•What President Tinubu must do to avoid American involvement
We predicted that after killing the Christians, Muslims would be killed. It happened. That after Plateau, Benue would follow, then Kwara. Is Southern Nigeria ready? Stop the killings NOW!
By Dickson Omobola & Matilda Ikediobi
Security consultant, Reverend Ladi Thompson, in this monitored interview on Channels TV , spoke on the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern by President Donald Trump of the United States of America and plans by the US to step into the ongoing killings if steps were not urgently taken. ‘Thompson gave insight into what President Bola Tinubu must do if he doesn’t want the United State’s intervention. Excerpts:
American government says Christians are being killed and government is not doing enough. Government is saying, yes, they are killed, but others are killed as well. There are conspiracies around in all of this. Can you give an interpretation of the multiple characterisations of what is playing out?
My take is this. What makes us human? One of the things that makes us human beings, not beasts is the ability to think lucidly. If a nation has 200 and something million plus people, if for whatever reason as many as 200,000, 300,000, 400,000 people are dying over a span of 15, 20 years of something that is not right, I would think that for a right-thinking nation, its priority would be to diagnose properly and then stem the problem.
There is something wrong with the way the Nigerian is thinking, and I believe that is what we need to correct first of all. I want to say whatever we are discussing right now, let us make it about the future, not the past. For 15 to 20 years, I spoke on this station that there is a global resurgence of religious extremism that is templated across the world, and it has a local expression in Nigeria.
I said to us that it is a hydra, if I remember correctly, and that it has a religious cover. I pointed out that its religious cover is exploitative because it had realised that in Nigeria’s foundation, because of the divide and rule foundation that we have. So it exploits that opportunity to create an enmity between classes.
I said for the first 10-15 years right from the 1990s, it was consuming Christians. Not only consuming Christians, it was systematic. We are talking about the rape of young girls, we are talking about kidnappings and we are talking about the fact that when we got involved, we found out that it is so clever that it was operating in a way that was difficult to detect.
I remember saying that at a final stage, towards the end, it will begin to kill Muslims. And when I said that, I was a special adviser to the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, president, and they were surprised. I said, no, we have studied the mode of operation of this thing, and whether we like it or not, if you want to go theological, let us go hyper-dimensional.
If you are a Christian, for instance, you will know that in Revelation, the Bible talks about a dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Now, one of these heads, the mountains, is religion. What you are up against is a dragon, and it uses not only religion but education, but you name it.
I will give you a good example. A few years ago, I remember we had a meeting, and a journalist in Lagos there picked up something we pointed out in a meeting, that a textbook contained classical conditioning of the minds of students, and was an approved textbook in a Nigerian school. It had a character who killed people, and offer them to convert to Islam, or be executed.
And the journalist went ahead and printed it. And when he did, a sack letter was waiting for him, he was charged to court. The police, the judiciary, everything was lined up to take care of him. Now, this is an interesting thing. That manufacturing company printed a new version of the textbook, presented it in court, minus that story, forgetting there is a secondhand market because they removed all copies, safely.
Who does that? When we went to a secondhand market and presented old copies of the book, they threw the case out and then there was a national furor, so they quickly retreated and he got his job back.
What amount of intelligence does it take to see that there is something moving and working together behind the scenes? So, we should not be in denial. Let me just sum it up like this.
Nigeria is a country that has multiple problems, like maybe a patient has Ebola virus, has HIV, and then has a virulent case of cancer. Shall we now say that because there are other life-threatening diseases, we must now deny cancer? I do not want to say anything more than this because there are two sets of people who have to be careful. When a soldier joins the army, he does not sign up to live.
He signs to die to defend his nation. When a pastor, a Christian, a minister becomes a pastor, he does not sign to live. He signs to become a living sacrifice, which means the nation should trust on them, at least the pastors, to speak truth to people of religion.
It is actually wicked, asinine, for anybody in Nigeria who knows Leah Sharibu, who was taken at age 13 or 14, raped brutally, has two children somewhere in captivity. They don’t care about it, whether she is in captivity or not.
I am surprised that the people who are in Nigeria, who remember Deborah Samuel killed in Sokoto, the students who killed her on a religious basis were never tried.
I want to remember Christianah in Gombe, a teacher who was slaughtered by students in 2007. I can go on for a whole day listing them.
The young man who came from Britain to do his youth corps in Plateau State, they shot at him and had him call his parents to listen to his death throes. Now, the challenge is this. This hydra has a head in politics. It has a head in education. It has a head in the media. It has a head in practically all things.
Many nations have learnt to deal with it, but Nigeria never got it right because of asymmetrical warfare, hybrid threats and, of course, the use of media as a force to expand. The point now is this. Because we refuse, whether it is a lack of courage, whether it is cowardice, whether it is confusion, or whatever it is, we have not really faced up to the truth, and that is where we are right now.
Over the years, there have been too many foreign observers who have come into the country who quietly have been watching the figures, collecting and collating. I remember this same confusion at the time we were looking for the Foreign Terrorist Organisation, FTO, designation on Boko Haram. Boko Haram was so disguised. Some said, no, it is ethnic. I remember in 2012, there was a hearing on Nigeria in the United States Congress, and you would not believe the asinine arguments that we heard there. On the global level, there is something called the pacification of terrorists with territories. Now, that is what is going on. But all of a sudden comes a president who says, no, we won’t do that. So let us get out of denial and protect the future of our children. What we should do now is what we should be talking about.
Not all this politicking, spreading money around, being silly with our future. I said this same thing some years ago when an Al-Qaeda member was appointed a federal minister in Nigeria. And I remember I said it publicly, because we are living sacrifices.
Why is that happening in a nation? And why are we pretending? Does this have a Christian colouration?
I think it has a colouration of what we call the defence of religious liberties. I will give you a few more examples. Go and read the Nikki Tobi report. In the Nikki Tobi report, there was a recommendation that the commissioner of police was complicit when the churches were being burnt, when Christians were being targeted in Plateau State, the recommendation from Nikki Tobi was that he was to be dismissed with ignominy. Instead, he was rewarded and became the Inspector General of Police in Nigeria.
Are we saying we don’t value the life of our people? Are we saying that we are not aware that this thing has a religious cover? And I keep saying religious cover because it is a supremacist ideology. I went to Ahmadu Bello University, and there are multiples of Muslims all over Nigeria who are not murderers. But because this thing wears a religious disguise and nobody blows the cover of this disguise, instead, government reinforces it.
Let us look at the governorship of El Rufai. If we begin to quote what he said, the things he did, and we begin to look through the years, we don’t need the American government to come and tell us that we have devalued human worth, and you will never build a successful nation when you devalue human worth. So when it comes to the American government, there are processes that they have.
But the question I want to ask is this: if a person’s daughter was picked up at age 12, and the 29-year-old men were raping her continuously, and I have had to deal with many children like that. I have had to do trauma counselling for them. How do we talk to their parents? Are you sure these are the questions that we will be asking? There are victims who could not care less whether it was Donald Trump or Donald Hump if somebody comes to finally tell Nigeria that you cannot keep doing this.
Terrorism is a global affair. It is not local alone. What the former administration was doing was to trade Nigeria off to the terrorists to keep their own territories safe. Now here comes the president who says, no, we are not going to do that. We are going to do this instead. And you know, I have heard this also, it is also killing Muslims, which we predicted it would
do in its latter phases. For me, what Nigeria should be doing right now is not a matter of what Trump said. If the Nigerian government does not protect its citizens, then there will be consequences.
Now the question is, is it true that the value of the life of a citizen in Nigeria is of no value? Is it true that there is a predatory class that has no future for the average citizen in the country? Now if this is true, why don’t we address it by seeking cooperation, setting up an ombudsman? Because you see, what is happening is this, the media is involved in this, and you don’t forget that there is money in Nigeria flying around.
And what happens is that instead of asking the right questions, instead of fixing the matters at hand, money begins to change hands. Then you find that even religious leaders begin to speak from both sides of the mouth. Let us call a spade a spade.
This is not working. Let us reformat this country. Let us look to the future of our children. Let us not wait for America. Look, whether it is the American president, whether it is the British Prime Minister, and all that, is not the issue. Is blood spillage going on? Yes. While I was dealing with Plateau State, I went and asked the governor of Plateau State then, Jonah David Jang, I mean, what his experience was. At that time, we told them in Benue State, get ready, you are next.
How come we said you are next, and now it has got to Benue? And that is why Benue said to them, Kwara, you are next. And after that, Southern Nigeria get ready. Now, are we paying attention to these things, or are we still quibbling, allowing ourselves to be divided by people who have collected 30 pieces of silver, who will sell their children’s future, so that they can enjoy today? We can’t afford that.
I want to pick up the President’s quotes. He said the characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national unity.
Donald Trump and his Minister of War, as it is called, gave a precondition, saying we will do the job if you refuse to do the job. When that is said to the President, also Nigeria, what drastic measure do you think they are talking about?
Now this is where we know whether we have leaders who care for the life of the citizens, or leaders who just want to hang on to power at all costs. A leader who cares about the life of the citizen, like I said, would probably, first of all, set up an ombudsman of some sort to clarify the issues, to bring forth statistics, which we will. If they dare, we will. We have seen oppression and suppression through the years.
And if that President knows that this is not right, and if that President knows that there is no infiltration in high places as admitted by presidents before him, the focus should be protecting the lives of our people. Now, what is America talking about here? I think the allusions America is making is this, excuse me, let me talk about Leah Sharibu, for instance. Everybody in the world knows where she is, with the children that she has been rearing after being raped. Where the locations of terrorist camps are, everybody has been telling us for years and we have been saying that there’s complicity in high places. There is government complicity in this thing that has been going on. And I don’t know how anybody will continue to live in denial when you know it will end up devouring this nation.
For me, I keep saying this, if America says, listen, remember the underpants bomber, the son of one of the wealthiest Nigerians who took a suicide bomb and was going to explode it in America? I told you this is a global problem. And it is not all countries that will wait for Nigeria to be destroyed. If Nigeria goes, West Africa will go. If West Africa goes, Africa is gone. What do you think will happen if all the resources of West Africa or Nigeria fall into the hands of this hydra? Why is our president not talking about that? Why is he not looking at the statistics and then say, look, this is what we are going to do. Please, Mr Trump, there is no need for you to come here. This is what Nigeria is going to do. We believe in the future of our children more than you can believe in the future of our children, and we have looked into what you have said. We are not going to be replying with just hyperbole and just talking politics for the lives of people. We are going to reply you factually and say you are right or you are wrong. And if you are right, we are going to say, maybe this is the challenge. I am going to tell you what the real challenge is.
The simple thing that is true is this: you are dealing with an intelligent hydra that collapses nations from within. Why would America sit down and watch you if in your Nigerian army, every time you capture terrorists, you claim you have found a special elixir that changes them and then you absorb them? Now, the people sitting down and watching that happen, is it that they are not thinking? Is it that they don’t understand what the future is going to bring?
The box stops at the president’s table, which is what I said when Muhammadu Buhari was the president of this country. The box stops at the president’s table and it is unfortunate that statement he (Buhari) made when he said that the killing is a lie from the pit of hell. People like us showed him that it was not a lie. I had a security meeting with the governors of the South-West more than 10 years ago. At that security meeting, I remember furnishing proof.
We had camps all in the forests. Did anybody go and clear the camps? No. Instead we are talking. To be a human means we must function and think, and think about the future of our children. When people use terror clinically, people become cowards. People become confused. So let us face the issue aground and protect the future. Let us reformat the country properly.
What is in it for the United States? Can we say that genuinely they are so concerned about Christians, regardless of whether or not the genocidal aspect to it is valid?
Let me tell you what is not in it for the United States. For many years, the total annual budget of Nigeria put together is usually at par with the budget of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport or one of those airports in Atlanta. It is the total budget of Nigeria. Second, for every year, do you know how much the diaspora sends into this country? First of all, this war of narratives where people are saying, America wants this from us, America wants that from us. Can we please wake up and smell the coffee? Let me tell you what is really going on.
On the global stage, if you go and study Francis Fukuyama, the Last Man Standing, Henry Kissinger, Kaplan and Huffington, everybody knows that a new day is coming. So the challenge right now is that many countries who have the strength are contributing to try and control the narrative of the new global order of the new day that is coming. All over the world, quietly, these forces are clashing. Now, when all the people did all their research, they thought it was either going to be the Russian bear, or it was going to be the Chinese dragon, or it was going to be the sword of the Middle East and all the contending factors. Nigeria is the giant of Africa.
We are the ones who should be talking about global change and the part of Africa in the global future. Now, this is really what is going on. Because those people are having this process out there, they are starting to control the narrative. Now, what they did not see coming was that one man would get to power in America and change the dynamics of power completely. Let me tell you what is going on that we don’t realise, we are looking at the new future. We are looking at the tussle that determines the dynamics. Right now, Nigeria says we have a democratic republic, a shambolic democratic republic that has no checks and balances, that encourages corruption. Now, the people who have the original world are tweaking it already.
Nigeria needs to understand that our destiny is to rescue Africa. If we manage our diversity in Nigeria properly, we shut down this killing of Christians, killing of Muslims at the last hour and all that, and we create a proper nation, people will leave America and come and live in Nigeria. People will leave Britain and come and live in Nigeria. We have everything that anybody can ever wish for. The only disaster is there is an age bracket.
I think everybody 55 and above now is a national problem. Listen to them talk. The younger generation is not even allowed to have a life to live.
How can there be a nation devoid of a future? I want to ask President Tinubu, these are days of artificial intelligence, these are days when the continent of science and technology, why are we still talking about desertification? All over the world, we have Nigerians in positions of authority in every field, whether it is robotics, nanotechnology, you name it, we have got it.
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