Haba! Fasehun

Credit: www.nigerianmonitor.com

Looking for justification where there is none for following Al Mustapha to Kano, the founder of OPC Dr. Frederick Fasehun said, ”It justified everything I did to fight for this Military officer. Can you imagine if this man had died in Lagos! How would that crowd greet the news of his death? What degree of reprisal wouldn’t they have unleashed on the millions of Yoruba people in their midst? Would we not have sentenced our kinsmen to certain death –avoidable death? Today, the Yoruba in Kano walk tall."

Haba Fasheun! What connection has Yorubas with the detention and trial of Al Mustapha? Why should an ordinary Yoruba man in Kano be held accountable for the death of Mustapha in prison?  Is every Yoruba person in Lagos a prison warder in Kirikiri? And if I may ask, why is Fasheun appealing to the primordial sentiments of northerners? This is very dangerous. To make it look as if a particular section of the country must be held accountable for the death of a person from another section is clearly irresponsible and so should not be promoted. Unfortunately this type of thinking was what led to attacks on Christians in the north for the actions of others thousands of kilometres in other countries. We have seen Christians killed in Abuja and other places in the north as reprisals for offences committed in Denmark, Lebanon, Israel and other places. Most of those killed were not aware of the desecrations in the first place! In the case of Bangladesh, even when the Muslims in that country merely protested and did not burn down the newspaper house or harm the offending cartoonist, innocent southern Christians were killed in Kano by rampaging mobs in 2007. By making this remark, Dr. Fasehun is giving credibility to such barbaric actions as a normal occurrence.

As a full blooded Nigerian with inalienable right of association, Fasehun can hob nob with Mustapha if he so wishes but this attempt to drag every other Yoruba man into the tent with him is clearly mischievous and self-serving. He should gauge his utterances no matter the excitement of the moment.