Opinion
Persecution: How The North Abandon Its People
Na’Allah Muhammad Zagga
Don’t blame southerners for defending the interest of their own people. They always rally around perceived victims of oppression or injustice. They circle the wagons in the defense of the rule of law. In our own case, we are indifferent to the plight of our own people who are victims of human rights abuses. We also defend those abuses because the violators are our own. We also defend the people in government and condemn the victims. We were indifferent to SARS abuses and not because we were not victims of those human rights abuses. The only reason for our apathy is that our own is in power.
Abubakar Idris(a.k.a. Dadiyata) disappeared mysteriously in August 2019 without a trace. He has become a statistic. Nobody is talking about his fate; we regard his disappearance as an act of God. How can a citizen just disappear and there was no effort from the authorities to trace him or unravel the mystery? We take pleasure in defending oppression because we are not victims.
The famous author of the “Undesirable Elements” the late Mohammed Sule was a victim of oppression at the hands of the Abacha government. When former President Obasanjo established the Oputa panel, some “concerned” northerners approached him to dissuade him from writing a petition to the panel against Abacha’s chief security officer Major Hamza Al-Mustapha. They told Sule that the panel was created by Obasanjo to humiliate northern leaders. Just imagine how someone could discourage a victim from seeking justice because the oppressor was a northerner.
Muhammad Adamu
My friend and columnist Mohammed Adamu was also a victim of Mustapha’s excesses. Adamu was the villa correspondent of the defunct National Concord, one of Abiola’s publications. The villa didn’t like his unflattering stories; he was just picked up and detained for one year without being charged to court. He regained his freedom by sheer divine intervention following Abacha’s sudden death on June 8, 1998.
Muhammad Sule
Adamu’s ordeal was unspeakable; it was clear the motive for his detention was meant to humiliate him and torture him mentally, and reduce him to a psychological basket case in order to break his spirits. Adamu’s clothe was fraying rapidly on account of constant sitting and sleeping on a bare floor. His only clothing in the detention cell was tearing so badly that it exposed his buttocks; he begged his oppressors to let him replace his clothing because it was unfit for prayers.
Jaafar Jaafar
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, his appeal for new clothe only hardened the hearts of his oppressors. They were using Chinese-made handcuffs on his wrists. The handcuffs were so cruelly designed that every move he made got them tighter. Mohammed Adamu would have died in detention; what kept him alive was his spiritual strength and faith in God. The emergence of General Abdulsalam Abubakar as new Head of State after Abacha’s sudden death had saved him by the bell.
Both Mohammed Adamu and Mohammed Sule were victims of oppression at the hands of fellow northerners. It took Mr. Abdul Oroh, a southerner, and civil rights activist, to fight for Mohammed Sule at the Oputa panel. It’s high time northerners were united behind victims of human rights violations, even if the abusers happen to be northerners. We have to form a critical mass in the defense of the victims of those violations. If you are indifferent today, how are you sure that you won’t be a victim tomorrow? Look at what has happened to Jaafar Jaafar? Was he not hounded out of the country for exposing corruption? So, don’t blame the southwest and southeast leaders for defending the human rights of their own people. If you are reluctant or lack the will to fight for your own rights, you shouldn’t blame others for their courage to defend the rights of their own people.