If you’ve been a follower of the Arewa section of Zuckerberg’s Metaverse, prepare for a sentence to Buhari’s social media jail. Never underestimate the enormous power of Africa’s most influential leader, President Muhammadu Buhari. Our leader did not wince in banning the bird app, Twitter for seven whole months for challenging his exclusive right to counter ethnic jingoism with fire for fire.
Forget the loss of over N500 billion in revenue resulting from the ban. National pride is not always measured in cash, especially if that cash is in Naira, which thanks to God still has greater value than a Made in America roll of toilet paper. From the Twitter ban, Nigeria has gained what six years of foreign junkets to woo investors could not attain – the presence of Twitter on Nigerian soil.
Today, if Twitter as much as think of challenging a presidential narrative, even a false one, it would be closed down again and its hapless staff arraigned before APC judges. There could be no better way to infuse nationalism.
Besides, Twitter would not accept that it was the ban that led to the resignation of its co-founder, Jack Dorsey. Yes, the bugger lost his job for daring to put a wedge between Twitter and its 3 million Naija users (government says 40 million), don’t blame the disparity, contested figures is how governments win landslide elections. And, don’t forget Twitter’s apology – it was published in every major news medium across the globe – if you live on the island ruled by Queen Mab.
Anyway, having seen its partner suffer a bloody nose in the hands of President Buhari, you would think that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has learnt a lesson. Silly Zuckerberg is scratching his fragile nose with the head of a spitting cobra by allowing woke and wailing northern Facebookers to recklessly post the picture of the young Hanifa Abubakar on their timeline a week ago. A foreign investor perusing the pages of northern influencers would have mistaken Hanifa for the new face of Arewa displacing the prime position of northern Nigeria’s two-time poster boy from the hearts of his die-hard followers.
Hanifa was the five-year-old pupil of a private school in Kwanar Dakata in Nasarawa Local Government Area of Kano State who was kidnapped in November 2021. Her abductors demanded a ransom of N6 million from her parents who perhaps had to incur debts to raise the ransom. Under able Buhari, when a relative is kidnapped, don’t bug the hapless police, just pay up and implore well wishers to join you in prayers for their safe return. Only Nigeria’s one per cent ruling elite are entitled to lawful protection as any unauthorised approach to Aso-Rock or a minister’s residence would prove.
The police in Kano say that her schoolteacher kidnapped poor Hanifa and that the poor girl recognized her captor. That sealed the chance of her being returned alive. The teacher recruited another partner in crime with whom they poisoned the poor girl, dismembered her and buried her in the same school compound where she was kidnapped. As often happens after the deed has been done, the proactive Kano State government has swept into action, closing down the school in case another teacher had bad ideas.
In case a reader thinks that kidnapping happens in our north, no, it doesn’t. Northerners don’t do haram and kidnapping – is the haram that first started in the restive creeks of the Niger Delta, a region which in Buharispeak would be nothing but a coma on the map. True northerners are not in a hurry to make money. In the words of Ja’afar Isa, it’s not in our character. We are often more preoccupied with capturing political power for its sake.
Here is the reason why nobody can impugn the character of our own Sai Baba, the epitome of decency, morality and best in governance since the Sardauna was violently snatched from us. Forget the Grasscutter, Ikoyigate and other sleazegates; with Buhari in the saddle, northerners are assured that Nigeria’s money is in safe hands. If, as often happens, it loses its value, Buhari’s integrity always paves the way for us to get the loans that our grandchildren would have to pay back.
This is why we cannot let ‘woke’ Arewa Metaverseans succeed with hashtags such as #justiceforhanifa as if it was Sai Baba’s dereliction of duty that led to the death of this delightful angel. What is justice when the life of such a young soul has been so mercilessly terminated? Does the capture of her murderers bring her back to us? Have our past hashtags helped reduce or stop the level of insecurity and wanton waste of lives under this regime?
A hashtag is capable of turning docile supporters into militant malcontents and Zuckerberg ought not to have allowed it. Such hashtags could have blighted President Buhari’s commissioning visit to Kaduna last week. Our president loves to commission projects he didn’t make, not visit victims of insecurity. If hashtags were humans, all those lamentations on Facebook could have blocked the president’s convoy leading to the non-commissioning of bridges, roundabouts and streetlights meant to cushion his retirement plans. Thank God hashtags die on social media. This is how we northerners differ from our southern counterparts – if it starts on social media; that is where it ends – as long as our son is in charge.
Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has dismissed the other inherent danger. It could have played into the hands of the WHO that claims that three out of ten Nigerians have mental health problems. Allah ya sawake that Africa’s newest kidnap capital is filled with nutcases. The WHO is a scam. Nigerians don’t do mental health. Ask our president and he would confirm that every crime committed under him is done by foreigners. Indeed, the men who killed and dismembered Hanifa Abubakar could end up being foreigners if a government-sanctioned panel were to look at their ancestry.
The sources of these little security problems are well known to the president. Every farmer hacked down on his farm by a herdsman is a victim of human encroachment into age-old cattle routes. Banditry evolved from global warming which, arose from the dehydration of the Chad Basin. We know these things and the WHO and its agencies should stop bamboozling us with their hack research results or we would withdraw our membership.
Back to baby Hanifa, may Allah console her grieving parents. It is sad that they have to suffer the neglect of a government voted to secure their best hopes and dreams. There can be no justice for Hanifa. The best justice would have been for her to fulfil destiny and not be a dot on the casualty map of unrecorded tragedies in Nigeria.
Parents deserve to see the manifestation of their best wishes on the lives of their children – not the ignominy of having their hopes reduced to hopeless hashtags. Nigerians deserve a better country, one that values human lives and goes for broke to preserve and protect it. The big question is, whether such a dream would be realized in the chequered remnant of Buhari’s regime.
