Nigeria’s Defence Minister, General Christopher Musa (rtd), last Thursday read the riot act to Sheik Gumi for describing those who have ravaged the Middle Belt, engaged in mindless killings of thousands of subsistence farmers and condemned thousands of their displaced families to IDP camps in their own country as “our brothers”. He frowned at his efforts and those of his group at providing “covert support to criminal elements seeking to destabilize our country”. And with foreboding finality, he threw a challenge at Gumi and his tribe of subversives: “The choice is clear. Stand with the law and the nation, or be counted among those enabling criminality” because for him, “a friend of a thief is a thief”.
One can understand General Musa’s righteous indignation. He has seen how rhetoric and actions of those who behave as if they are above the law not only endangered the lives of his soldiers but also increased the nightmare of Nigerians. He has witnessed how Gumi’s call for rehabilitation and payment of compensation to those who under the pretext of government marginalization killed thousands of innocent Nigerians has only increased the frustration of Nigerians. He equally understands that Nigerians are scandalized by betrayal of our country by respected Nigerian leaders like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who directed Fulani settlers in in Benue to disobey anti-grazing laws of their host state; Abubakar Malami’s attempt to extend free movement constitutional right of Nigerians to cows, and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed’s attempt to confer Nigerian citizenship on immigrant Fulani herdsmen terrorizing Nigerians with AK 47 which he said they needed to protect their cows from rustlers.
But I sympathize with General Musa because beyond Gumi and his tribe, most Nigerian elite have subversive tendencies and have engaged in serial betrayal of Nigeria since independence. Indeed, this is why many believe that the Nigerian educated elite are the scourge of Nigeria. Chief Obafemi Awolowo who in the run up to independence, believed Nigeria’s educated elite were driven by greed was also of the opinion that given a choice between them, our traditional rulers and the departing colonial masters, Nigeria would choose in reverse order.
Let us start with Book Haram insurgency that has dragged on for over 13 years, spreading violence at its pick from Borno State to Abuja. For instance, General Andrew Owoye Azazi, one time National Security Adviser to President Jonathan is on record as saying Boko Haram was a creation of PDP subversives. Today, leading lights of PDP currently taking refuge in ADC blame others for their folly as if it is possible to have today without yesterday.
Many believe terrorism in the northeast was a creation of dissident northern governors. For instance, Sharia law since it was institutionalized by the colonial masters was just a method of local adjudication in the north. But that was to change when anti-Obasanjo northern governors led by Ahmed Sani Yerima on October 27 1999, launched Sharia as a state religion in defiance of section 10 of the 1999 constitution, which states very clearly that “the government of the federation or of state shall not adopt any religion or state religion”. Thirteen other northern states soon joined Yerima to inaugurate sharia law in their states. Many of the ‘Sharia’ governors later sponsored some of our youths for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden who was then taking refuge in Sudan. It was widely believed that some of the youths that went through that indoctrination formed the nucleus of insurgents groups that have brought nothing but misery to poor northerners. While the 13 Sharia states today remain the most underdeveloped part of the country, their other baleful legacies are millions of out-of-school children and street urchins known as ‘almajiris’.
Niger Delta’s violent militant groups were also the creation of Niger Delta dissident governors. At the onset of the 4th republic, agitation for resource control by self-serving Niger Delta elected governors forced the federal government to seek the Supreme Court’s interpretation of section 162(2) of the 1999 constitution. The court ruled that the plaintiff was obliged to comply with the provisions of the constitution on the 13% derivation from May 29 1999.
That was all Niger Delta traitorous governors needed to invite disloyal VP Atiku Abubakar who was planning to oust his principal from power as their arrow head. Falsely swearing in the name of the people, they went on to arm frustrated jobless Niger Delta youths, victims of land degradation and water pollution.
Mujahid Asari Dokubo’s Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) later accused of “siphoning oil and gas from pipelines, destroying energy infrastructure and declaring war on Nigerian state, was one of such creations. Others include Odili ‘s rival group, the Atake Tom’s “Niger Delta Vigilantes”(charged for treason and jailed in 2005) and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) led by Ben Victor Ebikabowei, alias General Government ‘Boy Loaf’, responsible for the death of over 1000 people with over 300 others taken as hostages. This forced late president, Umaru Yar’Adua to negotiate and agree to pay each militant N65,000 monthly or N65b per annum. Non-faithful implementation of the programme after Buhari’s emergence in 2015 led to the emergence of the Niger Delta Avengers, whose attack on oil installations led to reduction in Nigeria’s oil production by half. This was what forced Nigerian government into the negotiation table.
General Government Boyloaf, who the late Pa Edwin Clark said could not secure government job because of lack of education, chased around by security officers on account of his criminal activities, has since obtained a first class degree in international relations from Abuja Base University and transited into a multi-billionaire business man with a big mansion in Abuja while Dokubo, his former principal has settled down as first class traditional Ijaw ruler routinely consulted by Niger Delta politicians. While the militant leaders have been integrated into the system, the lot of the poor in Niger Delta remains the same.
And if you believe they were driven by altruism to unleash terror on Nigeria, take another look at the profile of these self-serving leaders. First, they have all been accused of financial malfeasance against their states: – Peter Odili was saved by the court, Alamieseigha was chased by EFCC and foreign security agencies from Germany, through France, Britain where he had deployed his state resources to buy mansions to Nigeria; James Ibori was jailed in London. Ifeanyi Okowa is accused of deploying his state resources on Atiku’s 2023 presidential campaign. And as for Wike and Fubara, facts have emerged to show they generously deployed resources of Rivers to buy influence among PDP oligarchy and respectable Nigerian institutions like the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
But perhaps the greatest threat to our survival as nation is the economic and political subversives.
In the seventies and eighties when the naira was stronger than the dollar, we produced our own food, manufactured our own refrigerators, television, car accessories such as batteries, tyres, windscreen and our own drugs. Ibrahim Babangida’s liberalization and commercialization policies were to turn us to importers of labour of other societies. The economic subversives who argued most vociferously in favour of globalization to justify change of policy from manufacturing to importation are today behind massive importation of foreign goods including substandard and fake ones. They have over the years also sabotaged government’s efforts at backward integration just as they are the most critical of current government’s policy aimed at changing the narrative.
And of course, the political subversives have continued to betray aspirations of Nigerians by preventing a return to where the rain started to beat us.
Unfortunately, most Nigerian youths and others below 70 may never appreciate how beautiful our country used to be at a period we operated a federal arrangement that guaranteed “unity in diversity”. Our three regions each with her own High Commissioner in the United Kingdom operated without interference even from the centre. That was the period Nigerians had no apprehension putting their 12-years old inside the train unaccompanied from Ibadan or Lagos to Kano, when Sam Ikoku, an illustrious son of an illustrious father, Alvan Ikoku contested under AG, a Yoruba party and defeated his father contesting under United National Independent Party (UNIP) in Aba.
This is why I sympathize with Defence Minister Musa. Subversive war whether in the north or in the south are only symptoms of our unresolved national question. We today spend millions on subliminal advertising campaign to decree unity as if possible to climb the palm tree from the top even after 55 years of repeated failure of military social engineering strategies to promote unity.
I wonder if it has ever occurred to our leaders why it was only the period Nigerians were not ashamed of belonging to their Igbo, Hausa /Fulani, Yoruba, Edo, Ibibio, Mumuye, Kataf, Gwong, Biron etc. ethnic nationalities that our identity as Nigerians was never in question.
