IT is sad that while the snowballing fire in the South-East of Nigeria is spreading dangerously, many people who should speak out against it  continue to keep quiet. But to believe that the orchestrated fire stoked by some vested interests will be confined to the South-East when it finally becomes an inferno is a grand illusion. There are grim antecedents to show that the fire will spread to other parts of Nigeria, turning the country into a log of dried wood burning at both ends. 

Around March 2019, when insecurity was still building up in Northern Nigeria, Vanguard had, after pondering an incident that happened during the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections in Katsina State, published an editorial warning Nigerians, and specifically people in the South, that death was approaching from the North. 

Umar Aliyu, 38, of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, who was assigned to electoral duties, was shot in the chest at Santar Amadi village in Kankara Local Government Area of the state. Aliyu had begged his assailants to spare his life, and even offered them N20, 000 which he had on him, but he was pointedly told that taking his life and not his money was more important to these messengers of death. 

Aliyu revealed something worrisome before he died, which was probably why he was killed. After he performed similar electoral duty in the same village during the Presidential and National Assembly elections, Aliyu complained to his father, Nuhu, and perhaps to others, about the high level of insecurity in the area, saying that every resident was in possession of guns: “You will see Fulanis; everybody with a gun. Guns are everywhere, like groundnuts.” 

We warned in the editorial that there was every reason for every Nigerian to be worried about what was happening in Northern Nigeria; that if we allowed it to continue, it would only be a matter of time before the rest of the country was overrun. Today, the rest is history. 

Similarly, there are also reasons to believe that what is happening now in the South-East is beyond the agitation by IPoB for an independent state of Biafra. As a matter of fact, the IPoB agitation has almost completely ceased in recent times. It seems there is a dangerous obsession somewhere in the hearts of some powerful people to bring the South-East to ruin. 

We hereby call on all patriots who do not wish to see Nigeria go deeper down the abyss than it is presently to stand up and act now before it becomes too late. With the way things are now, President Muhammadu Buhari holds all the cards necessary to resolve the crises in the South-East and allow peace to return to the region. 

Releasing Nnamdi Kanu, as the court has ordered, is one of those aces the president holds. Then, de-escalation of tension through the relinquishment of whatever sinister preoccupation anybody in this government may have harboured against the Igbo ethnic group is another ace. We need peace in Nigeria now more than anything else.