Palladium
About the same time the Zamfara governor was imprecating the South on behalf of what he says are persecuted northerners in the South, 17 northern groups, including the respected Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), three Fridays ago, declared that they would support restructuring in a qualified way but would not be stampeded or blackmailed into taking a decision on rotational presidency. A day earlier, at the same time the Zamfara governor was threatening retaliation against southerners in the North, the ACF met and issued a statement condemning the killings but denouncing retaliation as a useful public policy tool to which the Matawallen Maradun had angrily elevated it. The 17 northern groups left enough food for thought for proponents of restructuring, suggesting that though it was desirable, it was nevertheless a convoluted idea whose outcome no one could definitively determine. And by refusing to be ‘stampeded or blackmailed’ on rotational presidency, the groups suggest that that they are yet to see any injustice or unfairness in retaining the presidency in the North going forward, a supposition that is implied in an item in their communiqué which speaks of the strategic advantage the North holds over the South in the establishment and location of business interests.
The North does not of course hold a comparative advantage in mediocre statements and politics, but some of their governors and ministers have made pungent and provocative statements that indicate their confusion and close-mindedness. They will be matched in the months ahead by southern exponents of restructuring who will sadly not have an answer, because they have prepared none, for the numerical aggressiveness of northern delegates to the cobbling of any restructuring deal. Too many people consequently feel empty, frustrated, entrapped and hopeless. This emptiness may illustrate why many southern activists are turning ineluctably towards self-determination rather than to restructuring, a turning northern leaders have just given hints may cost everyone, particularly the South, direly. But they exaggerate the consequences.
Since the coup d’etat and countercoup of 1966, core North politics has been coloured by a siege mentality that makes the region’s politicians see national dominance as an entitlement, sometimes interpreted as northern hegemony by southerners, but to northerners always more like a protective shield. Even the many intervening military regimes foisted on the country were largely inspired by the core North, but undergirded by Middle Belt officers until after the Gideon Orkar/Great Ovedje Ogboru coup saw the whittling down of their influence. By the time the Buhari administration arrived in 2015, both political and security power became unabashedly colonized by the core North, leading to feelings of alienation and marginalization in the South. There is a chance that such ruthless dominance will be a passing phase; perhaps it may even be construed as an indication of the desensitized nature of the current administration, and a reflection of the constricted worldview of the politicians and strategists who have hijacked it. Unhappily, however, this dominance, not to say the contorted views and arguments of administration officials, may have encouraged non-state actors like herdsmen to act as if that dominance reflected their prowess and manifest destiny which must never be challenged. But it is being challenged, and there is no telling how that challenge will end.
The northern political elite must find ways of eschewing the siege mentality induced by the politics of the first and second coup if peace and unity are to be restored. The country is in uproar, riddled by unstructured malfeasance and crimes in every part of the country. Administration rhetoric seems to suggest that the situation would be brought to heel soon; but there is little or nothing in the political and socio-economic dynamics of the country to underscore that optimism. Daily killings have assumed horrific dimensions, and there is near total breakdown of law and order, which unfortunately the administration believes can be controlled by the application of overwhelming force. This is an illusion. The resources to drive extended security operations do not exist; but even where a semblance seems available and is administered upon the country, it will inflict collateral damage on the social and economic wellbeing of the people, particularly the hordes of uneducated and disaffected northern masses. Rethinking the structure and operations of the country is the crying need of the moment. But the faulty thinking of the northern political elite, their newfound admiration for the unbridled privileges which the Buhari administration has conferred on them with appointments into key agencies, and the three arms of government and security positions, not to talk of the reluctance to entertain the genuine concerns of excluded parts of the country, may doom whatever martial remedies are being contemplated.
Worse, the northern political elite sees the current structure of the country as amenable to their needs and comforts, but they fail to appreciate that unless that structure is redone to greatly lessen the cost of governance and empower the various nationalities along the line of the independence constitution, the frictions will continue until they reach boiling and breaking points. Those points are upon the country already. Keeping the present structure unchanged, refusing to think expansively like nationalists, promoting religious dissension in the susceptible Southwest, and resisting accommodation with politicians of common ideology and patriotic interests will certainly doom the country. The era of keeping any nationality by force in an unhealthy union is long gone. There can be no military solution to the restlessness pervading the country, as the examples of the US/Afghan war, and before it, the Russo-Afghan war, not to talk of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, have shown.
If the crisis continues a little longer, the administration may toy with either the declaration of a state of emergency or emergency rule. This will, however, merely compound the crisis. With nearly all Nigeria’s neighbours – Niger, Chad, Cameroon, etc — unsettled by internal conflicts and bad leadership, the fear of imminent implosion is indeed palpable. The politics of the next general election will determine whether Nigeria will successfully navigate the landmines its leaders have carelessly strewn in its path. To suggest that the presidency will not rotate South, despite all the attendant drawbacks of the arrangement, as some northern politicians have overconfidently asserted, is courting disaster.
Concluded
