Disecting this strange phenomenon of hundreds of teenage Northern boys, no girls among them, hiding among cattle in trailers, others in minibusses, traveling in the dead of night, trying to sneak into Yorubaland but more especially into the Southeast and South-South zones.
For those unfamiliar with Homer’s tome the Iliad, the mythological story of the ten-year siege by forces from a coalition of Greek states circa 670 B.C. against the city-state of Troy, this saying warns that you should be wary when your adversary gives you gifts in the name of peace. In other words, never let your guard down. Ancient Troy sat by the sea on the crossroads of Asia minor trade routes and was very prosperous.
The Greeks wanted to conquer Troy, but could not succeed, for the Trojans lived in a fortified city surrounded by high walls. Eventually, the Greeks called for peace and gave the Trojans a very large wooden man-made replica of a horse as a sign of peace. The Trojans let the horse which was on rollers in through their gate. Unbeknownst to them, there were several Greek fighters hiding inside an enclosure in the wooden horse. These fighters came out at night and set the whole city on fire and opened the gates to let the Greek soldiers massed outside to come in and crush Trojan resistance. Close to three millennia later, the Fulani and their Hausa-Kanuri co-hegemonists are now giving Southern Nigeria the gift of Almajirai.
Most of these youths can only speak Hausa and are functionally illiterate.
Like many, I have thought long and hard about this strange phenomenon of hundreds of teenage Northern boys, no girls among them, hiding among cattle in trailers, others in minibusses, traveling in the dead of night, trying to sneak into Yorubaland but more especially into the Southeast and South-South zones. Most of these youths can only speak Hausa and are functionally illiterate. Some of them have been apprehended and turned back but an unknown number have managed to slip into forests in the South-South and Southeast.
For what purpose, people now ask. To wait to be supplied arms and ammunition, and for a signal to strike local inhabitants? Or to wait for a suitable time to enter into the society at large and seek some menial employment and gradually blend into the local milieu, for nefarious purposes? These are questions that demand urgent answers. Answers that can help to determine the course for countermeasures.
As I have postulated at various times, our Igbo people and their leaders have over a long period of time failed to assess the full scope of looming threats, oblivious to coming dangers, and time and again exhibited almost careless disregard of the need to plan and activate at the appropriate time measures to confront and defeat what may constitute existential threats. Making unnecessary noise and ineffectual protest gets us nowhere. Your adversaries don’t believe you are their fellow countrymen and women but enemies that should be fought remorselessly, while they present to you and the world the façade of nationalism and the lie of fair treatment.
It is my considered opinion that the young men from the Muslim Northern states being smuggled into the South are for the most part not militants but innocent youths looking for a better life. They are likely different from the AK-47 toting bandits, jihadists and landgrabbers who are even now hiding in bushes in the South. These unarmed youngsters have been starving in the North for very long, their conditions have deteriorated as a result of the pandemic, and they have lost all hope. It is probable that their parents and guardians have resorted to shipping them down to the South to survive and make a living. Money may have been paid to the owners or drivers of the trailers and minibusses to do what amounts to human trafficking.
The Northern syndicates organizing this mass migration have been doing a version of this trafficking for many years, sending lorry-loads of beggars and youths to Lagos. The Lagos Government under Babatunde Fashola made no bones about shipping these people back to their states of origin. In recent months, state governments in the Southwest have received intelligence reports from some people in the Nigerian military and the Nigeria Police that waves of armed Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram terrorists and unemployed Northern youths are coming into the Southern states. The Yoruba leaders didn’t make any fuss about it, but came together and made their preparations. That’s how you get Amotekun.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, pulled the same stunt in 1965, sending over 200 armed thugs to Lagos allegedly to protect Northern politicians, just in case Yoruba rioters in the West attacked them.
This would not be the first time that the North has shipped hundreds of young men into the South clandestinely. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, pulled the same stunt in 1965, sending over 200 armed thugs to Lagos allegedly to protect Northern politicians, just in case Yoruba rioters in the West attacked them. The thugs were quartered on Bello’s orders beside the Legico Flats and at other locations where the parliamentarians lived. John Lynn, the former colonial police officer who remained as the officer in charge of the CID at Alagbon Close, soon found out and with the assistance of the Federal Guards arrested all the thugs. Shehu Shagari, MP, and Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, was thereafter charged by Balewa to go and bail out the thugs, and they were subsequently returned to the North. Former president, Shagari, recounted some of these events in his memoir, “Beckoned To Serve.”
Governors in the Southeast are afraid to come together and plan anything to protect their people and the Igbo way of life. Some Igbo leaders have even mused about finding work for the Northern youths if they are told the purpose of their mission. Wow! How smart. It appears these governors are afraid to demand that these youths are returned to the sender for fear Igbos in the North would be asked to go home, in retaliation. Well, I say it here, after all the massacres Igbos have suffered in the North over the decades, and some Igbos still want to live in the North?
Whatever happens to them at this point, it is up to them. We are not lifting a finger to protect them up there. We do not welcome this invasion by Northerners. We are starving for farmland in the Southeast and South-South, and we are not looking for farmhands.
Muslims pay their allegiance to the Sharia not to the nation, and definitely it is in their Koran to dominate Christians, which is why they embark on jihads.
The message we need to send to the Northern Muslims is that we in the Southeast and South-South are strictly Christian. We do not hate Muslims, after all they are human beings just like ourselves, and we belong to the same country. However, we don’t want hordes of illiterate and unemployed Muslim youths hiding for God knows what in our forests or even coming into our towns. Muslims pay their allegiance to the Sharia not to the nation, and definitely it is in their Koran to dominate Christians, which is why they embark on jihads.
It is foolhardy to trust Muslims because you don’t know which of them would become radicalized and become a fundamentalist and a terrorist. Before you know it these young men from the North would settle in with or without a job and demand to build mosques, where inevitably they will become radicalized if they have not been radicalized already. And all of a sudden we would have another Boko Haram in our villages and towns.
There are no Christians in Nigeria who have ever become fundamentalists and terrorists in the North or anywhere else. We had Maitatsine and his extremist Muslim group terrorize the North in the past, and we currently have Boko Haram. We completely reject anything that can spread Islamic fundamentalism or terrorism in this part of the country. These Northern youths must be sent back to their home states forthwith, and the armed Fulani bandits and jihadists must be apprehended and neutralized.
♦ Hector-Roosevelt Ukegbu, an Economist, Financial Consultant and Business Analyst, is based in the United States.
