Chinweizu: 2015: Between liberation and slavery (3)

Continued from yesterday

BOKO Haram is supporting its candidate Buhari by escalating its attacks in the run up to the elections, so as to demonstrate that the Jonathan administration hasn’t succeeding in ending the Boko Haram insurgency, and implying that Buhari, therefore, should get a chance to become President and try. They are trying to shape opinion in favor of their preferred candidate for President.

(b1) They both want Shari’a in all the states in Nigeria. Buhari said so back in 2001, 

Buhari Calls for Sharia in All States http://allafrica.com/stories/200108270355.html ; and

 Boko Haram said the same in 2011: Boko Haram to FG “Total Shari’a in Nigeria or no Peace”

…Says Qur’an is Above Nigerian Constitution

Written by Alaba Johnson (Reporter for NaijaPundit) on Octobe 03, 2011. 

http://www.naijapundit.com/news/boko-haram-to-fg-total-shari-a-in-nigeria-or-no-peace  (Accessed October 2012)

(b2) Buhari and Boko Haram have the same view of the Sultan and the emirs. In his October 2011 email, Boko Haram’s Abu Qaqa declared “our position is that the Sultan is just a traditional ruler who revolted against the teachings of his ancestors and put the Nigerian Constitution ahead of the teachings of the Holy Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet.”

   NaijaPundit had earlier published a leaked wikileaks cable in which the Buhari team had told American Embassy officials that they had no confidence in the Northern Traditional rulers in general while naming the Sultan of Sokoto and the emir of Kano specifically as people who had tried to corrupt the judiciary. 

(c) Buhari is the candidate of the sponsors of Boko Haram. The Arewa Consultative Forum and the Arewa Elders’ Forum, which have both endorsed Buhari as their candidate, are leaders of the Northern politicians who, according to Major Jokolo, the former Emir of Gwandu, are the sponsors of Boko Haram. 

  Given that their aims, views and supporters are the same, will Buhari have the will to fight his jihadist Boko Haram comrades? Does a politician fight his constituency and supporters? Does a jockey stab the horse he is riding?

Nevertheless Buhari claims he can end the insurgency. How? Let’s figure it out.

   As a political or military solution is not possible under the Constitution, the only way Buhari can end the Boko Haram insurgency is to defuse it. And for that he would have to appease them by destroying the democracy that Boko Haram loathes, and then turn all of Nigeria into a Shari’a country. In other words, Buhari, if he became president, would have to become even more jihadist than Boko Haram and become their de facto political leader. But will the rest of Nigerians, those who want democracy and loathe Shari’a, put up with that?  That means that Buhari will defuse the Boko Haram insurgency only to ignite a much bigger civil war between the Jihadists and the rest of Nigerians. Then the war that’s been confined to the NE zone will be fought everywhere, Muslim against non-Muslim, neighbor against neighbor. If you are a Nigerian and desire that, then Buhari is your man.

   But let me sound a warning. Buhari and his Boko Haram supporters would do well to remind themselves that Jihadists have no monopoly on fanaticism. The historical record shows that Christians may be slow to be provoked to a Crusade, but when they finally get going, they are unstoppable. It is then “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching off to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” Buhari and his cohorts should recall how, after the routing of the Turkish jihadists on September 12, 1683 at the siege of Vienna, the Christian crusaders drove those Jihadists steadily back for centuries till they not only recovered all the lands previously taken in Eastern and Central Europe by the Jihadists, but ended up destroying the Ottoman Caliphate sponsor of that Jihad and, as extra, conquered all the Arab lands, including the Hejaz, by the end of World War I. That relentless push back ended two and half centuries after it began in Vienna. Similarly, in the earlier branch of the Crusades, the one which began after the Arab Jihadist armies were defeated by Charles Martel at Tours/Poitiers, the Christians ended up conquering all the Muslim lands in the world, from Morocco to Mindanao in what became the Philippines. 

  It is my duty as a historian to remind the world, and all Jihadists in particular, that the drive that, by 1918, culminated in Western Europe’s conquest of the whole world had its remote beginnings in Christian Europe’s response to the Jihadist invasion of Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar in 711. Some 20 years later, in 732, Charles Martel defeated those invaders of Europe at the battle of Tours/Poitiers, and stopped that jihadists push into Europe. But it was not until 1095, nearly four centuries after the jihadists entered Spain, that Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade. Strengthened by the crusading spirit, the faltering Christian reconquest of Spain from Islam was renewed with determination and ferocity. When the momentum of the Reconquista brought Christian power to Ceuta in 1415, the Reconquista morphed into Western Europe’s enterprise of expansionism that, by 1918, had conquered the whole world, including all of Dar-al-Islam, from Morocco to Mindanao.  That’s a crusading drive that lasted from 1095 to 1918, all of 8 centuries!

  On 9/11 Bin Laden’s gang began a fresh jihad against the West. The West has responded with its War on Terror and is still uncertain and divided on how to respond. But it is still early days. When they finally organize a coherent counter-attack, the consequences for Islam could be dire. It could bring about the liquidation of Islam, its total and final extinction from the face of the earth. So these 21st century jihadists should warn themselves.  In particular, Buhari and his Caliphate and Boko Haram cohorts, if they are wise, should desist from provoking in Nigeria the Christian crusader spirit of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’!

   From the examination of the above election issues, can anyone solve the problems of corruption, Boko Haram and the Fulani Militia?  Can Jonathan or Buhari or the APC or the PDP or any other party or candidate? 

 Because these major problems can be solved only after scrapping the Constitution, the principal election issue becomes the Constitution itself and how to replace it with another that can facilitate solutions to these problems.  If we are sensible, this election should be decided by the answer the candidates give to just one question: what’s your program for replacing the constitution? 

  Whatever answer he gives, can Buhari replace the constitution? I think not.  Since the prime interest of his Caliphate constituency is to keep its fraudulent fake–democracy constitution in operation and use it to dominate and exploit Nigeria, can you see Buhari honestly proposing or accepting to scrap the Constitution? As he can’t do the key thing – scrap the constitution –required to solve these problems of Nigerians, if you vote for Buhari in the hope that he can and will solve these problems, you are just a mumu who expects a pig to fly. That’s my submission, my argument for asking you to vote against Buhari. Are you a mumu? No? I don’t think you are. But prove it to yourself and the world: go out in your millions and vote against Buhari. 

    Knowing how much the Caliphate hates democracy, you should be on alert for Caliphate pro-democracy politricks and conmen. So when a Caliphate man with a track record as a bloody tyrant is put forward by the Caliphate party, APC; and is publicly backed by the Caliphate political leadership in the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, and the Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, you should enjoy their clown show. And when the candidate starts play acting and posing like a superstar or pop idol of democracy, you should know to also do a playact support for him, like some tell me they are doing at his rallies. But when you step into the polling booth, you stop play acting, get real, and vote against him. Use your votes to keep this conman Buhari in Daura to enjoy the well-deserved retirement into which IBB sent him in 1985.

    And as my own contribution to this effort of public enlightenment, I hereby release my 2013 booklet, “Caliphate Colonialism” from copyright. I thereby waive my author’s royalties so as to help keep its price low and make it affordable to most Nigerians. That’s my contribution to the liberation of the New South from Caliphate colonialism. And I specially invite the members of the Nigerian Book Pirates Association to publish and distribute it widely, starting yesterday, so every Nigerian household can buy and read its own copy. Any publisher or person in Nigeria can do the same. The essay can be downloaded from the Shekere Africa website through this link. 

http://rhythmsofshekere.org/contributors/chinweizu/caliphate-colonialism-the-taproot-of-the-trouble-with-nigeri/

    However, if any of these publishers should later on wish to contribute towards my medical expenses, that’s a separate matter, and for their generosity I shall be grateful.

• Concluded

• Professor Chinweizu wrote this as a contribution to the Abuja symposium On “National Confab And The 2015 General Elections” On Monday, February 2,  2015