By
Felix Oboagwina
Until I saw this particular photograph of the visit, I felt tempted to add my voice to the cacophony of criticisms that trailed the President’s sympathy trip to Jos, the capital of Plateau State, where the foot-soldiers of Fulani hegemony and terrorism AGAIN carried out the cold-blooded massacre of over 40 defenceless Nigerians, mostly Christians.
Then I saw that photograph. And it triggered my partial U-Turn. Tinubu did something right that deserved kudos on that visit.
Antagonists condemned Tinubu’s visit as insensitive, insulting and half-hearted because the Commander-in-Chief turned back at the Jos Airport (Yakubu Gowon Airport) and failed to visit Angwan Rukuba, the very eye of the incident. Such detractors insist his journey lost meaning when the President failed to travel a further 51 minutes and 40 kilometres to Angwan Rukuba and actually use his “korokoro” eyes to see the victims and other emblems of the mayhem of terrorism.
The Presidency and other Tinubu “hailers” have responded to such critics, accusing them of politicising the matter of insecurity. In defending the President, his team points out that the man moved heaven and earth to alter his tight schedule to make the Jos visit happen four days after the Palm Sunday tragedy.
Yes, there were security concerns too. Should they put the President at risk on the 40 kilometres and about two hours to and fro the Jos Airport-Angwan Rukuba route amidst possible threats to his life, knowing that the bushes bristled with pockets of heavily-armed non-state actors? Even when the Governor on Monday left the capital to visit the locus of the Palm Sunday attack, the man buried himself within an armoured personnel carrier, a virtual armoured tank.
But here is where the President won my accolades. The State House official Press Bulletin published a photograph that captured the President putting a conciliatory hand on Mrs. Favour Ayuba, a survivor, whose son, Promise, terrorists killed that Palm Sunday. Although she sat among other citizens in that airport hall, Mrs. Favour Ayuba stood out. Videos and photographs had days before gone viral, showing her cradling her adult son to her breast as he lay dying. She painted the picture of a grieving woman in denial; even as sympathisers made to take the young man from her grip, she held him, insisting she felt the warmness of his body and he could not be dead. But the guy died for real.
Part of those brought to see the President at the airport, Mrs. Ayuba received a specific mention in Tinubu’s ad lib speech. I thought the matter ended with that homily delivered from the lectern. But the State House photo showed Tinubu did more. He left the high table, went to Mrs. Ayuba and held her hand. It showed he understood the pain of losing a son, an adult son.
Tinubu himself lost a son. His 37-year-old lawyer-son, Jide Tinubu, died of cardiac arrest on November 2017.
Personally, the President broke away from the VIPs on the high table to approach and comfort the bereaved woman. This terrific gesture humanised the entire airport trip. It bestowed the entire Jos journey with an empathetic, personal temperament. It made that brief trip highly intimate –not just a sympathy visit, but an empathetic one. Here, the President touched base with the sorrowing commoner. The leader shared with the led a moment of deep sorrow.
For that singular superb, compassionate gesture, I doff my hat to the President.
However….
We must query his rhetoric. In speaking, Tinubu spoilt whatever goodness his visit signified.
Many neutral observers have also queried what Baba said: “You have no light at the airport and I have to fly back to Abuja in 10 minutes….”
For the airport being in darkness and making it an excuse for his quick departure, Tinubu sounded like: “Since you people can’t give me electricity here, don’t expect me to stay.” Should the people provide the airport with electricity? As President, he runs that airport, via his Aviation Minister! Thus, in complaining about lack of electricity, Tinubu marked his electricity power policy as a dismal failure. The darkness of Jos Airport epitomises a national malaise. And since he made the pre-2023 election vow that, should he fail to deliver electricity to Nigerians in his first term, voters should shut the door in his face if he showed up for a second term. There, he already has his 2027 result –all things being equal!
However, the man put his foot in his mouth on another matter. He told Plateau people that peace mustn’t be forced on parties.
Look, Tinubu has never been an orator’s orator. He is not gifted that way. In fact, his closest aides have suggested he should stop ad libs and should read ONLY from pre-prepared speeches. When the Commander-in-Chief pays a condolence visit to a hurting and bleeding people and tells them peace needed not be force-fed to feuding parties, one of whom, unprovoked, had taken and continues to take up arms to unleash cold-blood genocide on citizens, then you would appear to have taken sides to speak that way. You have validated the terrorists’ campaign of genocide. Or you have demonstrated a morbid fear of the terrorists and their sponsors. You wallow in the same dung as the Late Pan-Fulani President Muhammadu Buhari, who sent his errand boys Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu to warn indigenous Nigerians to cede their lands to foreign Fulani invaders or prepare to die.
Telling the world that you cannot force peace on terrorists signals gross cowardice and gargantuan disservice to Jos and Plateau State.
Like most of us, Tinubu would remember the Jos of old: Tourist Jos. Academic Jos. Sedate Jos. Peaceful Jos. Cosmopolitan Jos. Accommodating Jos. Cool Jos. Jos that Oyinbo foreigners rushed to as a favourite tourists’ destination spot. I ask Tinubu: Does this contemporary terror-terrorised Jos bear any semblance to that tourist-luring Jos? Of course, it doesn’t.
A near state of anarchy rages. Life there has become wild, brutish and short. Jos, Plateau State and the entire Middle-Belt, nay, the Christian North, have become a hotbed for Fulani irredentism. The entire space burns from the actions of Fulani warriors imported to overrun the zone in an evil expansionist campaign. Nasarawa. Benue. Plateau. Taraba. Adamawa. Southern Kaduna. Kwara. Niger. Large armies of ragtag non-state actors have taken over their forests and farmlands and communities, kidnapping, pillaging and killing the populace and occupying their lands.
Yet Chapter 2, Section 14(2), of the Nigerian Constitution says:
“The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
Government must live up to that social contract by helping bonafide indigenes retrieve, return and secure occupied lands from these demons.
These demonic terrorists will brook no peaceful negotiation. They understand one language. Violence. Violence must now speak to violence. Soldiers say they cannot even engage because commanding officers warn them against turning their ammo against these parasites. Yet these terrorists freely kill our soldiers. They freely unleash genocide on the Northern minorities unchecked.
Ahead of these bastards hitting Angwan Rukuba, terrified residents sighted them assembling with motorcycles and AK47s and pre-emptively reported to authorities. The police and the Army as usual turned a deaf ear. The President and his entire security team –Police, DSS, Army, Air Force– appear to believe tackling this matter with kid gloves would work. No. It hasn’t for the past 15 years. To keep doing the same thing expecting a different result indicates madness. One Yoruba musician sang, “Were la fi nwo were!” A violent provocation will need a violent solution. Only violence will counterbalance and extinguish violence. Violence is the language these terrorists understand. And time has come to speak that language.
In burying Promise, her son, Mrs. Favour Ayuba (the mother Tinubu consoled at the airport) put a machete in his coffin, invoking his spirit to wreak vengeance and justice on his killers. Promise and all the over 40 victims killed before, during and after Angwan Rukuba cry for justice.
Mister President and Commander-in-Chief, will the victims of the Jos Palm Sunday massacre cry in vain?
. OBOAGWINA IS A JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR AND WRITES FROM LAGOS
