By Mohammed Ibraheem Zakzaky
In the first speech delivered by the then newly elected president of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari he made a promise to deliver Good governance and the rule of law. At the very least that would have been enough; and I stood for that. This is why I could not believe it when the Nigerian army was deployed to exterminate people in Zaria. When I heard the sound of grenades, Rocket propelled grenades and light mortars, I was overwhelmed. Surely this apocalyptic attack on human beings was something I thought could never happen. By the time the effects of such weapons of mass destruction were made apparent upon little old me; I was already exhausted.
My mother and my father were attacked in our home by the Nigerian Army. The army systematically killed and burned its way through the neighbourhood. Then burned and ransacked its way to what was left of the survivors. And to my surprise the Buhari administration had put all instruments of government into overdrive to justify the horrific act that had just been committed.
It is no secret that in the aftermath my parents were held without trial for years. When the administration was finally unable to continue ignoring all the questions, they claimed to be spending five million monthly to maintain them in protective custody. Meanwhile all constitutionally legal attempts to secure their freedom had succeeded in the courts. But the administration never obeyed any of the court orders, and they used the government apparatus to make an array of all manner of bizarre excuses.
And since my father and mother had indeed been painted in a bad colour as Shiites, it became clear that no depth was too low to sink and no amount of rapine would be spared to justify the genocidal attack. Since then any and all who could be labelled as Shiites are routinely being harassed, tortured and murdered in scores, their dead bodies are denied proper burial all subject to the whims of SARS/ F-SARS and other visible and invisible Nigerian Armed Forces. The multitude of victims have no choice but to try to survive against such odds.
The administration made it clear that they are determined to continue in the policy of lawless violence, propaganda and terror as a means to implement the rule of Buhari and his supporters. This has long been made clear in northern Nigeria; so much so that In Northern Nigeria you cannot even drive the 70 kilometres from Zaria to Kaduna without fear of being kidnapped or killed by the elusive army of bandits and hoodlums which seem to pop out of nowhere, extort, rape, loot and kill only to disappear again.
Meanwhile the strategy of plunder and destruction in northern Nigeria continues to spread; affecting one and all, including all of those upon whose support or silence the Buhari Regime continues to thrive. Finally the campaign of intimidation, torture, humiliation and murder came to a point that, some people decided that enough was enough, and so they reacted.
The slogan was to end SARS, which was widely regarded as the most ruthless institution within the Buhari Regime. At first Buhari’s lieutenants offered token acceptance to the demands and even renamed the much heated SARS/ F-SARS to SWAT. However this did not serve to bring the desired result of ending the protests.
The regime now launched a pre-emptive strike, to restore the status quo. The strategy as usual was to send and sponsor the mass of the dispossessed youth to loot and burn. This contingent of people are so dehumanized that they can be relied on to even cut fingers off the dead in order to acquire a ring as had happened in Zaria in December 2015. Bored with their five year campaign of destruction, murder and rape in the north, the regime is bent on doing the same across the rest of Nigeria. Paid a poultry sum to block roads, disrupt lives and cause mayhem, this army of young pioneers have been doing this for years in Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara, Borno and Yobe and all across the north of Nigeria.
To create the necessary conditions that can redeem Buhari, efforts are being made to inflame, tribal, ethnic and religious tensions facilitating the destruction of property labelled northern or southern. This is all so that Buhari and his genocidal regime can justify the murderous mission led by his chief henchman Buratai. The B+B duo who are responsible for the chaos that reigns in northern Nigeria; and wish to expand it to all of Nigeria, and the rest of the world if they can. Already their army of bandits is busy trying to inflame tribal and racial hatred across the land, while their elite band of well-armed assassins use their weapons to kill the rest of the people.
My Father Ibraheem Zakzaky is Fulani and Hausa by ancestry, this did not save him from the B+B treatment of Buhari and Buratai. My mother is Yoruba and despite being the daughter of a father from Ibadan and a mother from Ilorin, she cannot have even a knee replacement surgery or any kind of descent medical attention because of the B+B rule over Nigeria.
Parts of Nigeria have already been thoroughly ravaged and ransacked by the B+B team. Now the machine guns and armoured vehicles missing at Sambisa are revealed to have been in their hands all along; ensuring that the kidnapping and killing of the Nigerians continues in order to keep them in line and to send to any other location they desire. That is if the divide and kill one by one strategy fails in the B+B controlled Nigeria.
Flesh and blood I am with all movements seeking for an end to all forms of injustice regardless of what ever hashtag precedes it. Yet I cannot help but wonder just how many more massacres does the Buhari/ Buratai led administration have to commit, live offline, or live online before the B+B combo is recognized as what they truly are?