I have severally made the point on this column that for us to make any meaningful progress in this country, we must, despite the risks, tell truth to both power, and ourselves. One of the weaknesses I have observed in the current administration is that those closest to the president, and are, therefore, in a pole position to advise him, are somewhat culturally precluded from doing so either for culturally prescribed disdain for arguing with elders – Rankadede – or for fear of his towering persona. This has, unfortunately, led the president into making some avoidable mistakes which, in turn, have negatively impacted not only on him, personally, but on the region where he comes from.
To this bit I shall return later.
First let us take a look at the sub national level.
For consequential changes to happen in the North, deliberate effort must be made by its politicians, especially the serving state governors, to reduce poverty by aggressively and massively investing in education rather than just grabbing power for the mere sake of power. Education is the fundamental tool of reducing, if not completely eliminating, the massive insecurity currently threatening the very survival of the region.
Let us hear a fellow Northerner, Minna-based, Dauda Hussaini Paiko, weigh in on this subject as he speaks to the governors in a trending WhatsApp post. Before bringing him into this space at all, I have had to check him out on Face book to ascertain that he is real, and not merely ghosting. He is described there as an “activist, a public affairs analyst, social commentator, feminist and motivational speaker”. All I now have to do is do my damndest to omit his expletives, as he wrote like an angry analyst.
He writes: “Northern governors are the most unhelpful set of people in the world. They don’t meet to discuss how to improve life, or add value, to their citizenry. The only time they meet is when they gather to discuss Social Media Bill or zoning of the Presidency. We have 19 Northern States out of which only two, Kano, and may be, Kaduna are viable. The others merely survive on federal allocation. They don’t meet to end banditry, or terrorism, let alone talk of economic development, and growth, or how to foster good governance across the region. Rather they will come and threaten everyone on how power must remain in the North, claiming they have the numbers. Yes, you have the highest number of out of school children. With time, Boko Haram and banditry will be a child’s play because those you fail to educate, and empower, will have no option than to take up arms. Yes, you have the highest number of Girl child marriages. In some states, girls aged between 10 – 12 years are married off, the reason VVF has become prevalent in North West States.
You have the lowest GDP in the country because you produce nothing of commercial value. Your land that could have been used to produce large farm products to be used for industrial production are now homes to terrorists. The only thing you know is Power. Power without value. Power without making a difference. Power without control.
I am a Northerner. And I speak for majority of the sane ones. Power sharing is not our problem. Our problem is lack of Peace, Progress and Prosperity. We want industry, trade, tourism and employment. Anyone parading himself as my leader should share that common interest with us. I want food, employment, education, roads and access to credit to establish myself. I am tired of running about”.
Paiko has said it all.
If the above is the background to indescribable insecurity in Northern Nigeria, the consequences of the president’s own errors – if errors they are – especially his unfortunate mismanagement of the country’s diversity, have been much more telling and deleterious, if not, indeed, disastrous, the way they have divided the country as we have never seen it, the civil war years inclusive. Nigerians have never loathed each other this much.
And this is where the appropriateness of the title of the article comes in. Dr Hakeem Baba – Ahmed has severally spoken about how disappointed the North is with the president’s performance in office. Indeed, as I shall show below, the president’s prebendal cronyism is, for instance, why zoning of the presidency has now transmuted to a war footing both within the various political parties and the public because once you become president, people from your region or ethnic group can claim they own the entire country.
So important has maintaining the unearned advantages President Buhari gifted Northerners these past 6 years that they rapidly organized a meeting this past week to strategise on how to retain the presidency in the North even after 8 straight years of President Buhari in office. At the meeting, insecurity enjoyed no more than the status of a footnote.
It is time the North, willy nilly, restrategises, thinks of Nigeria as not just the provider, or as a grazing field but, instead, help Nigeria to make some meaningful progress.
For me, however, except in matters of infrastructural procurement, this possibility now looks remote in the Buhari administration because there is no way the president can assuage the grave errors he committed in his mismanagement of the Nigerian diversity.
Or how many Northerners will he sack?
Below is how, uncannily, another WhatsApp post describes the things President Buhari did in a mere 6 years which have thoroughly divided Nigeria and sauntered our social and interpersonal relations across board, but has, more than anything, earned some Northerners ill will across the country. In what the writer calls his evaluation of the Northern takeover of Nigeria under the Buhari administration – a takeover exemplified by the preferment’s he gifted Northerners but which have not, in the least, stopped the hordes of their young compatriots rushing Southwards to hawk, beg or push trucks, since feudalism has no consideration for the underclass, he wrote:
“Today, all three arms of Government; Executive, Legislative and Judicial have been appropriated by the North.
President, Chief of Staff, Senate president, Chief Justice of the Federation, are all Northerners and as we all know, he who controls political power controls everything in the Republic.
Northerners have also taken over all arms – bearing organs of national security – Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Inspector General of police, Director general of Department of State Security (DSS), National Security Adviser, (NSA), Minister of Defense, Commander of NSCDC, Chairman of NDLEA, all Intelligence services, military and civilian. Director NIA, Director Military Intelligence, Director Naval Intelligence, Director Air Force Intelligence, Immigration, Prisons etc.
Like Aristotle observed centuries ago: “Those who have command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please.”
In February 2018, the Nigerian Police which feigned ignorance of the AK47- bearing Fulani herdsmen, announced with relish, plans by the Inspector General of Police to order surrender of both licensed and unlicensed guns within 21 days. This was targeted at Vigilante groups, Neighborhood watchers and people who obtained licensed guns for personal protection but Fulani herdsmen, some as young as 16, ,were exempted from this order as they still openly, and brazenly, hug AK47 in full view of the Police unchallenged. Again, that Philosopher, Aristotle saw this before our time, and said: “Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people and, therefore, deprive them of their arms.”
Nor is that all.
The four highest revenue earners of Government are headed by Northerners: NNPC, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the Nigeria Ports Authority as well as the Nigerian Customs Service.
Equally, the big spenders are also controlled by Northerners: Defense, Finance, Education, Justice, FCT, Agriculture, Police Affairs, Aviation, Communication, Power, Water Resources, and Humanitarian Affairs just as the following key federal agencies: EFCC, ICPC, NFIU, NNPC, PTDF, DPR, PPRA, PEF, NPA, NIMASA, NDIC, SEC, NAICOM, FMBN, FHA, NHIS, NPHDA, UBEC, TETFUND, SMEDAN, NYSC, BOA, DBN, BPE, NTA, NEDC, FERMA, PENCOM, NITDA, NCC, NEMA, FAAN, NAMA, NIMET, NIRSAL, NIMC and Sovereign Wealth Fund” are headed by Northerners.
What a state capture by a single section?
Importation of foreign Fulani and Northern youths into Southern forests started rather surreptitiously. During the Covid -19 lockdown, when interstate movements were officially banned, thousands of Northern youths, invaded most state capitals in the South, without security men batting an eyelid. They came in trailers, loaded with brand new motorcycles. Some people wondered aloud as to how they got those brand-new motorbikes, who paid for them, who sent them down South and who received, camped, housed and fed them?
These things are not accidental.
They are now suspected to be injected sleeper cells in Southern urban areas ready, and programmed, to press their weapons into action to cause maximum pandemonium, injure and kill in order to dominate and take over ancestral lands whenever their controllers so decide..
Under the pretext of herding cows, they started full scale occupation of forest reserves, importing their family complete with their armory of AK47 and ammunition”.
Now they rape, kidnap and kill.
All these things happening under the Buhari administration cannot be happenstance. Even if the president is not personally privy to them, it is obvious some evil people are leveraging on his being in office. But to the Villa Mafia, and some Northern intelligentsia, must go the credit for some, if not all of these well worked, all-encompassing Northern (less the Middle Belt, Southern Zaria and those areas where the people are being treated worse than aliens) take over stratagem.
In no country, or better put, in no other federation in the entire world, can we find this total takeover of the whole by a part, but because all these are of no beneficial use to more than 80 per cent of Northerners, especially the hoi polloi, I know for a certainty that 5 to 10 years down the line, President Buhari will look back to these days with considerable regret because they are the reasons his preachments for peace and unity, both of which he says are not negotiable, will never materialise given the level of the systemic inequity characterizing his government.
This is no curse, but reality, because peace and unity cannot be built on double standard.
Credit: Femi Orebe