Three Years After: Open Letter To Rev. Dr Asake

BY SIMON REEF MUSA

My Dear Reverend,

Today May 11, 2021 makes it exactly three years since you left this world to join the saint triumphant to be with your Maker that you served steadfastly throughout your life that spanned over six decades. Considering your involvement with others towards attaining a just nation where everyone matters, today is both joy and happiness to those of us familiar with your footprints. We are happy that God gave you to us, but at the same time we’re sad that the very causes you espoused and the evils you fought against are still with us, growing stronger more than when you were alive.

Great preacher of yore, remembering the sacrifice your life symbolises and the pains you underwent when faced with injustice and deliberate policies by some men and women in power to subjugate and oppress the weak, life for you today would have been more painful in the face of the current hurtling injustice and brutalities unleashed on vulnerable and helpless Nigerians.

Since your transition three years ago, the devastation of Nigeria communities by insurgents and bandits, among other outlaws, have continued to threaten the soul of our nation, with many citizens wondering if it is worth the pains living together in a nation that was saved from disintegration after the killing of millions of citizens over the Biafran secession.

As at today, separatist movement in the South-east has resurrected, with clouds of uncertainties hanging low over a country, with citizens becoming increasingly frightened over the future. Ethnic nationalities are suffering the pangs of being turned into mere tools of deepening despotism and now victims of injustice ripping across the country.

While our subjugated and oppressed ethnic nationalities continue to grope in darkness, the violence unleashed on us by blood-sucking insurgents and brigands has diminished our hope and confidence to emerge from the dungeon of despair made worse by the lackluster performance of national leadership. Our fearsome troops have largely been reduced to games for these criminals who have continued to hoist their flags in several communities, including towns and villages in Niger state, thus, providing cold comfort to Abuja, our nation’s capital.

As it is now, unlike when you were on earth, kidnappings, mass killings and devastations of our once thriving communities have become our lots. Presently, no fewer than a nearly 400 communities of our country have been decimated and inhabitants thrown into oblivion, with many of them now living miserably in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps. Just two weeks ago in Benue State, the security of these unfortunate IDPs were violated when a dare devil killer gang stormed the Abagana camp in the outskirts of Makurdi and cold-bloodedly murdered no fewer than seven IDPs, including two villagers that kept guard over the camp.

As I write you this letter, my Dear Reverend, the bangers of separatism for some who perceived themselves as oppressed are still resonating in the South-east, while our nation’s security forces are up in arms against the Eastern Security Network (ESN); a group that has become more or less the military wing of IPOB in realising the resuscitated dream of the ‘Rising Sun’ of Biafra.

Before the bloody clampdown on ESN elements that left bloody trails as demonstrated in the unprecedented attacks on police stations in the Southern part of our country, the setting up of the Amotekun security outfit by South-west states has assisted the region in putting up a united front against kidnappers and other criminals.

The Middle Belt Region has been turned into an oasis of blood and destruction.  Members of Boko Haram, now assisted by ISWAP and other warring groups, have continued to unleash a war of attrition and total annihilation of communities. The essence of the war against ethnic nationalities in the Middle Belt has become total annihilation with the sole purpose of changing demography and taking over ancestral lands of the indigenous people. The region’s leaders have remained unrelenting in drawing the attention of other Nigerians and the world to these horrifying cynosure of bloodshed and criminalities that have continued unabated.

We have never had it so bad in Southern Kaduna, your place of birth, than now. In the last three years since your demise, our communities have come under increasing mass genocide and open conquest by foreign Fulani invaders. As I write this letter, over hundreds of communities have been destroyed, while women and children are herded into camps without attracting the attention of both the state and Federal Government.

The many ethnic nationalities, under the leadership of your younger brother, Hon Jonathan Asake, as the President of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), have refused to let down the bars in drawing national and global attention to the inscrutable and nonchalant actions and inactions  of both the  Federal and Kaduna State Government to the recurring murderous attacks on Southern Kaduna communities.

Not only has the Kaduna State Government under Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai sacked public workers and pensioners subjected to travails of immeasurable hardship, life has become a harrowing experience for the state workers whose squalid conditions have been turned victims of political recklessness. Yes, Reverend, our heads may be bowed now, but we have this irrevocable faith that we shall survive these mindless and unprovoked onslaughts against our people.

Preacher for justice, I recall that you lived and died for the emancipation of the Nigerian people. You had looked forward to the day when our chains of oppression would break loose from our necks. You had also looked forward with fervency to the reconciliation of humanity with the Maker.

Unlike others who would prefer to be politically correct, you fought relentlessly against those demons of injustice  that were engaged in persecuting God’s children. You hated the oppression of the poor, enslavement of the free, dehumanization of Nigerian citizens and injustice against the weak. To these forces of evil, you committed your entire life in fighting them.

Though the present evils continue to confront us as a people, we carry the flame of hope in us that such evils will fritter away someday and be destroyed upon the Red Sea. We hold these solemn hopes as an irrevocable faith that the present wind of insecurity, corruption in high places, bigotry, nepotism, chauvinism and all sorts of vices will soon fade away.

Though kidnappers, bandits, Boko Haram and all non-state actors have unleashed a culture of fear on us, we have never lost hope that our present lamentation will soon cease for a glorious dawn. Our present distraught state of the present is only a prologue to a revitalising future for our people and nation.

  Sir, let me assure you that those you left behind are sworn to stay the cause and work tirelessly for a new dawn. The struggle you were engaged in can never be abandoned as it has become the main preoccupation of our people whose eyes are set on the sun of hope that has never set on our land.

As someone of great inspiration and purpose, I wish you had lived a little longer. In the struggle to continue with the struggle, the temptation has always been there for us to falter. In our low moments of being tempted to succumb to the floods of weariness and discouragement, your indelible footprints have always provided inspiration and guidance.

When sometimes we feel like giving up, that inner voice of courage that recalls your commitment and vision for a cause has always whispered raw courage to our nerves. Our belief for a new day that will provide peaceful co-existence with others has always steadied our feet to prepare for tomorrow’s freedom.

Yes, the night may be long, but we believe that joy comes in the morning. Together with like minds, we have resolved to continue standing tall and working in unison with the sole aim of setting our people and nation free. We shall continue to build alliances across many divides and seek to promote our common humanity by joining forces with other groups that believe in the equality of our citizenship where access to the doors of opportunity is not denied to anyone on account of ethnic, religious and socio-economic and political divides.

My Father in the Faith, let me assure you that your memory shall continue to remain evergreen on our minds. Your life on earth resonates with the true essence of life as echoed by the great poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

 And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

As we continue in this struggle of turning our present blight into hope, we shall not be concerned with either enjoyment or sadness. In the midst of the darkness of these horrifying massacres that have turned us into fearful objects, we promise to remain faithful and steadfast to whatever fate our Lord shall deem to come our way.

Since you lived a brave life and was never dumb in the struggle against injustice and oppression, we solemnly declare our commitment in full measure for what you stood for, while in this corporeal frame of mortality.

Continue to rest peacefully in the bosom of our Lord until all humanity’s works here is done. We all shall meet you at the Eastern Gate.

Sincerely yours,

Simon