Lagos, Nigeria

Forwarded by: LAOLU AKANDE

ALIYU SHINKAFI'S FATWAMANIA

eputy Governor Shinkafi's call for the death of a Nigerian citizen, under a so-called fatwa, makes him a common criminal who should be hauled up before the courts and charged with incitment to murder. If this man had any grain of piety in him, he should be on his knees twenty-four hours a day praying for the souls of innocents whose lives were needlessly and gruesomely curtailed. He should be on his stomach grovelling in contrition, pleading for the forgiveness of an over-patient, over tolerant nation whose civic dignity he continues to assail in the confidence of immunity. He should cover himself in sackcloth and ashes and urge his followers to do the same until the nation pronounces itself ready to forgive a rampage of murder, brutality and arson.

Let this 'elected official' understand that very few people in the Nigerian nation consider him - or indeed his governor boss who is unquestionably implicated in this latest outrage - as being possessed of one drop of spirituality. These are cynical manipulators of religious sensibilities who, when all the facts are known, may yet come to trial for the many hate crimes that have been launched against the citizens of this nation.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Mamuda Shinkafi and all who think like him must remember the saying that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword. These bigots have resolved to unleash a cycle of terror, which routinely breeds terror counter terror. Shinkafi and his collaborators wish to cow a hundred million people by the now explicit threat of their capacity to issue death warrants at will and summon the mindless, brainwashed hordes to an endless orgy of blood and mutilations.

President Olusegun Obasanjo must unambiguously call this man to order. If he cannot defend the constitution he is sworn to uphold, he must make a public declaration to that effect so that we understand once and for all that we are living in a country without law, where every group and every individual must make their own.

If, wherever she is, any harm comes to the menaced journalist, let Deputy Governor Shinkafi understand that there will be no hiding place for him on this globe and he will be brought to justice as a common felon, no matter how long it takes.

Upstart politicians and presumptuous clerics should not be allowed to use their positions as base for the undermining of the constitution that binds us togeether. The age of intolerance, of bigotry, of rule by terror is being inaugurated before our eyes, and we pretend that all is normal within the nation.

We have not thrown off the shackles of colonialism or dislodged the iron grip of military dictatorship to succumb now to theocratic insolence. Obasanjo must call a halt to this provocation before the nation is set on fire.