Stop Weaponizing Unity: A Rebuttal to General Musa’s Plea to Easterners Nigeria Continues To Weaponize And Impose On Supposed Citizens A Re...
Stop Weaponizing Unity: A Rebuttal to General Musa’s Plea to Easterners
Nigeria Continues To Weaponize And Impose On Supposed Citizens
A Rebuttal to General Musa’s Intimidating Theatrics Against Biafrans;
So, the Nigerian Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has spoken. He wants the people of the South East to stop “promoting IPOB activities on social media” because it is “destabilizing national unity.”
What an ironic sermon from the very institution that has turned gun barrels on civilians while turning a blind eye to hardened bandits, terrorists ravaging the nooks and crannies of the Nigerian enclave.
General Musa, with all due respect, your uniform should not be a shield for propaganda. IPOB is not the threat to Nigeria’s unity — it is your military’s hands, stained with the blood of the innocent. Before you point fingers at Easterners with legally operating social handle —expressing their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of expression, let us examine your own record, and the horrors committed by the institutional machination of the Nigerian military against Biafrans.
In 2020, during the EndSARS protests, the Nigerian Army unleashed terror in Obigbo, Rivers State. Young men and women were dragged from their homes, shot in cold blood, and some, till date, are still missing and are illegally languishing in various military detention facilities, not in South East but across the north. Women were raped. Mass graves littering all over the place. War crimes in peace times. They were commited by your soldiers while responding to a relatively expression of civil displeasure against police brutality and extrajudicial dispositions. Till date no one was held responsible for that ethnically inspired vindictiveness.
On October 20, 2020, the Nigerian Army opened fire on EndSARS protesters singing the national anthem and waving the Nigerian flag. They first denied it. Then they buried the truth. If not for social media, the blood would have been washed away like rain on asphalt.
In 2021, the military and secret service (DSS) launched and orchestrated a high-end trojan horse operation in Imo State which ended up turning the state to a mini-warzone. The aim? Frame and demonize the Eastern Security Network. The ESN a vigilante group formed in late 2020 by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the incarcerated IPOB leader to confront the marauding Fulani herdsmen in the East after the government and security agencies dubiously failed to do so.
What happened shortly after the birthing ofESN? Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was kidnapped and renditioned, immediately after Imo state was turned to ruins. Innocents died, murdered by the agent provocateurs created to impress false, negative psychological signatures against what the IPOB movement, ESN or the concerted efforts for Biafra self-determination stands for, in the minds of the people.
Going back a little further outside the bounds of the eastern region. In December 2015, over 347 Shiite Muslims were killed by soldiers and dumped in mass graves in Kaduna. Their only crime? Expression their rights to peaceful and religious procession/assembly. Yet, no single military officer was jailed or questioned for the unprovoked massacre armless civilians.Instead, the leader of the movement was detained for years and the Gen. Buratai who gave those orders stayed on in command many years after.
The military operations like the Operation Python Dance, Crocodile Smiles in the South East in 2017 was not about peacekeeping — there was never unrest to attract an overwhelming military deployment in the South-East. Instead, it was to reinforce the psychological warfare that the Southeast was a conquered territory and, that the Biafra idealogy/will for self-determination will never be allowed to receive recommendations, scrutiny in the eyes of the international community. Fortunately, it failed. However, that needless arm flexing ended hundreds of lives over the years, and assaulted communities. Meanwhile, the Fulani herdsmen with AK-47s roam freely across the country, untouched.
When Fulani bandits attacked the Kaduna-Abuja train, the military had no urgency. Victims were kidnapped for weeks. Some died in captivity. Yet the terrorists were negotiated with, ransoms were paid. No airstrikes. No Operation Storm. But villages in Ebonyi and Imo State get full military parade for daring to ask questions or express support for the Biafra cause.
It is plausible to infer that there is an internal memo between the ultranationalist Nigerian political elites - civilian, religious, past and present military brass – to tighten up the social media where citizens gets exposed to the truth about the conspiracy against their existence and survival, not just from Pro-Biafra sources, but from neutral sources that are simply pissed over the realization that those meant to protect the people are infact, colluding to extinguish them.
Recently, after Christian communities in Benue, Southern Kaduna, and Jos were slaughtered by Fulani herdsmen, Nigerians were forced to raise eyebrows after wide dissemination of the terrorists atrocities of the Fulani killers against innocent indigenous populations. But, instead of condemning the killers, the Sultan of Sokoto described the social media "the real terrorist", for hosting the expositions . And, now General Musa repeats the same chorus and sentiment.
Nevertheless General Christopher Musa, should never be mistaken or deluded to think that social media is the sword instead, it is the mirror that demonstrates the reflection the words sees. The real enemy of unity is not IPOB or those operating "X/Facebook" accounts it is the absence of justice, the selective enforcement of the law, and the weaponization of state power against one region and people in a bid to suppress their collective will to determine their political future and destiny.
You do not silence a people by cutting off their voice. You silence agitation for political self-determination by answering and addressing the questions and dissatisfactions.
If the Nigerian Army wants peace or acceptance by the Eastern populations, then they must respect court rulings, including the one ordering the release of Nnamdi Kanu. They must investigate and prosecute military war crimes not reward them with promotions. They must embrace dialogue, not drones. They must revert their orders to occupy, intimidate and extort the South-East in perpetuity.
Because one day, when the people grow tired of talking, they will stop whispering. And when a country loses the trust of its people, no bulletproof vest will shield its leaders or soldiers from divine retribution fueled by the accumulated misery and frustration of the an oppressed people.
Family Writers Press International
No comments
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.