Ihenacho’s Home Truths



...one should suspect that the whole exercise was perhaps part of the much-publicized grand outreach of the Arewa group to rein in their former run-away political slaves, namely, the Middle Belt and the East.
Saturday, March 9, 2002

David Asonye Ihenacho
EMAIL  |  ABOUT COLUMNIST

NIGERIAWORLD COLUMNIST
ANNOUNCE THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS
EAST-NORTH PEACE FORUM:
HERE THEY GO AGAIN!


he stage was one of those political campaign rituals that I anxiously look forward to every four years in the United States. It is called presidential debate. It is usually the Ground Zero of political theater. The highly programmed political actors angling to occupy the most powerful political office in the world display their adroitness in reproducing memorized answers and/or parrying subtle and implicating questions. But the ironic comedy of such an exercise normally comes from the fact that it rarely serves its intended purpose, namely, as a barometer to determine in advance the direction of the wind of the November elections. More often than not the winner of such a debate in points of arguments comes out the loser of the elections by margins of popularity. The reason for this appears at times obvious. Many voters seem to identify more with the perceived underdog than the overbearing bully-dog. They tend to prefer a candidate with a regular-guy, one-of-us type of image to a professorial policy wonk parading on his fingertips all the subtle details of the complex polity.

The American presidential debate sometimes pitches a notorious wonk against a popular "whimp." And there lies another aspect of its entertainment value. As the policy wonk, normally the presidential incumbent, reels out his detailed analyses of why things are the way they are and why he is the person most imbued with the prerequisite knowledge and skill to correct them or stay the course as the case may, the popular "whimp" most often the challenger, struggles to find his voice to counter such a barrage of details. To achieve this, he normally relies on classic one-liners that voters usually take home the night of the debate. No! I am not talking about the 2000 presidential debate between the then vice president, Albert Gore Jr. and the republican governor of Texas George Walker Bush who later became president. I am in no way referring to "fuzzy math," "lock box" and all that. Although those debates had their ample share of "wonky-whimpiness," they hardly yielded memorable one-liners. In fact one would have to travel memory lane some twenty years back to locate the situation in life of the presidential debate I have in mind.

It was the US election season of 1980. The army-captain veteran turned talk-radio host, Hollywood-actor and popular republican governor of California, Ronald Reagan, had just been elected the republican nominee for the presidential election of November. He was to face the democratic incumbent, President James Earl Carter Jr., a.k.a, Jimmy Carter, former Navy Seal officer turned popular governor of Georgia, who had become president four years earlier at the expense of the first and only un-elected president of the United States, Gerald Ford. For nearly a year before the debate Carter had been having his hands full with the choking Iran hostage crisis and its tragic aftermath as well as the hobbled American economy. But notwithstanding all that, he had a lot going for him. He was popularly perceived as a fair-minded good man, a master of details and a dignified and convincing personality.

With the emergence of Reagan, it meant that the presidential debate in the Fall of 1980 would pitch a policy wonk and the master of congeniality, Jimmy Carter against the Hollywood eloquent and photogenic Ronald Reagan many liberals thought belonged more to conservative talk-radio "whimpiness." And it was generally believed that the war-weary Jimmy Carter would blow the Hollywood actor-politician off the stage with his mastery of contemporary details ranging from the Iran hostage tragedy to the economic crisis in energy and inflation. In fact Carter seemed to have set for himself the task of doing just that. But the shrewd Reagan had his game plan in place. He immediately activated his Hollywood-actor brain. So while Carter painstakingly reeled out his unassailable factual details to impress his audience and the voters, Reagan would answer him with his classic one-liner, "there you go again!" Only after he had announced this rather mocking refrain would Reagan provide what he thought were the answers to Carter's fact-laden questions. And viewers that night treasured those simple statements of Reagan among the many other issues of the debate and rewarded him that November with a windfall of electoral votes.

Though the contexts couldn't be any more different, I am borrowing Reagan's debate refrain as a response to the simmering debate engendered by the current peace forum being organized at Umuahia, Abia State, by the so-called leaders of the East and North. I adverted to using this refrain since I lacked the foggiest idea of the main reason why such an effort became necessary at this last hour of Nigeria's political season. But since the so-called Eastern leaders acquiesced to staging this forum on the eve of 2003 presidential election one cannot help but recall the numerous similar forums in the past where the East was cleverly lured into political alliances by the politically gifted core North that hardly benefited them in the long run. So to the leaders of the Umuahia Peace Forum, I say, "There you go again!" In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, what I am asking is, are our Eastern leaders sincerely embarking on this route with all other options considered? Are they going to surrender themselves again to the Northern manipulation simply because they need a presidential power that desperately? Why embrace political expediency rather than evolve a strategy that will enable them compete on an equal footing with the rest of the country? Why not try a brand new alliance with the other parts of the country rather than assume your traditional role as the political pawn of the Hausa-Fulani of the core North?

According to newspaper reports, the two day rally (March 4-6) tagged "Peace Forum" is "to probe into all sectors of our national life and create an enabling environment that would draw a final curtain on the past and all those unfortunate events which have almost severed the bond between the Eastern and Northern Peoples of Nigeria" (Guardian-online, March 4, 2002). Looking at the pedigrees of those behind the forum, one can hardly be overoptimistic about the possible positive outcome of the initiative for both the organizers and their peoples. The potential for such a forum to midwife a brand new season of peaceful relationship in the polity is quite great. The personalities involved are those imbued with enormous talents and power to positively influence the direction of the Nigerian nation. With prime movers such as Ambassador Shehu Malami as Chairman and the speaker of second republic House of Representatives, Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke as secretary and a prominent Igbo son, Chief Rochas Okorocha as convener, the forum has sent out a clear signal that it must be taken seriously in the emerging political landscape of Nigeria. This seems to be reinforced by the cream of personalities from the two regions participating in the rally.

According to press reports, the forum is blessed with the endorsements of such eminent Nigerians as Alhaji Mohammed Maccido, the Sultan of Sokoto, Most Rev. Sunday Mbang, the Methodist Primate of Nigeria and President of the very influential Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Eze Ukandu, the Chairman of Ohaneze Ndi Igbo, Senate President Pius Anyim, Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu, House of Representative Speaker Umar Ghali Na'Abba, Deputy Speaker Chibudom Nwuche, Governors Joshua Dariye, Abdullahi Adamu, Ahmed Adamu Mu'azu, Orji Uzo Kalu, Rabiu Musa Kwakanso, Sam Egwu, George Akume. The forum also boasts of ex-leaders of Nigeria like Former President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Former Vice President Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Former Heads of State, Yakubu Gowon and Ibrahim Babangida, Former Head of State of the defunct Biafran Republic Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, Former Governor Dr. Sam Mbakwe, the secretary of Ohaneze Ndi-Igbo, Prof Ben Nwabueze, prominent traditional rulers, Alhaji Ado Bayero, the influential emir of Kano and Dr. Fom Bot, the Gbom Gwom of Jos. As reported in the Nigerian press, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mohammed Maccido would chair the forum while Bishop Sunday Mbang of CAN would give the keynote address. The main speakers of the forum who were billed to speak on "the need for peace between the peoples of the East and the North and the rest of the country included Gowon, Ojukwu, Shagari, Babangida, Anyim, Na'Abba, Kalu, Ekwueme, among many others." And the national organizing committee members of the forum included Ambassador Shehu Malami, Alhaji Mustapha Agwai, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, Chiefs Clement Ebri, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Senator John Wash Pam, Chief Rufus Ada George, Dr. Ibrahim Tahir and Chief Sunny Odogwu. Others included Chief Nnia Nwodo, Inuwa Abdulkadir, Alhaji M.D Galadima, Chief Joseph Jella, Rev. Sunday Onuoha, Dr. D.B. Zang, Chief Uche Njoku and Mr. Patrick Chidolue (cf. Guardian-online, March 4).

The forum was graced with the cream of the movers and shakers of the two zones and therefore deserves a very serious attention. First, what was presented to the press and the public was that the gathering was a peace forum. That is to say the two regions had found the need to make peace after a season of war and/or bitterness and feuding. On face value one would think that the two peoples in question had been locked in an Israeli-Palestinian kind of warfare for quite a long time and had only recently realized the need to stage a peace forum so as to calm the frayed nerves of the two regions. In other words, that forum presupposed that there had been a lost love situation between the two zones. In fact that much was stated in what was reported as part of the mission statement of the forum: "To draw a final curtain on the past and all those unfortunate events which have almost severed the bond between the Eastern and Northern peoples of Nigeria." The whole forum appeared like a giant project embarked upon by those patriotic leaders of Nigeria.

A lot of issues could be made on every point raised in the mission statement of the peace forum. For instance, what efforts will be embarked upon to draw the final curtain of the unfortunate historical events between the two peoples, or, is the whole effort going to end up with the empty rituals of the peace forum? What actually constitutes the past of the two peoples? Does the past begin from a pre- or post-amalgamation of 1914? Or does it include only a pre- or post-independence of 1960, or a pre- or post-civil war of 1967-70? And what are those unfortunate events in that past? Do they include the numerous pre-independence cases of massacres of the East in the North, the destruction and confiscation of their property, the horrendous pogrom that ushered the civil war, the civil war and all its unspeakable repercussions, the total exclusion and marginalization of the East ever since as a result of the lost war? Can this past be wished away with empty rituals of peace? Or did this peace forum signal the beginning of the talk for some kind of reparation for the people whose past and present were forever ruined by the numerous tragic events in the North? Can we consider those tragic events that traumatized the Easterners as actually belonging to the past? Is the past not part of the present of the two peoples, or is the past remarkably different from the present of the two regions? And lastly, what type of bonds existed between the two peoples that were nearly severed by the so-called unfortunate events of the past? Was that a cultural, historical, political or a colonial bond? How strong was such a bond before it was nearly severed by the unfortunate historical events in the past of the two regions? There are quite a lot of issues that we could take up on this statement. But it might be pointless to go after them in details. Suffice it to say that the forum's statement of mission assumes as facts issues that are very problematic in the history of the North-East relationship in the Nigerian polity.

But what strangely sticks out in the whole question of the peace forum in Umuahia is, why now? Why has it become very urgent now to have this forum between the two peoples that are not currently at war with each other? What platform or bridge is being contemplated between the two peoples and for what purpose? And why is the West not included in the peace forum? The last time I checked the immediate tragic crisis in Nigeria pitched the Yorubas of the West against the Northerners in Lagos. It was not between the North and the East nor the West and the East. If there was a sector where there had been a relative peace in Nigeria in the past few months, it must be between the East and the North. And if there were peoples that urgently needed a peace forum of such a magnitude it would have to be the North and the West. Why do the organizers find it much more urgent to hold a peace forum between the North and the East ahead of the urgently needed one between the West and the North. Why is nobody organizing a peace forum that will include the whole peoples of Nigeria?

Second why are the leaders from these two zones currently serving in the present administration not included in this forum? With the exception of the senate president, Pius Anyim, his deputy Mantu, the House Speaker and his deputy Na'Abba and Nwuche respectively, all from the second tier of the present administration, the legislature, which is perennially at war with the Obasanjo administration, nobody was recognized as representing in the peace forum the main pilots of the present administration, namely, the executive. If what the forum had been after was to build a culture of peaceful co-existence between the peoples of the North and the East, how would they hope to succeed without the cooperation of the present government in power? Why would they believe that they had to go outside the framework of the present government to achieve an enforceable or a realizable peace between the two peoples? Was the forum trying to insinuate that the reason why the East and the North had not been at peace was because of the present government in power? What all these seem to point is that there was more to the peace forum in Umuahia than one would every know. The name peace forum had been tagged in there to mask the real nature and intention of the gathering of the shakers and movers of Nigerians politics at Umuahia.

I do not think it requires much divining or any crystal ball to unearth the real reason for the gathering at Umuahia. It was a political gathering rather than a peace forum. In fact one should suspect that the whole exercise was perhaps part of the much-publicized grand outreach of the Arewa group to rein in their former run-away political slaves, namely, the Middle Belt and the East. The tag "Peace Forum" was just a misnomer, a subterfuge to confuse the unwary. The whole event was a rally signaling the launching of a new political body or a re-engineering of old political machines of the NPC-NCNC of the 60's, the NPN of the 70' and early 80's and the NRC of the 90's. The signs were clear. Most of the political heavy weights of the current political dispensation were there. It should have been crystal clear to any Nigerian with any modicum of experience on the socio-political history of the nation that such people could not have gathered in Umuahia for an empty ritual of praying and wishing peace for the two peoples that have hardly engaged in any open warfare for the past thirty-two years. They had not gathered at Umuahia, the war-time capital of Biafra to celebrate a ceasefire as they had announced, they were there to redraw the maps of political alliances in Nigeria. The people that gathered for the so-called Umuahia peace forum hardly understand any other language in Nigeria than that of partisan politics. They came specifically to lend their weight to the new political movement that was being delivered from the womb of the Northern political machinery. The likes of Sultan of Sokoto, Ado Bayero, Babangida and the others could never have traveled all the way down to Umuahia if there were no political benefits to reap on behalf of the North in the whole exercise. In fact the organizers were signaling by that "peace forum" the beginning of a new season of political realignments in Nigeria.

But it is wonderful that the North did come back again to seek the hands of its long abandoned traditional bride, the East. After its botched brief marriage with the only Yoruba man it thought it could manage as a bride, the North decided to reach out and reconcile with its estranged wife, the East. Isn't that amazing? The ingenious Hausa-Fulani political machinery seems to have rediscovered its ace of capturing the Nigerian power once again. And it is now seeking a new alliance with the East. It has successfully done that many times since Nigeria's independence with stunning successes. Such a strategy has always worked for the North. No wonder it has continued to rehash and to reuse it. As the Americans say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The method of political alliances with the East has always worked for the North, so it cannot be expected to replace it. To subdue the volatile West the North has always reached out for the hand of its bride. In its unassailable political wisdom, it knows that with the bridegroom and the bride united the West would be reduced to a whining grumbler that could be ignored or at worst tamed.

The so-called peace forum seems like a loud gasp in the protracted grumble the core North has been having against the Obasanjo administration. The leaders of the North, which have been claiming to have single handedly installed Obasanjo as Nigeria's president have been aghast with his style of administration. They have not hidden their feelings of betrayal with the Obasanjo administration and its "refusal" to "play ball" with them. And for that reason they have invented this peace forum to fortify their resolve to de-install him. With the peace forum in Umuahia they have embarked on putting in place a very formidable alliance that will give the Obasanjo man an un-winnable fight come 2003. The whole ploy seems to revolve around using all democratic means of the overwhelming numbers of the North and the East to extract power from the clenched fists of the Obasanjo man and hand it back to where it naturally belongs in Nigeria, namely, the Hausa-Fulani core North.

Moreover the leaders of the core North have come to the full realization that Obasanjo's plan of succession, should he decide to retire at a certain time in the future, does not perhaps include them. If Obasanjo's line of succession were to be allowed to succeed, they think, the current leadership of the North will be out of jobs for the rest of their years in the world. It will be only their great grand children who might have the prayer of ever tasting Nigeria's political leadership again. Obasanjo in their view appears to have plotted his succession graph to go through Atiku in Adamawa, and then to the rest of the Middle Belt and perhaps back to the South-South and then to the South East in the furthest future. The core North, which has been holding power for quite a long time, is perhaps being projected in the putative chart of Obasanjo to be able to latch back onto power sometime in the remotest future when perhaps the South East has been allowed a brief taste of it. The prospect of this becoming a reality is sending shock waves down the marrows of the Northern Leadership. And the situation of the South East does not seem any less bleak. Its place in the Obasanjo's succession flow chart is making its citizenry uncomfortably feverish. This appears to be the political calculation that galvanized the forum at Umuahia. The Abia peace forum appears to have been a convention of two desperate regions, which might out of sheer desperation embark on a fundamentalist Islamic form of marriage that enthrones the bridegroom while enslaving the bride.

What happened at Umuahia this past week appeared to have been the beginning of another marriage of convenience by two desperate groups of politicians. The North and East have scanned the political landscape and found that the only way to avoid political irrelevancy in Nigeria would be to forge a strong alliance to thwart what they had perceived as Obasanjo's dangerous political schemes. In their desperation they are ready to bury the hatchets so as to be able to negotiate their political futures in Nigeria from positions of strength. Unfortunately the naturally naïve Eastern politicians tend to see this as the only motives for their rally at Umuahia. But the master politicians of the Sokoto caliphate have a lot more tricks up their sleeves. They seem to have fronted two scenarios in that peace forum all geared towards recapturing the plum Nigerian political power, which has been eluding them for the past three years of democracy. First, the North knows that the East, which is currently feeling shut out of political relevance in the present dispensation, is desperate to latch onto any fringe power in Nigeria. It believes that the East would rather have something like the vice president in 2003 than not have anything at all. So, the North will as it has done most faithfully in the history of Nigeria be ready to cede to its bride the position of anonymous second fiddle. When this happens the core North believes it will just produce the president immediately in 2003 with an Easterner as the vice president. The Northerners who are banking on this scenario are already lining up for the presidency. And they are making open overtures to the East that they will be willing to give them their traditional bridal position in Nigeria. Included in this group is the loquacious Abubakar Rimi whose campaign for the presidency hinges around discrediting the incumbent president. He appears not to have any viable programs, no new initiatives and no reasonable alliances. But he has his acerbic tongue and is using it to some considerable effect. He has also not hidden his plan to let an Easterner be his vice. Outrageously some Easterners are jumping for his offer. Another Northerner in the line is Muhammadu Buhari who was only recently "forced into accepting to go into the race by some concerned politicians" on the platform of All Peoples Party. And the first thing he did according to press reports was to indicate to his loyalists that, "His running mate will (be) coming from the Eastern part of the country" (cf. The Triumph, March 4). The wild card, if not the hidden ace in the whole Northern plan is Babangida. He in fact may be the brain or the reason for which the gathering was put together at Umuahia in the first place. He may have used that forum to signal to the East of his willingness to select his vice president from the zone should he decide to run.

But should the East decide to settle for their traditional second fiddle role again, how are they to be sure that this group of individuals that disappointed them many times in the past will not do so again? It was Rimi who allegedly co-authored the demise of Ekwueme's PDP nomination at Jos. Muhammadu Buhari has hardly at anytime been a friend of the East. He is too preoccupied with the fanatical aspect of his religion to be able to respect any obligation owed to his potential infidel deputy. Moreover he was famous for dealing drastically with Easterners when he was a power broker of the first Obasanjo era. His recent performance with the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) is a clear testimony that he lacks any iota of goodwill towards the whole East. Babangida was the guy who embarrassed Ebitu Ukaiwe out of his number-two position during his reign as a military dictator. Given similar chances, he will do it a million times again. So a political contraption where the East plays a second fiddle position to the core North will never favor the region in any way. Rather it will further marginalize its people and push the gap between them and the West even further.

However there was a group of Northerners that gathered at the forum who were convinced that the East would never accept to play a second fiddle role to the North in the immediate future. So the challenge for that group was to ingeniously craft a scenario that would grant momentary relief to the East and its quest for the presidency as well as pave the way for the North to grab back power in the nearest possible future. The calculation of this group may be what can be called tokenism. They certainly would be willing to offer the East a brief period of the presidency which should end either with the expiration of a first term of office or a military coup or assassination to pave the way for the immediate assumption of the presidency by the Northern deputy to the Eastern president.

As one can see the political calculation of the present North is ingenious. By holding their political rally at Umuahia to jumpstart their so-called re-alignment with the East they have created some kind of a political labyrinth for Eastern politicians. If they enter it, the core North will certainly produce their joker and win as they have always done. That is why it is imperative for the East to weigh every political move they make because though the peace forum was professing to have discounted the past, the past of the North must decide the next election if Nigeria would ever survive. The past of the Northern elite must be the main issue of the 2003 election. That is, their past with regard to how they have managed the nation in the past thirty of the forty-year history of Nigeria, their past in view of the implementation of the Sharia law and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in Nigeria, their past with regard to the restructuring of the nation, their past with regard to resource control, their past with regard to social upheaval, religious conflicts, reckless killing of innocent citizens of Nigeria, etc. All these must provide the critical basis on which to consider going into any tricky alliance with the core North. One should hope that what happened at Umuahia this past week was the beginning of the game of poker in which representatives of the two regions have their cards tucked away at their backs waiting for the other to make the first moves.

Finally it is absolutely clear that no clear winner can ever emerge in any Nigerian elections without grand alignments. But the question is, what type of alignment best serves the people of the East considering their present marginalized status in Nigeria, the preciousness of their religion, the expressive flamboyance of their culture, and their adventurous lifestyles? The East is predominantly made up of open-minded Christians who are scared of being lumped into a fundamentalist Islamic nation with all its instability, lack of civility, abuses and abbreviated freedom. Easterners in general value fundamental human rights as espoused in the United Nations Charter. They love political republicanism, free enterprise, adventure, philosophy and technology, open society, rights of women and children, and a flamboyant culture. Easterners are not enemies of western civilization, rather they want to be a part of it and even make remarkable contributions to it. The critical question is which alliance will guarantee these basic rights to the Easterners? Is it an alliance with a conservative core North that is furiously transforming into Islamic fundamentalism or an alliance with a liberal West and Middle Belt that may be open to negotiation and sharing of power? There are two clear options for the East; to go with the core North with the Middle Belt in toe or to go with the West with the hope that the Middle Belt will come along? While alliances with the North have always worked to some degree albeit with only the North benefiting eventually, alliances with the West have hardly been explored. Is it not time the core Easterners started to explore a different kind of alliance with the West, which shares a lot in common them? Despite the fact that Obasanjo's succession flow chart presents a major obstacle to the Easterners, there is absolutely no evidence that Obasanjo as a person speaks for the entire West. If anything he is a politically adopted son of theirs. Obasanjo's chart is only good as long as he is in office. He has no power to elevate it to the status of a canon that must be valid at all times. A good alliance between the two blocs can always overrule such a chart and allow each bloc to occupy the presidency at different time schedules other than those prescribed in the Obasanjo's chart. We believe that the core East can have a reasonable and responsible alliance with the core West that will guarantee her a responsible place in mainstream Nigerian politics. The need to explore such an alliance with the West instead of surrendering again to become the bride of the rapidly deteriorating North is made imperative on two grounds. First, the West and the East share a lot in common unlike the core North with whom the East shares little or nothing concerning the future of Nigeria. The East and the West share a common vision on the need to restructure Nigeria, the need to keep Nigeria secular and independent of religious meddling, the need to increase local control of natural resources, the need to open up the politics of the country to every segment of the Nigerian society, the need to open up the Nigerian society to western civilization, the need to sustain democracy in Nigeria, the need to guarantee maximum freedom to every citizen of the country be they male, female or children, secular or religious, etc. In every one of these instances the North has a different viewpoint.

Second, if the tragic experiences of the East under the North's thirty-year old political domination of Nigeria would be forgotten as the political forum at Umuahia had pleaded, the introduction of Sharia in Nigeria by the radical elements of the region has changed everything. Post-Sharia political landscape of Nigeria is completely different from the Nigeria in which the Eastern grandmaster of alliance-making, Nnamdi Azikiwe, operated. The present-day North is no longer the North of Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa. Those were sensible Muslims of pre-Iranian revolution origin. They are long dead. A new brand of Islam has arisen in the North coupled with a different kind of Muslims. The new group of the fanatical Muslims demands the Islamic transformation of all of Nigeria or nothing. This development must be taken into consideration in any form of a political alliance being contemplated by the East. For this development any future alliance between the Christian East and the fundamentalist Islamic North must be stringently scrutinized. Those who are leading our people into such alliances must publicly declare their motives. This is because the North is peopled not by the former Muslims we knew and agreed to share a nation with at independence but by a different kind of Muslims whose inspiration and motivation originate from Iran and Afghanistan. This is not the kind of Muslims any sensible Easterner would want to go into any political alliance with. We would rather resign to the succession flow chart of Obasanjo than abandon the part of Nigeria that belongs to us to the hands of those fanatical Muslims who will ride the so-called alliance into power only to jettison it and transform the country into a fundamentalist Islamic state where innocent blood will flow forever after. Let the leaders of the East beware! Your political salvation will not come from the North. Look towards the West and the Middle Belt for alliance that will grant you the needed security and preserve all that you hold dear. Fight for a restructured Nigeria where each region will take turns in leading the country. Be on the side of justice for all Nigerians irrespective of ethnicity, religion and class. And finally, fight for one single nation that is free, just and open until the quest for the Sharia Law in the North completes its destruction of the Nigerian nation.