GOOD OVER EVIL.

President Muhammadu Buhari [PMB] was recently in Poland where he participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice. Some intellectual Nigerians have made it a habit of insulting the president and they would have done same if he did not show up in Poland. They would have called him an analog president oblivious of global trends and asked what he was doing when other world leaders were gathered in one place.

One cannot deny Buhari’s antagonizers their fix; a few of them used social media to express their rage at one of the activities performed by Mr. President while in Poland. PMB met with the leaders of Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Netherlands and Estonia; discussions were largely about Trade, Investment and Agriculture. His meeting with the Dutch Prime minister was a follow-up meeting while it was about Global Politics with the PM of Estonia. Stuff like these did not resonate with certain Nigerians, it was his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum where he laid a wreath in tribute to Holocaust Victims that irked them.

One fellow explained her disapproval by linking the Holocaust to Biafra while another was angry that he could visit a memorial but not states plagued by Boko Haram. I am still trying to find out which states she referred to. I confronted a friend on Facebook who had shared the post about Buhari’s wreath and the states hit by Boko Haram; I wanted to know the justification for criticizing the President for doing something that political leaders and diplomats do all over the world. I informed those pushing these stories that President Jonathan laid a wreath five years ago at the Yad Vashern Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem and I asked them if they had posts on social media condemning the man.

My friend decided to justify himself when I told him his activities on social media against PMB were borne out of hate for the man. He claimed it was not hate but that he could not trust the man who visited Qatar, a nation that has open channels with Hamas. He said Buhari’s wreath laying was dishonest.

How does one discern honesty by looking at photographs of a diplomatic activity? What does honesty have to do with anything? Was Theresa May being honest when she danced on her recent tour of some African countries? Should anyone really care if she danced with or without honesty? Queen Elizabeth II visited the United Arab Emirates in November 2010. She visited a tomb and the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi where she donned a scarf and took off her shoes. The Supreme Governor of the Church of England wore a scarf and went without shoes into a Mosque. 

Elizabeth II without shoes in Abu Dhabi

What if that happened in Nigeria? Our super-religious folks would have had plenty to trend with on social media. I am a ‘religious’ person and I arrived at my position almost 25 years ago without any parental guidance or societal coercion. I have observed [based on their expressed thoughts] the political ideology of many who have the same faith as I do, and I have found it difficult to explain. I refuse to believe that the shameless expression of hate towards a certain human being comes from truly spiritual people.

Some prayed death his way and one fellow earned plenty retweets when he announced that he was exiting the Redeemed Christian Church of God because he could not fathom how Vice President Osinbajo who is a Professor and a Pastor could be in Buhari’s camp. What wrong did Buhari or Osinbajo do to them? Most of the things they reel out as evidence against the men are flimsy and just broadcasts of what some paid anarchists pushed out to earn political advantage. Those who ridiculed an entire ethnicity, region or religion because of the man they have been trained to despise have now openly or ‘codedly’ declared for someone who is like him because their revered spiritual leaders have tilted in that direction. They have quickly forgotten all their profiling and curses; they now lay claim to divine backing to end slavery and poverty in the land. One court jester who happens to be a senator was recently recorded dancing and singing in front of an exotic car parked in what appears to be part of his living room. The irony of his action is that he was singing about poverty and hunger in the land and how Buhari was the cause.

How does someone despise PMB because he met with Qatar and voted against Israel with respect to Palestine? Is there a written code somewhere that Nigeria must support Israel in whatever that nation does? Is Israel backed by every nation in the world? Does voting against Israel in some issues mean we cannot still have diplomatic ties with them? Canada have diplomatic relations with Qatar just like many others do. The Clinton Foundation got $1million from Qatar when Hilary was US Secretary of State, do the Clintons not know that Qatar has ties with Hamas? The United States and Britain use an air-base in Qatar for some of their military operations in the region. The people we think are ‘defenders of the faith’ have their hands soiled and cover up matters from time to time. The world is evil and yet good; atrocities have happened and will continue to happen. Crimes do not have any unique religious, national or racial coloration, even those we look up to are imperfect with many neck-deep in committing, aiding or covering up crime against fellow men.

The United States of America have Saudi Arabia as a strong ally and not even the recent gruesome murder and dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi is able to affect this romance. What is the difference between what happened to Khashoggi and the many atrocities that have been linked to the USA? Was the CIA not involved in toppling Nkrumah? What about the execution of Fabrice Lumumba or the events that preceded the Vietnam war? Should we talk about the Iran-Contra affair? What about the Slave Trade and the atrocities that accompanied colonization which has left the previously colonized still suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? In the mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan and some top officials in his government were caught in a mess that involved money and weapons in Nicaragua, Iran, Israel and Lebanon. USA supplied military hardware to Iran prior to the Revolution there. An arms embargo followed which President Reagan supported and continued when he assumed office. Reagan was also in support of the move by the Contras to topple the Socialist government in Nicaragua.

Weapons were sold to Iran despite the embargo and the money obtained was used to fund rebel activities in the South American nation. When some American citizens got taken in Lebanon by Hezbollah, the narrative was directed to involve Israel and a move to source for Iranians to help rescue the kidnapped. It appears Israel related with Iran on America’s behalf and this hostage situation was what Reagan used to explain his actions to sell arms. An Israeli adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Amiram Nir played a role in this affair. He was apparently hung out to dry and was going to sell his story about the scandal to the press. One name was mentioned, George H. W. Bush who was said to have been briefed by Nir. Bush denied knowledge, Reagan’s rating had dropped, and Bush was busy running for president in late 1988. Nir died in December 1988 following a plane crash in Mexico but his death remains controversial with more than a few conspiracy theories. These are some of the evils that accompany politics and power.

Religious folks are not spared from these types of situations even though such should not happen. Should we act as if some of the Nigerian religious leaders haven’t erred alongside politicians? Some have helped to launder images and monies to foreign lands, should we deny these? As much as people insist that these leaders must be respected, and their actions or inaction not questioned, I find it rather weird to keep quiet when these people in vantage positions speak untruths about Nigeria, her people and her politics. Some of the things that have been said are worse than what set some nations alight and cannot be proved to me to be words from a deity. I might ignore heresies but half-truths or full-lies about Nigeria and utterances which are of the supremacist nature are some of the things that irritate me. We should be the ones pushing for transparency and demanding restitution instead of the cover-ups that we now assume is the godly thing to do. Let us not act like the Australian pastor who knew about his father's crimes but failed to act for many years despite being in the position to only for the matter to return now when his father is long gone. 

It is dangerous politics that is being played in some Nigerian states and Benue is one of such. It seems everything is all about ‘militia herdsmen’ there. The governor as reported in a September 1 2018 story published by Punch Newspapers told the state Chapter of the Christian association of Nigeria that the people of the state should arm themselves by obtaining their Permanent Voter’s Cards in order to resist further invasion of Benue land by herdsmen under the guise of grazing. How will voting for him ensure ‘herdsmen’ are resisted? He takes every opportunity he gets to talk about the state’s enemies and how some other parties that favor herdsmen are conniving to take over the state. There is also the case of Jimi Agbaje in Lagos who took to Twitter to express the same rhetoric about Igbos in Lagos which failed him in 2015. He or whoever is responsible for his social media platforms described the situation as antisemitism. I don’t understand these people anymore.

What is Good over Evil? There is a tussle within many people, to do good or allow oneself to drift with evil currents. The urge to constantly spread lies about Muhammadu Buhari knowingly or otherwise cannot be termed as good. You mock a man for having a modest number of cattle, but you celebrate those whose resources you cannot justify because it aligns with your sentiments. You profile entire groups and you are convinced you are expressing faith? Before you utter the next word or share that jaundiced post, ask yourself if you fact-checked and if what you are going to release will build-up or destroy. Don’t let arrogance or ignorance bring embarrassment your way, let it end in 2018. One fellow who described himself as a physician tweeted that certain anti-hypertensive medications had been recalled and urged people not to take them. He soon had over 5,000 retweets and 2000 likes but the problem was that he followed up the main tweet with information about a specific brand of the drug. Trust Nigerians to activate panic and WhatsApp sharing modes. It was clear that many ran with the root tweet which had no specifics. Other Twitter users noticed the problem and advised the young man to delete the first tweet which had caused confusion for many. Many Nigerians do not look beyond the superficial and those who read the first tweet ran with it as gospel. The problem was not that this man tweeted something misleading, he categorically said that he was not responsible for people failing to read his follow-up tweets. Despite the pleas from others to realize the danger his tweet had caused, he remained defiant.

Please do not think your actions or inaction are without consequence. There is life beyond social media and your supporters club. Do not let religiosity cripple you so badly that you endorse untruth and fiction as truth. Do not let evil cause you to hate your fellow man because society, history or your name tell you to. There is good in you, let it triumph over the evil that lurks. The President of the UAE owns significant real estate in Seychelles and gets to transfuse that nation with monetary fluids from time to time, I wonder if our people would refuse such gestures if we had the chance.