The cash-for-arms scandal in the airplane owned by the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Ayo Oritsejafor, should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet just like other issues before it.
This is because the man whose plane is at the center of the questionable arms purchase is an avowed enemy of Nigeria’s Muslims.
Ayo Oritsejafor has previously made a public call for the arrest of reverential muslim elder statesman, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, because he contested the Presidency with Goodluck Jonathan.
He has openly asked the Nigerian government, headed by his spiritual son, Goodluck Jonathan, to allow the Christian community to bear arms. It appears when the government was not audacious enough to openly acquiesce to that request, they decided to bear the arms through the back door.
The attempt by the government, headed by his spiritual son, to defend this war-mongering pastor is at its lowest. It does not only portray our country as being led by imbeciles, it opens us to more insult to the international community. This government defending genocide and attempt to commit genocide by those close to it is not anything new.
When in October 2010, the first-ever bomb explosion happened in the northern part of the country for which Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed responsibility, President Jonathan was the first to rush to the media to absolve MEND and added that he knew those who carried out the bomb attack.
While the President has not provided one person of those he knew who did it, MEND has insistently owned up to the crime. Its leader, Henry Okah, now serving jail term in South Africa for the same, had told the world the President’s men had asked him to rope in some prominent northern Muslim figures.
Since then it has been a cycle of bomb blasts up north. Since the news of the shady arms purchase broke, which the government initially denied, many questions have been asked. Yet, the more one looks into the whole issue the more questions come begging for answers.
How can a government which is not under any arms embargo decide to purchase arms using questionable means and shady characters. Oritsejafor is neither a licensed airline operator, nor the Israeli facilitator a licensed arms dealer.
How a plane ‘donated’ to God (sic) by unknown Church member found itself in arms and cash trafficking has to be unraveled. Is using God’s plane to buy arms also pastoral work? It is even more unecclesiastical if the arms are to be purchased using a syndicate.
Moreover, the manner in which the money was being transferred is a Pablo-Escobar style of moving money for his drugs and arms trafficking trade. Pablo Escobar was a notorious Colombian drug-gang leader who nearly brought Colombia to its knees in the late 80s through its narco business.
A plane supposedly purchasing arms for government has no single government officials in it. The issue also raises question on the increased number of private plane owners under the Jonathan’s administration, most of them his confidant. Is this arm purchase for the snipers mentioned in Obasanjo’s letter?
Is this the other side of the Boko-Haram war? Is this the manifestation of Dr. Davis’ claim that Boko haram is being funded from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)? Is this the reason Emir Sanusi, a Muslim, was pushed out of CBN so that any terror-related dollars can easily be loaded into a private plane from the CBN? This exercise is question upon questions!
Why Nigerians, and Muslims in particular, must not allow this to sleep is that the President’s men have openly threatened to wipe out muslims and a particular section of the country if Jonathan is not reelected come 2015.
Even before this scandalous attempt to bring arms to wipe out a section of the country, there have been attempts to openly provoke the muslim community. One such incidence was when the agent of the Nigeria government extra-judicially murdered three undergraduate sons of a known muslim clerics, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, in daylight.
The government has not even deemed it fit to pay him a condolence visit, nor our Press makes the usual noise if the reverse had been the case. This is because it was a deliberate attempt at precipitating a crisis. Had the child of a christian leader been killed under a muslim President, we can’t imagine both the physical war, and that too in the Nigeria-christian dominated press.
However, just as usual, Nigeria’s muslim leaders will allow this to be swept under the carpet like others before it, as most of them prefer the crumbs of bread from government than the wellbeing of their flocks.
The search for the truth must start from within. Muslims head the Nigeria Security Agency and Defense Ministry in the person of Ibrahim Dasuki and Aliyu Gusau, respectively.
They must account to us how such a huge cash for arms was found in a private airplane belonging to a sworn-enemy of the Muslim. Are they aware that such cash is being ferried out supposedly to buy arms for their agencies? If they had no knowledge of it all, but decide to defend this scandalous government, I say GoodLuck to the Muslim and the North.
A.S.M Jimoh (@anehi2008)([email protected])
