WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-01-01 Time: 10:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Adamu Adamu
In what was clearly an insult to the sacredness of Friday and the holiness of Christmas Yuletide, agents provocateurs exploded a string of bombs in Jos killing and maiming several on Christmas eve.
Without wasting time, His Excellency Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State accused the opposition of masterminding the act. If His Excellency had any evidence, he didn’t share it with the public. The opposition fired back, accusing Jang of fomenting it; and if it had evidence, what its spokesman shared with public was only circumstantial. Then, a hitherto unknown Islamic group- -Jama’atu Ahl al-Sunnati li al-Da’awati wa al-Jihad- -claimed responsibility for the blasts in what is widely believed to be a diversionary tactic. The claim was carried on a hurriedly designed website.
And while the nation mourned the dead, it came as morbid relief to everyone that this was an act that had been universally condemned. Even though it would elicit reprisal killings, the crisis failed to unleash the Armageddon its planners must have hoped for and which the nation feared. Instead, everyone was thinking of the same thing; most people suspected political motives, and despite the claim by an Islamic group, few gave any credence to that line of thinking. It was as if the Jos bombs had bombed out the truth fro everyone to see.
Simply put, the genesis of the crises in Jos is now generally seen a failure in leadership which then goes on to create an almost irreparable breakdown in relationships which then goes on to ensure an even greater failure in leadership- -and the interminable circle goes on. But take away the effect of divisive leadership and put back respect, which is most often missing, and suddenly all the people on the Plateau become human. Talks of indigene and settler and the Christian-Muslim dichotomy had been placed on the back burner. It suddenly became clear to all that an unprovoked, gratuitously violent person is a disgrace to his religion, whatever it is; for, no religion will ever support punishing an innocent person or countenance the punishment of even the guilty by one not entitled to do so.
The nation was on its way to a healing of sorts even before the bomb blasts; and if the blasts had scored any point, it was to temporarily delay the healing process. And while there were several interfaith dialogue groups operating in the country, it would appear that they had not been effective enough to check the activities of those pushing adherents of our two religions towards violence and war. Besides helping o strike friendships between pastors and imams, these groups have not achieved much. Perhaps what they need to do is create an Interfaith Interface Forum to share experiences and put agreements into practice.
And while the ‘lumpen proletariat’ may be at the receiving end of all these crises, matters should really be ept in perspective. The contentious issues are mostly elitist concerns for which, though the people may die, they really don’t care about some of the stereotyping going on. Just like the woman I met around Rayfield the other day.
Her face is personable and handsome in quite an unforgettable way; her deportment was pleasing, friendly, helpful and, for me, intriguingly rueful and pitiable in a painful way. We were standing by the roadside and she was sitting at overhearing distance from the road. We had stopped to ask someone the way. But even before the man asked could answer, the woman sprung to her feet and moved oyoyo-ly towards us, as if she had recognized one of us. She greeted us in flawless Hausa even though she is Berom and I expected she would speak in English- -and she gave us such direction as would make us reach destination without having to ask again. Form the dress we wore and the Hausa that we spoke, she must have concluded that we, decked as we were in babban riga, jampa and cap, were Hausa, which in fact we were not; because we are Fulani, though to outsiders to the two groups, the difference was that between six and half dozen. We smiled our thanks to her and made to go.
‘Ku dawo lafiya,’ she said, waving as she made her way back to her petty-trading post: she is a mai-tebur selling small wares and things. And we went our way.
It was the noon of December 11, 2010 and we were in Rayfield trying to find our way to Landfill, where an event was soon to be underway; and it was an event from which I could not afford to be absent for whatever reason. I had excused myself from two weddings in my hometown and two others in Kano and Bauchi to be at Rayfield. This was because Lawrence P. Ngbale, alias Man-Plus, would be giving his daughter, Princess Hubochi Hillary, out in marriage to Gyang Bulus Dareng, at the same time and place that Gyang’s true lookalike double- -his incredibly identical twin brother and fellow medical doctor, Pam- -would take Eileen.
Lawrence is huge, just as a man-plus should be, muscular, alert, athletic- -an all-rounder at all sports- -and extremely strong. They said if you put your finger in his mouth, like a toothless bull sheep, he would all go stiff lower lip. He could never bite you. Yet, a calculated and well-delivered blow by him could take one off this planet; but this was a blow that would never come, because this guy is just always peace, smiles and the epitome of respect for people, their feelings, their values and even their idiosyncrasies. And people repaid him; for, they came from all corners of this country to do him proud on his daughter’s grand day. For me, it was to be the most beautiful, most joyous, most organized and most well-attended Christian wedding I had ever attended. Happiness and gaiety were to permeate the entire atmosphere and occasion, from the service to the reception.
But I wasn’t thinking of that; as we made our way to Landfill, I was only thinking of that handsome woman. I told my colleagues that nobody could convince me that these people hated Hausa-Fulani per se in particular or Muslims in general. If there was hatred in all this, it must have been hatred for a particular attitude or that for a stereotype created by contemporary history and encouraged by a visionless leadership at all levels on both sides.
The whole nation is today bound up in knots tied by a country-wide network of social corruption that saw to it that everyone ultimately became his brother’s wrecker, aided by powerful forces within and outside the country that saw profit in Nigeria’s breakup. Therefore crises of this kind would continue and perhaps only get worse so long as security at airports and ports remained lax and borders remained porous; so long as preachers were ignorant and intolerant; so long as politicians and political leaders were corrupt and opportunistic and ready to trade lives [other people’s] for votes; so long as the nation’s youths remained restive, impressionable and violent-prone, all in a situation in which the nation’s security apparatus was often partisan and collusive. And perhaps we could never really be free of this type of violence until we are free of corruption.
Many things are needed and must be done with dispatch. To stem the tide of arms importation into the country, our borders must be tightened and internal surveillance stepped up. The nation must devise a way for holding the religious Establishments responsible for the ignorance, arrogance and intolerance of their respective preachers; and rehabilitating wayward youths and getting the trainable back to school or useful, gainful employment. And the nation must learn to punish; and, with respect to crises of this nature, it must make participation in, aiding and abetting violence in the name of religion punishable by death. And the penalty must be enforced on every culprit caught: there is no other way to bring an end to crisis.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 31 December 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201012310664.html?viewall=1