The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • Moremi controversy in S/West

    Ancient Ife, the first city kingdom founded by the Yoruba people, is a place of great legends and folktales. One of the most popular folktales from Ife is the Moremi story. In Yorubaland in modern times, Moremi has been widely celebrated in songs and drama – usually as a story of great heroism and patriotism. But now, in recent weeks, there has arisen a controversy over the exact significance of Moremi in Yoruba history. The Ooni of Ife has celebrated Moremi as a heroine and patriot with a beautiful statue in Ile-Ife. But the Oba of another Yoruba kingdom, the Olugbo of Ugbo, has responded that Moremi was not a patriot but a traitor – and a public controversy is raging.

    The first thing to say about controversies concerning Yoruba history is that the Yoruba are a very great African people – with one of the highest peaks of urbanism in world history, and with highly sophisticated political, social and intellectual accomplishments. The Yoruba have great stories to tell from their proud history but, unfortunately, because they did not develop writing as part of their civilization, oral traditions of their history can sometimes prove difficult to unravel. It is an honour for us historians to wrestle with these difficulties. And we must thank distinguished historians Toyin Falola and Jide Osuntokun and others for stepping into the present Moremi controversy. My brief intervention here is that of a historian who has spent a whole adult life researching and writing Yoruba history, and who is still strongly involved in the study.

    The setting for the Moremi story is the Ife town (Ile-Ife) in its earliest years. For many centuries before the creation of Ile-Ife, many tiny separate settlements had existed in the area of the Ife forest. (Clumps of such small settlements were many all over Yorubaland). In about the 9th century AD, the small separate settlements in the Ife forest coalesced into a single large town, Ile-Ife, ruled by one king – the first of such in Yorubaland. The path to the formation of this one Ile-Ife was rough, featuring conflicts and wars between the many small settlements of the area, conflicts and wars lasting, according to most traditions, more than 100 years. Even after the inhabitants of the small settlements finally agreed to end the conflicts and settle together in one large town (ile-Ife), there were some people who would not agree. These migrated away in anger into the forests far from Ileì-IfeòÌ, where they settled down and built settlements of their own. The people of Igbo-Igbo, one of such settlements, being still very angry, were determined to destroy Ileì-IfeòÌ. And so the stage was set for the Moremi story.

    Ileì-IfeòÌ town was new, young, and fragile. Suddenly, it found itself in grave danger. From somewhere in the deep forests, some people dressed in strange masks, and looking more like phantoms than humans, came attacking and rampaging in the dead of night, destroying and burning houses, killing people and kidnapping others. Before the Ileì-IfeòÌ people could respond, the phantoms vanished. Sometimes, the attack occurred frequently; at other times it occurred after long breaks. Nobody could tell when it would come. Fear gripped Ile-Ife; many people believed that the attackers were super-human. It sometimes seemed as if the town would break up.

    Among the king’s wives, there was one exceptionally beautiful young woman named Moremi. MoòreÌmi had only one son named Oluìorogbo. MoòreÌmi began to think of the terrible situation. Surely, she thought, there must be something that she could do to help her town. She finally came to a decision.

    One night, MoòreÌmi stole out of the palace and went to the small river EòsinÌmiÌnriÌn in the forest, not far from town. Standing in the darkness, she invoked the spirit of the river for help for Ile-Ife. At last the river spirit answered and agreed to help, but demanded a reward. Moremi pledged to offer her only son, Oluorogbo, as sacrifice to the river spirit as reward.

    And then the river spirit gave Moremi her instructions. On the next coming of the raiders, Moremi should deliberately let herself be kidnapped and taken away. She would go through a lot of experiences, but she should not fear, because she would be under protection. And she would someday come back to Ileì-IfeÌ, and her return would finally lead to the destruction of the enemies and the end of their attacks.

    So, when the attackers came next, Moremi let herself be captured by them. They rushed her and some other captives into the deep forests. After a long march in the forests, they reached their destination – a small town surrounded by thick dark jungles. Among Yoruba people, the practice was that kings and chiefs took as wives young women who were captured in war. So, the king took Moremi as wife.

    And so MoòreÌmi found herself in the very heart of the secrets of the enemies of Ile-Ife. In the many months that followed, as a wife to their ruler, she was able to listen to their conversations and plans and learn the minutest details of their secrets. They were not phantoms at all, but humans wearing masks. And their masks were inflammable.

    One morning, while fetching water alone at the brooks, Moremi felt the urge to bolt away. She said a short prayer and started off into the jungle. She had a fair knowledge of the forest paths. She knew that some men would soon be chasing her, but she was confident that they would not find her – that was what the spirit of the river had promised.

    Finally, she burst into her familiar Ile-Ife. She was taken before the Ooni and his chiefs, and she told them all she had done and suffered and learned. She revealed all the secrets of the supposedly phantom raiders, and made suggestions how their menace could be finally brought to an end.

    The raiders came at the time that MoòreÌmi had said they would. An ambush was waiting for them, mounted by men armed not only with the usual swords, spears, bows and arrows, but also with fiery torches. The phantom raiders were completely vanquished. The next morning, as MoòreÌmi had advised, a large army set out through the forests to go and attack Igbo-Igbo. The small town was taken by surprise and destroyed. Many survivors, including their king’s son, were brought captive to Ile-Ife. Many other survivors fled into the forests – and settled far away as new towns.

    In Ile-Ife, rather than order the execution of the captives, the Ooni allowed them to stay and live honorably as free citizens. The Ooni even conferred the title of a priest on their young captive prince, in which position he was allowed to wear his father’s crown. And Ileì-IfeòÌ lived and prospered from then on, and became the source from which many other YoruÌbaì city kingdoms were founded.

    MoòreÌmi’s personal story and agony was not yet ended. She still had her pledge to the spirit of the EòsiÌnmiÌnriÌn river to fulfill. One day, she took Oluorogbo to the bank of the river and offered him as sacrifice. Most versions say that, at that point, Oluìorogbo was snatched up to heaven and became a spirit. Some other versions say that after Oluìorogbo was sacrificed, the rulers and priests of IfeòÌ deified him. Oluorogbo’s shrine is said to exist still in Ile-Ife.

    Some historians doubt whether the Moremi story is myth or history. But, whichever it is, it is a very important story to the Ife people and to most Yoruba people.

    Moreover, if the Moremi story is indeed history, then it should not surprise us that, while most Yoruba regard Moremi as a heroine and patriot, people in some places in Yorubaland (probably descendants of those who suffered defeat and distress because of her actions) regard her as a traitor. In the history of the world, that commonly happens to important persons. It all depends on how an important person’s life impacted different people in his or her time. For instance, most French people regard Joan of Arc, who once saved France in a battle, as a heroine and patriot; but some regard her as an insane woman possessed of the devil.

    We Yoruba will always have colourful controversies from our great history. We must not quarrel about such. Our duty is to respect our past, and to try responsibly to study and understand difficult points in our traditions. Fortunately, we are always producing competent historians today. In the Moremi matter, the Ooni deserves our nation’s gratitude for the beautiful new statue of Moremi in Ile-Ife.  We Yoruba need to have many statues of our local and nationwide heroes and heroines in our homeland.

  • Another mega-party? Wait a minute!

    We Nigerians are hearing again that yet another mega-party is about to show up in our country’s political space.  The news media are telling us that some of our foremost politicians are milling around, pulling together, and flexing their muscles towards creating a mega-party, with the intention of using it to sweep the present APC crowd off the high stage of our country’s politics and governance. Before we see the new mega-party, we want to have our say. Here is what we say.

    We don’t want another mega-party. What we want is a proper political party – a political party drawn from all strata of Nigerians, motivated only and solely to seek, promote, defend, and advance serious improvements in the management of Nigeria and in the quality of life of all Nigerians, a political party properly and democratically organized, open to the sensitivities, desires and hopes of all Nigerians, and doing what most Nigerians know and believe to be in their best interests and in the best interests of their country.

    What we know about mega-parties – what we have ever got from mega-parties – is ugly, to say the least. If Nigeria now sways on the verge of breaking up, it is largely because mega-parties have had chances to lay their hands on Nigeria, to distort Nigeria’s path, and to brutalize and pauperize the overwhelming majority of common Nigerians. NPN! PDP! Names from the depths of hell. Each is a creation of the obscene kleptocracy of the military dictatorships. Military officials come by force into power as soldiers earning no more than soldiers’ salaries, but in only a few years, when they step down or are forced to step down from power, they have become members of the special club of billionaires in the world. Then, fortified by the wealth they have stolen from Nigeria’s coffers, they establish a lien over the political life of Nigeria – by creating and empowering, or helping to create and empower, a mega-party of their elite friends and cronies. Naturally, the culture of the mega-party is to empower its elite members to steal, steal, steal, so as to become billionaires too. What all this rapacity can do to Nigeria and Nigerians does not matter in the least to these barons of loot. In their hands, things like Development Plans are, at best, mere deceptive jokes, and most often, designs for scooping out public money for sharing.

    Over-impressed by its awesome galaxy of high and mighty members, the mega-party can only dream of ruling Nigeria virtually forever. And to that end, it uses stolen public money to recruit and absorb the agencies that the Nigerian Constitution establishes for regulating various aspects of the life of Nigeria – the Police, the electoral commission, the Secret Service, the top Civil Service, the judiciary, and even the serving military brass. The combination of the mega-party with all these agencies thus becomes like an army of occupation forcibly holding Nigeria down to its will. It was no empty pride when a leader of the PDP bragged that his party would rule Nigeria for at least six decades. The true nature of churning cauldron of chaos.

    No, we do not want another mega-party. And we do not again want any party created, organized, and run like a mega-party. The effort put forth by a group of political leaders, from 2012 on, to push the PDP from the government of Nigeria was a patriotic venture. The PDP kind of government and leadership was destroying Nigeria, and most Nigerians were distressed and worried. The effort to push the PDP out deserved and easily earned the support of most Nigerians. But, unfortunately, the effort suffered one major defect. It emulated the mega-party method of party formation that was well known in Nigeria’s recent political history. It concentrated almost entirely on gathering and recruiting big barons across the country, and it highlighted and brandished the power of big money in politics. It paid no visible attention to ideas, programmes, plans and processes of successful governance and development in our type of country and, ultimately, it did not produce any such ideas, programmes and plans. Its emergence was magnificent, for sure, but it did not stand forth as a party dedicated to any clearly known body of ideas, ideals and goals – other than to boot out the PDP. It did not have a pillar of principles around which the truly faithful could rally and from which the merely self-seeking (or the merely ethnic-motivated) political wayfarer was likely to walk away.  The election manifesto it put forth was not a product of deep commitment but a mere afterthought. In that way, it made itself vulnerable to the assaults of big persons who accepted the invitation to membership or candidacy of the party and who had peculiar and surreptitious agendas of their own.

    The consequence of all these are now with us. The party won the election but immediately lost its constitutional right to control and direct the government. We Nigerians voted for a party that promised us change, but some of the key persons whom we elected on the platform of the party are now hissing at change and laughing in our face.

    So, we demand that those who have the heart to do it again must do it differently – very differently – this time around. The very existence of our country hangs in the balance; if they do it right now, they may become the saviours of our country.

    Before gathering the barons together to form a party, determine, first and foremost, what the objectives of the party will be – what you are recruiting people to come and do for their country. Very seriously consider this, be sure it is what you honestly and sincerely want to do for your country, and commit to it unreservedly. In the disaster we face as a country today, there are countless Nigerians, high and low, who desire to support serious efforts to save their country. There are countless Nigerians who strongly believe that our country does not have to be as poor as it is today and that the poverty, confusion and instability are all products of poor organization and poor management of Nigeria. Indeed, a revolution is already close to the surface in Nigeria. When the aged statesman, Maitama Sule, recently called for a revolution, he was speaking the minds of countless Nigerians. The critical population mass already exists for a mass movement for grabbing control of Nigeria from those who see politics as a means of self-enrichment and those whose mission in Nigerian politics is to impose and expand their own ethnic nation’s domination over Nigeria.  Very many prominent Nigerians are now crying for a restructuring of the Nigerian federation so that it may become efficient for development purposes. Many of these are saying that delay in restructuring the federation could soon lead to the dissolution of Nigeria. It is obvious to most Nigerians that a proper restructuring of our federation and widened regional autonomies (to empower each section to develop its resources and cure poverty among its people) could bring to an end even the most violent demands for secession in various regions.  The masses of Nigeria’s unemployed youths, the millions of other Nigerians, men and women, who are poor, hungry and destitute, and the countless Nigerians who abhor corruption in the public life of their country, are desperate for change. To create the party of change in these circumstances, the great and foremost need is to put before Nigeria a clear message stating the programme of change – the programme for the revival of Nigeria.  It is around this that efforts must then be made to recruit and rally members and supporters for the new party.

    The ideas and programmes must include clear sectoral programmes for the various sectors of national development – the economy (modern agriculture, rural development, modern job skills development, entrepreneurial development, infrastructural development, educational improvement and expansion, small business development, business assistance programmes, export promotion, etc.) It must also include plans for setting free various regulatory agencies (police, electoral commission, judiciary, etc.) to enable them to do their duties faithfully. And it must include a no-nonsense programme for eliminating public corruption.

    A party like this can be done successfully. I have seen it done in our country before – and I was one of the young intellectuals who contributed to it. I refer to the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) 1978-83, which, even in those times, was phenomenally successful at achieving membership and support all over Nigeria because of its great and wonderful development programmes and its well-known sincerity. We took years of diligent work to put those ideas and programmes together before we ever chose a name for the party. I know too that such an idea-driven and programme-driven party can indeed change Nigeria dramatically. In country after country like ours in the world, I have seen such parties change the directions of their countries for the better. That is what Nigeria needs now – not another so-called mega-party of the high and mighty that has no intentions for our country’s good.

  • Yoruba in the Nigerian situation

    The general decline of Nigeria, and Nigeria’s growing poverty, has dragged the Yoruba nation steadily down since independence. Typically too, federal administrations hate the Yoruba spirit of enterprise and modernization, as well as the Yoruba frontline position in development, and devise various ways to drag the Yoruba people back.

    In spite of all these, the Yoruba are deservedly proud of their consistent contributions to the progress, stability and survival of Nigeria. They have always served as the pace-setters in educational and most other aspects of modernization in Nigeria. They have faithfully preserved their culture of religious tolerance and accommodation in their homeland, their cultural openness to the acceptance and inclusion of immigrants from other parts of Nigeria, and their political culture that promotes the growth of modern democratic society. They are always the foremost in the promotion of a sane federal structure for Nigeria, and in the defence of the integrity and well-being of Nigeria’s many nationalities. The Yoruba   homeland has therefore regularly been the destination for most Nigerians needing to relocate from the harsh conditions and conflicts of their homelands.

    The Yoruba also have a proud record of stepping forth at critical moments to defend Nigeria’s existence and stability. In 1966-7, as Nigeria slid towards chaos and civil war, the Yoruba were the only major Nigerian people standing up for peaceful resolution of differences in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the very courageous interventions by Yoruba leaders (Leader of the Yorubas, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and the Western State’s then Military Governor, Gen. Adeyinka Adebayo) did not succeed in achieving an amicable and peaceful resolution of the passionate differences – and civil war followed. In the civil war, the Yoruba nation’s various inputs (on the battle field and in the government’s management of Nigeria’s war effort) proved the most crucial contributions to the preservation of Nigeria as one country.

    In 2009-10, when President Yar’Adua from the Arewa North died in office, the Arewa North political elite demanded that he must be succeeded by another Arewa North    politician – a demand that sought to set aside his Vice-President, Jonathan from the Delta, in negation of the constitutional provision that a president who dies in office shall be succeeded by his vice-president. It was a strong and resolute defence of the constitutional provision by masses of Yoruba elite and people at home and abroad, that stopped the crisis which threatened Nigeria with conflict and disaster.

    In 2014, when the President of Nigeria convoked a National Conference, the overwhelming majority of the Yoruba elite and people arose to give it full support. Many Yoruba civic organizations submitted memoranda. A series of Yoruba leadership meetings was held, and a restated Yoruba Agenda was put forth, spelling out the well-considered proposals of the Yoruba nation for Nigeria’s stability and progress. Furthermore, in the interest of Nigeria, the leaders of the Yoruba South-west reached out to the leaders of the other zones. Their contacts with the South-east and South-south resulted in a meeting of the leaders of the three zones at Asaba just days before the commencement of the National Conference. At the Asaba meeting, the leaders of the three zones agreed to work together. On the whole, the Yoruba delegation discharged its duties creditably at the conference, did a good job of putting the Yoruba position clearly forward, and deserves much of the credit for the success achieved by the conference.

    Even though not much hope for change ever manifests in the Nigerian situation, the Yoruba generally don’t give up on Nigeria. Thus, in the course of 2013-14, the collapse of Nigeria appeared imminent. The Federal Government became more chaotic than ever before. The ruling political party was breaking up. Corruption was at a peak in all aspects of government. The Armed Forces, horribly weakened by corruption, were limping pitifully against Boko Haram in the North-east, and the fear was high that Boko Haram would expand its terrorism all over Nigeria. Faith in the country was at its lowest. Even in the Arewa North, whose political elite had always held a predominance in Nigeria’s governance since they had been installed over Nigeria by the British at independence, people were talking of dissolution of Nigeria. Various prominent Arewa North citizens threatened a resort to war. Reports of illegal arms imports into Nigeria sky-rocketed. An organization of Arewa youths held demonstrations demanding that Southerners resident in the North should return to their homelands within two weeks, that Northerners resident in the South should return to the North, and that the “failed experiment” of Nigeria should be terminated without delay.

    In these dark hours, a Yoruba political leadership group stepped forth to save Nigeria. Their resourcefully and competently managed effort mobilized leading citizens from all over Nigeria and produced a new Nigeria-wide political party which boldly promised change. In order to stem the tide of the prevailing inter-regional hostility, these Yoruba leaders helped to nominate their party’s candidate for Nigeria’s president from a nationality other than their own Yoruba nationality – a candidate from Arewa North, Muhammadu Buhari. Their party won the presidential election as well as majorities in both houses of the Nigerian federal legislature. Change seemed about to begin.

    President Buhari is fighting corruption and the old terrorist organization, Boko Haram, with some success. But he has demonstrated that he is no President of change. He has seriously depressed the influence of the party that got him elected; and he runs what looks more and more like an ethnic-sectionalist administration. He never makes any reference to the need to restructure the federation, to allow some autonomy to the regions, to restore socio-economic development initiative to the regions and states in order to revive the country’s economy and reduce poverty.

    Moreover, under him, the most murderous terror gang hitherto known in Nigeria has grown and quickly extended its rampages to most parts of Nigeria. This gang consists mostly of Fulani herdsmen who are armed with sophisticated rifles – and are destroying farms, killing farmers and farmers’ families, raping women, and destroying villages in most parts of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt. According to President Buhari himself (in an interview with CNN in London in late May) gangs of Libyan militiamen from late President Ghadafi’s militia who fled from Libya with their arms after the fall of Ghadafi, are embedded among these Fulani herdsmen, and have been supplying much of their capacity for killings and destruction.

    What the objective can be for this whole storm of rural killings and destruction is a great mystery to most Nigerians. It looks very much like the Janjaweed kind of terror in the Darfur Province of former Sudan Republic. In the Middle Belt, it looks very much like ethnic cleansing – an attempt to wipe out the small nationalities of this region and seize their homelands. In the South, where the nationalities (like the Yoruba and Igbo) are larger and stronger, the immediate objective seems to be to disrupt the agricultural economy of the various peoples.

    Even as this new storm of terror has grown, President Buhari has chosen to take steps to terminate the debate over the restructuring of the Nigerian Federation. On May 28, he made the alarming statement that he had not “bothered to read”, and did not intend to read or to seek any brief on, the Report of the 2014 National Conference. He stated that he had simply dumped it into the archives. A week later, his spokesmen informed Nigeria that restructuring the federation was not part of their government’s agenda – even though their party had earlier promised Nigeria that restructuring the federation was a cardinal point in their change agenda.

    It is historically significant that, while President Buhari thus shot down all consideration of structural change in Nigeria, some nations in Nigeria stepped up their demands for separation from Nigeria. In the South-east, the Igbo pro-Biafra organizations put huge crowds of demonstrators on the streets, and the clash of some of these with the police resulted in death and injury to many people. In the South-south, Niger Delta militants repeatedly announced demands for a new sovereign Delta country. They then greatly intensified their blowing up of oil mining and pipeline installations, thus inflicting very heavy damage on the Nigerian economy. In the Yoruba South-west, some highly placed Yoruba citizens, gathered at a civic event, reiterated the demand for the restructuring of the Nigerian Federation, adding that continued resistance to restructuring would result in “no Nigeria”. A few days later, in a city in the Igbo South-east, many prominent citizens from most parts of Nigeria (including former Nigerian vice-presidents, ministers, governors, legislators, etc), gathered at a civic event, demanded that the Nigerian federation should be restructured without delay, insisting that the existing conditions of the country were no longer tenable or sustainable.

    In short, stubborn and rigid resistance to demands for restructuring the Nigerian federation and for increased local autonomy, now makes Nigeria steadily more unstable, more violent, more chaotic, and more unworkable day by day. It is difficult to see what more the Yoruba, or any group, can do now to stop the slide. The probability of Nigeria’s dissolution has become very real.

  • Conclusion of a 2012 letter to Gen. Gowon

    Your Excellency, we urge you to see this perspective. Trying to heal Nigeria’s diseases with a supposedly almighty Nigerian wand has never worked, and it will never work. Military regime after military regime thought that the way to solve Nigeria’s problems was to pursue a centralizing, forced-unifying and forced-integrationist path. Well, they succeeded in centralizing, but that made the problems of Nigeria enormously worse. In the place of the locally based leaderships and local loyalty and passion that had moved the regions forward fairly strongly in the 1950’s, they strapped on all parts of the country a leadership with a pseudo-national orientation, a leadership divorced from the ruled in all localities, a leadership with no empathy for, or loyalty towards, the ruled. Then, as civilian politicians, using all their political power and influence, and the huge wealth that they had acquired in political offices, they proceeded to institutionalize the new brand of leadership by creating a powerful political party, the PDP, to encapsulate it all. And the outcome is that this super-party is able to force its candidate at election time on any state or local government, rig him into position, and demand of him loyalty to the culture of the party and not service to his own people. In the process, public corruption, already mountainous and all-pervasive, grew greatly in stature and confidence – and the common people for whom the state and local governments were established could only watch helplessly as they are robbed and raped. To be able to get any share at all, most ordinary Nigerians began to worship the robbers and rapists. Things could not be worse even if Nigeria were conquered by a horde of foreign bandits.

    In short, Your Excellency, the solution is not more centralization, or the fostering of more, or other, super-powerful political groupings. The solution is to restore control to the people – to empower the people to nurture again a leadership that is produced by the people and that serves the people. And there is no other way to accomplish this than by empowering each ethnic nation to call out its traditional ethical norms and laws and cultural influence for the guidance of its own affairs. There is no other conceivable way to get it done. There is some news as this is being written, that some super-powerful politicians are working on creating another super-powerful party to seize power from the PDP. Even if this new group manages to achieve the seizure of power, there can be no real change. The supermen of the defeated group will only stream to the party of the new holders of power – and the country will then return to square one. In the end, it will only be like replacing the leopard with the hyena as gate-keeper to the animal farm; neither will do anything other than steal the goats. It is because more and more Nigerians are coming to see these truths that the volume of voices is growing for either the replacement of the 1999 Constitution by another constitution that restructures our federation, or the outright dissolution of Nigeria.

    Your Excellency, we are distressed that, in your statement, you would castigate the Nigerians promoting these demands as “idealists who cannot wait to see a “perfect” Nigeria,” and who “agitate for the cancellation of the 1999 Constitution on the premise that there was too much concentration of power and resources at the centre”, and as “demagogues and other anarchists who will sooner take Nigeria back to the chaos of the 18th century”, who want “to see the country balkanized into small territories to be headed by tribal leaders”, who “desire the country’s break-up into “geo-political territories, whereby big ethnic groups may swallow up small ones without a challenge”, and who are “asking for a new constitution that will allow them keep 100 per cent of money derived from the sale of oil that is extracted within their territories”.

    We really must urge you, Your Excellency, to rethink these sentiments. “Chaos of the 18th century”! Is that the way a leading son of Africa like you, sir, should describe the history of your people? What was the chaos of the 18th century? The Hausa kingdoms? The Sokoto Caliphate that came later to unify most of the Hausa kingdoms? The Yoruba kingdoms and the Old Oyo Empire? The Kanem-Bornu Empire? The kingdoms of the Edo, Igala, Nupe, or Tiv? The kingdoms of the Western Igbo or the village democracies of the rest of Igboland? The states of the Ibibio or the city states of the Ijaw?   Are these and other significant cultural and political creations of our history the chaos of the 18th century?

    In a way, it is greatly valuable that you voiced these sentiments – valuable because you thereby highlight a very important weakness and flaw in the way many leading citizens of Nigeria view their country and handle its affairs. For such citizens, our past as peoples was generally one of barbarism, chaos and oppression; it was the white man, the British, that brought civilization, order, peace, and law to our lives. Therefore, why should we even think of examining what they created and gave to us? Why should we ever think of looking closely at the Nigeria that they gave us, and why should we ever want to strive to mould  it, or the management of it, to suit our own cultural ways? We had no culture!

    Your Excellency, please ponder these things, and it will strike you what terrible consequences this way of looking at our past has wrought in the corporate life of Nigeria. Do you see in the rulers and leaders of Nigeria and its various states today the same near-sacred devotion to the public good, the same dignified joy in service to their subjects, that characterized the rulers and chiefs of the Yoruba kingdoms? What researchers are finding is that Yoruba kingdoms were ruled according to certain pan-Yoruba ethical norms that limited the power of rulers, respected the dignity of the individual in society, promoted the welfare of all in society, and provided a high code of conduct for rulers, chiefs, and other prominent persons (a code of conduct that was fiercely enforced through powerful ritualized institutions). According to these researchers, this political culture had the effect of making the Yoruba person a citizen who values his freedom of choice in society, who expects to be decently respected by those holding authority in society, who expects probity and accountability in his rulers and chiefs. On the basis of these standards, can those who lead and rule the Yoruba in Nigeria today be really called Yoruba leaders? Of course, the Yoruba are being used here only as an example. Many other Nigerian nations have much to be proud of too.

    The noise of anger, desperation, resistance, conflict and turmoil are audible all the time from every part of Nigeria. What those noises mean is widespread rejection of the prevailing conditions of governance and leadership among all the peoples of Nigeria. Even the common people of the Arewa North, whose leaders have ruled Nigeria much longer than leaders from other regions, have seen very little that is aimed at the improvement of their quality of life. In all regions of Nigeria, it is the political leaders that are doing well for themselves; the welfare of the masses of the people is no longer a factor in government at any level. Create constitutional arrangements and systems that empower each nation to produce and control its leadership in its own way, and the quality of leadership and governance will improve dramatically across Nigeria.

    Finally, we ask you to note the conclusion enunciated by Karl Meier in his book on Nigeria entitled: This House Has Fallen. He stated that the only long-term solution in Nigeria to the crises that arise in a multi-ethnic state is for the various Nigerian nationalities, however many they may be, to “sit down and negotiate how they want to govern themselves and how they want to share their resources, and to decide whether they want to ultimately live together. Until they begin that process of internal reconciliation, at best Nigeria will lurch from crisis to crisis. At worst, it will fall apart”.

    We also ask you to acknowledge that there are countless Nigerians of your calibre who believe that Nigeria, like other multi-nation countries in the world, may, or even will, (or perhaps even should), dissolve into many smaller nation states. Given that, our continuing to follow the path we have followed since independence – the path of nation-building through a highly centralized state structure and the depression of our ethnic nations – holds a high potential for a violent end. Even if the ultimate fate of Nigeria will be dissolution, let us work to make it peaceful – let us make a violent parting unnecessary.

  • A 2012 letter to Gen. Gowon

    Nigeria seems to be crumbling in every way imaginable. The country’s economy is shrinking agonizingly. The masses of ordinary Nigerians are being crushed by a run-away inflation. The Naira has lost as much as 85% of its value in just two years, and it continues to fall. The supply of electricity, poor in the best of times, seems to be dropping towards an absolute zero. Productivity is being destroyed at a fearful pace and unemployment is sky-rocketing. The sharp declines in crude oil prices in the world starting in late 2014 forced the Nigerian economy into a nose dive, and since late 2015, nationalist revolts in the oil-bearing Niger Delta have blasted much of the oil exports and the economy. The folly of basing the economy only on crude oil since the 1970s, ignoring other obvious assets of the economy, and discouraging local resource development initiatives, now stares a helpless Federal Government in the face. Recession deepens, and there are alarms about a coming depression.

    We see staggering incompetence and rigidity in the management of our country – at a time when nothing short of courageous change can avail anything. Our President, who cannot find the funds for implementing his budget, is trying to beef up the armed forces in order to fight wars against those sections of our country that seek some sort of regional resource control or autonomy. Some influential countries in the world are preventing Nigeria from procuring the destructive weapons for such wars, and that the image of Nigeria, poor in the world at most times, is declining further abysmally.

    As I ponder these depressing thoughts, my mind flashes back to a letter which I and some other Nigerian patriots, resident abroad, wrote in 2012 to General Yakubu Gowon, former military Head of State of our country. It is a long letter – too long for this column. So, I will reproduce a part of it today, with some space-saving modifications, and use the rest in future:

    “Dear General Gowon: We write this letter in response to a speech delivered recently on your behalf by Alhaji M. D. Yusufu, at the second anniversary seminar of the Arewa Consultative Forum earlier this year. It is our hope that you will view the contents with the consideration they require and deserve.

    First, Your Excellency, please note, that of all the Nigerians who have had the privilege of serving Nigeria as Heads of State, your tenure is generally regarded most favourably. You are about our only living former Head of State not known to be a billionaire, and that endears you to a lot of Nigerians. Whatever you say about Nigeria deserves to be received and considered with the utmost respect.

    It is for these reasons that very many Nigerians feel very deeply about the opinion you expressed in the speech under reference, in which you say that Nigerians demanding change in the structure and management of Nigeria consist of “four groups” trying to destabilize Nigeria:

    a). “idealists who cannot wait to see a perfect Nigeria … (who) agitate for the cancellation of the 1999 Constitution on the premise that there was too much concentration of power and resources at the centre.

    b). those who want to see the country balkanized into small territories to be headed by tribal leaders . . . made up of demagogues and other anarchists who will sooner take Nigeria back to the chaos of the 18th century.

    c). those who desire the country’s break-up into “geopolitical territories, whereby big ethnic groups may swallow up small ones without a challenge”.

    d). those who demand “a new constitution that will allow them keep 100 per cent of money derived from the sale of oil that is extracted within their territories.”

    In short, Sir, your opinion of all who challenge the status quo in Nigeria today is wholly negative. As far as you are concerned, all who challenge the status quo or who ask for a serious look at Nigeria as it is, are despicable elements who are simply impatient with the pace of Nigeria’s evolution, or are demagogues and anarchists whom no system of order can satisfy, or ethnic chauvinists who want their own large ethnic groups to dominate smaller ethnic groups or who simply do not want the resources of their own ethnic territories shared with the rest of Nigeria. Sir, please look deeper. When you do, you will find that probably most of the persons who are actively asking for change for Nigeria, or who are intensely dissatisfied with Nigeria as it exists today, are motivated by very positive and commendable purposes – persons who seek meaningful order out of the near chaos that Nigeria now is. Such persons deserve not opprobrium but acceptance and encouragement from all far-sighted Nigerians. Another Nigerian, Peter Ekeh, in a paper titled “Urhobo and the Nigerian Federation: Whither Nigeria?” demonstrated a clear understanding of the realities of today’s Nigeria when he said: “It is an indication of the stress and turbulence of our times that Nigerians are everywhere re-examining the purpose of the Nigerian state and the relationships between their ethnic groups and the Nigerian federation”.

    The truth, Sir, is that most informed Nigerians, and very many friends of Nigeria in the world, are intensely worried about the way Nigeria has turned out to be. That is why speeches, articles and even books about Nigeria’s future are being churned out increasingly. And that is why the pages and editorial columns of Nigerian newspapers are continually filled with the evidence of the stress and the turbulence raging in the minds of thinking Nigerians concerning Nigeria.

    The most important question, then, is this: What are the roots of Nigeria’s very profound sicknesses – Nigeria’s intractable political instability, intense criminality, fraud, and violence in Nigeria’s political processes, the political assassinations, the all-pervasive and resolute corruption in the management of Nigeria’s public resources, the disregard for law, etc. There are some who would opine that the causes of these aberrations are simply human greed, the lack of adequate leaders, or even a weakness in the make-up of the moral consciousness of Nigerians. This is tantamount to saying that, before the British came and favoured us with the creation of Nigeria, we were all morally, socially and politically depraved and incapable peoples, intrinsically unable to produce solid and respectable leaders of men or to manage orderly political entities.

    But people who hold such opinions must ask themselves certain important questions. The Hausa people, long before the 19th century, created a number of splendid kingdoms, and their rulers ruled those kingdoms with dignity and poise. In the course of the 19th century, as a result of a revolution, Fulani emirates replaced the Hausa kingdoms in an inclusive Caliphate whose leaders promoted scholarship and commerce. In European mediaeval times, the Kanuri people on the Lake Chad built a large empire which held sway over expansive territory, commanded enormous commerce and established diplomatic relations with the then centres of civilization on the Mediterranean. The Nupe on the Middle Niger and the Tiv on the Benue, though not very large peoples, were very strong peoples, each of whom built a strong kingdom and managed with distinction the trade, and the channels of trade, across its own river.  In the forest country of the south, the Yoruba built the most advanced urban civilization in tropical Africa, established well-ordered and gorgeous kingdoms  – all of which were already far advanced before the first European explorers came to the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. The Edo had also established one of Africa’s most prestigious kingdoms before the 15th century. If these peoples were depraved and incapable, how did they achieve these great things?

    No, the true explanation for Nigeria’s huge, stubborn, and perpetually worsening diseases is to be found not in any inherent flaws in us as peoples, but in circumstances created by the very existence of Nigeria itself. To understand, one needs to look at what has happened, and what is happening, in countries similar to Nigeria in the world – countries comprising two or more ethnic nations, each with its own language and culture, and each living in its own homeland: Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Spain, Britain, Canada, India, etc. And then, one needs to examine seriously how Nigeria is being ruled and managed

    First, in all parts of the world, the inter-relationships of ethnic nations in multi-ethnic countries tend to generate and promote conflicts, weakness, corruption, slow growth, etc.  On all continents, ethnic nations – even the smallest ethnic nations – are waking up and demanding the freedom to have autonomous and independent countries of their own. The observable reality is that as each ethnic nation becomes more and more literate, more and more educated and informed, it tends to become more conscious of its cultural heritage, more emphatic about the differences between it and other nations, more defensive of its interests, and more desirous of managing its own affairs and controlling its own destiny. There is nothing bad or condemnable about that. It is just the way that humans tend to behave, and all we need is to manage it appropriately in our Nigeria.

  • Trump’s election: Nigerians need caution

    Ever since Donald Trump won the United States presidential election, most Nigerian commentators have gone out to paint an incendiary picture of him. Most are raising fears about the kind of government he is likely to give to this most powerful country in the world. Most raise fears, in particular, about the probable impact of his immigration policies on the millions of Nigerians now resident in the United States, and even on Nigeria itself at home.

    Of course, most of these negative responses to him by Nigerians are justified. The ideas he has ventilated in the past many months about further immigration into America, about “undocumented immigrants” already in America, about the very large number of Nigerian immigrants in America, about further Nigerian immigration into America, and even about Nigeria as a country, are alarming. All over Nigeria now, many families who have members in America are fearfully wondering what will happen to their people at the hands of a Trump presidency.

    Still, I think that we Nigerians need to handle the situation with caution. It is possible that we Nigerians could generate among us at home and abroad such intense hostility towards Donald Trump and a Trump presidency that the Trump presidency’s policy makers may come to feel the need to focus specially on Nigerians.

    It is not that I am afraid for most Nigerians resident in America. Until I returned home to Nigeria about a year ago, I had lived for nearly 25 years continuously as a professor in America, and among the students I taught and mentored (at undergraduate and graduate levels), I can count thousands of Nigerians. I know for sure that most Nigerians in America are there legally. It has never been really easy for Nigerians to enter America illegally, or to reside in America illegally – far less easy than for persons from Mexico and other Latin American countries, and even persons from countries of the Middle East and Asia.  Many Nigerians do come legally to America with visas that allow them to come for short visits only, or for few years as students in American colleges and universities. Many of these usually leave at the expiration of their visas or at the end of their studies. The few among these who decide to stay are typically diligent about pursuing legal permission to stay – and many of these may even become, legally, citizens of America. In short, it is not easy to find a Nigerian who is truly illegally residing in America. An overwhelming majority of Nigerians who reside in America are residing there legally. And if a person is in America legally, there is nothing that American officials, or the American legal system, can do to their residence – especially if they do not involve themselves in crimes.

    And I also know that Nigerian residents in America are, on the aggregate, among the most law-abiding people in America. I am not saying that no Nigerians in America have crime records there or that none of them gets involved in crimes. Every human group in the world has its own crop of criminally inclined and criminally active members. But it is my assessment, based on very close and long contacts and observations in the Nigeria community in various parts of America, that the criminally inclined and criminally active tend to be fewer among Nigerians in America than one would find among most non-Nigerian groups in that country. On some occasions, we hear some hoopla about “Nigerian crime rings”, but I insist that, even with these, Nigerian youths in America are among the most serious students and hardest workers in that country, and are significantly less likely to lapse into a life of crime. Most Nigerian students come without any scholarship from home, and without sufficient, or any, financial support by parents. But almost all come with a peculiarly Nigerian resolve to succeed, and almost all succeed in the American educational system. Many earn scholarships with their high quality performances in their studies; most scrub floors and do other menial jobs to make their ways through colleges and universities. On the whole, Nigerian youths in America make older Nigerians like me proud, and deserve to be thought of with pride by their parents and their country.

    About three years ago, a department of the American government – the United States National Census Bureau – published the information that Nigerians are the most educated national group in America – more educated than any other immigrant group from any other part of the world, and more educated than even Americans themselves, indeed the most educated group of immigrants in all the history of the United States. The publication added the further detail that in the typical Nigerian family in the United States, the father and mother commonly come with a university degree from their country, that the father (and often the mother) then acquires a postgraduate degree (Masters or Ph.D.), and that their older children are typically enrolled in colleges or universities studying for first degrees or postgraduate degrees. Those who come younger (with school leaving certificates) almost always go on to obtain first degrees, and then higher degrees.

    The result of this is that Nigerians are very formidably included in all aspects of America’s economy and society. Of the thousands of universities in America, there is hardly any one without some Nigerian professors. There are countless Nigerians serving in very high levels of the American government and civil service, in all branches of the American military, in top positions in the American health services, research establishments, elementary schools and secondary schools, the professions, businesses, security services, state governments, local governments, etc.

    Nigerians in America are therefore not as vulnerable as candidate Trump may have imagined during his electioneering campaign – and definitely not as vulnerable as we Nigerians at home seem to fear.   And therefore we Nigerians do not need to be trembling about the coming of a Trump presidency. We do not need all the hostile rhetoric we have been spewing at him. We must stop acting as we are sure that our people living in America are among the most vulnerable people in that country. They are not.

    Very importantly too, we must not appear to be set on a venture of disrespecting the American people. Whatever any of us may think of Donald Trump, he is the man whom the American people have chosen to be their president, and we ought to respect the American people. The president of Nigeria has joined the leaders of other countries of the world to congratulate President-elect Donald Trump, and it is, I suggest, time for us to wish him well, wish our people in America well under his presidency, and wish the great country of America well.

    Finally, here is an insight that may help us a little in assessing the surprising impact of Donald Trump over America at this time. During my decades of residence in America, one political development had gradually been observable in the politics of America – namely, that the politicians had gradually become unpopular with the masses of the common people. This was caused mostly by the fact that the leading politicians had become increasingly incapable of compromise among them, with the result that importantly needed decisions and changes were becoming impossible to arrive at. This reached a sort of peak under President Obama. At the beginning of the Obama presidency, some Republican officials even said explicitly that they intended to see to it that Obama would achieve nothing worthwhile. President Obama responded by significantly rejecting compromise too; and quite often, over difficult issues, he seemed to prefer to go on the road campaigning to the masses of his supporters rather than painstakingly working for compromise with his opponents in Washington DC. The stock of politicians fell sharply. Donald Trump’s initial attraction among some of the masses of Americans was that he was not one of the politicians. As he found this to be a bigger asset than he had first thought, he and his handlers used it more and more – and he said a whole lot of stuff that was far out. Well, it won him the election.

    But can he – can any American president – do some of the wilder things that he has indicated? I doubt it. Most of my friends and colleagues in the American intellectual community doubt it. America is a very solid entity with very solid political traditions. It is very unlikely that President Trump will be able to rock the boat as violently as some of his youthful supporters may expect. Many of the things we fear today concerning him are not likely to materialize. But we shall see.

  • Nigeria: Time to ponder the realities

    The popular children’s story, “The Blind Men and the Elephant” is soberingly close to the relationship between Nigeria and the various nationalities (or peoples) that make up Nigeria. Each Nigerian people perceived, and proceeded to mould Nigeria, in their own way. The British nation too, the nation that created Nigeria, did the same, with the result that, at independence, they left Nigeria packaged as a troubled country that would be impossible to manage. In short, many nations – the British, the Yoruba, the Igbo, the Hausa-Fulani, and nearly 300 other nationalities – when faced with Nigeria, formed, like the blind men in the story, their different perceptions of Nigeria and have resolutely kept trying to impose those different perceptions. This state of affairs was destined from the very beginning to determine Nigeria’s history. It has determined Nigeria’s convoluted and sad history.

    Of the Nigerian nationalities, the three largest and most influential, and the three most responsible for the making of Nigeria’s direction, are the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Igbo. Another people, the Ijaw of the Niger Delta, are much smaller than each of these three, but because nature packed the Ijaw homeland with petroleum (the most important resource in modern world economy), their stature in Nigerian affairs has been big too. It is therefore the divergent perceptions of Nigeria by the British, the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Ijaw, and their divergent responses to Nigeria, that have shaped Nigeria’s endemic pattern of instability and conflicts – resulting in turning this naturally rich country into a land of frightful and perpetually worsening poverty, corruption, and conflicts, a country that must wage bloody wars to remain one. It is not merely because Nigeria is made up of many nationalities that it has evolved into an unworkable country. It is because these main builders of Nigeria (the British, the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Ijaw – as well as the other nearly 300 Nigerian peoples) have never jointly invested serious and sincere effort in the critically important task of harmonizing Nigeria’s profound differences.

    The differences are not merely ethnic and linguistic. They are also products of deeply divergent histories. Historically, the Hausa people were one of the three largest peoples of tropical Africa – the other two being the Yoruba and the Igbo. Exposed to Islamic influences penetrating from North Africa since as early as the 8th century AD, the Hausa people and their kings were mostly Muslims for centuries before the 19th. In the course of the 18th century, a mostly nomadic people, the Fulani, migrating from the grasslands and Sahel of West Africa, spread out into Hausaland.  In the first years of the 19th century, an Islamic reform movement arose among the immigrant Fulani, and started a Jihad (holy war) against the old Hausa kingdoms. The Fulani were, in comparison with the Hausa, very few. But, by winning large numbers of Hausa folks with the message of Islamic Reform, the Fulani Jihad overthrew the Hausa kings and replaced them with Fulani men, with the title of Emirs.  Hausaland thus became a Fulani Empire, fervently Islamic and seeking to expand its kind of Islam, as well as its Fulani political rule, to the homelands of neighbouring non-Hausa peoples.

    Beyond the eastern borders of Hausaland, the Kanuri and related peoples had long been strongly Islamized peoples. They defeated the Fulani attempts to conquer them, and they thus remained under their own ancient rulers.

    The broad Middle Belt south of Hausaland was inhabited by many small peoples. The Fulani rulers of Hausaland launched intensive attacks to conquer, destabilize, or even to destroy these peoples. Some of the peoples sought peace by accepting Islam, but that hardly stopped the attacks. These fierce attacks were still going on when Christian influence reached these territories. Many of the peoples accepted Christianity. And then, British colonial rule came over the whole large country that was later (in 1914) to become Nigeria.

    South of the Middle Belt, especially in the western parts of the South (the homeland of the Yoruba), Islam had come at about the same time as it had come to Hausaland in about the 8th century but, on the whole, Yoruba conversion to Islam had been relatively small. In the course of the 19th century, internal political developments in Yorubaland resulted in the emergence of a strong Yoruba Islamic centre in the Yoruba city of Ilorin. Attempts by the rulers of Ilorin to spread Islam by force into the rest of their Yoruba homeland was decisively defeated by other Yoruba. Thereafter, Islam peacefully spread, becoming considerably strong in various parts of Yorubaland by the late 19th century. In the territories east of the Lower Niger, (the homelands of the Igbo and neighbouring peoples) the influence of Islam was almost non-existent.

    From the 1840s, European Christian missions of various denominations began to bring the message of the gospel to these Southern and Middle Belt lands. Penetrating from the coast, they gradually expanded into the interior. With Christian churches came schools and Western education.

    Churches and schools immediately became most widespread in the South-west (the homeland of the Yoruba people). The cause of this is that Yorubaland was the most urbanized country in all of tropical Africa. For nearly a thousand years before the 19th century, the Yoruba people had evolved a rich urban civilization, with sizeable towns flourishing at short distances from one another all over Youbaland. Churches and schools quickly mushroomed in the Yoruba towns. By the 1860s, Yoruba families were already beginning to send their children to institutions of higher education in Europe, and a literate Yoruba elite and professional class (of doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, writers, surveyors, etc) was emerging. Yorubaland’s first newspaper was born in 1859 in the city of Abeokuta, and others soon followed in other towns. When the British created Nigeria in 1914, the Yoruba part of Nigeria was considerably ahead of the rest of the new country in modern transformations. For instance, no other Nigerian people produced a university graduate until the mid-1930s. Islam and Christianity were strong in Yorubaland by 1900. But the Yoruba people have a unique ancient tradition of religious tolerance and accommodation, and, as a result, Christianity, Islam and the traditional Yoruba religion co-existed harmoniously in Yorubaland (even in Yoruba families). Yoruba people of all religions embraced Western education, thereby turning their country into the most literate part of, not just Nigeria, but tropical Africa. In the 1950s, the last years of British rule, under the system of limited self-government preceding independence, the Yoruba established free education in their part of Nigeria – the first African people to take such a step.

    Furthermore, in the traditional government of Yoruba kingdoms, in the context of Yoruba urban civilization, there had long existed many democratic institutions and tendencies – such as selection of kings and chiefs by their subjects, provisions for the peaceful removal of unpopular rulers,  institutions commanding the power to moderate the conduct of rulers and influential citizens and to penalize any of them that was guilty of errant conduct, citizens’ associations with institutionalized influence on the processes of governance, the right of all to voice their opinions (to “contribute their wisdom”) freely, the practice of forming factions and of lobbying rulers,  the right of peaceful protests, etc. In contrast, the large Igbo nation traditionally lived differently from the Yoruba, without a widespread urban culture, or centralized political systems.

    In the course of the first three decades of the 20th century, Western education grew fast in the rest of Southern Nigeria too, especially in the homelands of the Igbo and the Ibibio peoples. By the mid-1930s, the Ibibio and Igbo, and some other Southern Nigerian peoples, began to produce literate elites.

    In contrast to these educational and occupational transformations going on in the South and, to a lesser extent, in the Middle Belt, the strongly Islamic Hausa-Fulani North rejected Christian influence and showed apathy to Western education as well as to modern occupations. Furthermore, the system of rule which the Fulani Jihad had created here was one in which the Fulani, though much fewer than the Hausa, were simply the aristocratic ruling elements over the large mass of Hausa people – a system which the Fulani feel duty-bound to spread over all the peoples of Nigeria.

    Did a vast country so ethnically, linguistically, culturally, religiously, politically, and historically divided and divergent, with so many scattered traditions of conflict possess the elements and prospects for one country? Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister from 1952, said more than once that Nigeria’s unity was merely British intention for us, and that the factors for such unity simply did not exist. Now that we have tried Nigeria for over a whole century, what do we think of Balewa’s words? Isn’t it instructive that we still have not found how to live harmoniously together, respecting one another, sincerely wishing one another well, and providing for the happiness of all? Isn’t it important that we are still fighting, and still threatening to fight and destroy, one another? It is worth thinking about.

  • What can we still hope from President Buhari?

    The Buhari presidency kicked off on a big note of hope – especially because President Buhari immediately embarked on a war against corruption. But, unhappily, in its one year, it has slumped badly. The eagle that the world gathered to watch soaring above the highest mountains is flapping helplessly among the lowliest shrubs.

    From the way Buhari’s political party base crystallized and fought for his election, we Nigerians had good reason to hope that he would unite our country and mobilize some of the best of our talents to move our country fast and far into success and prosperity. Instead he has chosen to retreat into building an administration led and guided almost wholly by his kinsmen. Even the formerly solid South-west base of his party is being pulverized. The Igbo of the South-east are virtually excluded. The Ijaw of the South-south and the Kanuri of the North-east are being battered by insurgency and war. The many small nationalities of the Middle Belt are being subdued by incessant brutalization by Fulani herdsmen and the herdsmen’s other kinsmen. The same herdsmen are doing all their worst to disrupt orderly farming and rural life in all the states of the South. The old animosities between North and the South have risen to great heights again.  Even in the Hausa-Fulani North-west, the Buhari presidency has managed to generate internal animosities, mostly by excluding some sections – with the result that many respectable north-western voices have been raised in condemnation of the Buhari presidency. In all essence, Nigeria is a lot more divided and more shaky today than it was only a year ago.

    In the midst of all these, and under the impact of poor understanding of economic forces and incompetent management of the economy, Nigeria’s economy is being shattered. Many Nigerians talk of recession, but we appear to be more in a depression today than in a recession. A number of times in recent months, the national electricity grid has plunged all the way close to zero. Businesses are being wiped out. Large numbers of small businesses are finding it impossible to cope. Investment is fleeing from our country, and we are experiencing a process of deindustrialization. Commodity prices are sky-rocketing. Some food prices are doubling within days. The hold of hopeless poverty on the masses of our people is tightening. The National Bureau of Statistics said some months ago that about 70% of Nigerians were living in “absolute poverty” and that that percentage was increasing. The percentage may have risen close to 80% by now.

    In spite of this condition of our country’s economy, President Buhari still opts for war to solve some of the most challenging problems of our country. The presidency says that some 3,000 troops are now fighting the people of the South-south and that the number will be increased to 10,000 by next January. He obviously thinks that those Nigerian national groups hitting now at Nigeria can only be pacified in only two ways – by subduing them with military force, or by bribing or tricking them into surrendering and reconciling with the status quo. He has no thoughts whatsoever of considering serious changes in the status quo in order to bring the troubles to an end. And, as far as we can see, his intention is to raise heavy loans to finance this policy. Some days ago, he placed before the National Assembly a request to be allowed to raise the equivalent of N9.12 trillion from abroad – a loan that will instantly raise Nigeria’s foreign debt by a staggering 150%.

    Altogether, President Buhari is pushing or pulling our country towards something truly frightening. What this will be if he continues with it, only God knows at this point. But President Buhari does not have to continue along this path. There are other options. In the interest of the country that gave him power as president, and in the interest of the over 180 million of us Nigerians, he must now consider other options.

    First, as much as possible, Nigeria must liberate the inherent energies of each Nigerian nationality, or every section of Nigeria, so that it may develop its own homeland in its own way and make its own kind of contribution to the overall progress and prosperity of Nigeria. That means, we need to restructure our federation rationally. The capricious structure given gradually to the Nigerian federation since the 1960s, and the massing of all power and resource control and development in the hands of the federal government, has not worked and it can never work. It is a path to the death of Nigeria. And it needs to be changed expeditiously.

    Secondly, Nigeria must begin to invest heavily in our youths in all corners of our country.  I mean in quality education, in modern job skills training programmes, in entrepreneurial development programmes, in leadership development programmes, in business support programmes, etc. All of these should be a mandated agenda in all our states, and should be strongly shielded from infestation by partisan political germs and viruses. The objective must be that our men and women will soon rank among the world’s best modern workers, best managers, best chief executives of companies, most prolific inventors and business starters, most professional and dignified civil servants, etc.

    Thirdly, we must definitively crack the knotty problem of our infrastructures. In particular, we must zero in on electricity, and make partial, haphazard and spasmodic supply of electricity a thing of the past in all parts of our country. This will serve as an incentive to draw countless Nigerians out to scramble for, and push, a modern economic and industrial culture in our country. Centralization of electricity supply has failed our country; we need to diversify in various ways.

    Fourthly, we must create various incentive policies to encourage investment – investments by Nigerians and by foreigners, in all facets of our economy (industrial, commercial, service, agricultural, research and development, tourism, social services, real estate, etc). We must devise ways and means to attract Nigerians scattered all over the world to be part of this investment movement. And we must establish various incentives to encourage businesses in Nigeria to pursue an aggressive export orientation – to produce high quality products that can easily penetrate the most sophisticated markets in the world, and to evolve superior and efficient export management practices.

    Fifthly, we must de-emphasize politics as a means of livelihood among our ambitious citizens. We must drastically reduce the emoluments and perquisites earned in politics and public offices, shut down the unrestricted and uncontrolled access of public officials to public money, revive the public service rules and regulations that guided the handling of public money during the 1950s (rules and regulations that were destroyed by the military regimes in 1966-99), and institute enforceable limitations and controls over political and electoral expenses.

    All these will deal a heavy blow at public corruption in our country – in addition to whatever other methods the Buhari presidency may choose to use to fight corruption. To crush public corruption effectively and abidingly, we need to reform or change the structures, institutions and practices that uphold public corruption in our country. Merely striking at the manifestations and culprits of public corruption at the top cannot really eliminate corruption. If it subdues corruption to some extent now, it cannot ensure that corruption will not return.

    Sixthly and finally, it is time we put to rest the growing influence of religion in our political life. Our country was much more peaceful and stable in the 1950s when religion was not so much a force in our politics. Of course, all should be free to practice and propagate their faith. But the government of a country of religious plurality like Nigeria should not be involved in promoting any religion.

    The developmental strategies summarized above are by no means new to the Nigerian debate. They are from the progressive agenda which germinated in the then Western Region in the 1950s and which reached its maximum flowering in the late 1970s under Chief Awolowo’s leadership.  Though it started in a region of Nigeria, its purposes have never been regional or sectional. Its objective is to reinforce growth and development in all corners of Nigeria, to put the opportunity to prosper within the reach of all Nigerians, and to make Nigeria a prosperous, powerful and great country. It is part of our Nigerian heritage, and it is easily accessible to Nigeria’s topmost servant of today – President Buhari.

  • Maitama Sule calls for a revolution?

    Alhaji Maitama Sule is easily one of the biggest minds, and one of the biggest hearts, in our country. I became considerably close to him in the 1970s when I was a member of the National Antiquities Commission and he was chairman of it. Because I saw in him such loftiness of humanity, such talent, such broad-mindedness, and such untainted love for people, I often wondered why the northern political elite never put him forth as candidate for the position of topmost ruler of our country.  And when the northern-based NPN nominated another man as its presidential candidate in 1979, I could not resist asking openly, “Why not Maitama Sule?”

    Last week, Alhaji Maitama Sule’s mighty voice issued a call for a revolution in our country – a revolution without any violence or bloodshed, a revolution that Nigerians courageously rise up and carry out, a revolution that will completely change the way our lives are being managed in this country, a revolution that will profoundly change the structure and manner of our governance, a revolution that will wipe out the constraints that, since independence, have been treacherously imposed upon enterprise and productivity in our country, etc.

    My assessment is that Alhaji Maitama Sule has validated all those Nigerians who have been demanding in-depth change in this country. He has handed serious encouragement to them. And, at this time when our country is heading manifestly into deeper and deeper poverty and deprivation, when, indeed, our country seems to be heading for its death and to conflict and ruin, we Nigerians must not only thank God for Maitama Sule’s call for a revolution, we must, in our various ways, rise up and respond.

    Nigeria cannot – simply cannot – continue the way it is now going. Nearly six decades of crookedness and impunity have brought Nigeria to the verge of ruin. Our former president, Goodluck Jonathan, used to say that he was not the cause or beginning of Nigeria’s complicated problems, and he was right. His failure was in his inability or unwillingness to invest his presidency in real change. Our present president too is neither the cause or beginning of our problems. But he is already failing too because he allows various unworthy factors to inhibit him from pursuing real change.

    As we see him now, he seems to operate in the belief that his most important charge is to maintain, and provide for the sustenance of, his Fulani nation’s position of dominance in Nigeria. He ought to be viewing the massive loss of revenue from oil as a God-given opportunity to revive the fundamental strengths of our country’s economy. He ought to be striking boldly for the revival of those productive features that made our economy buoyant and our people reasonably comfortable before independence –  our farmers’ impressive outputs in groundnuts, cocoa, palm produce, gum-Arabic, cotton, etc. To achieve this, he ought to strike boldly for a restructuring of our federation, for the redistribution of power and resource development as between the federal and the state-local governments, and for massive encouragement and assistance to the state-local governments to revive the myriads of local support systems and traditions that used to empower our export-crop farmers. He ought to champion the decentralization of power generation, in order to make electricity available more widely and more surely in our country, and thus enhance entrepreneurial venturing and success. Rather than do any of these and other things that can boost enterprise in our country, he prefers to hold on to everything as federal ruler, so that, as far as we can see, his Fulani people may not lose power.

    For instance, some days ago, there was a report to the effect that the federal government was going to boost Nigeria’s cocoa production to about five million tons per annum. Federal government to boost cocoa production? How? Can it be that the persons responsible for these policies believe that Nigerians are ignorant of the fact that the expertise and traditions by which the producer farmers of cocoa (and groundnuts, cotton, palm produce, etc) were once encouraged belong to our state and local governments? Let them not be deceived. We remember that it was when the federal government, in its zeal to control everything, scrapped our regional produce marketing boards and took over control that our farmers almost totally gave up producing these crops. Do these barons in power in the federal government now believe that, yet again, we can be deceived that it is the federal government that will revive the production of these crops?

    Even worse, our president seems to believe that a massive build-up of federally-controlled military and security forces is the way to hold Nigeria together in the hands of his Hausa-Fulani nation. And he has put his kinsmen in charge of most critically important offices in the military and security forces. As I have said many times in this column, he has junked the political party that recommended him to us Nigerians for election, and has built up an administration almost totally manned by his kinsmen whom “he knows”.  And, by doing these things he is expanding and enhancing fear among the other peoples of Nigeria and, God forbid, he may be paving the way for some big trouble in this country.

    That is why we must not lose the opportunity to respond to the message of a very credible Nigerian elder statesman like Maitama Sule. Obasanjo and Jonathan are southerners. They are both products of peoples who lead Nigeria in the quest for sane decentralization of power and resource development in this country. But when they rose to the presidency, they both preferred to keep federal power intact, or even to build more on it. Buhari comes from a nation that is passionately, unrepentantly, determined to keep everything in the hands of the federal government, and then to control it perpetually themselves. Yes, what our country needs most now is diversification in resource development; but why should we hope that Buhari will ever do it? The obvious answer is to do what Alhaji Maitama Sule has called upon us all to do.

    As Alhaji Maitama Sule said, the word revolution is scary. It tends to conjure up images of masses of angry people pulling things down, causing mayhem and even causing injuries and death. But Alhaji Maitama Sule says that the revolution he envisages does not have to have any of these evils. He urges us Nigerians to stop being afraid to take the life of our country into our hands, and to step out with courage to bring new direction into the life and management of our country. I am sure that almost all elder citizens like me agree fully with him, because we would like to see this country return to the country which we knew when we were younger, the country that was brimming with enthusiasm and hope.  All of us Nigerians of all ages can do what Alhaji Maitama Sule has urged – courageously, resolutely, peacefully, successfully – and hand a much better country to our descendants.

  • Yakasai doesn’t know why Nigeria should restructure?

    Last week, in an interview, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, leader of the Northern Elders Council, came out full-blast in opposition to any restructuring of the Nigerian federation. He also came out full-blast in attack on the Yoruba nation of Southwestern Nigeria for being the foremost proponents of the idea of restructuring. In both, he left no doubt whatsoever that he was swinging as a champion of his Fulani nation, and of the Fulani nation’s agenda, in Nigeria.

    Yakasai was quoted as saying that the agitation for restructuring is an agenda of the Yoruba people of the South-west; that it was started “in the South-west…in 1959” and has gone on “from Action Group to UPN to NADECO to PRONACO”; that it is driven by envy and hate for the northern geopolitical zone”; that the intention was “to deny the North the benefit of its population and land mass”; and that “it is not driven by patriotism”, but “by hate and envy”.

    I am a member of the Yoruba nation of Southwestern Nigeria. Tanko Yakasai and I belong to the same generation, and we both served Nigeria during the Second Republic. I know that Yakasai knows the truth concerning the things he spoke about at that interview, and that he is knowingly and deliberately trying to distort the history of Nigeria – with the objective of confusing and frustrating the demands for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation.

    I am sure he knows that in the late 1940s, after the Second World War (1939-45), when the British rulers of Nigeria first began to consider how to make this multi-nation Nigeria into one country, leaders of the Yoruba nation were the first to put forth the intellectually and politically sound proposal for a rational federation, based upon a decent respect for the nationalities that make up Nigeria, and aimed at ensuring varied and vibrant socio-economic development initiatives across Nigeria. Yakasai knows that a Northern or Eastern or Western Region did not yet exist then, that there was therefore no Northern Region to envy, and that the proposals by the Yoruba elite were a very patriotic contribution to the beginning of the search for one Nigeria.

    I should add that the said Yoruba proposals originated from the fundamentals of Yoruba political philosophy – which is that a state and its government exist principally for the well-being of its people, that all individuals and nations are entitled to seek prosperity and to prosper in their own way.

    I am sure Yakasai knows that from the moment our first federation (of three Regions – East, North and West), came into operation in 1951, the minority nationalities all over Nigeria began to clamour for, at least, one separate region of their own in each of the three regions. In the Northern Region where Yakasai was born and raised, the minority nationalities demanded such separate regions. These nationalities are not Yoruba. However, after the top Yoruba political group carefully examined their demands in the light of reason, and in the light of healthy growth for Nigeria and the peoples of Nigeria, it took the decision to support their demands.

    I am sure too that Yakasai remembers that, for most of the 1950s, the leaders of his Northern Region, while opposing the demands of the minority nationalities, were the most insistent on a very loose federation for Nigeria – in order to ensure a strong measure of autonomy for the Northern Region over which they ruled. They even proposed at one point that Nigeria be broken into three separate countries related only through a customs union. And, to reinforce their demands, they threatened again and again to secede from Nigeria.

    Of course, the northern leaders of the 1950s were not doing anything wrong by demanding autonomy for their region. Every nation on earth wants, above all else, to manage its own life and control its own destiny. The strange thing is that, after the northern political leaders came to power over Nigeria at independence in 1960 (as a result of British manipulations), they began to deny autonomy for all the peoples of Nigeria – they began to promote a concentration of power and resource-control in the federal centre which they controlled.

    They took a major step in this centralization adventure in 1962, when they used the powers and influence of the federal government to engineer a crisis in the Western Region, and when they took advantage of the crisis to take over control of the Western Region.

    The adventure soon generated revolts and a Nigeria-wide crisis, and ultimately a military coup – the beginning of military coups and military dictatorships in Nigeria. From the late 1960s, a series of military dictatorships led by northern military officers relentlessly pushed forward the Fulani agenda of centralization – and of weakening of other Nigerian peoples.

    In 1999, the cumulative successes of the centralization agenda were finally enshrined by a northern military dictator in the constitution which he imposed on Nigeria – the constitution which now makes Nigeria essentially a unitary country in which an all-controlling federal government holds Nigeria in its corrupt, ignorant and incompetent grip, reduces the state and local governments into impotent attendants on federal authority – spewing corruption and shoddiness all over Nigeria, obstructing and even disrupting non-federal development initiatives, and enthroning poverty, hopelessness, desperation and moral banditry, over the lives of Nigerians. Every Nigerian knows (even the political adventurers who have created these horrible conditions know) that, in spite of decades of enormous revenues from oil, Nigeria is much poorer today, and the masses of   Nigerians are much poorer, than in 1960.

    The consequence is that most Nigerian nationalities are trenchantly demanding a restructuring of the federation today. We Yoruba are very prominent in the struggle, but we are not alone in it. Most Nigerian nationalities, representing over 70% of Nigerians, are in it. In fact, in the struggle, some Nigerian nations are already doing some things that are putting great stress on Nigeria. The number of Igbo citizens pushing for a separate country is now so large that it is impossible for the world to continue to ignore them. The peoples of the Niger Delta, whose homeland produces all the oil wealth, and whom federal policies have left in the deepest depth of underdevelopment in Nigeria, and who now belong to the most wretched of the wretched in Nigeria, have united to demand separation from Nigeria too – and they are fighting to withhold the oil wealth from the federal government.

    Obviously, Tanko Yakasai knows all these, but he and his companions are not bothered about the escalating poverty, hopelessness, desperation, and moral collapse among the masses of Nigerians. Their sole interest and ambition is that their Fulani nation must forever control a federal government that controls all power and all resources in Nigeria – even though they must know that the concern of the rest of us is not who rules Nigeria but that   Nigeria should be ruled in ways that advance the quality of life of Nigerians.

    One of their men who identified himself as Aliyu Gwarzo in a statement or article that went viral on the social media in 2014, wrote: “Allah, through the British, gave us Nigeria to rule and to do with as we please. Since 1960 we have been doing that and we intend to continue”. He added that, to hold on to that position, his Hausa-Fulani people “will kill, maim, destroy, and turn this country into Africa’s biggest war zone and refugee camp”. “The Mujaheedin are ready,” he announced, “and by Allah we shall win”.

    And who are the Mujaheedin? Masses of citizens armed, trained and indoctrinated to kill, maim and destroy those of us Nigerians who are not Hausa-Fulani. The kind of people that we are already seeing in the murderous Fulani herdsmen and their accompanying Libyan mercenary militiamen. Our country is heading towards becoming a dark, vicious, house of horrors.

    Obviously, it is all fine with the Yakasais among us. But what does it call for from the rest of us? It calls for greatly heightened resolve and action among us to preserve the treasures and values that we cherish. We don’t have to be destroyed by our being parts of Nigeria. In spite of our rivalries, and our differences of the past, today’s situation calls for a surge of cooperation and collaboration among our various nations, in order to get this federation restructured, so that each zone of Nigeria may manage much of its own affairs, and promote its own development, in its own way and at its own pace, in the context of a true Nigerian federation. The day of the promised horrors is not yet here. But, if we keep delaying, it may come. We don’t have much time.