My visit to the east has actually left me very angry with my Yoruba people. We cannot even commission good workmen to do standard jobs for our public space! We cannot do a neat roundabout with a good artwork and keep it so. Our monuments are hidden and unremarkable. We have not shown pride in our spaces. We have not beautified the way the easterners have. Look at the relative mediocrity and all the grammar we are ‘blowing’ around a new Awo Statue? Why can we not make it 160 Feet like what the Sengalese have in Dakar, complete with restaurants inside the statue? Yet we try to say we are superior and more enlightened than other Nigerians. The time is now to prove it.
But back to Nnamdi. It occurred to me that what we have in Kanu is a religious cult leader. And that the problem is so deep already, with thousands, possibly millions of little children in Nigeria and all over the world already recruited into the hate cult. When children are raised with hate and disdain against other people then that is some sort of social and mental terrorism and abuse. There is also economic terrorism here because most of Kanu’s followers are poor. Not everyone will ‘make it’ financially in any society, but what this guy has done, in spite of the averagely higher financial successes of Easterners – is to gather together the disgruntled and the unsuccessful into a band of very angry people who are now ready to die for him because they have been adequately brainwashed, and to destroy others who don’t think like them where necessary.
Nnamdi is a cult leader. He checks all the boxes. He is worshipped and craves more of it. Check. He is called Supreme Leader. Check. He is a singular figure whom every member looks up to; no structure, no deputy. Check. People kiss his feet and would drink his piss. Check. His word is law and even when he insults the same people, they say yessah! Check. Even those who are older than him and have more resources, address him with much respect, almost calling him Daddy, Mazi and so on. Check. Many call him Messiah. Check. He has brought religion into it with this Jewish persecution rhetoric. Check. He believes he and his people are superior, perhaps to everyone else in the world. Check. People will probably not mind ceding their wives to him at least for a while, so that he can be replicated hundred times over. Check. People spread their clothes on the ground so that he can walk on it like Jesus Christ walked on palm leaves. Check. He has great, compelling oratorical skills and is quite intelligent. Check. He has the ability to manipulate his subjects, concoct lies and make them go after his foes at the expense of their own lives. Check. Check. Check. He ticks all the boxes. This is the correct diagnoses if you observe him from afar with an unbiased mind. He is more a cult leader than a terrorist. But cults do unleash their own terror from time to time, as we shall see from a few examples below.
He is slightly worse though. He combines tribal sentiments and persecution mentality. And so, whoever does not buy the Jewish persecution angle will buy the Chukwu Abiama angle or at least the ‘we have been oppressed as a people’ angle. Now this is classic and unique. This is a well-packaged and deadly product that we would be wrong to ignore.
To show he is not balanced, he has openly solicited for guns and bullets against Nigeria (no one should act like this is of no consequence even though it’s there on Youtube. Even his audience were flabbergasted that day), he has promised to overrun Sokoto within two weeks of declaring a war on Nigeria, and he has instructed his people more than 50 times to ‘burn down’ Nigeria if he is ever arrested. We have a cult bigger than what even the Americans have ever handled on our hands. They are in every state of Nigeria ready to deploy for their master. This is why I support the DISPLAY (not the use) of whatever forces Nigeria has at her disposal.
How Jim Jones and David Koresh experiment ended
Famous cult leader Jim Jones people moved to Guyana to get away from the ‘madness’ that was USA. They lived a communal life even as Jim impregnated many women, did drugs and also involved in homosexuality. His people got very militant and once shot and killed a US Congressman who had been asked to officially confirm reports of abuse going on in the Jonestown camp. Jones directed his men to shoot the government team just as they boarded the aircraft. Three other members of the delegation were killed alongside Congressman Ryan. Later that day, Jones commanded all his followers to drink cyanide mixed with KoolAid and die because according to his ‘intelligence’ sources, having killed a US congressman, men will “parachute in here on us”, “shoot some of our innocent babies” and “they’ll torture our children, they’ll torture some of our people here, they’ll torture our seniors”
920 people died that day; all US citizens. We have seen IPOB members stand in front of armoured tanks, confront police with guns and show that they are ready to die for the cause. Again I think we all have suffered under Nigeria’s rudderless governments. But should all die for the cause or try and make things better?
As for David Koresh, his men too were already armed and when his camp in Waco, Texas was to be raided for weapons violation, child abuse, and drug trafficking, they resisted with gunfire. This led to a siege by a combination of men from the FBI, ATF (Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) and the Texas Army National Guard (which is part of the US Army). The government side lost four men, but Koresh ensured 82 men, women and children from his side perished through mass suicide.
Comparisons with Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen
Violent herdsmen, or Fulani armed robbers or terrorists can be designated as terrorists but not every herdsman or herdsboy that we see on the road. There could also be a terrorist wing who terrorise farmers in Benue, Enugu and other states. The problem with those ones is that they have not presented themselves as a group. They have never stepped up to claim any terrorist act. But if we have better intelligence, and we can establish a pattern, and put names and faces to their actions, then ‘Terrorist’ will be a fitting moniker. Regarding Boko Haram I ask, why did the Americans hesitate to tag them terrorists in the Jonathan era despite their many killings? Of course they are terrorists and actually have a so-called ‘leader’ – the drugged out Shekau – who has been killed at least four times.
For me the real issue is not whether IPOB was tagged a terrorist group. What matters is that our intelligence forces are moving quickly on the issue. What matters is that by this quick action we may yet be saved from a full blown war, and the destruction that comes with it. If some aggrieved person with a cult followership, who has a deep, implacable grouse with the country, and has promised to burn down the country several times, plus solicited weapons in more places than one, were living in Abuja where I stay, I would be glad to see Nigerian Army at checkpoints, in addition to the Police. LAWS ARE NOT FOR THE DEAD.
