Nigeria Is A Barbaric Country, By Peregrino Brimah

When President Muhammadu Buhari disclaimed Nigerians as a criminal infested country, I was one of those who staunchly rejected it. Not because, like all other countries, we do not have criminals, but because our President, like our Information minister is paid to be our chief image maker. It is disheartening to make such statements about my country, but I have to considering the reality. And as a free soldier, I am not paid to protect our image.
It has been over two months since the Zaria massacre. The Islamic movement has released a list of 705 missing human beings. 200 citizens of our barbaric country have been detained extrajudicially since the massacre and are now being framed. Parents do not know where their children are and breadwinners are either detained or dead and secretly mass-buried, leaving children without a clue where their parents are. And Nigerians continue to go about their business like all is OK. Nigeria is indeed a nation of barbarians. No regular human beings will watch such monstrous injustice and be easy and indifferent to it.


I am not a Shia Muslim, nor a Sunni Muslim. I am a human being. What happened and continues to happen to the Nigerian citizens in Zaria is an abomination. Boko Haram did not kill 45,000 Nigerians (according to CFR figures) by accident. The success of terror in Nigeria is a result of our being barbarians. We watched as Boko Haram bombed Churches, then we watched as Boko Haram killed all and sundry because we are barbaric. We did not rise up against Boko Haram. We played politics with the terror on both sides of the isle as our animal nature permeated. We are not interested in going after the sponsors of Boko Haram because we love them.

Taiwo Ogundipe in the Nation newspaper revealed in 2012 that Boko Haram received funds from Saudi Arabia, from Governor Ibrahim Shekarau and governor Isa Yuguda among others. We watch these men and do not press for justice…because we are apes. This is the plain bitter truth. Nigerians are a wicked and unrepentant rotten breed of the type that inhabits the black hole of Calcutta.

Our eyes are dimmed by sectarian and other fanatic, evil divides. We look at the Zaria massacre and refer to the victims as “them.” That group. Those miscreants who do not deserve to be alive. We ourselves do not deserve to be alive. We are the scum of humanity. A disgrace. I am using the most polite words to write this article. English lacks words terrible enough to classify what we are as a people…or the low level we are in the animal kingdom.

The Kaduna probe is a ruse and we all know it. People are looking for their loved ones. What is a probe? Is there not supposed to be an urgent and active police investigation going on right now to find who is dead, where the dead are buried and who is alive? Where is the investigation as we go about our business? Barbarians! Plain and simple. How can the whereabouts of our fellow citizens of such a large number be unknown and we act regular? When one lady went missing in Abuja recently, we all clamored to find her. We hashtagged and twitted, looking for her. Glory to God she was found. We are pretenders. Hypocrites and liars. 705 people are missing and 300-1000 are dead and we do not give a damn, because “some of them tapped the chest of our army chief”…or because some of them protested and barricaded a street with sticks and stones, after we had massacred them the year before. Oh, they were a pest so kill them right? Animals!

The Nigerian military massacred not only those who blocked the street. Let’s say that was OK, even though it was not. The army and Kaduna government went ahead to rape, burn and in other ways massacre more with bombs and all sorts of weapons at three other sites: in the Husainiyyah complex, at Gyellesu and Darul Rahma burial ground. Then demolished their structures and exhumed their graves. And there is no active investigation and we sit and eat dinner thinking we are human beings? We are animals, we drink blood. We are neither Muslims nor Christians because the followers of Jesus, peace be upon him and Mohammed, peace be upon him, will Never behave as we do. Two whole months! We are the rats who wrote the budget. Who is fooling who?

Fellow barbarian, I hail you oh.

Dr Peregrino Brimah @EveryNigerian