by Alexander O. Onukwue

There were ethnically-motivated underpinnings in the recent clash between some traders and Charly Boy at Wuse Market, it would appear.

As described by various accounts, those who made to attack the popular entertainer and activist leader were of the Hausa speaking ethnic nationality, supposedly springing to action in defence of their person, President Muhammadu Buhari, to whom the #ResumeorResign protests have been targeted.

Buhari has been in London for 100 days undergoing treatment and recuperation for an undisclosed illness, and it has been the aim of groups like Charly Boy’s that he either is now well enough to be President or give way fully for the Acting President.

While Buhari has been away, there have been threats of eviction from different parts of the country, beginning with the Kaduna Declaration by some youth groups in the North. They set a deadline of October 1 on or before which every Igbo in the North is expected to have vacated, leaving behind their assets and investments.

The 19 Governors of the Northern States released a statement after the Arewa group’s declaration in June, condemning them and emphasising the safety and security of all Nigerians in every part of the country. However, persons like Prof Ango Abdullahi lent his sympathies to the quit notice.

More recently, there have been rumours of a supposed anti-Igbo song which vilifies persons of Igbo-speaking origin. It does not appear to have spread much in other parts of the country, but it is available online and sounds like a purposefully and well-rendered project.

Adding the attack on Charly Boy – an Igbo man – by supposedly Hausa persons to the above as being the emergence of a thread might be too hasty; as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja is not a Northern state, and the evidence at present does not appear to make the incident a pre-meditated and planned attack.

However, it could be that this gives an idea of some of the feelings and sentiments of a particular people towards another and what they would be ready to do to express their displeasure. Nearly everyone is calling the October 1 deadline an empty threat but it will be unwise to not take measures to forestall any negative eventuality.

Editor