BY BOLAJI AKINYEMI
The word saviour as it is commonly been used today is the English equivalent of the word of Hebrew; Messiah, which denote the person in context of the promise of God to the Jews’ nation of Israel, of a coming savior who will deliver his people from oppression. Christians generally believe that this promise was fulfilled by the birth, life, ministry and the finished work of Christ on the Cross, His resurrection from the dead and accession to heaven. I have no intention to bore you with messianic theology in this piece, but this prelude is of essence to my point in this article.
The word Messiah has become an everyday usage in context of someone needed to fix a human task that is of importance to a collective group of people. In political parlance, in Nigeria, the search for one is as old as our independent state, but it took the center stage when Obasanjo in the midst of our agitation for democratic government in the face of the annulment of June 12, 1993 elections, said, MKO Abiola was not the Messiah!
This background became necessary, in view of the fate of the Yoruba nation’s agitator, Chief Sunday ADEYEMO also known as Sunday Igboho whose travails in the Republic of Benin is of global interest.
One virtue of the Messiah; that a “messiah†must possess is the need to be free of the entanglements of whatever he is sent to free the people from. In the case of Jesus Christ the Messiah, a quick background check shows a mother who was a virgin free from the bond of sins that are associated with biological procrastinations. The Messiah must be free from the core thing he was sent to deliver humanity from. Sin. We are told he that knew no sins was made a sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Finding a savior at twists and turns in our history has never been easy, somehow we have always ended up with persons with bags and baggages of properties of our oppressors with them, making it pretty easy for our “messiahs†to be snared in the traps of our oppressors. I need not remind you of the jolly good fellow MKO Abiola was to the vagabonds in kakhi and particularly of interest was his fraternity with Murtala Mohammed and later his affinity with Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who will later annul the mandate of the people given to him.
Sunday Igboho was a child of necessity. Òkè Ògún axis, where he hails from is not new to herders/farmers hostilities with the Fulani side gaining upper hands depending on who is in charge. Few years back, Obasanjo was in charge at the center and Lam Adesina was the Governor in Oyo State. Obasanjo’s Presidency was mistaken for a Fulani’s, possibly because of the role northerners played at making him the President and so they went on rampage, but the security agencies and apparatus was not activated to compromise national security as it is openly being done today, under their own. With their fingers burnt they were led in protest by General Mohammadu Buhari, who stormed the Government house, Oyo State alleging marginalization of his Fulani tribe. He will later storm out of the meeting with Lam Adesina who comforted him with his failure as a leader of the Fulani tribe for failing to make education the priority of his people. His lack of thoughts in the same direction in Lam’s evaluation was not seen in his engagement. He left angry, hoping to deal with Lam some day. What a lucky Lam! God honored him with death from the threat of one who hoped on the future to deal with him. The twist to this however is my doubt at Buhari becoming the President, had Lam been alive.
This intelligence of Fulani vendetta championed by Buhari I have no doubt, Lam must have shared with Tinubu who then, was the Governor of Lagos State. This, I believe must have been one of the things that informed his popular quote on Buhari, (the quote).
The silence of Mr President on renewed Fulani killings of people of Okè Ògún, we all should understand. But stressed beyond limits by ceaseless banditry against the people for whom a Messiah arose. Unfortunately, again the wrong one was dressed for battle with amulets, “ayeta, gbetu gbetu†all sorts of traditional empowerment, our Sunday will no longer remind us of the Lord’s day, but of the traditional gods that didn’t save our fathers from the superior fire power of the white man’s gun. How come we believe what couldn’t save us over a century ago, will now! While the course is noble, the personality championing it lacks the required nobility for the mission to be carried out.
Igboho has a past. one, we are careless about. Our confrontation requires urgency as the forest of South West has been taken over by Fulanis and their foot soldiers are ringing round us daily, inflating our social structure, hijacking minor services of hawking unhindered. There has been kidnapping and killing in the South West, some of which are traceable to Fulani culprits.
The rise of Sunday Igboho got the best of our sentiments. Emotions were invested in the mission without any investigations. The diaspora jumped on it and funding began, local and international supports were growing for a mission that was snared before its take off!
The questions we need to ask ourselves in the midst of Sunday’s “persecution†are; who is Sunday Igboho? What are the intelligence reports on his business activities before now? What is the link between the consistent move of Customs men against rice sellers in Bodija markets and the alleged involvement of Sunday Igboho in smuggling activities in the Òkè Ogun axis? Can he survive the alleged link with robbery activities if it is trumped up against him? What is the details of ownership of the new palace of Sunday Igboho?
There is a general saying that you don’t have to give the dog a bad name in order to hang it, how easy it will be for a dog who already earned a bad name and needs to be hung? There are too many questions that answers to them may leave us with no choice in the day ahead than to prostrate for Fulani oligarchy in plea for ‘Sunday Oosa’ after all.
