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Showing posts from March 12, 2023

Now That We Have Arrived Rwanda | By Festus Adedayo

Just before genocide broke out in Rwanda in 1994, a broadcaster on the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) had said: "Someone must ... make them disappear for good ... to wipe them from human memory ... to exterminate the Tutsi from the surface of the earth.” That statement, among others, from that Kigali-based radio which broadcast from July 8, 1993, to July 31, 1994, became the tinder that set Rwanda on fire. By this time next week, the 2023 Nigerian general elections would have been concluded. However, like the shrew – the asin – which leaves in its trails pungent and breath-ceasing smell, the elections, perhaps unwittingly, have endangered social cohesion among ethnicities and set Nigerian unity back by almost a century. RTLM broadcasters got enveloped in crude jokes and usages of offensive language that have today been held to have contributed highly to the 1994 genocide. Though figures of casualty are still being disputed, from April 7 to July 9, 1994, a total o