THE MARCH FOR FREEDOM AND THE
MONSTER FROM FUTA JALON The greatest crime that man has inflicted on his fellow
man in the last 50 years is
the evil concept of unrestrained globalisation
coupled with the incremental evolution, unacceptable espousal and wholehearted
acceptance of the artificial, man-made, mongrel nation-state which is made up
of ethnic and religious incompatible.
Yet thankfully there has been a
backlash. The forces of the far-right and ethnic nationalism are marshalling
and are on the rise all over the world. Consequently a laudable, unprecedented
and irresistable counter-offensive has begun. We see this in Trump’s United
States of America, Putin’s Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Israel,
France, Holland, Hungary and many other parts of the civilised world.
We have witnessed it in Catalonia,
Biafra, Scotland and Kurdistan where the oppressed are fighting for the
establishment of their own nation. All over the world we hear the cry of those
that are struggling for their emancipation and deliverance from alien and
foreign oppressors with whom they share no history or have any cultural or
religious links or affiliation. Throughout the comity of nations we hear the
desperate lamentations and compelling words of those great and noble patriots
and souls who take pride in their history, cultural heritage, ethnicity and
religious faith and who refuse to allow their identity to be redefined, watered
down, eradicated or decimated in the name of unrestrained and unfettered racial
integration with those that they have nothing in common.
We hear the voices of those who
refuse to be robbed of their heritage and persona by a godless horde of ranking
unbelievers, murderous religious extremists, barbarous aliens and desperate
usurpers who come from a distant land and we acknowledge the concerns of those
who refuse to be ensnared by false, bogus and long-discredited notions of
political correctness and the wholesale adoption of discredited and nonsensical
liberal values and philosophies. The bottom line is as follows: there is no
crime in flying the flag of ethnic nationalism, in rejecting the idea of a
nation of hybrids and in wanting to take your nation back for its people. There
is no sin in the desire to re-establish pure and unpolluted ethnic bloodlines
and racial stock. There is no shame in chanting “blood and soil” whilst
marching in the streets with torch in hand as others once did many years ago.
It is indeed the procession of the
faithful: it is the march for freedom and the song of liberty. It is an attempt
to restore, defend and preserve the very essence of who we are. It is an
attempt to break the shackles of bondage and the chains of slavery. It is an
attempt to liberate us from those with whom we share no history, no heritage
and no values and yet who insist on imposing their will on us, controlling and
dominating our very lives and insisting that they were born to rule. This is
all the more so given the fact that, in the Nigerian context, our president was
once a profoundly good man I say this because under his watch more Shiite
Muslims, northern Christians, Igbo youths, Middle Belters and southerners have
been slaughtered and butchered than at any other time in our history other than
during the civil war.
Worse still, this is a man who,
according to the President of the World Bank, Kim Yong Jim, said that his
organisation should concentrate their efforts on developing northern Nigeria
alone as if the rest of our country does not even exist. Yet why am I not
surprised? After all, as far as Buhari is concerned the people of southern
Nigeria and the middle belt are only relevant at the time of a presidential
election. This is a man who had the sheer effrontery to insult us all by
addressing the entire nation in the Hausa language on the occasion of the
Islamic Ramadan observance.
This is a man who boastfully and
openly told the world that he would favour those who voted for him in the 2015
Presidential elections (meaning his core Muslim northern base) and that he
would not favour those who voted against him (meaning the predominantly
Christian south). This is a man whom the celebrated writer Bashorun Akin
Osuntokun rightly described in his latest column as a President “who is firmly
wedded to the politics of division and of pan northern Nigerian Muslim
irredentist politics”. A leader must put the good of his country before his own
inclinations and that of his party.
This is something that is clearly
lost on Muhammadu Buhari and his core northern Hausa Fulani supporters. Nigel
Farage MEP, the founder and former leader of Great Britain’s United Kingdom
Independence Party (UKIP) and one of the most formidable and potent voices
behind BREXIT recently said, “The establishment media across Europe and the
West despise me. They cannot accept that people still believe in the nation
state”. I know precisely how he feels. The walk of the ethnic nationalist in
todays globalised world is more often than not a lonely one. Farage places his
english heritage and identity before he does his British one. He also places
his British heritage before his European one and he outrightly rejects the
concept and notion of a fully integrated and amaglamated European super state
where various and disparate ethnic nationalities are merged into one.
I share his vision and ethos and I
superimpose it on the Nigerian plain. I am an Ife before being a Yoruba, I am a
Yoruba before being a Nigerian and I refuse to have it any other way. This is
especially so when one considers what has been going on in the last two years
in our country. Consider the events in Plateau state a few days ago. No less
than forty (and according to some reports as many as one hundred) innocent and
defenceless indegenous Christians, including women and children, were butchered
in their homes by Muslim Fulani herdsmen. President Muhammadu Buhari, who is
himself a Muslim, a Fulani and indeed the Life Patron of the Fulani Herdsmen
Association (Miyetti Allah) has offered no commiserations to the families of
the dead, has refused to visit the state, has expressed no genuine regrets or
remorse, has failed to arrrest any of the perpertrators and has refused to
declare the Fulani herdsmen as terrorists. Instead of doing any of the above he
promptly flew off to Turkey for a D8 That is where Buhari has brought us.
One is compelled to ask, is this the
kind of leadership and country that we deserve. Is that what Lord Lugard’s
amaglamated super state with its annointed Fulani overlords have to offer? Is
that what I am supposed to subsume, supress and sacrifice my Yoruba heritage
and my Christian faith for? I think not! Permit me to end this contribution
with the words of Sir Winston Churchill, an Old Harrovian (like yours truly)
and the greatest Prime Minister that Great Britain ever had. He said, “Never
give in. Never give in. Never, never, never: in nothing great or small, large
or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never
yield to force. Never yield to the apparantly overwhelming might of the enemy”.
These words inspire and I commend them to every man, woman and child in our
country who refuses to bow to tyranny and be enslaved and who takes pride in
who they are, where they come from and what their ethnic heritage, bloodlines,
racial stock and true nationality is.
I conclude with the following
counsel. There will be times that we are powerless when we face evil, injustice
and tyranny but there must never be a time when we fail to Some say that the
path of uncompromising and relentless opposition that we have chosen is a
dangerous and unpredictable one. They forget that the wounds of honor are self-inflicted.
If you want to be set apart and regarded as a man of courage, truth and honor
or the champion of the oppressed and the voice of the voiceless you must be
ready to take the blows, wounds and oftentimes dire consequences that go with
it. William Shakespeare wrote “cowards die many times before their time but the
valiant die but once” whilst our very own Wole Soyinka wrote “the man died in
him who remained silent in the face of tyranny”.
The great American patriot and hero
of the war of independence, John Mchenry, told King George 111 of England to
“give me freedom or give me death” whilst George Washington, the leader of the
American forces in that war and the first President of the United States of
America said, “the thing that sets the American Christian apart from all other
people in the world is that he will die on his feet before he will live on his
knees”. To top it all one of the most courageous souls of the 21st century,
Edward Snowden, who is the American spy that defected to Russia two years ago,
wrote “speak not because it is safe but because it is right”. Given the
circumstances that we have found ourselves in Buhari’s Nigeria, EVERY single
person in our country has much to learn from the profound words of these deeply
courageous men. Some of us have chosen to be courageous and valiant and have
refused to remain silent.
We made a choice to stand up and
resist the chicanery and wickedness of this administration and we are prepared
to pay the price for the choice that we have made. I for one would rather live
a short life and die as a free man than live a long life as a slave. The Bible
says “he who holds on to his life will lose it and he who is ready to give up
his life for my cause will gain it”. I do not fear any man or any circumstance because
I know the God that I serve. I am a servant of truth, a warrior of light and a
child of the Living God: I bow to no man and I do not tremble before tyrants. I
will endure anything and pay any price to liberate my nation from what it has
been transformed in the past two years with every fibre of my being in the full
knowledge that in the end we shall prevail. By Femi Fani-Kayode
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