmen bandits are foreigners, what did his government do to save the natives and stop the foreign invaders? How many of these foreigners were arrested & jailed in their operation "Graze, Kill & Go"?
Government's response has been more provocative & supportive of the criminal invasion. "Your ancestral land for Grazing or your life" - Femi Adesina (the presidency)
"What do you want them to do when their grazing routes have been occupied due to developments" - NSA. Grazing routes in 2021? Is that not craziness?
Hundreds including infants are hacked to death regularly by hetdsmen. What's the response of many of us who can do "perfect struggle" to the daily human carnage happening in our rural areas which is daily & widely reported by the media? Golden silence because we are not affected in our comfort zone or we just watch the horror and pass mild comnent over bottles of wine.
Where's our humanity, have we been so callous and made bestial by our political partisanship, money, money, money, despite our kukukere kurukere to Mecca and Jerusalem to profess the faiths we do not truly believe in their teachings beyond false facade of abstract religionism? Have we lost all our conscience to filty lucre, cheap money & contract from government and godfathers that we are now blind to social justice and talk truth to power as some of us used to do. Or we are just tired and overwhelmed by this regime of a crude, old stone age tyrant looking for grazing routes for his native herdsmen at all cost in the 21st century? Can we reamind Buhari and his grazing route co-searchers that cow businsees like poultry or piggery is a private business of individuals. Nigeria has not adopted cow rearing as the official business of the State, so, why this wahala of open grazing and killings by compulsion? Hundreds of private poultry /fishery farms have relocated or closed down due to development of their initial areas of location and complaints by other residents. Meran poultry farms estate in Lagos which is now a cluster of modern houses is an example. Nobody was killed by displaced and evacuated poultry farmers. Buhari! O ma de ga o! E get as e be o.
I was in Imeko sometimes ago to consult for a London based Agric & rural empowerment foundation and the media also reported recently the human tragedy in that Yewa axis. It was the tale of woes even more than Okeogun farmers by poor farmers of Imeko, Egua, Isanlu and other boarder villages from the account of their suffering from violent Fulani herdsmen particularly the Foreign Fulani herdsmen who kill, rape & take over their land with no one including government to help them. Their kings are made powerless to act by state apparatus . What do you want these people to do? I have produced farmers radio and other Agric related programmes, documentary, research work for agencies and at a time we were organizing Farmers - Media Forum to help out on this invasion of farms by herdsmen and other issues. This crisis had been an agelong one but Buhari who has a ranch as a good role model that these rich cow owners should emulate, decided to escalate the crisis by his incurable provincialism. Why did Buhari want to lead Nigeria into another Civil War because of ordinary cow? This not leadership but gangsterism and land grabbing.
Recently, a well educated hardworking lady who has over 500 acres farmland in Lanlate had her fiance shot dead while they were on their way to Ibadan after the day's work.. She invited her fiance from Lagos to join her and operate a processing farm. Their wedding scheduled for December last year became a nightmare. She was kidnapped for days until the family paid huge sum running into millions of Naira to these rural bandits. I called Edmund Obilo, the radio man, to commend him for professionally reporting the plight of the rural dwellers in Okeogun which has been on for decades but escalated during Buhari regime because of the regime's utterances and body language.
The lady identified them as the familiar bororo herdsmen in Lanlate (Edmund Obilo did a video documentary on it, you can watch) , A successful life is wrecked for ever. What did Seyi or Buhari do for this family and many more like that?
My wife & daughter, Empress, wept that evening we watched the documentary of the lady's agony together. It was a very sad moment that evening that I thought perhaps I should have watched it alone because Empress was asking brilliant but difficult questions for me to explain clearly.
Insecurity is a whirlwind, anywhere we are, we will get our own portion one day if it continues unabated. The lady went back after the period of mourning, all her farm hands had disappeared, by now, the farm would have closed down. Many more like that, losing their farms after collecting huge loans. The Defenders of tyranny don't address their minds to this type of regular tragedies in rural areas than to defend and lie to change the narratives and give excuses that they also condemned in the past failed regimes. Truly, "Ise Aje Le"
Just consider the lady or her dead fiance is /was your close relative, will you say No to Igboho:s little solidarity / confidence building to your village despite reservation for his methodology since government has abandoned you to your fate for many years?
When government fails and the perfect activists" or emergency nationalists stand akimbo and only enjoy the video of human killings on social media to pass comments or write romantic "protest letter" to condemn it , the raw, rough, illiterate but courageous Igbohos will be the situational leaders because nature abhors a vacumm.
Who knew Igboho 2 yrs ago as a Yoruba activist or ethnic agitator beyond his publicized commercial political thuggery lordship?
I met Igboho once at a birthday party in Germany, he was so colorless, so simple & highly respectful bowing for everyone on sight. . I didn't know him until my friends told me about him and his war expedition during Modakeke - Ife war, his acclaimed juju prowess and polical thuggery exploit (now politicians who patronize them call them "political enforcers"). I just ignored the "citation" and continued catching my fun that cold night as Igboho became the cynosure of all eyes including the DJ who was praising his name everytime.
Now years after, I have to start writing about Igboho, not the one introduced to me in Germany as a life loving, juju empowered "political enforcer", but now a raw, courageous, "illiterate" freedom fighter for Yoruba farmers and natives whose farmlands and villages are regularly sacked by some violent local and foreign Fulani herdsmen who take their land forcefully for open grazing of cows and their lives when resisted in the presence of a regime they voted to power.
Igboho suddenly became a Yoruba nation agitator with all his crude & civilised methods and according to his and his mass followers" understanding of the situation, when those educated "decent" political elites who campaigned on restructuring, power devolution, true federalism and revenue redistribution which could have addressed some of these issues that manufactured the Igbohos have abandoned their promises and have been captured by their dubious silence.
I never imagined for once that an Igboho would be at the barricade, on the streets, not to rig & kill for "do or die" corrupt politicians, his genesis, but to take a raw courage to defend his Oke Ogun people and his Yoruba nation, against some violent Fulani land grabbers prodded by the State apparatus. I had never thought that a rich political roughneck would command such a huge followeship of helpless, angry, battered, poor, rich, anxious farmers and hungry citizens of Yoruba extractions looking forward to him, rightly or wrongly, to save them from forest bandits and from a failed government that told perplexed citizens to defend themselves from Ak47 armed Fulani herdsmen and bandits of varied ethnic stock. Such a huge crowd would have taken politicians millions of Naira with total mobilisation by inducement to organise.
For me, such a movement can't be ignored with a wave of the hand as a socialist and experienced protester. Such a movement must be situated, critique and draw useful lessons for perspective development on multidimensional approaches the Nigeria struggle may break with or without our planning or intervention.
I am not a rhapsodic arrogant elite, I am of the street, I learn from the low and the high, I live with the masses, mix, chat and learn from them as they also gain from me. We can't afford to fold our arms when tyranny and bad governance propels rural banditry against the poor farmers locally and nationally, we must speak up against land grabbing, your life or your land grazing body language of this regime. Ask them, after the months of RUGA noise, how many states in the north that have shown their reception to RUGA and ranching have commenced operation? Baba Agba is really notl interested, he has shown his interest is open grazing, he's now looking for 1963 cattle route gazette in 2021. Laughable!
Why would the Igbohos not seize the initiative when many ex-this, ex-that have become Abobakus defending all tyrannical actions of government, or we are battle weary, or now too rich & too decent to protest, arrogant as custodians of struggle, or old, weak, organizationally confused or just having a false sense of safety and security in our comfort zones, or gladly have "retired" after a long period of remarkable commendable leadership of struggle.
How long Igboho's movement lasts like many struggles before it will not be determined by bloody tyranny but by the resolution of those issues that makes Igboho relevant to many people and the consciousness they put into it.
Igboho is an effect of a cause. So, when we deal, critique & condemn the effects, let's address the cause first, that's the way to go. Blame the nonchalant government that failed to secure its citizens first before blaming the effects.
If Igboho is killed today, as some voluntary idiots may wish, he has etched his name in our memory, not as a rich political thug of his genesis anymore, but as a controversial, hated and loved, popular, raw courageous, juju embellished freedom fighter for his Oke Ogun - Ibarapa and Yoruba poor farmers and the people feeling disenchanted by their state of helplessness in the face of terror and land grabbing by fully armed accredited and non-accredited bandits while government always tells the citizens to defend themselves. But, with what? Cow stick, brooms, catapult or Juju Igboho?
This is the new Revelation of Igboho synthesis from Genesis as political thugs to some of your political godfathers. Many of those who hate Igboho for fighting for poor Igangan farmers would have loved him if he had continued to play the political enforcer role with other rich thugs for their power desperate leaders.
We should condemn the midnight gestapo- like attack on his "juju" embellished mansion, we should condemn the extra- judicial killing without trial of citizens captured in his house and demand for the immediate release, or speedy trial of the arrested if found culpable.
We are human beings not animals in the jungle. Government cannot be crazy and be blood thirsty always.
Adeola Soetan
08037207856
©Adeola Soetan
I smile when guys create impression that there was once a "perfect struggle" in the students movement or human rights struggle in Nigeria that anti-people government did not raise its finger against it, shoot, maim, arrest and at times, kill like army of occupation..
Please tell me one example of that "perfect struggle" and its processes you or we had partipated in. I don't know of anyone because for over 3 decades I have been involved at various levels of movement. Please tell me one to learn from. Since 1978 "Ali Must Go" mass student protest that I was involved as a secondary school student to the anti-fuel price hike protest we did at Ojuelegba in 2020 and the recent ENDSARS protest that I partly addressed in 2020, the brutal state has always been crazy to suck blood at different levels of state terrorism. So, let the perfect activists or , the do-nothing revolutionaries, the egregious protests post-mortem "anatomist" , the automated Abobakus and the lousy voluntary idiots remind us of one. I beg and let's us debate it. Tyrants are bad, but supporters of tyranny are worse because in them, tyranny thrives and with them tyrants became monsters to devour all.
Beko, Gani, Aka Bashorun, Falana, Segun Sango, Odumakin, Arogundade, Aturu, Olorode, Awopetu, Jingo, Femi Aborisade, Joe, Biola Akiode, Sawaba, Balarabe Musa, Fela, Tony Fash, Aremson, Soweto, Sina Odugbemi, Sowore, MKO, Gani Adams, Ken Saro Wiwa etc were not Igboho, not roughnecks and never conducted the protests they organised and led in any "uncivilized" "illiterate" "warlords" versions.
They spoke good English, they never spoke "Yoruba Nasion" of your derision. We all know the hell they went through in the hands of tyranny, military & civilian dictatorship. Today, they are our heroes and part of our history of struggle for better and secure nation. Gani was never a secessionist but a detribalised freedom and human rights fighter, yet the tyrannical State invaded his house & office, arrested & detained him for over 30 times. Beko, a medical doctor from elite family like his blood brother, Fela, he's a dedicated human right activist only spoke for us before the State sent him to jail illegally after several detentions and physical attacks
Wetin Fela do? Fela only sang about Zombie soldiers beating civilians for streets, (which has increased now). Fela sang about corruption, commercial religionism, poverty in the midst of abundance, suffering & smiling, no much rally except analysis, interview, music & yabis, yet, Obasanjo regime burnt his house, Kalakuta Republic, killed his ideological mama, Mrs Funmilayo Kuti, raped his wives, torture Fela & his boys. Buhari regime jailed him and Babangida finished the job.
Dele Giwa was just a patriotic investigative fine journalist, he was bombed. Nigerian bourgeois state under military or civilian government is a criminal state of power bandits and hoodlums who will always resist protests, but like Reggae music, protest can't stop because it's a right to resist tyranny. So, let the "perfect activists" the "Oluaye of struggle" and all the self acclaimed custodians of organised protests without government attack, that was massive, principled & uncompromising, that the State received with red carpet applause, come out and say it. . No event, no history and no heroes and no advancement to human race. Mistakes are bound to be made, corrected and learnt from them. But we must never justify State Terrorism and Gestapo - like invasion of citizens home to steal, raid, rape and kill at night.
What gave birth to Igbohos?
Igboho is spontaneous situational leader created by the ineptitude & nepotism of Buhari regime to critically & timely address the violent Fulani herdsmen invasion of people's land, who kill, maim and do all that with impunity with Miyetti Allah openly claiming responsibilities & threatening to do more. What did government do? No Miyetti Allah leader who openly claimed responsibility for invasion of farmland and killings was ever invited by DSS or police for questioning. So, what message is government passing to the citizens and the victims? Fulani race superiority over others and all lands are grazing land with no ownership right?
When 78 citizens were slaughtered in Benue state by herdsmen and less than 24 hours Miyetti Allah Kanti claimed responsibility, what did Buhari do and say when the bereaved visited him? His response was that "the Benue people should go and learn how to live peacefully with their neighbors".
Over 20 villages were sacked in Yewa by some violent Fulani herdsmen including the foreign Fulanis and the Oba of Isanlu and other kings cried out that soldiers also assisted some Fulani herdsmen to graze on their lands by force, what did Buhari and Gov. Abiodun do? Many villagers fled to neighboring Benin Republic as refugees. Buhari himself had declared that many of these herdsmen bandits are foreigners, what did his government do to save the natives and stop the foreign invaders? How many of these foreigners were arrested & jailed in their operation "Graze, Kill & Go"?
Government's response has been more provocative & supportive of the criminal invasion. "Your ancestral land for Grazing or your life" - Femi Adesina (the presidency)
"What do you want them to do when their grazing routes have been occupied due to developments" - NSA. Grazing routes in 2021? Is that not craziness?
Hundreds including infants are hacked to death regularly by hetdsmen. What's the response of many of us who can do "perfect struggle" to the daily human carnage happening in our rural areas which is daily & widely reported by the media? Golden silence because we are not affected in our comfort zone or we just watch the horror and pass mild comnent over bottles of wine.
Where's our humanity, have we been so callous and made bestial by our political partisanship, money, money, money, despite our kukukere kurukere to Mecca and Jerusalem to profess the faiths we do not truly believe in their teachings beyond false facade of abstract religionism? Have we lost all our conscience to filty lucre, cheap money & contract from government and godfathers that we are now blind to social justice and talk truth to power as some of us used to do. Or we are just tired and overwhelmed by this regime of a crude, old stone age tyrant looking for grazing routes for his native herdsmen at all cost in the 21st century? Can we reamind Buhari and his grazing route co-searchers that cow businsees like poultry or piggery is a private business of individuals. Nigeria has not adopted cow rearing as the official business of the State, so, why this wahala of open grazing and killings by compulsion? Hundreds of private poultry /fishery farms have relocated or closed down due to development of their initial areas of location and complaints by other residents. Meran poultry farms estate in Lagos which is now a cluster of modern houses is an example. Nobody was killed by displaced and evacuated poultry farmers. Buhari! O ma de ga o! E get as e be o.
I was in Imeko sometimes ago to consult for a London based Agric & rural empowerment foundation and the media also reported recently the human tragedy in that Yewa axis. It was the tale of woes even more than Okeogun farmers by poor farmers of Imeko, Egua, Isanlu and other boarder villages from the account of their suffering from violent Fulani herdsmen particularly the Foreign Fulani herdsmen who kill, rape & take over their land with no one including government to help them. Their kings are made powerless to act by state apparatus . What do you want these people to do? I have produced farmers radio and other Agric related programmes, documentary, research work for agencies and at a time we were organizing Farmers - Media Forum to help out on this invasion of farms by herdsmen and other issues. This crisis had been an agelong one but Buhari who has a ranch as a good role model that these rich cow owners should emulate, decided to escalate the crisis by his incurable provincialism. Why did Buhari want to lead Nigeria into another Civil War because of ordinary cow? This not leadership but gangsterism and land grabbing.
Recently, a well educated hardworking lady who has over 500 acres farmland in Lanlate had her fiance shot dead while they were on their way to Ibadan after the day's work.. She invited her fiance from Lagos to join her and operate a processing farm. Their wedding scheduled for December last year became a nightmare. She was kidnapped for days until the family paid huge sum running into millions of Naira to these rural bandits. I called Edmund Obilo, the radio man, to commend him for professionally reporting the plight of the rural dwellers in Okeogun which has been on for decades but escalated during Buhari regime because of the regime's utterances and body language.
The lady identified them as the familiar bororo herdsmen in Lanlate (Edmund Obilo did a video documentary on it, you can watch) , A successful life is wrecked for ever. What did Seyi or Buhari do for this family and many more like that?
My wife & daughter, Empress, wept that evening we watched the documentary of the lady's agony together. It was a very sad moment that evening that I thought perhaps I should have watched it alone because Empress was asking brilliant but difficult questions for me to explain clearly.
Insecurity is a whirlwind, anywhere we are, we will get our own portion one day if it continues unabated. The lady went back after the period of mourning, all her farm hands had disappeared, by now, the farm would have closed down. Many more like that, losing their farms after collecting huge loans. The Defenders of tyranny don't address their minds to this type of regular tragedies in rural areas than to defend and lie to change the narratives and give excuses that they also condemned in the past failed regimes. Truly, "Ise Aje Le"
Just consider the lady or her dead fiance is /was your close relative, will you say No to Igboho:s little solidarity / confidence building to your village despite reservation for his methodology since government has abandoned you to your fate for many years?
When government fails and the perfect activists" or emergency nationalists stand akimbo and only enjoy the video of human killings on social media to pass comments or write romantic "protest letter" to condemn it , the raw, rough, illiterate but courageous Igbohos will be the situational leaders because nature abhors a vacumm.
Who knew Igboho 2 yrs ago as a Yoruba activist or ethnic agitator beyond his publicized commercial political thuggery lordship?
I met Igboho once at a birthday party in Germany, he was so colorless, so simple & highly respectful bowing for everyone on sight. . I didn't know him until my friends told me about him and his war expedition during Modakeke - Ife war, his acclaimed juju prowess and polical thuggery exploit (now politicians who patronize them call them "political enforcers"). I just ignored the "citation" and continued catching my fun that cold night as Igboho became the cynosure of all eyes including the DJ who was praising his name everytime.
Now years after, I have to start writing about Igboho, not the one introduced to me in Germany as a life loving, juju empowered "political enforcer", but now a raw, courageous, "illiterate" freedom fighter for Yoruba farmers and natives whose farmlands and villages are regularly sacked by some violent local and foreign Fulani herdsmen who take their land forcefully for open grazing of cows and their lives when resisted in the presence of a regime they voted to power.
Igboho suddenly became a Yoruba nation agitator with all his crude & civilised methods and according to his and his mass followers" understanding of the situation, when those educated "decent" political elites who campaigned on restructuring, power devolution, true federalism and revenue redistribution which could have addressed some of these issues that manufactured the Igbohos have abandoned their promises and have been captured by their dubious silence.
I never imagined for once that an Igboho would be at the barricade, on the streets, not to rig & kill for "do or die" corrupt politicians, his genesis, but to take a raw courage to defend his Oke Ogun people and his Yoruba nation, against some violent Fulani land grabbers prodded by the State apparatus. I had never thought that a rich political roughneck would command such a huge followeship of helpless, angry, battered, poor, rich, anxious farmers and hungry citizens of Yoruba extractions looking forward to him, rightly or wrongly, to save them from forest bandits and from a failed government that told perplexed citizens to defend themselves from Ak47 armed Fulani herdsmen and bandits of varied ethnic stock. Such a huge crowd would have taken politicians millions of Naira with total mobilisation by inducement to organise.
For me, such a movement can't be ignored with a wave of the hand as a socialist and experienced protester. Such a movement must be situated, critique and draw useful lessons for perspective development on multidimensional approaches the Nigeria struggle may break with or without our planning or intervention.
I am not a rhapsodic arrogant elite, I am of the street, I learn from the low and the high, I live with the masses, mix, chat and learn from them as they also gain from me. We can't afford to fold our arms when tyranny and bad governance propels rural banditry against the poor farmers locally and nationally, we must speak up against land grabbing, your life or your land grazing body language of this regime. Ask them, after the months of RUGA noise, how many states in the north that have shown their reception to RUGA and ranching have commenced operation? Baba Agba is really notl interested, he has shown his interest is open grazing, he's now looking for 1963 cattle route gazette in 2021. Laughable!
Why would the Igbohos not seize the initiative when many ex-this, ex-that have become Abobakus defending all tyrannical actions of government, or we are battle weary, or now too rich & too decent to protest, arrogant as custodians of struggle, or old, weak, organizationally confused or just having a false sense of safety and security in our comfort zones, or gladly have "retired" after a long period of remarkable commendable leadership of struggle.
How long Igboho's movement lasts like many struggles before it will not be determined by bloody tyranny but by the resolution of those issues that makes Igboho relevant to many people and the consciousness they put into it.
Igboho is an effect of a cause. So, when we deal, critique & condemn the effects, let's address the cause first, that's the way to go. Blame the nonchalant government that failed to secure its citizens first before blaming the effects.
If Igboho is killed today, as some voluntary idiots may wish, he has etched his name in our memory, not as a rich political thug of his genesis anymore, but as a controversial, hated and loved, popular, raw courageous, juju embellished freedom fighter for his Oke Ogun - Ibarapa and Yoruba poor farmers and the people feeling disenchanted by their state of helplessness in the face of terror and land grabbing by fully armed accredited and non-accredited bandits while government always tells the citizens to defend themselves. But, with what? Cow stick, brooms, catapult or Juju Igboho?
This is the new Revelation of Igboho synthesis from Genesis as political thugs to some of your political godfathers. Many of those who hate Igboho for fighting for poor Igangan farmers would have loved him if he had continued to play the political enforcer role with other rich thugs for their power desperate leaders.
We should condemn the midnight gestapo- like attack on his "juju" embellished mansion, we should condemn the extra- judicial killing without trial of citizens captured in his house and demand for the immediate release, or speedy trial of the arrested if found culpable.
We are human beings not animals in the jungle. Government cannot be crazy and be blood thirsty always.
Adeola Soetan
08037207856
#RevolutionNow: We demand Ondo state Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to immediately release these 4 innocent Nigerians
#RevolutionNow: We demand Ondo state Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to immediately release these 4 innocent Nigerians
We demand the immediate release of these 4 innocent Nigerians that were illegally arrested and locked up in Surulere Prison, Ondo Town by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu since October 2020 .
Akeredolu accused them of setting an APC office ablaze during the EndSARS Protest. We found the allegations to be untrue because these young Nigerians were picked up at other locations and they were not even protesting.
Rotimi Akeredolu is a governor in a democratic setting and not a king. He can't just lock people up because he feels like.
#FreeOndo4 now
https://twitter.com/AyRevolutionary/status/1406503780439498756?s=09
@rotimiaketi #FreeOndo4 #FreeKemisola NOW!
#June12Protest #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow
We demand the immediate release of these 4 innocent Nigerians that were illegally arrested and locked up in Surulere Prison, Ondo Town by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu since October 2020 .
Akeredolu accused them of setting an APC office ablaze during the EndSARS Protest. We found the allegations to be untrue because these young Nigerians were picked up at other locations and they were not even protesting.
Rotimi Akeredolu is a governor in a democratic setting and not a king. He can't just lock people up because he feels like.
#FreeOndo4 now
https://twitter.com/AyRevolutionary/status/1406503780439498756?s=09
@rotimiaketi #FreeOndo4 #FreeKemisola NOW!
#June12Protest #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow
#June12Protest: A Defining Moment – Take the Struggle Forward!
PRESS STATEMENT – 14th June 2021
________________________________________
The massive nationwide and global turnout for the #June12Protest marks a milestone in the struggle against the regime’s tyranny and its utter inability to ensure a better life for the working people and youth. It is a demonstrated step forward, towards the revolutionary transformation of Nigeria.
This hugely successful wave of demonstrations came up on the heels of the government’s ban of Twitter and threats which were backed up on the streets with security forces armed to the teeth, with the aim of stopping the mass movement. It thus sends home a clear message that we will not be repressed, we will make our voices heard and we will fight for our total liberation, until victory is won.
Coalition for Revolution (CORE) seizes this opportunity to salute all members of its affiliates who made this historic moment happen. We equally commend the great Nigerian students who, in several states, defied the treacherous order of the pro-government secretariat of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to students’ unions to desist from joining our ranks on the streets.
The #June12Protest is not a passing moment, it is part of movement-building efforts of the Revolution Now campaign. We will take this struggle forward. Preparations to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the launch of the Revolution Now campaign on 5th August will immediately commence in earnest.
We take note of the concurrent demonstrations of separatist groups in countries such as Britain and the United States, calling for Oduduwa and Biafra republics. CORE makes bold to say we support the right of _oppressed_ nationalities to self-determination. But we hasten to stress that the primary challenges which confront working-class people and youths of all ethnicities and across all regions in the country are social questions: exploitation; economic and physical insecurity including hunger, joblessness, kidnappings, senseless killings; and political repression by a rabid government.
To borrow from the memorable words of the immortal fighter, Chima Ubani *“regime change is our stand, mass resistance is our vehicle, system change is our goal”.* Our aim is not merely to kick out the Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd)-led regime which has brought nothing but sorrow, tears, and blood to the poor masses. We fight - alongside workers, farmers, artisans, marginalised women, and youth - to implement the CORE Charter for Total Liberation. And we will not stop until we win our self-emancipation and build a better society for all.
*Baba Aye*
_Co-convener_
*Gbenga Komolafe*
_Co-convener_
PRESS STATEMENT – 14th June 2021
________________________________________
The massive nationwide and global turnout for the #June12Protest marks a milestone in the struggle against the regime’s tyranny and its utter inability to ensure a better life for the working people and youth. It is a demonstrated step forward, towards the revolutionary transformation of Nigeria.
This hugely successful wave of demonstrations came up on the heels of the government’s ban of Twitter and threats which were backed up on the streets with security forces armed to the teeth, with the aim of stopping the mass movement. It thus sends home a clear message that we will not be repressed, we will make our voices heard and we will fight for our total liberation, until victory is won.
Coalition for Revolution (CORE) seizes this opportunity to salute all members of its affiliates who made this historic moment happen. We equally commend the great Nigerian students who, in several states, defied the treacherous order of the pro-government secretariat of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to students’ unions to desist from joining our ranks on the streets.
The #June12Protest is not a passing moment, it is part of movement-building efforts of the Revolution Now campaign. We will take this struggle forward. Preparations to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the launch of the Revolution Now campaign on 5th August will immediately commence in earnest.
We take note of the concurrent demonstrations of separatist groups in countries such as Britain and the United States, calling for Oduduwa and Biafra republics. CORE makes bold to say we support the right of _oppressed_ nationalities to self-determination. But we hasten to stress that the primary challenges which confront working-class people and youths of all ethnicities and across all regions in the country are social questions: exploitation; economic and physical insecurity including hunger, joblessness, kidnappings, senseless killings; and political repression by a rabid government.
To borrow from the memorable words of the immortal fighter, Chima Ubani *“regime change is our stand, mass resistance is our vehicle, system change is our goal”.* Our aim is not merely to kick out the Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd)-led regime which has brought nothing but sorrow, tears, and blood to the poor masses. We fight - alongside workers, farmers, artisans, marginalised women, and youth - to implement the CORE Charter for Total Liberation. And we will not stop until we win our self-emancipation and build a better society for all.
*Baba Aye*
_Co-convener_
*Gbenga Komolafe*
_Co-convener_
NIGERIA: Clampdown on protests negates democracy
Punch Editorial Board
15 June 2021
FOR the umpteenth time, the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has demonstrated its characteristically strong but disturbing disdain for the democratic rights of Nigerian citizens to peaceful protest. This is as heavy police deployments disrupted the June 12 protests at different venues across the country as Nigeria marked Democracy Day 2021. The irony is unmistakable. On a day chosen to mark democracy in the country, the Buhari regime came out charging at the citizens expressing their inalienable right, deploying heavily armed police personnel and armoured personnel carriers to intimidate the protesters, condoning off protest venues, hounding and beating up protesters in the process.
This is unconstitutional, authoritarian and utterly unacceptable. It grossly negates the core democratic tenets of freedom of assembly, association, and expression. As the Open Society Justice Initiative rightly declares, “protests are a catalyst for social change and are essential for citizen participation in a pluralistic democracy. They enable individuals and groups to share their views and interests, express dissent, and make demands of the government or other institutions.” Sadly, despite its importance to democratic sustainability, in both advanced and emerging democracies, “some police and government officials treat protests as an inconvenience, a disruption to be controlled, or a threat to be extinguished,” the group laments.
The police clampdown on the peaceful June 12 protesters demonstrates an aversion to democracy by the Buhari regime. Indeed, it is a detestable act of desperation by a regime that has failed to live up to the expectations of the citizens and lacks faith in a process that birthed it. The action has further depleted Buhari’s low legitimacy account balance.
Democracy does not begin and end in conducting periodic elections. Protests are also an essential element of democracy and provide a veritable outlet for the citizens to interact with the government in a different dimension. Unfortunately, the regime does not see it that way, hence the resort to its criminalisation.
In Lagos, media reports stated that police officers fired tear gas at the crowd gathered at the Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota, Lagos. In the Gudu area of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, police similarly tear-gassed and chased away the protesters. Earlier on May 31, an online publisher, Omoyele Sowore, was injured by a tear gas canister fired by a female police officer while he and others under the aegis of the CSO, Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond, demonstrated in Abuja. The group was protesting widespread insecurity in the country. Media reports said Sowore, and other protesters were approaching the protest venue when armed police shut down the place. Unfortunately, the police do not display such sternness and ruthlessness towards the rampaging bandits, kidnappers and outlaws currently holding the entire country to ransom. Ironically, police provided cover for demonstrators who gathered in Abuja in support of the regime, according to reports.
The Cross River State Police Command had earlier threatened intending protesters, promising to deal ruthlessly with anyone who dared it. The command warned, “Everybody should be sober and, in their houses given the experience people had particularly during #EndSARS protests, we will not allow such an incident to repeat itself. We have got intelligence reports on how people are planning to disrupt the peace of the state in the form of a protest and unlawful gathering, as well as to embark on the violent destruction of property; we will not allow that.” This is unacceptable. The duty of the law enforcement agencies in a democracy is not to force protesting citizens off the streets but to ensure such a democratic exercise is not hijacked by unscrupulous elements. That is a breach of their right to freedom of movement and assembly. The failure of the security agencies to do this led to the fatal hijacking of the #EndSARS protests against police brutality across the country in October 2020.
It is commendable, however, that Nigerians in many parts of the world like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada joined their courageous counterparts at home who braved official harassment to protest against bad governance and insecurity in the country. Citizens should not succumb to police intimidation to shun peaceful protest. It is a democratic right that cannot be circumscribed by any government agency. Protests, experts say, encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. Nigeria is a signatory to several constitutional and legal frameworks that support protest as a democratic right. Article 21 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for instance, provides: “The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognised. No restrictions may be placed on this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law, and which are necessary for a democratic society…”
Also, Article 11 of the 1981 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights states, “Every individual shall have the right to assemble freely with others.” Similarly, sections 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution guarantee the citizens the right to freedom of assembly and expression. And under Section 45, there must be a state of emergency properly declared before these rights can be violated. The onus is on the government to always protect these constitutional rights and not constitute itself into a stumbling block to their attainment. Violently stopping free protests in a fragile democracy like ours, as has been regularly done under Buhari, tends to radicalise the protesters with dire consequences for the entire country.
The right to assemble freely cannot be abridged without violating the fundamental right to peaceful assembly and association. As a civil rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), argued, the violation can only be done by the procedure permitted by law, under Section 45 of the constitution, in which case there must be a state of emergency properly declared. The criminal law is there to be applied if protesters resort to violence during a demonstration, but once the rights are exercised peacefully, they cannot be taken away.
Ensuring that government works for the public good requires informed, organised, active and peaceful citizen participation. Nigerian citizens should tenaciously hold on to this.
Punch Editorial Board
15 June 2021
FOR the umpteenth time, the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has demonstrated its characteristically strong but disturbing disdain for the democratic rights of Nigerian citizens to peaceful protest. This is as heavy police deployments disrupted the June 12 protests at different venues across the country as Nigeria marked Democracy Day 2021. The irony is unmistakable. On a day chosen to mark democracy in the country, the Buhari regime came out charging at the citizens expressing their inalienable right, deploying heavily armed police personnel and armoured personnel carriers to intimidate the protesters, condoning off protest venues, hounding and beating up protesters in the process.
This is unconstitutional, authoritarian and utterly unacceptable. It grossly negates the core democratic tenets of freedom of assembly, association, and expression. As the Open Society Justice Initiative rightly declares, “protests are a catalyst for social change and are essential for citizen participation in a pluralistic democracy. They enable individuals and groups to share their views and interests, express dissent, and make demands of the government or other institutions.” Sadly, despite its importance to democratic sustainability, in both advanced and emerging democracies, “some police and government officials treat protests as an inconvenience, a disruption to be controlled, or a threat to be extinguished,” the group laments.
The police clampdown on the peaceful June 12 protesters demonstrates an aversion to democracy by the Buhari regime. Indeed, it is a detestable act of desperation by a regime that has failed to live up to the expectations of the citizens and lacks faith in a process that birthed it. The action has further depleted Buhari’s low legitimacy account balance.
Democracy does not begin and end in conducting periodic elections. Protests are also an essential element of democracy and provide a veritable outlet for the citizens to interact with the government in a different dimension. Unfortunately, the regime does not see it that way, hence the resort to its criminalisation.
In Lagos, media reports stated that police officers fired tear gas at the crowd gathered at the Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota, Lagos. In the Gudu area of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, police similarly tear-gassed and chased away the protesters. Earlier on May 31, an online publisher, Omoyele Sowore, was injured by a tear gas canister fired by a female police officer while he and others under the aegis of the CSO, Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond, demonstrated in Abuja. The group was protesting widespread insecurity in the country. Media reports said Sowore, and other protesters were approaching the protest venue when armed police shut down the place. Unfortunately, the police do not display such sternness and ruthlessness towards the rampaging bandits, kidnappers and outlaws currently holding the entire country to ransom. Ironically, police provided cover for demonstrators who gathered in Abuja in support of the regime, according to reports.
The Cross River State Police Command had earlier threatened intending protesters, promising to deal ruthlessly with anyone who dared it. The command warned, “Everybody should be sober and, in their houses given the experience people had particularly during #EndSARS protests, we will not allow such an incident to repeat itself. We have got intelligence reports on how people are planning to disrupt the peace of the state in the form of a protest and unlawful gathering, as well as to embark on the violent destruction of property; we will not allow that.” This is unacceptable. The duty of the law enforcement agencies in a democracy is not to force protesting citizens off the streets but to ensure such a democratic exercise is not hijacked by unscrupulous elements. That is a breach of their right to freedom of movement and assembly. The failure of the security agencies to do this led to the fatal hijacking of the #EndSARS protests against police brutality across the country in October 2020.
It is commendable, however, that Nigerians in many parts of the world like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada joined their courageous counterparts at home who braved official harassment to protest against bad governance and insecurity in the country. Citizens should not succumb to police intimidation to shun peaceful protest. It is a democratic right that cannot be circumscribed by any government agency. Protests, experts say, encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. Nigeria is a signatory to several constitutional and legal frameworks that support protest as a democratic right. Article 21 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for instance, provides: “The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognised. No restrictions may be placed on this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law, and which are necessary for a democratic society…”
Also, Article 11 of the 1981 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights states, “Every individual shall have the right to assemble freely with others.” Similarly, sections 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution guarantee the citizens the right to freedom of assembly and expression. And under Section 45, there must be a state of emergency properly declared before these rights can be violated. The onus is on the government to always protect these constitutional rights and not constitute itself into a stumbling block to their attainment. Violently stopping free protests in a fragile democracy like ours, as has been regularly done under Buhari, tends to radicalise the protesters with dire consequences for the entire country.
The right to assemble freely cannot be abridged without violating the fundamental right to peaceful assembly and association. As a civil rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), argued, the violation can only be done by the procedure permitted by law, under Section 45 of the constitution, in which case there must be a state of emergency properly declared. The criminal law is there to be applied if protesters resort to violence during a demonstration, but once the rights are exercised peacefully, they cannot be taken away.
Ensuring that government works for the public good requires informed, organised, active and peaceful citizen participation. Nigerian citizens should tenaciously hold on to this.
ARISE TV INTERVIEW: Buhari’s Dot-In-A-Circle and Makinde’s AK-47
The Buharideens won't read this but l am pegging it here for history...
By Festus Adedayo
(Published by The Cable, June 13, 2021)
Was it better that President Muhammadu Buhari remained unapologetically deaf to all entreaties to address Nigerians or open a window into his mind and reveal a cesspit of foul-smelling hate? Peradventure there were still nationalistic remnants among his coterie of admirers, after last Thursday’s interview the president granted Arise TV, they would be at the crossroads. Their dilemma may jolly well be addressed by a famous Maurice Switzer quote whose authorship had before now been a subject of controversies. Was it authored by Abraham Lincoln or celebrated humourist, Mark Twain? Anyway, Switzer, in a book written in 1907, had said, which I tinker with for the purpose of this discussion, that, “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought an ethnic bigot (inflection mine) than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
If anyone was undecided whether Buhari was at the roots of Nigeria’s worsening ethnic crises in the last six years or so, that Arise TV interview removed all doubts. It revealed a president whose mind is a fertile breeding ground for viral ethnic divisiveness, an infection that is without any possible hope of redemption.
The interview brings an urgent need to conduct a psychoanalysis on the man at the Villa. I did and the result was prim, grim, and unsavoury. That perhaps was one good the Arise TV interview did for Nigerians. It ventilated the innermost recess of the mind of one of the most reticent closet presidents in Nigerian history.
With the interview, we were obliged the opportunity to scrutinize the hidden crevices of President Buhari’s mind. The white apparel he wore was apparently a deliberate ploy to associate purity of mind to him. It attempted to hide the disgusting sewers his inner being harbours. Presently, the maggots began to wriggle out, in the form of huge bile and rank hatred for the Igbo ethnic stock and crass disregard for the myriad other nationalities that make up the geographical expression called Nigeria. The disgust sipped out of every pore on his gangly frame.
While the world, in that interview, saw a feeble Muhammadu Buhari, what a deeper scrutiny would reveal is a re-sprouting Milton Obote, a notorious Ugandan despot and a Buhari who sees anyone but Fulani as the British saw Mau Mau fighters in colonial Kenya. Obote was a two-time Ugandan leader who led his country to independence from the British in 1962 and served, first as Prime Minister from 1962 to 1966, President, 1966 to 1971, and after his Idi Amin ouster in 1979, Obote ruled Uganda again from 1980 to 1985. In 1983, Obote of the Oyima clan of the Northern Ugandan Lango ethnic group exacerbated ethnic tensions in Uganda and launched a bloodcurdling military expedition called Operation Bonanza which resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 to 500,000 Ugandans.
Asked about separationist agitations in Nigeria’s Southeast, Buhari beamed that cynical smile of his, laced with a hidden serpentine venom, and said arrogantly, “That IPOB is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they’ll have no access to anywhere. And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties. I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about. In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organize the police and the military to pursue them.”
In the president’s manifestly narrow reading of the Southeast geopolitical zone, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) approximates the Igbo nation that owns assets all over Nigeria. This reminds me of the gory narrative of the Kenyan Mau Mau war. The rebellion of Mau Mau Uprising raged from 1952 to 1960. It was waged in the British Kenya colony between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) populated by Kikuyu, Meru and Empu people of Kenya, against the white European settler overlords.
Just like Buhari, to the British, every Kenyan was a Mau Mau who merited being mowed down mercilessly. Headed by a guerilla fighter called Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, the moment Kimathi was captured on October 21, 1956, it was obvious Britain had extinguished the Mau Mau uprising. In that spiteful summation of the Igbo uprising, Buhari was further alienating a people who only needed a sense of belonging and equity in Nigeria.
How else can a president, whose mind is this poisoned with venomous hatred, be told that just as there are criminals among his Fulani stock, so also are there outlaws in Igbo land who believe that violence opens the trough of peace? The sad thing is that, as Buhari exhibits this crude hatred for Daniel Kanu and his Igbo people, his baseless venom grooms a generation of dangerous sympathizers to the IPOB cause, just like the killing of Mohammed Yusuff is the precursor of the subsisting Boko Haram insurgency.
In Buhari’s unguarded ire, the Igbo have come to see his selective criminalization of the Southeast as a manifestation and continuation of the First Republic Hausa-Fulani hate and pogrom against their people. Buhari is, through this hatred, promoting Kanu beyond his relevance.
With the benefit of hindsight, President Buhari’s dot-in-a-circle theory is a product of a lazy mind and a narrow reading of the historical trajectory of secessionism in Nigeria. First, he forgot that a sentence, like a whole, is not complete without a full stop, which is a dot. By that very fact, Nigeria needs his so-called dot-in-a-circle to turn full circle.
Again, what he and his commissars hounding the Igbo out of Nigeria should know is that the separatist agenda is lawful and not criminal. Indeed, the United Nations recognizes it as a fundamental human right. Over time, that mantra of Nigeria’s unity being non-negotiable has been dissected to be void and a refrain only on the lips of suppressors of people’s rights.
Northern Nigeria is historically known to be the region that first threatened to secede from Nigeria when the Northern delegation to the 1950 Ibadan Constitutional Conference warned that “unless the Northern region is allotted 50 per cent of the seats in the Central Legislature” it would ask for separation from the rest of Nigeria on the arrangements existing before 1914. Again in 1966, it attempted to secede from Nigeria through its Operation Araba. It is obvious that, due to the manifold injustice, inequity, and oppression of the Buhari government in the last six years, separatist calls have risen to a proportion that is unprecedented in history.
At the core of those calls is this administration’s equivocation of seeking peace when it dishes a broth of injustice to the other partners in the Nigerian federation. In the Southwest today, separatism is gaining traction. If Buhari hounds that dot-in-a-circle Southeast out of Nigeria, he will do well to know that this petulance will open similar doors of secession to other ethnic groups that have been reduced to slaving partners in Nigeria’s pseudo-federalism. This was perhaps the sense in that statement attributed to Immortal Obafemi Awolowo when he allegedly said that if Odumegwu Ojukwu’s Biafra was allowed to secede, the Yoruba would have no other option than to follow suit.
One other slant of Buhari’s Arise TV interview which revealed the nocturne enveloping his mind is his obsession with the Niger Republic, Fulani herders’ grazing route, and his narrow reading of the serious security concern in the land. These three issues are a continuation of his dogged and relentless defence of his Fulani kin. His simplistic explanation of incineration of billions of Nigeria’s patrimony into the construction of a rail line from Lagos to the Niger Republic is a sickening logic that bears every imprimatur of his Fulani ethnic group’s notorious disrespect for international boundaries. How vast can Niger Republic’s crude oil find be to constitute such a humongous threat to Nigeria’s economy, such that Nigeria had to now scamper to please this imaginary oil god with such monumental infrastructural project?
A la the President, because his Fulani, Kanuri and Hausa cousins reside in Niger, Nigeria must abandon its suffering people to please Niger? If this reasoning is not otiose, I wonder what else is.
In the interview, Buhari merely regurgitated Abubakar Malami’s lazy thesis of constitutional human rights for cattle. He confirmed that he ordered the AGF to exhume the grazing routes gazette of the 1960s, just to find a legal justification for the rapacious quest of his Fulani kin to turn the whole of Nigeria into their cattle ranch. “What I did was ask him to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws. There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) are moving up country, north to south or east to west, they had to go through there,” he said. Then, he lapsed into the solipsism of a 20th century animal husbandry where straying cattle’s herders were arrested and ordered to pay fine by the Khadi (judge). With that kind of reasoning, one shudders to discover that a human being could indeed live in the 21st century and remain anachronistic like a Stone Age provincial overlord!
To confirm that the president’s thinking is actually frozen in the Antarctic glazier, as against the norm in a supersonic 21st century, Buhari is still fascinated with that antiquated cattle rearing model he was born into. He does not give a hoot if the whole country is propitiated to the god of rampaging Fulani herdsmen. He romanticized his cattle-rearing model thus: “People were behaving themselves and in the grazing areas, they built dams, put windmills, in some places, there were even veterinary departments so that the herders are limited. Their route is known, their grazing area is known.”
Unapologetically, like a conquistador bent on acquiring territories and demanding vassals, Buhari magisterially proclaimed that “those who encroached on these cattle routes and grazing areas will be dispossessed in law and try to bring some order back into the cattle grazing.” The fact that countries like Brazil and Argentina which have larger herds of cattle practice a modern ranching system which gives them humongous economic and environmental benefits matter little to our President who proudly declares himself a herdsman in the ilk of his marauding brothers!
The pertinent question to ask is, what part of the world still retains a leader like Nigeria’s whose mind reeks this disgustingly of ethnic impurities? Why is Buhari this stubbornly and illogically obsessed with this antiquated grazing model, in a world that has since left this Acheulian culture mindset? If Buhari was this much in love with the exhumation of the past, how come he didn’t ask that the 1963 constitution be exhumed?
The other leg of Buhari’s tripodal assault on logic in that Arise TV interview was how he simplistically dismissed the raging Fulani herders’ killings that rocks Nigeria. To Governor Samuel Ortom, whose state Fulani herdsmen have turned into a mobile mortuary, he had this doggerel: “The governor of Benue said I cannot discipline the cattle rearers because I am one of them. I cannot deny that I am one of them.” No solution, no apologies. He then went further to tell the story of how two governors of the Southwest visited him. “Two governors from the South-west came to tell me that the cattle rearers in some of the forests are killing farmers while their cattle are eating their crops. I told them you campaigned to be elected and you are elected. I told them (to) go back and sort out themselves,” he announced, pretending to forget that in the kind of obtuse federalism we practice in Nigeria, governors neither control the Police nor the Army! There were insinuations that he was referring to Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo States.
Last week, Oyo State literally went up in flames, drenched in tears. Igangan, a town in the Ibarapa area of the state, was visited by one of the most visceral carnages ever by Fulani herders who had apparently come for reprisal against their eviction from the land. Properties, including the palace of the town’s monarch, were set ablaze by these sons of perdition. When the quake settled, about 15 people lay dead. Governor Makinde, amid weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of the natives, visited and soberly accepted responsibility for the killings. “We failed you,” he said, his voice soaked in melancholy. Though the counterfeit federalism practiced by Nigeria has castrated state governors security-wise, reducing them to window-dressing sissies, Makinde’s acceptance of responsibility was seen as a mark of leadership.
In the true sense of it, that apology should have come from Buhari as the man who failed woefully to protect the people. Not only didn’t he show any remorse, but no word of apology also came from him to Igangan. It was as if in Buhari’s mean veins, no blood but cow milk flows. That is why his attempt to shift responsibility above is sadistically lame and laughable. Igangan people and all victims of herdsmen are no less man than Buhari’s Fulani killers. They are only hamstrung by legally blocked access to AK-47 which the killers wield. That AK-47 request made by Makinde is a direct test of statesmanship for Buhari who holds the knife and the yam on the control of violence. If he is not for the aggressor in the fight against terror, he should grant the request of the Oyo State governor then watch if Igangan will ever happen again.
Those who accuse the governors of failing to provide security for their people, a tame and puerile route which Buhari also trod by that his hypocritical comment, is not being fair to them. If Makinde, Akeredolu, or Ortom, for instance, acceded to the request of arming their people with AK-47, this Fulani presidency will give them the Zamani Lekwot treatment. Do you remember how that General was almost executed for allegedly arming his people in the Zangon Kataf war?
Thank God, elders of the land like Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdusalami Abubakar and others are said to be meeting and will visit Buhari presently. Buhari has morphed dangerously and can use his obsessive hate for others and malicious Fulani clannishness to set Nigeria on fire. Yoruba always ask that elders should wade in, at a critical moment like this, lest a loony make barbecue of the remains of his deceased mother. The Buhari government is in the autumn of its relevance. The symbolism of the end is all we see – leaves are falling and it is haunted by literal death. As same Yoruba will say, the Buhari market is at the edge of its tethers, winding up and leaving only remnants of those who display their wares – oja ti tu, o ku pa’te pa’te.
The Buharideens won't read this but l am pegging it here for history...
By Festus Adedayo
(Published by The Cable, June 13, 2021)
Was it better that President Muhammadu Buhari remained unapologetically deaf to all entreaties to address Nigerians or open a window into his mind and reveal a cesspit of foul-smelling hate? Peradventure there were still nationalistic remnants among his coterie of admirers, after last Thursday’s interview the president granted Arise TV, they would be at the crossroads. Their dilemma may jolly well be addressed by a famous Maurice Switzer quote whose authorship had before now been a subject of controversies. Was it authored by Abraham Lincoln or celebrated humourist, Mark Twain? Anyway, Switzer, in a book written in 1907, had said, which I tinker with for the purpose of this discussion, that, “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought an ethnic bigot (inflection mine) than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
If anyone was undecided whether Buhari was at the roots of Nigeria’s worsening ethnic crises in the last six years or so, that Arise TV interview removed all doubts. It revealed a president whose mind is a fertile breeding ground for viral ethnic divisiveness, an infection that is without any possible hope of redemption.
The interview brings an urgent need to conduct a psychoanalysis on the man at the Villa. I did and the result was prim, grim, and unsavoury. That perhaps was one good the Arise TV interview did for Nigerians. It ventilated the innermost recess of the mind of one of the most reticent closet presidents in Nigerian history.
With the interview, we were obliged the opportunity to scrutinize the hidden crevices of President Buhari’s mind. The white apparel he wore was apparently a deliberate ploy to associate purity of mind to him. It attempted to hide the disgusting sewers his inner being harbours. Presently, the maggots began to wriggle out, in the form of huge bile and rank hatred for the Igbo ethnic stock and crass disregard for the myriad other nationalities that make up the geographical expression called Nigeria. The disgust sipped out of every pore on his gangly frame.
While the world, in that interview, saw a feeble Muhammadu Buhari, what a deeper scrutiny would reveal is a re-sprouting Milton Obote, a notorious Ugandan despot and a Buhari who sees anyone but Fulani as the British saw Mau Mau fighters in colonial Kenya. Obote was a two-time Ugandan leader who led his country to independence from the British in 1962 and served, first as Prime Minister from 1962 to 1966, President, 1966 to 1971, and after his Idi Amin ouster in 1979, Obote ruled Uganda again from 1980 to 1985. In 1983, Obote of the Oyima clan of the Northern Ugandan Lango ethnic group exacerbated ethnic tensions in Uganda and launched a bloodcurdling military expedition called Operation Bonanza which resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 to 500,000 Ugandans.
Asked about separationist agitations in Nigeria’s Southeast, Buhari beamed that cynical smile of his, laced with a hidden serpentine venom, and said arrogantly, “That IPOB is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they’ll have no access to anywhere. And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties. I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about. In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organize the police and the military to pursue them.”
In the president’s manifestly narrow reading of the Southeast geopolitical zone, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) approximates the Igbo nation that owns assets all over Nigeria. This reminds me of the gory narrative of the Kenyan Mau Mau war. The rebellion of Mau Mau Uprising raged from 1952 to 1960. It was waged in the British Kenya colony between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) populated by Kikuyu, Meru and Empu people of Kenya, against the white European settler overlords.
Just like Buhari, to the British, every Kenyan was a Mau Mau who merited being mowed down mercilessly. Headed by a guerilla fighter called Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, the moment Kimathi was captured on October 21, 1956, it was obvious Britain had extinguished the Mau Mau uprising. In that spiteful summation of the Igbo uprising, Buhari was further alienating a people who only needed a sense of belonging and equity in Nigeria.
How else can a president, whose mind is this poisoned with venomous hatred, be told that just as there are criminals among his Fulani stock, so also are there outlaws in Igbo land who believe that violence opens the trough of peace? The sad thing is that, as Buhari exhibits this crude hatred for Daniel Kanu and his Igbo people, his baseless venom grooms a generation of dangerous sympathizers to the IPOB cause, just like the killing of Mohammed Yusuff is the precursor of the subsisting Boko Haram insurgency.
In Buhari’s unguarded ire, the Igbo have come to see his selective criminalization of the Southeast as a manifestation and continuation of the First Republic Hausa-Fulani hate and pogrom against their people. Buhari is, through this hatred, promoting Kanu beyond his relevance.
With the benefit of hindsight, President Buhari’s dot-in-a-circle theory is a product of a lazy mind and a narrow reading of the historical trajectory of secessionism in Nigeria. First, he forgot that a sentence, like a whole, is not complete without a full stop, which is a dot. By that very fact, Nigeria needs his so-called dot-in-a-circle to turn full circle.
Again, what he and his commissars hounding the Igbo out of Nigeria should know is that the separatist agenda is lawful and not criminal. Indeed, the United Nations recognizes it as a fundamental human right. Over time, that mantra of Nigeria’s unity being non-negotiable has been dissected to be void and a refrain only on the lips of suppressors of people’s rights.
Northern Nigeria is historically known to be the region that first threatened to secede from Nigeria when the Northern delegation to the 1950 Ibadan Constitutional Conference warned that “unless the Northern region is allotted 50 per cent of the seats in the Central Legislature” it would ask for separation from the rest of Nigeria on the arrangements existing before 1914. Again in 1966, it attempted to secede from Nigeria through its Operation Araba. It is obvious that, due to the manifold injustice, inequity, and oppression of the Buhari government in the last six years, separatist calls have risen to a proportion that is unprecedented in history.
At the core of those calls is this administration’s equivocation of seeking peace when it dishes a broth of injustice to the other partners in the Nigerian federation. In the Southwest today, separatism is gaining traction. If Buhari hounds that dot-in-a-circle Southeast out of Nigeria, he will do well to know that this petulance will open similar doors of secession to other ethnic groups that have been reduced to slaving partners in Nigeria’s pseudo-federalism. This was perhaps the sense in that statement attributed to Immortal Obafemi Awolowo when he allegedly said that if Odumegwu Ojukwu’s Biafra was allowed to secede, the Yoruba would have no other option than to follow suit.
One other slant of Buhari’s Arise TV interview which revealed the nocturne enveloping his mind is his obsession with the Niger Republic, Fulani herders’ grazing route, and his narrow reading of the serious security concern in the land. These three issues are a continuation of his dogged and relentless defence of his Fulani kin. His simplistic explanation of incineration of billions of Nigeria’s patrimony into the construction of a rail line from Lagos to the Niger Republic is a sickening logic that bears every imprimatur of his Fulani ethnic group’s notorious disrespect for international boundaries. How vast can Niger Republic’s crude oil find be to constitute such a humongous threat to Nigeria’s economy, such that Nigeria had to now scamper to please this imaginary oil god with such monumental infrastructural project?
A la the President, because his Fulani, Kanuri and Hausa cousins reside in Niger, Nigeria must abandon its suffering people to please Niger? If this reasoning is not otiose, I wonder what else is.
In the interview, Buhari merely regurgitated Abubakar Malami’s lazy thesis of constitutional human rights for cattle. He confirmed that he ordered the AGF to exhume the grazing routes gazette of the 1960s, just to find a legal justification for the rapacious quest of his Fulani kin to turn the whole of Nigeria into their cattle ranch. “What I did was ask him to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws. There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) are moving up country, north to south or east to west, they had to go through there,” he said. Then, he lapsed into the solipsism of a 20th century animal husbandry where straying cattle’s herders were arrested and ordered to pay fine by the Khadi (judge). With that kind of reasoning, one shudders to discover that a human being could indeed live in the 21st century and remain anachronistic like a Stone Age provincial overlord!
To confirm that the president’s thinking is actually frozen in the Antarctic glazier, as against the norm in a supersonic 21st century, Buhari is still fascinated with that antiquated cattle rearing model he was born into. He does not give a hoot if the whole country is propitiated to the god of rampaging Fulani herdsmen. He romanticized his cattle-rearing model thus: “People were behaving themselves and in the grazing areas, they built dams, put windmills, in some places, there were even veterinary departments so that the herders are limited. Their route is known, their grazing area is known.”
Unapologetically, like a conquistador bent on acquiring territories and demanding vassals, Buhari magisterially proclaimed that “those who encroached on these cattle routes and grazing areas will be dispossessed in law and try to bring some order back into the cattle grazing.” The fact that countries like Brazil and Argentina which have larger herds of cattle practice a modern ranching system which gives them humongous economic and environmental benefits matter little to our President who proudly declares himself a herdsman in the ilk of his marauding brothers!
The pertinent question to ask is, what part of the world still retains a leader like Nigeria’s whose mind reeks this disgustingly of ethnic impurities? Why is Buhari this stubbornly and illogically obsessed with this antiquated grazing model, in a world that has since left this Acheulian culture mindset? If Buhari was this much in love with the exhumation of the past, how come he didn’t ask that the 1963 constitution be exhumed?
The other leg of Buhari’s tripodal assault on logic in that Arise TV interview was how he simplistically dismissed the raging Fulani herders’ killings that rocks Nigeria. To Governor Samuel Ortom, whose state Fulani herdsmen have turned into a mobile mortuary, he had this doggerel: “The governor of Benue said I cannot discipline the cattle rearers because I am one of them. I cannot deny that I am one of them.” No solution, no apologies. He then went further to tell the story of how two governors of the Southwest visited him. “Two governors from the South-west came to tell me that the cattle rearers in some of the forests are killing farmers while their cattle are eating their crops. I told them you campaigned to be elected and you are elected. I told them (to) go back and sort out themselves,” he announced, pretending to forget that in the kind of obtuse federalism we practice in Nigeria, governors neither control the Police nor the Army! There were insinuations that he was referring to Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo States.
Last week, Oyo State literally went up in flames, drenched in tears. Igangan, a town in the Ibarapa area of the state, was visited by one of the most visceral carnages ever by Fulani herders who had apparently come for reprisal against their eviction from the land. Properties, including the palace of the town’s monarch, were set ablaze by these sons of perdition. When the quake settled, about 15 people lay dead. Governor Makinde, amid weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of the natives, visited and soberly accepted responsibility for the killings. “We failed you,” he said, his voice soaked in melancholy. Though the counterfeit federalism practiced by Nigeria has castrated state governors security-wise, reducing them to window-dressing sissies, Makinde’s acceptance of responsibility was seen as a mark of leadership.
In the true sense of it, that apology should have come from Buhari as the man who failed woefully to protect the people. Not only didn’t he show any remorse, but no word of apology also came from him to Igangan. It was as if in Buhari’s mean veins, no blood but cow milk flows. That is why his attempt to shift responsibility above is sadistically lame and laughable. Igangan people and all victims of herdsmen are no less man than Buhari’s Fulani killers. They are only hamstrung by legally blocked access to AK-47 which the killers wield. That AK-47 request made by Makinde is a direct test of statesmanship for Buhari who holds the knife and the yam on the control of violence. If he is not for the aggressor in the fight against terror, he should grant the request of the Oyo State governor then watch if Igangan will ever happen again.
Those who accuse the governors of failing to provide security for their people, a tame and puerile route which Buhari also trod by that his hypocritical comment, is not being fair to them. If Makinde, Akeredolu, or Ortom, for instance, acceded to the request of arming their people with AK-47, this Fulani presidency will give them the Zamani Lekwot treatment. Do you remember how that General was almost executed for allegedly arming his people in the Zangon Kataf war?
Thank God, elders of the land like Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdusalami Abubakar and others are said to be meeting and will visit Buhari presently. Buhari has morphed dangerously and can use his obsessive hate for others and malicious Fulani clannishness to set Nigeria on fire. Yoruba always ask that elders should wade in, at a critical moment like this, lest a loony make barbecue of the remains of his deceased mother. The Buhari government is in the autumn of its relevance. The symbolism of the end is all we see – leaves are falling and it is haunted by literal death. As same Yoruba will say, the Buhari market is at the edge of its tethers, winding up and leaving only remnants of those who display their wares – oja ti tu, o ku pa’te pa’te.
#BuhariMustGo: Protest resumes tomorrow in Lagos, Ibadan
Protest resumes tomorrow in Lagos, Ibadan and probably in Abuja on Tuesday.
Lagos Resumes #BuhariMustGo PROTEST tomorrow at Gani Fewehinmi Park, Ojota Lagos at 9:00 am.
Join the Protest to say No to TYRANNY.
#June12Protest #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow
Protest resumes tomorrow in Lagos, Ibadan and probably in Abuja on Tuesday.
Lagos Resumes #BuhariMustGo PROTEST tomorrow at Gani Fewehinmi Park, Ojota Lagos at 9:00 am.
Join the Protest to say No to TYRANNY.
#June12Protest #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow
#BUHARIMUSTGO - A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AGAINST THE UNSEEN REALITY
My mum was desperate about knowing if I was still in Ondo State, not even when I don't share nor inform people of my weird travels, including the imminent ones. I don't think she is that strange to this development. That doesn't still deprive her of the fear she had so much had. She wanted to know if I wasn't already with Sowore, or possibly some revolutionary comrades in some territories, mobilizing for a massive agitation for a working democracy in Nigeria.
I kept mute at first. My brain went blank. I could not say "yes" or "no," not until she claimed the men of the Nigerian Police have been mandated to shoot any peaceful protester tomorrow. "A war is to happen in Ondo State and I have ordered for enough foodstuffs. I would be sending you money to recoup." She said.
The money aspect sounds so nice. I prayed to God just a day before, seeking some manna from heaven. It was as well sure to some extent, that I might not have the necessary in courage to stay put the next day. I have to be on the face of the streets, waxing a few lyrics of gyrational albums. The oppressors must be intimidated!
I got home around 9:00pm, met my landlord on his simply-made armchair. It was unusual of him to put his phone very close to the mouth, he was more of sermonizing the daughter who studies outside the state as to reasons why she need stay at home. In the sanctimony of the ululations laid peacefully my interest. I was willing to digest the thematic preoccupation of the whole thing, while also making the best of fun out of the drama. He conclusively counselled his girl to stay put, pray and read for her coming exams. He didnt drop the call without promising a tireless struggle for her school fee.
I entered my room at the drop of the call, mobilized my gentle flesh to the bed. I never knew when I drifted towards my own Hades, slept off into the dead. I have grown to love terrific dreams, especially ones tallying with aggressor Pharaohs, coming with their daggers, dogs and guns. I don't run! I fight the dogs, guns and daggers at a time. That night's dream was not a good one. I dreamt of suffering another of Police brutality (being battered, manhandled and detained). I dreamt that God wouldn't be there to save me.
I saw myself standing before a scary Magistrate, with bushy air and sorts. Maybe deformed was my leg, my soul eaten by the flying birds of the heaven. I could not breathe again, as my heart is borne into a burden of casket. I need to cry!
Not all these stopped me from waking up as early as planned, an admirer of the Revolutionary movement earlier promised to join me to Akure from AAUA. He is sturdy, courageous and indefatigable, not the cacophony of supposedly discerning minds can stop the Shelter of Freedom.
We entered into the same vehicle with a generation of Nigerians who are on bed with their oppressors. The generation I am talking about are not just bereft of the realities but are of a conviction that is in love with their chains. No wonder Akure was as lifeless as the graveyard, the streets were as dead as the smelling pits around, including the shops, that were shut out of economic activity. We trudged on and landed at our point of convergence.
Our first port of call was Cathedral Junction in Akure, there I met a few revolutionary minds, whose disposition as to the issue with a brain-dead President, whose little or no cognitive ability to oversee the affairs of a populous state has landed Nigeria in its present state, could be blunt.
The movement from there to Post Office Junction was peaceful, it was augmented by so many other reactionary forces like Students For Liberty, unemployed youths, artisans and the elderly promised unpaid stipends in their old age.
The Police surfaced at this point, barricaded peaceful protesters. The Courageous Nigerian people appeared to have mustered a stride in serious organization, they transcended the machinations of the Nigerian Police and marched all through the whole of Akure. It is worthy of special note that nobody was attacked.
The #BuhariMustGo protest is seen as a reactionary mechanism under which the Nigerian youths can mobilize to take back their future. This was apart from the fact that the state-sponsored rumour of possible violence and replication of Lekki massacre, has not held water today.
Conclusively, I want to conclude on the strength of my earlier position, that the tele-guided speech delivered by analogue President Buhari today is nothing but fictitious. Most achievements incoherently reeled out on the national television are realities that can never be seen. They are simply believable lies devised to sabotage justice for a people who are ready to address their grievances in a peaceful manner.
I however state that the Nigerian government has not totally failed by not being able to confine or cow Nigerians. We now have a generation of Nigerians aware of their rights.
A people united cannot be defeated!
_In solidarity_
*Tunde Akingbondere*
My mum was desperate about knowing if I was still in Ondo State, not even when I don't share nor inform people of my weird travels, including the imminent ones. I don't think she is that strange to this development. That doesn't still deprive her of the fear she had so much had. She wanted to know if I wasn't already with Sowore, or possibly some revolutionary comrades in some territories, mobilizing for a massive agitation for a working democracy in Nigeria.
I kept mute at first. My brain went blank. I could not say "yes" or "no," not until she claimed the men of the Nigerian Police have been mandated to shoot any peaceful protester tomorrow. "A war is to happen in Ondo State and I have ordered for enough foodstuffs. I would be sending you money to recoup." She said.
The money aspect sounds so nice. I prayed to God just a day before, seeking some manna from heaven. It was as well sure to some extent, that I might not have the necessary in courage to stay put the next day. I have to be on the face of the streets, waxing a few lyrics of gyrational albums. The oppressors must be intimidated!
I got home around 9:00pm, met my landlord on his simply-made armchair. It was unusual of him to put his phone very close to the mouth, he was more of sermonizing the daughter who studies outside the state as to reasons why she need stay at home. In the sanctimony of the ululations laid peacefully my interest. I was willing to digest the thematic preoccupation of the whole thing, while also making the best of fun out of the drama. He conclusively counselled his girl to stay put, pray and read for her coming exams. He didnt drop the call without promising a tireless struggle for her school fee.
I entered my room at the drop of the call, mobilized my gentle flesh to the bed. I never knew when I drifted towards my own Hades, slept off into the dead. I have grown to love terrific dreams, especially ones tallying with aggressor Pharaohs, coming with their daggers, dogs and guns. I don't run! I fight the dogs, guns and daggers at a time. That night's dream was not a good one. I dreamt of suffering another of Police brutality (being battered, manhandled and detained). I dreamt that God wouldn't be there to save me.
I saw myself standing before a scary Magistrate, with bushy air and sorts. Maybe deformed was my leg, my soul eaten by the flying birds of the heaven. I could not breathe again, as my heart is borne into a burden of casket. I need to cry!
Not all these stopped me from waking up as early as planned, an admirer of the Revolutionary movement earlier promised to join me to Akure from AAUA. He is sturdy, courageous and indefatigable, not the cacophony of supposedly discerning minds can stop the Shelter of Freedom.
We entered into the same vehicle with a generation of Nigerians who are on bed with their oppressors. The generation I am talking about are not just bereft of the realities but are of a conviction that is in love with their chains. No wonder Akure was as lifeless as the graveyard, the streets were as dead as the smelling pits around, including the shops, that were shut out of economic activity. We trudged on and landed at our point of convergence.
Our first port of call was Cathedral Junction in Akure, there I met a few revolutionary minds, whose disposition as to the issue with a brain-dead President, whose little or no cognitive ability to oversee the affairs of a populous state has landed Nigeria in its present state, could be blunt.
The movement from there to Post Office Junction was peaceful, it was augmented by so many other reactionary forces like Students For Liberty, unemployed youths, artisans and the elderly promised unpaid stipends in their old age.
The Police surfaced at this point, barricaded peaceful protesters. The Courageous Nigerian people appeared to have mustered a stride in serious organization, they transcended the machinations of the Nigerian Police and marched all through the whole of Akure. It is worthy of special note that nobody was attacked.
The #BuhariMustGo protest is seen as a reactionary mechanism under which the Nigerian youths can mobilize to take back their future. This was apart from the fact that the state-sponsored rumour of possible violence and replication of Lekki massacre, has not held water today.
Conclusively, I want to conclude on the strength of my earlier position, that the tele-guided speech delivered by analogue President Buhari today is nothing but fictitious. Most achievements incoherently reeled out on the national television are realities that can never be seen. They are simply believable lies devised to sabotage justice for a people who are ready to address their grievances in a peaceful manner.
I however state that the Nigerian government has not totally failed by not being able to confine or cow Nigerians. We now have a generation of Nigerians aware of their rights.
A people united cannot be defeated!
_In solidarity_
*Tunde Akingbondere*
#JUNE12THPROTEST: To save Nigeria, Nigerian people must wake up
*OSOGBO:*
*#June12thProtest*
*#BuharMustGo*
*#BuhariTheDictator*
It is almost three decades down the road now. Nigeria's rulers across the divides appear to have learned nothing and forgotten everything.
June 12, 1993 presidential elections promised us bright summer of liberty, unity and prosperity. Unfortunately, continuous decades of bad governance by unpatriotic and self-centered elites, military and civilian leadership that cut across all tribes and religions, produced exploitation, oppression, poverty, misery, injustice, hopelessness, insecurity, banditry and violent death as majorly being experienced by the common masses all over the country!
To save Nigeria, the Nigerian people must wake up, organise across all ethnic and religious divides to enforce a system of change. We should demand and ensure a restructured Nigeria.
Devolution of power to the extent that more responsibilities be given to the state while the federal government is vested with the responsibility to oversee our foreign policy, defence and economy should be pursued aggressively.
It is time to wake up, rise up and set our differences aside, meet at the restructuring junctions, fight for it, get it and proceed with a new generation of leaders produced by that struggle for common consensus, to build the "Giant of Afrika" of our dream, united in diversity and the beacon of final freedom, hope, pride and development for Afrika and all Afrikans home and abroad...
Viva Aluta!
Dayo Popoola
*OSOGBO:*
*#June12thProtest*
*#BuharMustGo*
*#BuhariTheDictator*
It is almost three decades down the road now. Nigeria's rulers across the divides appear to have learned nothing and forgotten everything.
June 12, 1993 presidential elections promised us bright summer of liberty, unity and prosperity. Unfortunately, continuous decades of bad governance by unpatriotic and self-centered elites, military and civilian leadership that cut across all tribes and religions, produced exploitation, oppression, poverty, misery, injustice, hopelessness, insecurity, banditry and violent death as majorly being experienced by the common masses all over the country!
To save Nigeria, the Nigerian people must wake up, organise across all ethnic and religious divides to enforce a system of change. We should demand and ensure a restructured Nigeria.
Devolution of power to the extent that more responsibilities be given to the state while the federal government is vested with the responsibility to oversee our foreign policy, defence and economy should be pursued aggressively.
It is time to wake up, rise up and set our differences aside, meet at the restructuring junctions, fight for it, get it and proceed with a new generation of leaders produced by that struggle for common consensus, to build the "Giant of Afrika" of our dream, united in diversity and the beacon of final freedom, hope, pride and development for Afrika and all Afrikans home and abroad...
Viva Aluta!
Dayo Popoola
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