Nigeria killing spree is first step to Rwanda — Rights lawyer

By EMMANUEL OGEBE

Penultimate Saturday it was reported that Plateau indigenes intercepted buses of armed Muslims from out of state en route a massacre of them at a mass burial holding that day. Several of the Muslim travelers were killed and the State Government immediately declared a curfew and arrested some Christians for “reprisals”.

For at least nine years straight, Christians are being taken from vehicles and killed by Boko Haram. In 2011, President Muhammadu Buhari’s party did it too in post-election violence. Ten years later he’s president. Never tried.

Since the “reprisals” occurred, people were arrested & curfew imposed. So when there was rampaging for five days destroying 500 houses, killing at least 80, why didn’t the government impose curfew or arrest anyone?

This manifest injustice can spark a revolution that will consume the unjust and uncaring.

Funny enough in an interview I gave just the previous week, I warned of a Rwanda or Syria style Genocide! Add to that Afghanistan style collapse https://youtu.be/ZxtfGEHp9qs

That same week, I also marked 25 years since the prison doors were flung open by the military junta and I was freed as a young human rights lawyer in dictator Sani Abacha’s desperate karmic atonement for a Nigerian Olympic soccer gold medal.

Despite the despair and despondency of having to cope with 156 now homeless kids from the orphanage, I am enthused by the sheer impossibility of my situation and the sheer magnitude of my divine liberation.

Now I am thankful that we only lost a campus and not almost 200 souls comprising children and staff. Property can be replaced, lives can’t!

There’s a sense of futility you feel having been abducted, imprisoned and tortured, then forced on exile giving up you career and country, then being defamed and slandered by those you helped and those who never sacrificed anything near you and seeing your work go down in flames. But I serve the impossible God who spared me!

It was my tedious task to inform my American co-travelers that the houses we built on a mission trip to Nigeria seven years ago had been destroyed.

In reply to one lady who broke down and wept, I wrote: “I feel like crying too and wanted to cancel all my Capitol Hill meetings today. Then I decided I needed to go still and speak about the kids and the orphanage.” Fortunately I made it through the day!

Since we went together I have been back over a dozen times and built more housing, plumbing and water supply, a farm, gas cooker and even a rabbitery!

They didn’t have a chance to take anything during the evacuation and lost even the little they already had. Every year I bring clothing and all that was lost.

There has to a purpose and some good that will come out of all this.

Some of these kids are in their fourth displacement…

My joy was seeing one of my daughters smiling even in the back of the evacuation truck. She seemed to be saying, “I walked from Nigeria to a refugee camp in Cameroun and back. This is nothing. I get to ride in a truck! That cheers me up.”

These kids were not “clashing” with anyone. This isn’t global warming. This is evil pure and simple!

It doesn’t take a summer recess and no, it doesn’t honor an armistice for the Olympics. Our orphans are running not for sport but because they are the sport – the game – being hunted by wicked monsters. You cannot cloak a medieval jihad in modern semantics.

The cost of replacing all that infrastructure is humongous but even worse is not advisable given that this could happen again.

Gradually, the utter feeling of despair and total loss of years of hard work, sacrifice and investment is giving way to a ferocious desire to help these kids stay afloat and defy the fear that “if you rebuild it they will burn.”

If my international trekker daughter can smile through this storm, then I really don’t have time to luxuriate in tears.

I am happy that a school has offered this smiling ex-refugee schoolgirl a scholarship along with four other orphans though this is a drop in a bucket leaving 151 children behind. However, I am thankful for the generosity.

In conclusion, I wish to honor the memory of Doris Bitrus, a student of my alma mater University of Jos who was among worshippers murdered on Sunday on their way back from church service.

May Doris’ soul Rest In Peace, and her killers know none!

I also wish to commend Hon. Rep Beni Lar, ESQ also an alumnus of UniJos law faculty who speedily rescued and evacuated her constituents out of the besieged campus.

I condemn Buhari’s one-sided and biased remarks which as usual favour his own to the exclusion of all others.

I urge the Plateau State Government which failed in its duty to protect to rise up to its duty to care for the victims.

•Emmanuel Ogebe is Managing Partner of US Nigeria Law Group, Washington, DC.