BY MAJOK NIKODEMO AROU

Gallant people of the Nuba Mountains, who played a significant role in the civil strife in Sudan cannot lap up the current propaganda campaign waged by the defeatists, among others, Mohammed Kuku, who wrote an article published by Sudanese online titled: “The Nuba Used and Dumped”, on March 13.
The Nuba people, alongside other marginalized people of Sudan, had fought against the perennial injustice and exploitation and would still do so until justice finally prevails.
Ambivalent and defeatist Mohammed Kuku, who wrote from the Nuba Mountains’ provincial capital Kadugli, cited his imagined scenario, “the parable of the man who castrated himself to punish his wife”, to depict what he deems and alleges as an unfortunate conclusion of the Nuba Mountains’ people struggle. He was even so bold to ridicule the struggle by describing the Nuba heroes as “licking their wounds” because they are according to him left in a lurch by the Southern Sudanese after the Naivasha Agreement.
In a nut shell, Kuku simply reduced the contribution of the Nuba sons, Commanders Yussif Kuwa and Abdel Aziz Adam El Hillou to the SPLA/M struggle to set up the New Sudan to a personal vendetta. The plausible Kuku even assumed that there was no point for the Nuba people in the first place to join the war alongside the Southern Sudanese since the Khartoum governments had been appointing the Nuba sons as governors! He forgot that Southern Sudanese were appointed as Vice Presidents yet war erupted.
One would really doubt whether Kuku wrote out of sheer fears to warn the Nuba of dangers ahead as South Sudan gears towards exercising the right of Self Determination inked in the Naivasha Agreement. It is apparent; he has other ulterior motives when he describes the SPLA/M hero and martyr commander Yussif Kuwa, who died of cancer in March 2000, as a myopic because he took up cudgels against the injustice and inequality. This alone raised eyes brow about the actual allegiance of Kuku.
The Naivasha agreement may not be ideal to meet all the aspirations of the Nuba Mountains’ people, but a truth has to be highlighted that it puts the cause of the marginalized people of Sudan, including the Nuba Mountains on track. No more would the future of the Nuba Mountains be determined without its people.
Another unequivocal glaring truth - is that the people of Southern Sudan will never never never leave the Nuba people in the cold. The Nuba people represent a solid rock on which the New Sudan will be built. There may be transient obstacles and hiccups in the way but the will of people is invincible!
It is still fresh in the memories how the people of Nuba Mountains were beleaguered for ten years in row during the 1990s of infamous split in the SPLM. The people there miraculously endured the systematic organised massacres and man made starvations which were intended to coerce them to give up the struggle, but they didn’t until the truce was eventually reached in Switzerland in January 2001.
It is a glorious historic paradigm and legacy that cannot be brushed aside by the defeatists such as Kuku and the likes. The enemies of the New Sudan still wreak havoc to weaken the very objectives of the struggle in order to exercise their old new policies of divide and rule to rock and finally conquer the SPLA/M.
Though the defeatists whistle in the darkness, the SPLM should be awake to counter such poisoned chalices to boost the morale of its supporters across the country. Leaving this to mere chance alone could be fatal, because some adherents could be overpowered by the enemy’s media machine and change horses in midstream.