By Ochereome Nnanna
I READ a very interesting interview that Leadership Newspaper’s Midat Joseph had with retired Air Vice Marshall Muhammadu Yahaya published in the paper’s online edition on September 2, 2012, and I decided to discuss it with you today.

If Yahaya’s fellow Northern Muslims shared his urbane mindset, the region would not be the theatre of religion-related violence that is sinking it and the country at large.

Yahaya is a committed Muslim from Adoka Local Government Area of Benue State. He is married to a Christian woman. Both are strong adherents of their respective faiths but still they support each other to the hilt and the union has lasted all of blissful 47 years.

Says he: “We have never had any issues on religion because we respect each other’s religions. During fasting, she gets up early to cook for me, so we have no conflict”. The retired air warrior has seven children: three boys and four girls. All the boys are Muslims while the girls chose to be Christians.

Social and  political might

Again, I quote the interview: “When the girls were marrying I went to church and handed them over (at) the altar. That does not change my faith”.

The most important part of this interview, to me, was where he analysed the problem posed by the murderous Boko Haram insurgency which, even erstwhile tongue-tied Northern Muslim elite now admit is destroying the economic, social and political might of the North. AVM Yahaya correctly posited that it is a political problem and has very little to do with religion. Again, I quote:

“We have a situation where people are developing thugs. When there is a change of baton and the same carrot is not there, there would be a reaction”.

And his idea of a viable way out of the problem? Here again, I quote him: “Northern leaders should sit down and find out what is going on before it destroys the North…so we in the North, if we are waiting for the Federal Government to solve this problem, it is not going to be solved. Northerners must solve the problem themselves”.

I have said it times without number that the major problem that breeds violence and disunity in Northern Nigeria is not religion but the use of religion as a weapon of political contestation.

AVM Yahaya and his family have a mindset shared by Muslims of Yoruba stock, who constitute nearly half of the indigenous population of South Western Nigeria.

They face their religions, leaving politics out, thus affording themselves the peace and harmony that grease the path to individual accomplishments, social stability and development.

The North will remain poor, fractured, unstable, underdeveloped and socio-politically suspected by other Nigerians unless its Muslims separate politics from religion.

You cannot have peace if you insist that people of other faiths must change to your own through your campaign of terror and violence. What business of yours is another person’s religious beliefs?

Why must you seize every opportunity to impose your religion on others simply because you have the privilege of transient authority and power? As for AVM Yahaya’s solution to the Boko Haram insurgency, that is exactly what we have said here, which some mischievously choose to misinterpret to satisfy their own hidden motives?

The only role the Federal Government can play in the matter is exactly what they are doing: Using the security and armed forces to quell a bloody, foreign-sponsored uprising that is claiming thousands of innocent Nigerian lives and their property across the upper North.

The Federal Government has a duty to enforce the law, protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria and the lives of Nigerians.

If the grouse of the insurgents is “injustice” the Federal Government and other Nigerians have no hand in it, except, perhaps in isolated cases of unilateral acts of impunity by security personnel.

The dialogue that many have advocated should be between the Northern leaders and the insurgents. The Federal Government can only encourage and assist insofar as it will achieve DESIRABLE and ACCEPTABLE results.

I hope the committee set up by Northern governors and leaders recently to pursue this objective will address these issues appropriately, rather than embark on shadow-chasing or turning in a report that will turn around to blackmail the Federal Government.

I wish them success in their endeavours.

Wishing our Dame Patience Jonathan quick recovery

The scriptures enjoin us to pray for our leaders (including their spouses and perhaps, children). I am not praying for our ailing First Lady, the indefatigable Dame Patience Faka Goodluck Jonathan simply because she is the wife of the President. It is not merely out of the usual humane consideration for someone who has fallen under a severe weather of ill health.

More importantly, it is because I like her guts. She is a resolute, unstoppable, unflappable and focused activist. We need her around a president who is more liable to be swayed this way and that. She is a great watcher of the President’s back, if you catch my drift.

Of course, she has her own human foibles, such as the Bayelsa Permanent Secretary post she incongruously accepted and the public censure of Governor Chibuike Amaechi over the use of Okrika lands for government projects. She could have done better in those episodes. But tell me, who does not have foibles and brief moments of straying off the beaten path?

I pray for her quickest recovery and long life. When she comes back, let her deploy her fierce energies to persuade government to install modern facilities in Nigeria so that those who cannot afford to be taken out of the country to posh hospitals in presidential jets can also have access to help. Enough of these medical tourisms abroad by our top office holders!

Come back soon, fit as a fiddle, our ebullient First Lady!!!