A NICE PIECE WRITTEN IN RESPECT OF AN ARTICLE BY ONE MR GOODWIN ABOUT THE EGGON PEOPLE AND THEIR INNOCENT ABOUT THE ON GOING KILLING IN STATE BY MUHAMMED LIMAN ENJOY IT !!!!! Godwin onyeacholem,Youre no doubt on a mercenary mission,youre a stranger to Nasarawa state;to its people and their cultural and social rigidities;,its politics ,demographics and the complex social imperatives that define the categories of these relationships. Obviously,your mission is to politicize the most grisly and dastardly act of mass murders, to dilute its sordid criminal nature with unmitigated falsehood and publicist propaganda.To portray Eggon people as victims of official policy of discrimination is a gross disservice to the truth,for nothing on earth can justify this well planned and clinically executed annihilation of an entire unit of a police force and a score of state security service personnel on an ostensible mission to arrest an outlaw, a self-proclaimed shaman who had fermented several crises within Nasarawa state, threatened its peace and security, also caused incalculable losses of lives and inestimable damage to properties.The result of these incessant terrorist acts went on unabated,with impunity and this confirmed the fears that Ombatse,contrary to its claim that its a spiritual revivalist movement, is in fact a deadly terrorist organization with cells embedded all over Nasarawa state, with the primary objective to militarily take over the entire Nasarawa state,by force.Past events have proved this assertion right:The attack of Gidan Mai Akuya in 2001;the invasion of Assakio and Agyaragu in 2012;the killing of the chief of burumburum,invasion of kwandare and the genocidal attack on Fulani in Bassa and some parts of Doma LGA-all initiated by the Eggon militia groups.These bellicose and intractable activities by the Eggon terrorists are not consistent with the characterization by Godwin that Eggon people are peaceful people by nature. Mr Godwin should be told that his claim that Eggon people are more populous in Nasarawa state is an empty myth,though being mainly farmers they are more widespread geographically .But this special migratory nature of Eggon people especially the farmers,into other areas created new complex set of relationship thats particularly conflicting.This,in addition to their extreme territorial tendencies,pitched them against their neighbors and host communities.A diligent check on the court records will disclose that Eggon people represent more than 80% of litigants in land cases.I cannot defend the policy of Abdullahi Adamu directing local govt staff to relocate to their respective local govt Areas of origin.That clearly was retrogressive as it was condemnable,it might be targeted against the Eggons.But although Aliyu Akwe followed the policy and applied it,Godwin should have been honest enough to admit that Tanko Almakura,in redressing the injustice has reversed the the policy.Most importantly however,Godwins claim of political marginalization of Eggon people is a puerile mischief.This claim is not supported by any shred of evidence,rather evidence abound that Eggon people have always been adeguately represented both at the state and federal levels-both elective and appointive.In Lafia federal constituency An Eggon man was elected to the house of reps from 1999-2003 and during the 2011 election,Lafia people rejected their own son to elect an Eggon candidate.His victory was not based on the preponderance of Eggon votes,which previously were manufactured from village electoral factories, it was deliberate because he was a CPC candidate which the ethnicity-neutral electorate overwhelmingly supported. Secondly ,the Eggons have variously held high level positions in the state which include two deputy Governors;Secretary to governments;commissioners-2to 3 at a time;high court judges.If therefore systematic policy of oppression were in place as scandalously alleged by Godwin, if its true, then the present landscape in which a system of equitable structure of power balancing would not be present, in which the Eggons seem to be enjoying more than their own equitable sharers of appointments.The tragedy however is, generally, the average Eggon man grossly suffers from ethnic myopia,a disabling cognitive impairment that limits his perception beyond ethnicity. Nothing else beyond eggon interest appeals or makes sense to him. Neither religion,philosophy,ideology,nor personal or social relationship matters -nothing else really matters.This primordial attitude has reduced the eggon people to a ruck of pathetic,ethnocentric,inward spiraling tribal jingoists.It also renders them vulnerable to an egregious ethnic programming,reduced to a myopic,superstious and culturally primitive set of people.Labaran Maku,whose hands I see clearly in this mercenary write up aptly typifies the cultural crudity of an average Eggon man,he is a perfect portraiture of an unrefined ruffian with a little education but with a rumbustious and arrogant carriage. Back to the process of mental programming Eggon people,this trend had started from the early seventies but fully crystalized in 1979 when Solomon Lar the then Elected Governor of greater plateau state introduced the divisive indigene/settler politics.Although the Mada,Alago,Migili,Gbagi,Igbira,Afo,Yeskwa,Toni,etc,seized this ethnic propaganda and utilized it to redefine their politics and restructure the power equation in the then lower plateau, but the Eggons went further to integrate this ethnic ideology and elevate to a new cultural identity,namely; pax eggonnaor in Eggon language-Eggon ken ken-loosely in English:All Eggons are one.That it was a propagandist call to political cohesion and unity was not in doubt but it did not take long before its negative implication produced a tragic irony:After the creation of Akun local government Area by Lar,the Eggons were already fighting the Mada people over the control of the commercial part of Akwanga,leaving in their trail scores of deaths and damaged properties.Also after the appointment Of Aren Eggon,a sort of traditional incongruence over a fiercely republican tribe,the Eggon people living outside the domain of Aren Eggon began to undermine the other traditional rulers of the lands in which they were settled,shifting their traditional loyalties to Aren Eggon whose area of jurisdiction was limited to Nasarawa Eggon local govt Area.This open rebellion to the traditional institutions of their host communities created an intractable state of tension and sometimes skirmishes ,but the then civil authorities were effective in dealing with the crises each time they erupted .Also in 1981, the Eggons again attacked the migilis over the ownership and control of Agyragu station in now obi Local govt Area.that also left several people dead,houses and properties destroyed.All these incidences were directed both by directive force-through political and cultural brainwashing-by their political and cultural leaders and also by their socio-cultural backwardness.I have chronicled just a few of the atrocities the Eggon people-committed against their neighbors and host communities-whom Godwin claims are peaceful.In fact they are anything but peaceful.They are pugnacious,territorial,quarrelsome and of recent bloodthirsty. One of the greatest losses the Eggon and people of nasarawa state suffered in recent times was the death of Chris Abashi.The late Chris was one of the few most charismatic leaders Nasarawa State ever produced.He was the most detribalized,highly progressive,ideologically polished and whose commitment to common good of all people transcended the basic level of ethnic parochialism.If chris were alive today Ombatse would not have sprout out and political neonates in the cast of the present pugilists would never have been able to plunge the Eggon people into this horrendous tragedy. The objective behind Ombatse is as shortsighted as it is parochial: it is time to produce a governor in Nasarawa state by all means,come 2015.But in their foolishness they fail to grasp the simple logic of history,that no matter what,an Eggon man must one day become the governor of Nasarawa state,the same way also a Christian,but its logical that inevitably,they too at one time or another must relinquish it to some another ethnic group or religion.This simple logic must bear the mark of reality that there is nothing sacrosanct about 2015 to the people of Nasarawa state in general,neither is it to the Eggons in particular,for which lives ,property ,social and economic relations should be so wantonly destroyed in pursuit of the political ambitions of a few individuals,whose lives and political career are merely defined and grossly limited by costly electoral spoils. So My advice to all of us is simple: the path to the government house is not paved with genocide,banditry and terrorism but by the ballot papers.The barrel of the gun can only engender anarchy and that will make governance impossible.The conventional wisdom has always been:No body has the monopoly of violence.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 11:05:46 +0000
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