We cannot Preach Unity if we cannot act Unity, even at the Symbolic Level by Abdul Mahmud.

Abdul Mahmud

Troll the Facebook accounts/pages of those you think should teach us to understand why we fail at uniting our people, or why we lack understanding of those centrifugal pressures that undermine our unity, and you will see how we have started on the long road paved with dumb skulls to peril. 

Unfortunately, these Facebook compatriots have become megaphones of hate and preachers of violence and their accounts/pages places for whipping up ethnic sentiments, mobilizing folks for reprisal attacks.

The Nigerian state has been at its weakest, at least, for a decade or more now. This is a nation-state that cannot defend its citizens against ritualist, herdsmen, kidnappers, militants, robbers, and thieving politicians; this is a nation-state that cannot defend itself against BH, JAMBS, and ISWAP. 

Lest we forget 19 citizens or more were murdered in their nights of sleep a few days ago in Plateau state; police officers and lecturers of the University of Maiduguri are still being held by BH and JAMBS!

Two wrongs, they say, cannot make a right. All citizens of conscience must call on the military to withdraw its men and women from the streets of the South East and allow the Nigeria Police Mobile Force deal with the security challenges IPOB presents. All citizens of conscience must continue to make the call that IPOB prosecutes its struggle within the confines of the Constitution and international laws that Nigeria is a signatory.

We cannot preach unity if we cannot act unity, even if acting it is at the symbolic level.

Imagine what acting unity does to our preachments if the following happened or is happening:

1) President Buhari's son who recently graduated from a British university is doing his NYSC in Abia state;

2) Bukola Saraki's son who also recently graduated from a British University is doing his NYSC in Cross River state;

3) Rochas Okorocha's son who recently graduated from a British University is doing his NYSC in Borno state;

4) HRH Sanusi's daughter who recently graduated from a British University is doing her NYSC in Bayelsa and so on and so forth!

They won't act unity.

They won't tell us where their kids are serving.

They kill using our soldiers and our citizens kill fellow innocent citizens who they believe are their enemies because they belong to the other side of the ethnic divide and the cycle of violence widens.