- By; Khalifa Dikwa.
Alhaji Aliko Dangote has been receiving great accolades as a true son of the north these days. These attributes are indicative of a good result sheet and we pray for a great result for him to enter Paradise Firdaus in the hereafter since he visited Borno to share our pains.
He took along huge relief materials for us as victims of Boko Haram insurgency and promised to feed us during Ramadan fast. Have u ever heard that since our ordeal began 6 years ago?
Alhamdulillahi, please join me to pray Allah (SWT) to bless and protect Dangote and his business for coming to our rescue at a time when help is proving difficult to come our way. I dare say that he who does not appreciate humans cannot appreciate God. A friend in need is a friend indeed.
This man squeezed time out of his tight schedule, not only to visit us in Borno State as the most embattled people by Boko Haram, but also gave us relief materials worth millions of naira for distribution to the needy when many relatively rich persons from the North could not, for lack of large heart, at a time when we could hardly eat one good food in a week, yes week, not day.Dangote’s name will remain in our heart and history. He didn’t stop at that, he promised to feed us during Ramadan when help from within and outside proved utterly impossible. This is heart warming, particularly when the few money in circulation only emanates from the regular payment of salaries. Thanks to Governor Kashim Shettima who made sure that the civil servants were paid in good time despite the lack of internally generated revenues owing to the heinous activity of Boko Haram.
Thus, let’s appreciate our governor for sourcing money to pay salaries regularly whenever Federal Government allocations were either meagre or late due to low sale and low price of crude oil in addition to the near empty treasury that President Buhari inherited.Therefore, please join me to pray for Dangote’s progress.
Governor Kashim Shettima’s first term (2011-2015) was full of security challenges but he can now sit up to write his name in gold, now that Boko Haram is tamed. Even though many do not agree with me for appreciating our governor for paying salaries regularly when richer states are at dagger’s drawn face offs with their labour unions. I advise for patience and forgiveness in the spirit of Ramadan if they differ with the inability of our governor to do more than he did in Maiduguri and other Council headquarters where thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) were camped for safety, feeding and other necessities of life.
Those opposed to the notion that the state government give details of accounts for unused money during our hellish 6 years, can do so when the security problem is put behind us. The insurgents and their hitherto foreign and official sponsors under GEJ’s FG have been preventing us from farming for 6 years, our borders were closed, phone communication was epileptically limited to Maiduguri as only a few of us were able to defy our frustration, pain after losing our dear ones, our hunger, fear and empty accounts to talk to the media to inform the outer world of our real story till support came from a private and white man’s owned and Kano based Dandal Kura Radio with reporters from all over the north in Kanuri and Hausa, after the shameless snubbing of our governor Shettima by GEJ for saying the truth in his capacity as the Chief Security Officer of the State on his typical frank and hard Borno talk to advise the complicit GEJ’s FG on how to quickly defeat BH and save all the abducted men, women, young and old from Sambisa forest.
Until PMB took over the mantle on 29th May, 2015, we were caught in a crossfire between Boko Haram and fire power of treacherous elements who swore by the Constitution to protect us and our property. Change under PMB has confirmed what Borno elders were rebuked for via the ongoing exposés on the diversion of funds meant to equip the hitherto highly rated Nigerian armed forces by the office of the NSA Dasuki, who had earlier visited us in Maiduguri to assess our situation and to solicit our support particularly spiritual one. I was briefed by leading Malams due to my capacity of double (emeritus) Shettima Malumbe and Ilmube which is a title that gives me to authoritatively defend my people and their interests anywhere and at anytime.
Let me digress a bit with a view to hinting that we gave the then NSA ( National Security Adviser to President Jonathan) the support he needed with a strong conviction that as a Sokoto Prince, thinking that he was better placed to understand that attackers of Borno, would not spare Sokoto as its grand child that is younger by millennium and that he would use his new position to change the narrative to quickly defeat the terrorists. The rest is now a subject of discussions in various public domains. We will drag those behind the genocide before a Law court.
We can forgive without necessarily forgetting these heinous atrocities perpetrated against us as the traditionally acclaimed peace loving people of the historically great Kanem Borno, that is linked to all other Northern states by history or blood, beyond the colonial 1884 boundaries of Berlin, because we didn’t choose to be what we are.In other words, virtually all northerners trace their history to Borno, meaning that all ethnic groups were of Borno ancestry occupying the 313 sits at the palace of KanemBorno Kingdom (the 313 figure was coined after the number of Messengers of Allah and 114 basic Laws picked from the number of Chapters of the Qur’an.
Let me conclude by stating that I came across the conspiracy documents to destroy Borno along other world Islamic territories when I was a student in Europe back in 1983/84 for which I have been retired at the age of 51 by the lawless federal government of Jonathan with the connivance of my former Governor Sheriff. The plan to ‘somalise’ the spiritually and Islamically historical Borno in order to enslave the rest of Northern Nigeria. It had to be shelved while waiting for execution under a weak and unpatriotic national leadership after it was thwarted by the post 1960 independence counter coup that sacked the failed Igbo led coup headed by Nzeogu at which all uniformed and civilian personalities and other great northern leaders of the first Republic were summarily killed with the intelligence support of foreign countries like France which is still the villain or enfant terrible in Africa. Particularly in all former French colonies and others where there were abundant resources as part of French economic interests.
Those killed then were mainly from what is today the north east, including Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and all influential senior military officers. The present political restive elite are extraordinarily impatient and unappreciative of anybody else having been for long deceived into thinking in the past that they were linked to a superior race, hence deserves to rule not only Nigeria but also Africa, ignoring the fact that their self acclaimed superior race and teachers have been challenging all the basic commandments of God as well as the God sent teachers such as Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them). And went further to act a film with some Hollywood actors to further mislead their younger generation to follow the mischievous dictate.
Those northern martyrs of that unfortunate first military coup were inspired by first class and international scholars who had made Borno as centre of excellence and more famous to be at per with its contemporaries in the Islamic world like Egypt, Andalusia (Spain) and Sham (Iraq and Syria) and Turkey prior to the creation or amalgamation of Nigeria.Let me once again thank the Kano born businessman Dangote for his immense contributions at this trying time with the hope that others will emulate him. May Allah reward them abundantly. Let there be some adequate measures for the relief materials to reach the needy, not those who have enough. This appreciation is not in anyway synonymous with ignoring previous contributions by others, notably Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso when he was the Governor of Kano State.
Furthermore, let’s continue to pray for the success of our leaders especially President Buhari, our governors, Senators, Reps, ministers, Commissioners, other public servants, as well as other good citizens of Nigeria and of neighbouring countries who have been standing by us by showing that the travails of Borno are squally a collective problem of theirs.
Insha Allah, we shall come out of this crisis too, stronger than ever before, as can be deduced from our previous war and famine history.
