Is Aremu also among the prophets?

Like a random pestiferous, carking neighbour, it takes special grace to love someone with the personality and persona of Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo. But Paul the Apostle admonishes that children of God should strive to be at peace with all men, including Okikiola’s kind. You may not agree with them, but they must become an enemy, because of their ways and words.

Some of my Yoruba kith have sworn never to see anything positive in Ndigbo as a race and I said, what? What about the good men and women, pleasant boys and girls, and wonderful kids that fill the contoured places in the landlocked region and Igbo diasporans across Nigeria?  The swearers believe, without substantial empirical evidence, that vexing attitudinal gene runs in the Jews of Africa. Somehow, the mindset is prevalent and those harbouring it, are hardly shifting ground. If Igbo presidency in Aso Rock, would ever be, omo Oduduwa, may be the tallest hurdle that history-making Ibo woman or man, would need to scale. I digress.

Obasanjo revels in swashbuckling impressionism. His kind won’t say “good morning” with less than two sentences. He is given to overkill, but he isn’t a wolf-crier. He loves to hector but hardly leaves room to be paid in like currency. When critics succeed in crawling under his skin, he rages like a bull and tries to spit in the eyes like a cornered cobra, now at its deadliest. Despite being president twice, he isn’t the ideal Nigerian to be hoisted for the world, but in his sakasaka (irreverent) way, he doesn’t tolerate asakasa (nonsense).

On 17th May, 2019, he pressed the listening world to his reading of the gradual but unmistaken occupation of Southern and Middle-Belt parts of Nigeria by Fulani herders. He called it the Fulanisation and Islamisation Agenda, to the rest of the country, Western Africa and the entire continent. Southerners applauded. Northerners raged, including his close associates like former Jigawa governor and president-wannabe Sule Lamido.

Maybe because Aremu released his “prophesy” at a Synod organised by the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, his critics decided to go fully religious with their objection, and because the venue was Southern part of Oleh in Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State, the upper part of the country roiled and trolled, rejecting a deep appraisal of what he said. Well, we are where we are, with those “Northern” elders, berating him 20 months back, now accepting his prognosis, but still using what Yoruba will call, “abe ahon” (tongue-in-cheek”).

For Lamido’s kind, that berated him for becoming a religious bigot, where else, would bull-eye prophesy be more fitting than a spiritual gathering. For those who accused him of receding from being a Nigerian Patriot to an ethnic jingoist, that he was kow-towing to the North in the past, doesn’t change the fact that he is first and foremost a Yoruba man and if you like to please the theorists, a suspected Igbo-born, Yoruba-adopted. Would that change the fact that “home” for Obasanjo is the South?

Yoruba will say, tidi ba baje–if you allow something preciously yours to be ruined, the price would be for you to pay. Without doubt, Southerners have “overslept” and the strongman is already in, ravaging everywhere in the image of Fulani herders. Who goes into the bush to make a permanent home, when a better alternative is provided by civilization. Motives don’t get more sinister. Until Sunday Igboho and Rotimi Akeredolu flexed their minuscule muscles a bit, to further escalate what was already a national emergency, but refused to be seen so by suspected sympathisers of the cold-blooded criminals ravaging the South and Middle-Belt, the assumption was possibly that whatever noise was made, would eventually go the way of those made in the past. Somehow, the noisemaker-geo-political zone decided to add a bite and those snuggling with fura da nono (millet and milk gruel) suddenly discovered that man was beginning to chew at the dog, and obviously, not acceptable to them.

Fact is, the war is always for the owners of invaded homes to fight. Since South allowed the Fulani strongman to bind it and plunder its land until now, a stronger man, according to the Word of God, is required to flush the invading strongman out. Anarchy is described as “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling system” or “absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal”. We are not there yet, but we may get there, if the strongman continues the plundering and certainly, government institutions are obviously lacking in the will, to bind the rampaging strongman, though they have enough fire, to quench the criminals’ fire, if authorities are resolute on fire-for-fire.

If we take the President’s promise to Ooni Ojaja’s delegation that criminal elements should be flushed out in the South West, an already-biased federal security, escorting the accused to Ogun communities and flogging the landlords in the presence of land-seekers, can’t be trusted to handle the Operation-Whatever they plan to come up with. At its best today, Amotekun appears a disparate platform, but with a lot of potential. Until earth-scorching joint operations begin to take place, in place of the current tokenism of police-style arrests and “celebration”, nothing serious would be achieved with the so-called mass recruitment of personnel into the quasi-force.

Amotekun doesn’t need Crime Fighter’s kind of parade of suspects to be noticed as effective. There is a way the stubborn one is handled, that would make him run. I see that fire in Akeredolu’s eyes. I hope the one in his belly had not been quenched by the Villa visit. As for Seyi Makinde, being derided as kindergarten governor, his work has been cut out for him by Igboho. At least, for a while, he would pay for the obvious lack of intelligence-gathering, within his government. His tamed visage at the meeting with Buhari says it all.

Before Saul started prophesying, there was already an anointing upon him, to lead. Without doubt, Aremu is extremely favoured of God, out of millions. Anointing is definitely upon him, to “prophesy”, only that, like Saul after becoming king, he has a way of going rogue with the oil on his head. I’m deliberately leaving Asiwaju Tinubu out of the conversation, until he makes a choice.

 

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