Eloquent Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai has the courage of his convictions. At Monday’s Arewa Joint Committee interactive session for presidential candidates, he spoke effusively of the social and political character of the North, insisting that that character underscores the approach of “Northern Nigeria” to issues pertaining to Nigeria. He described the North as a region shaped by the values of honour and justice, and by the historical imperatives vivified by the politics of Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Tafawa Balewa, the former prime minister, and Aminu Kano, exponent of Talakawa politics and radical politician. Mercurial in temperament and unafraid to own his views, whether they are popular or not, Mallam el-Rufai seems always poised to needle his critics with sarcasm and coruscating remarks. Last Monday, in a packed hall in Kaduna, and in the presence of an animated crowd, he once again indulged his passion for oratory and boldness.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, was at the interactive session earlier on Saturday, days before both the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Labour Party candidate Peter Obi took their turns last Monday. Alhaji Atiku must be credited with setting the tone for the interactive session by signposting the importance of the northern stakeholders’ meeting with his combustible and controversial statement directing northern voters to support him for obvious reasons. He had said: “…What the average Northerner needs is somebody who’s from the North and also understands that part of the country and has been able to build bridges across the country. This is what the Northerner needs. He doesn’t need a Yoruba or Igbo candidate. I stand before you as a pan-Nigerian of northern origin…” The statement had triggered a firestorm, and Nigerians looked forward to what Asiwaju Tinubu and Mr Obi would say.
Few expected any of the candidates to alarm anybody through their formal presentations. But a question and answer session followed every presentation. That was where the Arewa House audience hoped to ensnare the candidates. It was during the question and answer period that Alhaji Atiku fell on his sword, when communication and the use of language failed him, and when his closet conservatism, dogmatism and narcissism exploded into the open and exposed him as a risky leader the country should be chary of electing. As usual, Mr Obi, despite the social media hype by his men after the Monday event, was both lackluster and politically straitlaced, unwilling to explore beyond his constant and enervating homiletical politics. And it was during the question and answer session that Asiwaju Tinubu, despite his unease with fecund speeches, felled many a learned man with his answer to a question on climate change. Few, it turned out, had heard the metaphor “a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating poisoned Holy Communion”. So they interpreted it literally and concluded it was inappropriate and offensive to Christians.
There was no question who performed most creditably during the Arewa Joint Committee interactive sessions, or who was most prepared to govern. It was certainly not the jingoism of Alhaji Atiku or the staidness of Mr Obi. But Mallam el-Rufai’s plea to the Kaduna crowd, eloquently delivered, also struck a distinctive chord that belied its brevity. He opened a window into his own worldview, as he always managed to do when he speaks, and an even larger window into the mindset of the core North. The rest of Nigeria may not always be enamoured of those windows, considering what controversial views they give a peep into, but politicians who curry those regional votes must be wary of infringing the northern mindset or becoming alarmed by it. Indeed, the purpose of the interactive session was to find out whether the candidates understood the northern worldview and had prepared to accommodate it. Mallam el-Rufai reiterated that worldview, but as usual gloated about it in a mildly offensive manner that betrayed the ethnic exceptionalism that had long formed the leitmotif of his politics.
In his short admonition, Mallam el-Rufai did not mince word about the candidate he supported, the APC candidate whom he said resisted entreaties not to present himself for the scrutiny last Monday. Though he said the occasion was not meant to politik, he nevertheless managed to endorse his candidate and recommend him for general endorsement, arguing that he was the only man fit and prepared to assume the mantle of leadership in 2023. But in endorsing the APC candidate, the governor predicated his choice on a few moral facts which he insinuated gave an unassailable view into the character and persona of the North, assuming the North could be likened to a man. He then brusquely went on to appropriate the mind and spiritual essence of the North for his political party by declaring that the region had the sense of honour and justice to always do what was right. More, he claimed ostentatiously, the North had a sense of history rooted in the politics and worldview of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Prime Minister Balewa, and Mallam Aminu Kano. Mallam el-Rufai also glowed about the support northern APC governors are giving Asiwaju Tinubu because the North does not know how to pretend. Once they said something, he crowed, they did it, unwilling and unable to dissemble.
Shortly before he ended his brief remarks, he indulged his mercurial gifts again as he subtly but poignantly shredded Mr Obi’s politics. He recalled an incident in 2013 or so when the APC sought to participate in a by-election in Anambra State. Mr Obi, who was then the governor of the state, he alleged, ordered him detained for 48 hours. He did not elaborate on why he was sure Mr Obi was behind his ordeal. In any case, he growled, he was now in a position as Kaduna governor to recompense Mr Obi measure for measure. But his birth as a northerner, the Kaduna governor suggested icily, did not permit him vengeance. “We are northerners; we are civilised; we don’t do things like that”, he boasted. Perhaps it is okay to boast of possessing such virtues, but it is not clear whether he did not in the same breath imply that such virtues were region-specific, almost as if those virtues were exclusive. What is clear, however, is that he had planted a seed of doubt in the minds of his listeners, inviting them to not trust Mr Obi for his pettiness, undemocratic proclivity and lack of principles.
Mallam el-Rufai appeared to have reserved his most penetrating barb for Alhaji Atiku, absolutely without mentioning his name. In fact, few would suspect the barb was aimed at the PDP candidate. Alluding to a sense of justice in the APC but inextricably connecting it with, again, that regional exceptionalism and nobility that both hallmark the politics of the North, the Kaduna governor painted an effervescent picture of northern APC governors convoking ‘one Saturday evening’ to redeem the image of the region by insisting on power rotation to the South. Some have described the effort as a ploy to get the governor or any of the governors’ assignees the coveted running mate position, but Mallam el-Rufai suggested the aim was much nobler than that – a regionwide gesture to higher moral principles and standards. “We insisted that power must rotate to the South”, the governor bellowed to underscore the principles of justice, fairness and honour. After eight years of Muhammadu Buhari administration, he opined, it was futile asking for another four years in the presidency for the North, as if others do not matter.
What Mallam el-Rufai said made ample sense, whatever his motives. But it becomes even far more poignant when contextualised against the ambition of Alhaji Atiku who throughout his politics had shown an idiosyncratic lack of reverence for rules, agreements and fairness. Not only was Mallam el-Rufai now insinuating the serial presidential contestant’s shortcomings before the northern audience, he was probably also drawing their attention to his provocative Freudian slip denoted by the inexpert appeal to the regional sentiments of his northern compatriots. Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike at various times alluded to the unreliability and self-centredness of the PDP candidate, insisting that he could not be trusted to keep his word or extend the virtue of fairness to others since he didn’t have it in the first instance. In a few short minutes, Mallam el-Rufai, while facetiously deploring politking at the Kaduna interactive session last Monday, managed to sell his candidate and demarket the PDP and LP candidates. In that dizzying moment too, he sold the virtue of the North with the typical gusto his politics of exceptionalism could drive. But who could blame him, or cavil at his virtuoso performance?
Kanu, Igboho and mismanagement of dissent
Once the federal government moved against Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, two well-known self-determination activists, it was constitutionally duty bound to prosecute them according to the laws of the country. The problem, however, for many Nigerian governments is that the rule of law appears ponderous, demanding and less indulgent towards government powers in order to protect the weak. In 2015, the Muhammadu Buhari administration arrested the showy and loquacious Mr Kanu for demanding freedom for Biafra, an amorphous and hypothetical country with controversially ambitious boundaries. The administration detested self-determination, arguing that the boundaries of Nigeria and its unity had become inviolate and ironclad. It made no effort to understand the reasons for the agitations, nor did it attempt any effort to placate or even cleverly weaken or subvert the secessionist demands.
But the courts remain courts, and in 2017, Mr Kanu was admitted to bail. He, however, jumped bail when soldiers invaded his home. Fast forward to 2021, he was extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya to Nigeria, thereby abridging legal process and violating domestic and international laws. The Court of Appeal last month seemed to agree and he was discharged and ordered released. Then began a welter of legal interpretations to determine whether his discharge amounted to acquittal or not. The federal government has finally gone to the Supreme Court. What is important here is not whether the Court of Appeal erred in law or not, but whether the administration could not have handled the sensitive matter differently. From all indications, and judging from statements made by administration officials and even the president himself, the government was unduly emotional, awkward and imperious in handling the separatist demands from the Southeast.
The same emotionalism was to lather the self-determination agitations from the Southwest anchored by Mr Igboho a few years after Mr Kanu was first arrested. The Southwest case was even more interesting. It began with the rampage of herdsmen killing and maiming on farmlands and remote settlements. Months after months, the federal government demonstrated the most appalling degree of impotence any government anywhere could exhibit. Fearing that the Southwest could become a killing field like the Middle Belt, where herdsmen embarked on and still sustain unchecked killing sprees, Mr Igboho appropriated the angst of the region and took it upon himself to rid the Yoruba heartland of herdsmen, armed or not. Naturally, it was not long before the campaign took on ethnic colouration that pitched locals against every nomad and itinerant Fulani. Soon, it was a matter of time before the campaign against herdsmen morphed into a campaign for self-determination, sucking in critical members of the Southwest elite already apprehensive of some hidden Fulanisation agenda.
Here again, the federal government demonstrated sheer incompetence. They summed up that Mr Igboho exemplified the struggle against herdsmen and the nascent self-determination campaign by the Southwest. They also reasoned that once he is taken out of circulation, either by death or arrest and incarceration, the campaigns would collapse. Though the Southwest had their reservations against Mr Igboho and his autocratic and amateurish style, they were nevertheless incensed by the clumsy effort to murder the activist in a night raid marked by indiscriminate shooting. Before the raid, sensing the awful dimension the Southwest struggle was heading, the region’s political leaders met publicly and denounced the Igboho secessionist campaign. The unusual denunciation was a bold and risky business, but it worked. All that was left was for the federal government to cash in on that breather and mount a coordinated campaign against herdsmen and other international criminals soaking the countryside and farms in blood.
Instead, flush with the success of the rendition of Mr Kanu from Kenya, the administration mounted a campaign to force Mr Igboho back to Nigeria from Benin Republic where he had fled for refuge. He was on his way to Germany. That effort, luckily for the federal government, met with little success. Had Mr Igboho been extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria, the administration would be battling two unpopular cases in the court, cases that have tended to paint the administration as sectarian, ethnically motivated, and obsessed with hegemonic agenda. The courts have tried to maintain impartiality by judging the Kanu case mostly on its legal merit. Consequently, the administration is having egg on its face. Had they also tried to manage an Igboho case alongside the Kanu case, it is unlikely they would not be more embarrassed.
Mr Kanu would have been castrated had the administration made diplomatic and legal efforts to extradite him from either Kenya or Britain. But they were tired of his campaigns, his incitement, his hate speech, and the freedom with which he seemed to indulge his bellicosity. They, however, failed to recognise that his campaign did not have the legitimacy it appeared to have at first view. They then compounded their error by also tarring Mr Igboho with the same brush, and tried neutralising him using the same terror tactics unsuccessfully applied against the Southeast activist. But neither Mr Kanu nor Mr Igboho was as popular as their campaigns indicated. The administration may be spared the burden of also prosecuting Mr Igboho in Nigerian courts, but it will have to continue to contend with that of Mr Kanu for a while. It is hard to see them winning, for domestic and international laws recognise self-determination agitations. There were reasons for the agitations; the administration should have more sensibly tackled the campaigns from the demand side (reasons for the agitations) rather than from the supply side (government’s instruments of coercion), a misnomer and orientation that hark back to the dysfunctional paradigms of colonial rule.
