It is exhilarating and a breath of fresh air of change to read this beautiful essay about the exciting turnaround of sociopolitical and economic events that are taking place in Zamfara State of Nigeria.
No attentive Nigerian could have easily forgotten that Zamfara State was the state that ex-Governor Ahmed Rufai Sani Yerima brought to the bottomless pit of infamy in 1999 shortly after Nigeria re-established a democratic form of government that replaced the 16 years of military occupation.
Sani Yerima was the overblown nincompoop, bigoted Islamic fundamentalist and untutored Islamic brigand who carved a name for himself as the conveyor of Sharia to a large part of modern day Northern Nigeria. The unusual development of introducing and championing Sharia State laws into governance was against the avowed secular constitution of Nigeria,.
By this singular act of theocratic rascality, born of a shallow thinking, unforgivable bigotry and egregious partisanship, ex-Governor Ahmed Rufai Sani Yerima of Zamfara State threw a religious bomb into the relatively serene, (not a perfect one but still manageable), political and socioeconomic arrangements of Nigeria.
And with that infamous political and religious development, initiated by a dim-witted opportunist, Nigeria entered the present unfortunate era of sorrow, woes, tragedies and the gnashing of teeth for most of the indigenous people of Nigeria and more damagingly for the people of the so-called Northern Nigeria.
By this thoughtless act of introducing a Sharia Revolution into Nigeria, Sani Yerima inadvertently gave birth to various notorious religious terrorist groups. Among such groups are: Boko Haram militant Islamic fundamentalist group, ethnic/religious militias and ruthless blood thirsty bandits. Sani Yerima went further to establish government institutions for religious recklessness like the Hisbah Police to terrorise innocent citizens that do not comply with religious virtues as defined by the State Governor. The irregular religious institutions were then legalised by the enactment of various forms of hastily crafted State laws throughout the so-called Northern Sharia States.
It is therefore shocking to witness the complete degradation of life that befell the State where the birth of the Sharia revolution in Nigeria took place. Shortly after the launching of the Sharia Revolution, the world witnessed how the poor and wretched citizens in the State lost arms and legs for stealing a plate/bowl of ‘tuo shinkafa’. While the elites especially the past governors and the creators of the laws against societal/religious vices became the El Capo (the Boss) and the chief perpetrators of all the evils that came later to bedevil Zamfara state in the past 20 years.
What a bunch of sad, unrepentant and irredeemable hypocrites!!!
It is high time the indigenous people of Nigeria, accepted the truth that the past political elites and governors of Zamfara state are the archetypes of clueless political neophytes in Nigeria. That these good-for-nothing political ‘leaders’ have merely used religion, either Islam or Christianity, to perpetrate a unique sadistic and Machiavellian-type of rulership that is steeped in selfishness and wickedness over the people.
Nigeria must begin to put to shame these dishonourable Nigerians in political garbs who have succeeded in building a hell-on-earth country for Nigerians. These leeches and blood suckers must not be allowed to go scot-free without adequate sanctions and befitting punishment in order to use them as examples against bad behaviours that will no longer be expected from future occupiers of political offices.
There is a great need and an important obligation for Nigerians to turn back the hands of the political clock that the hoodlums in politics have mispositioned backwards to the right progressive and forward direction where it ought to be from the beginning.
The few titbits that Mr Sesugh Akume has supplied about the progressive and forward looking actions of the current Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, is a welcome development. Every Nigerian will like to wish the Governor well in the meritorious duties he is undertaking for the people of Zamfara state and for setting good examples for other governors/states of Nigeria.
I sincerely hope that all the accolades showered on Governor Bello Matawalle are true and not just another exercise in image laundering as Nigerians witnessed in Lagos State since 1999 where no visible infrastructure or other measurable performances can be identified.
However, If this good report is true, then the Governor is surely a ray of light in a land of perpetual darkness, a pathfinder among a people lost and blighted by intergenerational feudal exploitation, and a glad tiding of precious hope to the forgotten and downtrodden people of Zamfara state.
I will therefore like to join other progressive indigenous people of Nigeria to wish him well. And to encourage and urge him to continue to work tirelessly in order to turn Zamfara state into a beacon of fertile land flowing with milk and honey once again.
But the Governor must not fail to bring to justice those political rascals and Islamic gangsters that deliberately wrecked, looted and carted away the assets and wealth of the State. For robbing the people of the resources that could have contributed to the provision of a good quality of life for everyone in the State, these political idiots must be made to pay everything they stole and pillaged back into the coffer of the state.
Our prayer and wishes are that this type of political vampires and wolves in human skin that callously and treacherously ruined the heritage of the people of Zamfara State for personal aggrandisement shall never be allowed to get near the corridors of political power again in Zamfara State or anywhere else in Nigeria.
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
SAM ABBD ISRAEL 