OUR ONLY CRIME TO THEM WAS THAT “WE ARE MUSLIMS”. 7 September 2001 was not an ordinary day. It was a day that left a permanent scar on the memories of the Hausa-Fulani Muslim community in Jos. Twenty-five years may have passed, but some memories do not grow old. Why do we need to remember? We remember not to teach hatred, revenge or division, but to preserve the truth against contamination and learn from the wounds of the past. We remember because a people without memory can easily become victims of history again. Let the world know that these days were real, these losses were real, and the tears were real. We may forgive, we may seek peace, and we may choose reconciliation but we WILL never forget. Is there a need for our upcoming generation to know? Yes, for them to know the nature of their town, people, diversity and other issues. I will personally never forget that Friday. I will never forget that Saturday. And I will never forget that rainy Wednesday. They were not ordinary days. They were days of fear, survival, loss and unimaginable pain. We must remind the world of the lives we lost, almost 1,000 people according to accounts of the violence. Behind every figure was a human life, a family, a story, a future that was suddenly cut short by the enemies of peace calling themselves “Yan Kasa”. We must remember the homes that were set ablaze, the properties destroyed, businesses wiped out, farms and other sources of livelihood lost, and the wealth accumulated by families over generations reduced to ashes within days. We must remember those who were displaced from their homes. We must remember mothers who lost children, children who became orphans, husbands who lost wives and wives who lost husbands. And we must remember the fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty and the feeling that the place we called home was suddenly no longer safe. Some may want history to move on without looking back. But you cannot heal a wound by pretending it never existed. For us, the lesson was profound. We learned that security cannot be taken for granted. We learned that communities must remain vigilant. We learned that friendship must be tested by difficult times, not merely by peaceful days. But most importantly, we learned the value of unity, self-preservation, solidarity and peaceful coexistence. We remember those terrible days not because we seek revenge, but because we refuse to allow the suffering of our people to disappear from history. Our dead deserve to be remembered, our displaced deserve to be remembered and our destroyed homes and livelihoods deserve to be remembered as well. And the lessons of 2001 deserve to be remembered. Twenty-five years later, I still remember that Friday, Saturday and that rainy Wednesday. The memories are still fresh because the losses were real, the pain was real and history must never forget. We won't be the first to ignite a fire, but if another person ignite the fire, we'll use every available means to extinguish the fire to protect ourselves and to ensure we're not victims. @bbchausa @AJEnglish @ARISEtv @channelstv @hrw @AmnestyNigeria @amnesty @cnnturk @CNN @RFI

Can we all agree this Man is the worst CDS as well as the worst Minister of Defense?