I was a student at the Nigerian Law School, Lagos, the day General Sani Abacha sacked the Interim Government, led by Mr. Shonekan. I remember walking to my hostel at Igbosere that unfaithful evening and met a gathering of students at the entrance to the Dom, debating the bloodless coup. As I listened, the theme of the discussion was the need to dismantle Nigeria permanently. And I waited and watched, without saying a word. After a while, I joined the discussion, indicting the Northern political leaders without calling for disintegration. I remember vividly what I said: "I will not oppose any Nigerian, irrespective of his or her tribe, aspiring to become the President or a Military Head of State of this country. In addition, I will not condemn any region that fought hard to impose one of its own on the rest of us. However, I am finding it difficult to accept the quality or caliber of the leadership coming from the North, especially the types the Northern powerful political elite has consistently imposed on us over the years." And I continued, citing examples of Adamu Chiroma, a retired Banker, and Mallam Maitama Sule Usuf, a former diplomat who were left out during the NPN Primaries for Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Adding that Alhaji Shehu Shaagri's highest aspiration was to be a Senator and not a President. And I stopped. It was like a bolt from the blue; the comment was unusual, leading to a brief pause in the discussion.
Then, this student who I have never met before or interacted with stepped forward and faced me directly, directing his speech at me. He said, "every problem that you guys have in the South, we have ten times that problem in the North. The poverty and joblessness you guys are complaining about, they are times ten in the North. Health, infant mortality, insecurity, poor infrastructural facilities, educational problems, just name the problem, it is times ten in the Northern part of this country." At that point, I interrupted him by asking if he understood what I just said. He said, "yes, I did." And he went prophetic and ballistic.
Adding, "watching some of you since I arrived here in Lagos, it is like we live in a different world. I have noticed that some of you have been to the UK or America during the holidays. Also, it is very apparent that your Mom, Dad, Brothers, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles, or Cousins either live overseas or have been there. It is not the same story in the North." And he continued. "There are towns and villages in the North where you would hardly find someone who had traveled to Lagos before, talkless of traveling to the UK or America." Then, he paused. Hearing that, no one could rebut him. Because it was the blunt truth. Given the fact that he directed his speech at me in particular, it was not unexpected that I should respond. I said to him, "my friend, why are you telling me all these? I am not asking for the dismantling of this country, but I am unequivocally opposed to the trial and error leadership coming from the North. Besides, I don't even know you." I declared, visibly annoyed.
At that point, he stepped closer and said, "you don't have to know me, but I know you and I have been watching you since my first day in this Law School." Hearing that I said, "this is why I don't like to engage students in debate." As I was about walking away, he stopped me and said, "Please, whatever position you find yourself tomorrow, do not forget this discussion and do not join hands in the demands for the break up of this country." Noticing that he wasn't in the mood to show contrite, I walked away from the group and went up to my room.
About thirty minutes later, another student who was at the discussion came into my room to chastise me for walking out of the gathering. He said, the guy likes you and he knows you very well. And I asked, how, I have never met him before. My visitor repeated, he knows you very well. Adding, he knows that you are one of the Executive team of the Edo State Bar Student Association. Hearing that, I was a little bit amazed, asking my friend, who is he?
My visitor told me that the guy is a Middle-Belt native, precisely from Jos, and a graduate of the Ahmadu Bello University Faculty of Law, Zaria. He added that the student was the President of the ABU Law Student Association (LAWSA) before coming to the Nigerian Law School. And I said, "impressive, a Jos native, no wonder I couldn't figure his accent." The following morning, I bumped into the guy at the Obalende Bus Stop, and we both acknowledged each other by nodding our heads, without saying a word.
Before I proceed further, I want to add that this discussion came up about a year ago (September 2018) on my impromptu trip to Lagos. The gentleman who came to pick me up at the MM International Airport was the same dude who came to my hostel that faithful evening to apprise me of the background of the student who confronted me. He told me that the gentleman is now practicing law at Abuja, FCT. And that's by the way.
That discussion at the Law School Dom has remained with me until this very moment. As I told the gentleman and the other students in that discussion, I have never asked for the dismantling of this country in my copious writings or in my pronouncements in the public. But I have never ceased to have problems with the quality and caliber of the personalities emerging from the North as our political leaders. They see the South as a conquered territory. And the ninety-nine problems (apology to Jay Z) that the gentleman articulated more than twenty years ago are still with us today. Despite the dominance of the political power at the center by Northern political elite groups, they remain in the wood on how to make life better for the majority talakawa and the almajiri population.
A Disturbing Reality!
But for the Boko Haram insurgency and the invasion and sacking of villages and communities in the Middle-Belt and North-East, Southerners would not have known of the appalling state of infrastructural facilities and the standard of living in some parts of the North. I am not denying the fact that we have poverty and joblessness or at all the Makoko villages in the South, but I am not so sure that we still have communities living in mud houses in the South voluntarily and comfortably.
Today, the world and the international news media have given up counting and reporting the number of bandits and Boko haram related death in Nigeria, especially in the Northern region. Indeed, we have a President who is a Northerner. And the Minister of Defense, Chief of Army Staff, and the Security Adviser, all Northerners. Yet, they can't stop the killing in their neck of the woods or elsewhere in Nigeria. Therefore, as at this moment, it is not unpatriotic to conclude that President Buhari and his administration, especially the security team, have failed Nigerians. Declaring that they DO NOT have any cards left to play on how to fight and eliminate bandits and insurgency in Nigeria as a whole is a moot point.
Worse of it all, foreign mercenaries do not have problem invading Nigerian communities in Sokoto and Zamfara States, holding the natives in bondage, and forcing them to pay taxes to them. It has never been so bad in the history of this country. Yet, we have a son of the Sokoto/Kano Caliphate as the President, who is a retired Major General in the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Today, there are thousands of his people in the streets of Aba, Benin City, Lagos, Owerri, Onitsha, Port-Harcourt, Ibadan, Akure, just to name a few, soliciting for alms to survive. And their big brothers who pray like them and speak like them, live luxuriously in the big houses at Abuja, UK, Niamey, and Dubai.
Every day, they die like chicken, uncounted. They are butchered. They are slaughtered. They are dislocated. They are evacuated. They are dispossessed. They have no home. They have no history. And they have no future. They are Northerners. But they are first, Nigerians. And they are the tragedy of the identity politics of Northern political leaders, which most commentators referred to as irredentism.
The major beneficiaries of that identity politics are the like of the gentleman who confronted me at the front of the Nigerian Law School Hostel at Igbosere Street in Lagos the day Abacha struck. They have executive-level federal jobs waiting for them if they chose to work in the public sector.
And when they attained that position, a discussion about the Talakawa, the Almajiri, or the Aboki pushing wheelbarrow all around the city of Lagos becomes an aberration. As long as they have one of their own on the top, the Talakawa are on their own. And for the first time since amalgamation, only one President thought it fit to remember the Almajiri and the Abokis in our midst by specifically making funds and educational facilities for them. He is from the Niger-Delta.
Fighting to Frustrate the South Without Helping the North!
It is one of this talented ten (apology to Booker T. Washington) who confronted me at the Law School hostel that would grow up to become the like of Dr. Ahmadu Ali of the famous "Ali Must Go" student protest of the 70s who sponsored the removal of feeding subsidy for Nigerian University students.
It is one of them who would grow to become a Professor, a VC of the University of Maiduguri, a Minister of Education, a Minister of Petroleum Resources - the extremist Dr. Jubrin Aminu of the Nigerian University Commission of the 70s who canvassed vigorously AGAINST free education at all on the ground that it would not benefit the North in the same magnitude that it would likely benefit the South.
It is one of them who would grow up to become a Professor and the Chairman of the national electoral commission who would openly manipulate the results of a Presidential election to perpetuate in the office of the President of Nigeria someone who indisputably believes that the Southern part of his country is a conquered territory. His state of mental infirmity is irrelevant. The other candidate is not northern enough.
It is one of them who would, thanks to crude oil dollars, secured a fulltime scholarship to study Law to a JSD level at Harvard University Law School, and become a Legal Adviser to a Military Dictator, and singlehandedly concocted a convoluted National Constitution, while presiding over the lopsided calibration of Nigerian into unviable states and local government councils, all favoring his own region.
They tolerated the Almajiri culture. We consider it a national shame. To them, illiteracy is an honor, and Boko is unquestionably Haram. Indeed, poverty is a pride, almsgiving is noble, and sponsored marriages are the best way to go. But they sent their children overseas to attend Grammar Schools and Universities to acquire western education and dignified social etiquette
Since the exit of Mallam Aminu Kano, can anyone name a Nothern Gani Fawehimi, Tai Solarin, Professor Awojobi, Falana, or Dr. Akionla Aguda? To all the Dr. Junaid Mohammeds or El-Rufas in our body politic, it is the North first, before the rest. Their bogus radicalism is defined or limited to the extent that it benefits certain classes on the basis of tribe and religion.
The truth is, if the northern Military Officers, both serving and retired, as well as serving and retired political leaders willingly extricate themselves from that cocoon of born to rule philosophy and cast their votes on every national issue dispassionately as a Nigerian first, I can assure my Law School Student friend that no Nigerian commentator would be calling for the dismantling of this country right now. Go back and do a review of the excuses you gave for refusing to pass the petroleum industry bill.
Analysis!
There is no denying the fact that poverty or joblessness in the Northern region is ten times what we have in the Southern region. But thanks to Quota System and Federal Character, the University-educated Northerners are never on the jobless lines, like their Southern colleagues. And as long as the educated Northerners remain silent in the face of the horrendous joblessness ravaging the Southern educated class, the more strident the demands for the dismantling of this country will take.
There is no more debating the fact that it is in the area of national security that President Buhari and his trusted and chosen few failed this country the most. National security was his major bargaining chip as a Presidential candidate. His affinity with the sect and the fact that he is a retired Military Officer and a Northerner to boot, cast him out as the favorite candidate for the American Government and that of the UK. Besides, before becoming the President, he was the chosen one by the Boko Haram sect to negotiate a cease-fire on its behalf with the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
There is no harm in that. And it was on the basis of trust. What is stupefying, though, is that the trust was there when he was an outsider, but now that he is in charge, the trust disappeared. And that is where I have the greatest problem with President Buhari. It is about trust. It is about integrity. And it is about fairness. He doesn't have it. He lied to Nigerians.
After more than four years in power as the President, more Northerners have been slaughtered in Nigeria than at any time in the history of this country. Under him, Nigerian Armed Forces have suffered more casualties than it experienced during the three years of civil war. And as long as you continue seeing names likes Okonkwo or Owolabi as casualties of Boko Haram's ambush, the louder the revolutionary songs and of separation will take.
Sambisa Forest is smaller in size than the whole of the former Eastern region, a region the Federal Forces invaded and conquered in three years. Why is Boko Haram still intact, standing, and capable of inflicting untold harms on members of our armed forces?
The Niger Republic is a friendly Nation. Mali is a friendly country. Chad is a friendly nation. And the Cameron Republic is a friendly nation as well. In other words, Boko Haram's major enclave is landlocked. They have no access to any airport or to any seaport. And they do not share territorial landmarks with any friendly nation. So, who is supplying them the vehicles and weapons of war and by what means?
If after four years in office, the President and his security team are still deceiving Nigerians, killing our young men and women in uniforms and wasting our financial resources fighting a war that only President Buhari and his Northern friends can define, you cannot stop those who cherish freedom, peace and the good life from agitating to leave you and your folks alone and have a country of their own. That is the fact of the story. You are wasting our resources, killing Nigerians, and fighting a war you were once picked as a mediator and a peace-broker. I don't hate you, Mr. President. Please, tell me that I am wrong, you have no idea of what is going on in this country outside of Aso Rock. If you do, most of the names on your Ministerial list would not be there.
Conclusion!
Nigeria belongs to every one of us, both the rich and the poor. The Almaijiri population needs economic and social emancipation. Every Talakawa in our midst, from the North to the South and from the East to the West, deserves liberation and they are victims like every one of us. I am not asking for the dismantling of this country. Nevertheless, the time is now for every state in the union to have its own Police Force, create incentives for power generation and water supply, and partner with the Federal government, individuals, and foreign investors to exploit the abundant natural resources in its region. The Unitary model and the centralization of power and our nation's wealth at Abuja is not working and it is not for the best interest of all. Northern political leaders have destroyed a supposedly great nation by exploiting the timidity and greed of Southern Political leaders to hijack the leadership of this great nation; dominating most Federal MDA at the top, and in most cases, unaccountable to no one. They perpetuate nepotism unhinged; thus, enabling incompetence, insecurity, corruption, and a culture of low expectations. And that is why we where we are today and the nature of the uncertainties enveloping the land.
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