Fashionable Bias

By Olakunle Abimbola

The Igboho debacle: fugitive from Nigeria to detainee — or worse — in Benin Republic, just echoes the oft-quoted Karl Marx quip that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Sunday Igboho recalls the much more refined Anthony Enahoro, who bolted from Nigeria, to the United Kingdom, to escape the celebrated treasonable felony trials, that involved the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his political disciples in 1962.

But Her Majesty’s government repatriated Chief Enahoro to Nigeria to face trial. The late Ishan chief, and fine Nigerian nationalist and patriot, captured this high-octane drama in his political odyssey, Fugitive Offender.

Well, we have another fugitive offender in Igboho, who evaded DSS arrest in Nigeria, only to land in gendarme cells in neighbouring Benin.

But unlike the original, who faced no wrap of UK passport forgery or racketeering, Igboho, the neo-fugitive offender, was arraigned in a Cotonou, Benin, court for alleged immigration offences, though his lawyers claim that reportage is incorrect. Talk of history repeating itself, as tragedy and farce!

Still, since it is crass to kick a man who is down, let the Igboho supporters avail him of the best legal representation. The case, after all, is before a Benin court.

But fashionable bias, which spurred the Igboho debacle, from the heroics of Igangan, to impassioned Yoruba nation activism, and now to a Benin Republic gaol, merits fair and legitimate discourse, however the Igboho matter is resolved.

Fashionable bias! That bug bites not a few and brings out the worst in most!

The other day, the Blessed Father Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, stacked his cards, in a virtual discourse, with the US Congress.

As part of his explosive offer, he claimed bandits and terrorists solely target and kill Christians — a clear untruth that has sent the federal authorities howling.

To be clear, these free-wheeling criminals make absolutely no discrimination: not on faith, not on creed, not on tribe. Indeed, if their bulk are northern Muslims, so are their victims, particularly in the killing fields of the North West and some parts of North Central — and the earlier the security agencies wipe out these brutes, the better for everyone.

But to the holy ranks on the Archbishop’s side, even if he told a lie, it would be the sacred lies of Father Kukah! The HURRIWAs of this polity, and a lobby that calls itself the Catholic Bishops of Ibadan Ecclesiastic Province, have already received that bishopric untruth with full rapture, even if the truth is badly ruptured!

It’s the spiritual — and temporal — strain of fashionable bias!

Still, in Kukah: between the fiery archbishop playing the immaculate arbiter on the national turf and the southern Kaduna boy oozing the bitterness of ancestral feud and politics, it’s clear, to the acute mind, who is trumping who! The poet is right: the child indeed, is the father of the man!

The other day too, a pro-Igboho Yoruba monarch from Kwara, reportedly swore Buhari — favourite demon, in the coven of the biased — was oppressing and persecuting the Yoruba. So, the Benin authorities shouldn’t extradite Igboho to Nigeria.

Well, anything goes in propaganda, except that this royal(?) fib is concrete mirage that can’t be sustained with facts or logic — except, of course, the monarch now blames PMB for the Ilorin Yoruba-Fulani ancestral feud, which dates back to the 19th century Afonja-Alimi saga.

But let’s even interrogate this “persecution”. A Yoruba man is No. 2 in the government; and the dominant alliance, that birthed it, is South West-North West.

But leave politics and offices aside. The Lagos-Ibadan corridor now boasts modernized rail, linked to the Apapa, Lagos Ports complex, that could spur movement of passenger and cargo, thus giving the economy a healthy jab in the arm. Also, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is receiving due attention. At the Berger, Lagos end, just after the long bridge, still stands spicy deceit from the past: an Obasanjo-era signboard “threatening” to fix that expressway, but never did! No Buhari billboard in that vicinity right now, but the roads are getting fixed anyway.

Obasanjo never crowed about his “Yoruba-ness”, it’s true. But he bears a Yoruba name; and he wasn’t shy about dismissing Lagos as a “jungle”, to sate the regnant partisan temper of his day.

Yet, a Fulani “oppressor” is fixing decrepit, long-abandoned roads all over Obasanjo’s “jungle” — not only in Yorubaland but all over, using Babatunde Fashola, another Yoruba son, as his workaholic foot soldier-in-chief — but all folks warm up to is some Buhari-driven, Fulani hate theories! Talk of a vicious strain of fashionable bias!

For the first time in Nigerian history, this same government is planting core progressive policies at the centre — pro-poor policies and programmes that could have warmed Chief Awolowo’s heart: feeding poor kids in schools nationwide to boost school enrolment, conditional cash transfers to the most vulnerable, credit to the lowest and humblest of micro-trades, giving farmers a fairer deal.

Indeed, as the hate campaign deafens, Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s Vice President, has quietly purloined Buhari’s conditional cash transfer policy — he must have seen its great impact on the helpless and the nameless — rebranded it “Atiku Youth Empowerment Funds”, and called on would-be beneficiaries to access N10, 000 weekly — a scheme his roller coaster presidency, with Obasanjo, never dreamed of!

But lo! In this high season of fashionable bias, you must be blind to all that, as fevered optics must trump cold facts! Still, it’s a costly mirage that would come back, in due course, to haunt its pushers, misleading the unwary and excitable millions.

Yes, dire insecurity hobbles Buhari: for the killing spree, by some herder criminals, continues to push a theory of a Fulani militia, sworn to gobbling up the rest of Nigeria.

And yes: there are some Fulani hegemonic extremists, mouthing lunatic screeches. But if this ethnic cleansing theory is regnant — or even true — how come most of the killed, maimed and sacked are in the North West, bastion of the Fulani themselves?

Not from the South East? Not from the South West? Or even from the North Central, where you have a long history of no-love-lost, between Fulani herders, and native communities; and of Christian/Muslim tension?

Could it then be a case of out-and-out criminals? If so, why not de-link wherever they come from, and tackle crime as crime?

But no matter! The president must be the fall guy-in-chief, simply because of his Fulani stock. That must also automatically translate into the president as criminal-in-chief; and, to elite job hustlers, nepotist-in-chief, who must be demonized to no end!

Such fevered optics goaded Igboho into becoming a zesty battling ram — his elite backers cheering from the safety of their homes — until he batted himself into trouble.

Those who traduce a Fulani president, for the crime of a Fulani few, had better brace themselves for what to come. What goes around, after all, comes around.

Soon an Igbo or Yoruba president would birth — and those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind!