We have barked too long. It is time to bite -By J. Ezike

The Nigerian DSS has continued to reveal itself as bush dogs away with the fairies, stark mad and with a most uncommon and shocking effrontery that beguiles them to the bush hunter whose jungle power saddles on his mean shoulder as a double-eyed metal tube from which the hails of death are propelled with a weight of explosion.

The funny thing about a bush dog is that it naturally re-echoes the bullet bang of the bush hunter who assumes the role of the master and guides its trained paws on the track to grave hustle. The bush dog knows that it must bark when the gun weeps in order to exaggerate and magnify the terror on the intended prey. But the prey in the picture is unaware that it has the unspoken options of either responding with bewildered anxiety, irrational fear, confused timidity or pride itself with a jungle madness that will rise above every presumption of feebleness, every hint of cowardice.

One does not have to be a genius to know that Nigeria is a jungle. And in every jungle there are always three prominent characters: the prey, the predator and the hunter. And it makes a lot of jungle sense to always avoid being the prey. And it takes a conscious, deliberate effort to match the temperament of the other two tyrannical characters.

In the jungle, it is pertinent to remember that what precedes death is the inspiration of fear and the gutless breath that palls at the slightest hint of intimidation. This is not science. It is simply plain psychology. And I have always said that in that abominable Jungle called Nigeria, I am not a prey. Let’s just say I am bordering somewhere between the predator and the hunter. In order words, we attack when we are threatened and we bite back when we are bitten and not the opposite.

The Fulani-led slavocratic government has left its fang clasped on the neck of the South and the Middle Belt. And its forceful gnaw is visible everywhere, in every defacement of civilian rights, in every defenseless, Nigerian voice that criticizes the laws of the jungle, in every so-called herder and farmer conflict, in every catastrophic constitution and statutory of mandate.

It is absolutely clear that the Nigerian DSS – the bush dog of the bush hunter – will bite and bark terror in the hearts of the entrapped, as long as the entrapped are timid enough not to attack the master. The entrapped in this context are apparently the preys who lack an awareness of the fact that without the bush hunter, the bush dog is simply a noisy echo. The bush dog becomes an “echo” because its predatory bearing lies in the agonizing tyranny of the bush hunter who happens to be the master. This is not something abstract. It is as concrete as reality.

One of my media colleagues, whom I’d rather grant anonymity, had said: “The Buhari I know will never release Sowore…He will remain in detention till 2023.” In simple English, the “abducted journalist” in question, had been predicted to rot into nonexistence, to perish from the scourge of merciless judgments and hegemonic principles. My media colleague had also insinuated that the Man in Aso Rock is far-flung from what had been “criminally installed” as President on the 29^th of May 2015, giving credence to the hard truth about the myth of a living Nigerian President. But let me begin by saying that Sowore did poorly in “defining” what he actually meant when he shouted for “revolution” from the comfort of his living room, or from an air-conditioned office, or from wherever he was at the time his guts grew heavily on him.

The idea of “revolution” can be examined from a spectrum of possibilities. It can be understood through various permutations and multiplicity of interpretations. A revolution geared towards a “New Nigeria” through a change in governance, a systemic purging of “old brigades” and the sudden enthronement of “Young Leadership” is a literal attempt to deodorize the stinking corpse which Nigeria has become. It is in its real sense a fraud that boasts itself as an antidote of a greater fraud.

Another possibility to the abruptly announced “revolution” seems to be that Sowore is reacting to the awakening of his senses in a conniving manner that rejoices the hearts of the Foreign Intelligence Agencies, especially the arm of British Secret Service, who will rather prefer to stand behind the authority of a “compromised figure” and cast a long spell of deception on the infinitely unwary masses entrapped in the British contraption. I say this because his arrest carries a smell of drama and unveils a spectacle fit for a movie. It is reminiscent of the “Not-too-young-to-run” campaign that filtered like an unwanted virus into the Nigerian mainstream but which prided itself on the fact that the British Secret Service and its foreign allies had employed Sowore to exploit the rising population of politically-conscious “Nigerian Youths”. We know for a fact that Sowore was paid in hard currencies, to “weaponize” his media outfit and plunge the South at the mercy of so many predicaments. And the predicaments in question have a lot to do with the Sokoto Caliphate’s oligarchic, pan-Fulani hegemonic dominion!

Through his platforms, Sahara Reporters and TV, we have seen charlatans like Joe Igbokwe and a host of extremely arrogant, humorously confused writers and presenters who till this very day have mocked the violent deaths of thousands of Biafran activists, unarmed civilian protesters murdered by the Nigerian soldiers. We saw it during the ideologically-bankrupt, episodic “Operation crocodile smile and python dance,” that suggested both literally and metaphorically, that the 1914 expired Amalgamation of the Southern and the Northern Nigeria is still valid and which automatically makes the British-inspired Union of Death – nonnegotiable.

Also, we saw Sowore’s paid hirelings resonating with Paul Arkwright’s self-righteous arrogance on about the subject of “Biafraexit”. We witnessed the media war by his outfit against the struggle for the emancipation of the South and the Middle Belt, and ultimately surrendered to the carnal knowledge that he, Sowore, and his likes have blended in the villainous shadows of the white oppressor. And I know some Yorubas, I mean powerful Yoruba men who would describe Sowore in brief words that suggested intense loathe and thick-skinned detestation.

We cannot forget the anguish, the rage that filled us up like soiled water in an empty bottle, the unspeakable discomfort that devastated our resolve during those difficult transitions of tremendous loss and having to manage the overwhelming tragedies that passed for a state-sponsored domestic terrorism and the proscription of our civil minds from thinking, from analyzing and from questioning the so-called democracy of Nigeria. And we cannot forget that Sowore through his weaponized media platforms, played an integral part in the persecution of the Biafrans, of the South and the Middle Belt.

Inasmuch as I am a brutal summoner of history, however, I am not here to reference the sordid past. I am simply here to rationalize the logic of revolution through the mind of Sowore without any form of bias, any fiber of emotion, any sounding drum of partisanship.

Permit me to declare that a “revolution” within the context of systemic change that will tear down the British contraption into four inescapable “sovereign entities” and give all hope of justice to the Black Man in Africa, is the only viable “revolution” that matches the enduring tyranny of the bush dogs and the bush hunter. Any other shade, color, breed, or type of revolution is a fraud.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not an emotional victim of the “One-Nigerian” project. I retired my heart a long time ago. These days, I use my brain and my fang in the dealings of life. So, I will say this to Sowore not as an enemy but as a distant brother of the Southern part of the British contraption. If your idea of “revolution” resonates with the “shooting down” of the military-imposed, Abdulsalami Abubakar’s constitution, or the installment of a “transitional government” that will oversee the renegotiation of the abominable “Union of Death” through an “independence referendum,” by that I mean, a political vote by the stakeholders to determine if they wish to be part of Nigeria or walk down the aisle of eternal divorce, then, I swear it that you have my moral support and my sympathy. On the other hand, if your idea of “revolution” borders on a radical response to bring an abrupt end to Nigeria, through a unanimous, Southern and Middle Belt proclamation of their collective freedom, whether by force or by war, then, I swear it that you have my moral support and my sympathy. But if your idea of revolution, revolves round the hegemonic, baptismal slave name we have come to know as “One Nigeria”, then you are on your own.

The South and the Middle Belt in its old schismatic attitude to the injustices fashioned by the Caliphate-North in a manner so ruthless, so unspeakably barbaric, so unforgettably cruel, will continue in the cycle of rotational butchery – a butchery so long tolerated with the decency of civil minds. Last month, it was the daughter of the Afenifere’s highest echelon and the wretched unknowns of the South and the Middle Belt. This month, the metal tube of the bush hunter navigated its muzzle at the indifferent, deeply political class of religious advocates of a “white Jesus” in a Black Christendom. We saw it when Reverend Father Paul Offu was brutally murdered by the same powers canonized and religiously validated by the vainglorious, materialistic, Enugu contractor of false prophecy and P.R.O to the “answered prayer” we all know as Buhari. In this harvest of blood and bones, “Prophet Mbaka” is yet to explain to us how the “answered prayer” suddenly became the country’s worst nightmare. We saw it when five flamboyant pastors of the “Redeemed Franchise” were abducted by the Caliphate sons of anarchy. And we did not hear a whisper of dissent from “Pastor Adeboye” and his disciples. He never criticized the Fulani powers to the best of our knowledge but was quick to scold harmless Christians of committing the sin of fornication, or failing to pay the weekly tithes and offerings. These types of misplaced priorities have made the South and the Middle Belt a willing prey to the Caliphate North.

The answer to this nonsense lies beyond the synergy between the South and the Middle-Belt. It is time to disengage from this euphoria of having found the unity of voice and purpose. It is time to finalize the slow crumbling of “One-Nigeria” outside the context of essays and press statements. These bush dogs and their hunters cannot be wished away through imaginative confrontations or ideological commercials that are predominantly passive, tolerant and weak. And like my friend Ahamefuna would say: “we have barked for too long. It is time to bite.”

It is time for the class of 1965-1970, I mean the surviving principal actors of those violent years of genocidal wars to crawl out of their shells and call this tyranny by its name. It is time for Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, General TY Danjuma, Professor Jerry Gana, Professor Ben Nwabueze, Edwin Clark and all the stakeholders at the crown of the cross, to gather thick skin and rally their entrapped peoples and force the Caliphate North to a round-table for a renegotiation of “One-Nigeria” through a referendum. Let the Biafrans, the United Kingdom of Oduduwa and the Middle Belt decide and determine their political future.

And I shall conclude this essay with a thoughtful statement from Frederick Douglass, one of America’s most prominent social reformer, writer, orator and statesman. At the time when black slavery was the norm, he had said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Now, the South and the Middle-Belt must “demand” an independence referendum from the Caliphate North and its foreign allies. And this demand must be filtered into their consciousness until they fully surrender to the fact that our universal right to self-determination is not an option. It is simply a necessity…