By Dr Ugoji Egbujo

Since Trump threatened to storm Nigeria and smash the bandits—to protect Christians in the Middle Belt from genocide—the presidency has been running helter-skelter, disputing the genocide, denying complicity and complacency, redefining mass murders as a global phenomenon, dispatching emissaries, claiming sovereignty, placating America. If only they stopped there . The terrified presidency’s approach has been a confused scramble.

The central strategy has been unimaginative. Placate Trump’s impetuosity while carefully refuting the idea of a Christian genocide. With mercurial Trump, the risks of defiance are unpredictable. So Tinubu’s men have carefully kept their noises about sovereignty muffled, just enough to stir nationalistic feelings in some sections of the country. But behind the scenes, their knees have touched the ground. Surely their prayer warriors no longer sleep . If only they were told to pray for national unity and not just the softening of the heart of the  pharaoh in America.

Long slumbering agencies and functionaries all seem startled. The parliament isn’t left out.  Trumps tweets rang like alarms bells. Ministers rushing to address the press. All agencies are now dramatizing activities  against the bandits, jihadists and insurgents with vigour, data and pictures. Any ploy to undermine accusations of complicity, of awarding immunity to jihadists and bandits in this supposed genocide will be employed. If only some agencies and ministers were also dispatched to the battered communities to comfort them . So that the entire damage control frenzy  wouldn’t look so contrived, so superficial to mollify the international community. 

Tinubu has hurriedly met the U.S. envoy—Trump’s in-law. His spokesmen have been unleashed on TV stations, home and abroad. Daniel Bwala went on Russian TV to declare himself a northern pastor. Everybody’s a pastor these days. Pastors used to be known for their honesty, integrity, love, and desire for unity. Reno Omokri is a pastor too. All kinds of political hustlers are pastors now. Some of these pastors have taken bigotry against the Igbo as their divine assignment. If only they knew that a man whose house is on fire shouldn’t chase rats. There should be a time for these small minded political antics and a time to focus on the elephant in the room . 

Pastor Daniel Bwala, after denying a Christian genocide, said Trump acted in error—that he was deceived by some US senators who were fooled by the Igbo separatist group, the IPOB. The  IPOB has long been designated a terrorist group by the government of Nigeria. Though that often violent group doesn’t represent the Igbo nation and is not synonymous with the Igbo, but the entire Igbo race sometimes bears vicarious liability for certain actions of the loquacious IPOB. Especially when the political choice of the generality of the Igbo and the group coincide.  It is indeed true that the majority of the Igbo, like many other ethnic groups, want the massacres of christian communities in the middle belt by the jihadists and Fulani militia to stop by all means.

The Igbo like other groups are free to express vocal support for the international pressure on the government to curb damaging insecurity in the country. So this manipulative narrative to make the Igbo the scapegoat of the controversial Christian Genocide issue through the disingenuous reference to the IPOB as the mastermind is  political mischief of diabolical proportions. It has t be checked. The political operatives of the Tinubu government have made the Igbo not just the tree bark where they wipe their muddy shoes, but also the backyard where they dump political refuse, vent cathartic contempt, and blow their runny noses. Bashing the Igbo, it seems, helps them mend and reinvigorate their fraying bonds with other ethnic groups. But if only  bashing the Igbo would assuage the bandits and make them become tractor operators which Tinubu had promised to make of them before he was elected. 

The Catholic Bishops from Benue had presented dossiers of massacres to the U.S. Congress. Professor  Soyinka in his Interventions Series, lays out starkly the genocidal attacks of Fulani killer herdsmen on Middle Belt communities: raids that aren’t random, but systematic land grabs laced with ethnic and religious venom, displacing and decimating entire villages. Pastor Bwala and his colleagues should be wary of creating new problems for the president. They must have read Tinubu himself talking about Christian massacres and calling for the resignation of President Jonathan in 2014. Bwala must have seen the work of Mike Arnold, the former American mayor hired by Omokri and the Tinubu government for damage control, but who flipped and exposed the con job he was asked to pull. Pastor Bwala knows that Governor Ortom spent his eight years in office as a Jeremiah, burying victims of massacres week after week. None of these people are Igbo. Pastor Bwala would have watched the stories of the massacre of over two hundred people in Yelwata—including women and children. Yet the presidency  thinks it’s the Igbo who deceived Trump? If the presidency didn’t send Bwala to look for scapegoats the presidency ought to have disowned  his disposition 

Pastor Bwala who speaks for Tinubu, went on Russian TV to blame it all on the Igbo. The questions Tinubu must then answer are many . Are the Catholic Bishops of Benue, including Bishop Anagbe, who went to the U.S. Congress, Igbo? Is Soyinka, who wrote copiously about the genocide in his book, Igbo? Is Tinubu, who once tweeted about the massacre of Christians in the Middle Belt, Igbo? Do the Igbo run the State Department? Professor Amupitan, the new INEC chairman, didn’t just call it a genocide—he wrote a legal brief on it. Why can’t Tinubu’s men sort this out without making the Igbo nation the scapegoat?

Two years ago, Pastor Bwala was tweeting about the Muslim-Muslim ticket, the subjugation, and the precariousness of northern Christians. Was his father Igbo?

Nigeria’s political theater: where denial dances with deflection, and sovereignty is invoked like a shield against uncomfortable truths and international scrutiny. A superpower roars, shakes the corridors of power in Abuja, and the response is a frantic scramble of media conferences, envoy meetings, and finger-pointing that somehow always circles back to old ethnic fault lines. Poor Igbo. The state department has a dossier on the subject matter matter.  But blaming it on the Igbo might be politically rewarding. If only the government knew that insecurity has blighted the nation and divisive propaganda can’t solve it. The clouds have gathered . Tinubu should find adults to speak for the country.

Long live Nigeria.