Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

But for its tragic consequences for a nation held hostage by Fulani terrorists, last week’s antics by our lawmakers would have been dismissed as a comedy laden with some sardonic humour. The reality today is that non-state actors have seized the initiative from our elected leaders resulting in indiscriminate killings of our compatriots, on their farms, homes, in transits or places of work. And that was the time our lawmakers chose to whimsically direct Buhari to tame in six weeks, Fulani herdsmen terrorists, rated the fourth deadliest insurgency in the world. It is on record that Miyetti Allah, long before Buhari’s inauguration in 2015 had, on behalf of Fulani herdsmen threatened to make the country ungovernable if their demand for open grazing across nation was not met. There has since been no respite for our people while President Buhari insisted he had done his best and cannot wait to leave office.

What then, if one may ask, is the sense in issuing impeachment threat to a man who said he is tired and wants to go home?  This is a president that has for seven years ignored the lawmakers’ demands, summons and resolutions, responding sometimes to their irritations through his trusted gatekeepers- Shehu Garba, Lai Mohammed and Abubakar Malami. Issuing a threat, they have neither the numbers nor the gut to enforce on the eve of an election is bizarre. Their action is even more weird. The current assembly has done everything except that which the nation desperately needs- replacing the current ‘Decree 24’ of a constitution with a federal constitution to address our diversity.

But Nigerians are not deceived. We know why they issued a puerile ultimatum while escaping from Abuja with their tails behind their legs last week. Abuja is no more a safe haven for parasitic lawmakers that have lived in denial for seven years. Those who sowed the wind are trying to escape reaping the whirlwind.

Our political class remains the scourge of the nation whether it is in the mismanaged privatisation programme, ‘Monetisation policy’ scam, cornering of 25% of the national budget by the lawmakers, budget padding, unimplemented constituency projects, fuel theft, collapse of the health and educational sectors while they and their wards spend billions on health tourism.

In office, Obasanjo, Jonathan and Buhari work for themselves or their cronies. Obasanjo presided over the sales of Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b at a paltry $1.5b to his cronies, thereby turning our nation to net importer of labour of other nations. When there was nothing left to sell, President Jonathan in the name of dubious ‘monetization policy’ sold all federal structures dating back to the colonial period spread across the nation. And as for President Buhari, he doesn’t seem to be worried that if the current narrative does not change before he leaves office, he will probably be remembered as a leader who as a result of his mismanagement of our diversity, presided over the disintegration of the country.

At the onset of the fourth republic in 1999, the lawmakers gave an indication they were coming to serve none but themselves. They publicly expressed their desire to recoup their expenses on election having sold houses for the battle. They them created an artificial fuel scarcity which forced Obasanjo to set up the Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), an instrument with which about N1.7t was stolen under the dubious fuel subsidy regime, according to a house committee report.

For successive senate presidents viz Evan Enwerem, Chuba Okadigbo, Anyim Pius Anyim, Adolphus Wabara, Ken Nnamani, David Mark, Bukola Saraki, Ahmed Lawan, it has been a game of dog eat dog as they struggled over sharing of resources. It was no less the same in the House with speakers, Patricia Ette, Dimeji Bankole, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Yakubu Dogara and Femi Gbajabiamila.

Okadigbo spearheaded the removal of Evan Enwerem from office on November 1999 for falsification of name, while Okadigbo was in turn removed as Senate president in August 2000 by 81-14 votes over inflation of contract costs. Anyim Pius Anyim out of office was drilled by EFCC for shortfall of about N396 billion in ecological fund deductions as well as over $1.3b Centenary City project.

Saraki sold the victory of his party to the opposition by cutting a deal which ceded the deputy senate presidency to the opposition in what Itse Sagay described as ‘a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline”. On January 11, 2017, a Range Rover SUV that the Nigerian Customs “had intercepted and impounded valued at N298 million, with an alleged fake documents presented by the driver showing payment of N8m as against expected customs duty of N74 million was traced to the senate president. David Mark, challenged by EFCC for buying his official residence at a giveaway price went to court to defend short-changing the nation.

In 2007, Patricia Ette’s award of about N628m for the renovation of her official residence and that of the deputy speaker forced her to be booted out of office. Dimeji Bankole bought his palatial official quarters for N45m. That was after N200m provision had been provided in 2008 budget for its renovation. The sale of the 32-storey NECOM building to his company also led to a presidential probe. Abdul Mumin Jibrin, accused of ‘unilaterally padding the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State, attributed his travails to his inability “to admit into the budget, almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

Nigerian opinion leaders, at different periods called attention to the excesses of our lawmakers. Sanusi Lamido as governor of Central Bank on December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin lamented that the federal legislators were gulping about 25% of federal government overheads.

Former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Kayode Eso, on November 21, 2010, described the National Assembly as an assembly of fascists for trying to make laws that would make their return automatic. For him, “the nonsense of ‘first refusal is’ fascism”. He also believes “for any senator including absentee senators, to take home N30 million every month without accountability…as a foundation for revolution.”

For Biodun Jeyifo “if you want to know why looting and thievery became so pervasive in the 4th Republic, you must pay attention to the legalization and institutionalization of greed and sleaze in our predatory legislature”. Similarly, Obasanjo at the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”.

And in July 2013, The Economist, one of the most influential economic newsmagazines in the world, ranked Nigeria as the country with the most unjust and lopsided pay structure in the world.

We have no evidence the current National Assembly leaders are dealers. But actions speak louder than voice. Nothing can be more self-serving than Lawan’s recent attempt to derail his party rotational arrangement. As for Gbajabiamila, hosting big party for his 90-year old mother in Dubai or throwing big parties in Lagos to display $300,000 car gift to mark his wife’s 50th birthday, pastimes that were rare before becoming a lawmaker are not true mark of leadership.

Dear compatriots, behold thy self-proclaiming messiahs.

Of course, Nigerian Christians have every reason to be apprehensive. President Buhari’s handling of the security situation in the country has come under serous scrutiny by those who believe he has handled the menace of Fulani herdsmen killers and bandits with kid gloves.  Unfortunately, he has not done enough to prove critics who accused him of ‘Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda wrong. One proof of this was his identification with Gumi’s thesis that rehabilitation and reabsorption of repentant killers into the security services as against outright elimination of those who had visited violence on Nigerians vigorously canvassed by Kaduna’s Nasir El Rufai and Katsina’s Aminu Masari. Today, herdsmen and bandits operate unchallenged attacking trains, liberating prisoners from correctional centres and keeping their victims in the bush for as long as they desired.

But it will be a disservice to the nation for stakeholders including Christians, opposition parties and their media that rightly hold Buhari responsible for the mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building to give the impression that our problems are about Christians Muslim conflict. “The nation’s scourges are Fulani herdsmen terrorists, bandits and kidnappers who hide under religion to wage war against the nation, sacrilegiously torching churches and mosques to massacre worshippers and attacking subsistence farmers and confiscating their farmland. And for the north that has always manipulated the poor masses of their people using religion as instrument of electoral warfare, the chicken has only come home to roost.

Undoubtedly, religion plays an important role in modern society. Part of this includes ‘promotion of good citizenship, dialogue among the people and serving as witness of truth and righteousness by speaking against injustice’. Unfortunately for our nation, instead of acting the gospel by promoting fellowship, trust, faith and hope, a large section of the church uses the church for the exploitation of the innermost fears and ignorance of our people. In the east, the church has become instrument of economic warfare with the church selling grace to the highest bidders especially their governors just as the Catholic Church did some 500 years ago before Martin Luther. In the southwest, Obasanjo, Jonathan and Osinbajo wasted a great deal of time they should be ministering to the people doing night vigil while their ministers stole the country blind. Buhari’s inept management of Fulani herdsmen and bandits onslaught on Nigerians, sometimes using attack on Christian churches to divert attention from their real objective – the lust over land – as an incentive for crooked pastors to further exploit the ignorance of our people by inflaming passion.

But Tinubu who insists religion is not our problem hopes to change the above narrative by proving Muslim-Muslim ticket is not antithetical to the interest of all adherents of various religions in Nigeria. But for the PDP and their media that are expected to reflect society or set agenda for society, it is an all-out war against Tinubu. Whipping up religious sentiments against his Muslim-Muslim ticket, they hope will enhance their chances in the 2023 election.

Since the ethnic irredentists in Buhari’s government are more favourably disposed to replicating the crisis in the south rather than find solution, the question today should be which of the three leading candidates are best prepared to achieve elite consensus that has defied the nation since the end of the civil war.

Both PDP and APC unfortunately suffer the same affliction.  By its constitution, PDP presidential candidate ticket ought to have gone to a Southeast or South-south Christian, the two geo-political zones that have remained loyal to PDP since 1999. To this end, PDP and APC southern governors met in Asaba under Governor Okowa.  Pa Edwin Clark cursed any southern leader that would accept VP slot from any northern PDP candidate. At the end, the hegemonic owners of PDP from the north, claiming they could not find an electable Christian candidate from the south, outwitted Wike, the leading candidate from the south and handed over their ticket to Atiku who had contested every presidential election under various parties since 1999. PDP and their today’s warring clerics kept their peace.

But for his grit and gut, Tinubu was not supposed to secure the APC presidential ticket already ceded by Adamu, former PDP stalwart and Buhari imposition as APC chairman, to Ahmed Lawan, another Fulani from the north. His steadfastness paid off when 11 predominantly northern Muslim governors rebelled against Adamu and took sides with Tinubu. And based on their advice, he settled for a Muslim-Muslim ticket as a strategy to win the election.

That was all PDP stalwarts, their powerful and influential media, Pa Clark, their sympathetic Bishops and clerics from the southwest and southeast where religion is heavily commercialized, needed to start a war in support of northern minority Muslim VP candidate.

Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation who lost his ward to PDP and yet hoped to be picked as VP candidate says Tinubu’s choice of “Muslim-Muslim ticket was a direct attack on Christians.  A section of CAN even passed a fatwa: “This is a clear instruction, when it is time to vote, vote only in the favour of the Church not for your party. Any believer that sells out his faith in the name of party is heading for hell”.

Tragically for our nation, this type of CAN members would prevent their Christian children from reading the Quran just as some misguided Muslims parents would prevent their wards from reading the Bible forgetting we are grooming them to manage our society.

For the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria’s (CSN) Fr. Zacharia Nyantiso Samjumi and Rev. Fr. Michael Nsikak Umoh “the unity of this country has, over the years, been maintained by a delicate balancing of the religious and the regional”, a claim not totally true. Religion has always been a threat to the survival of our nation with many complaining Islam is mentioned in more than a dozen places in the constitution as if Nigeria, a secular state dragged by Babangida to Organisation of Islamic countries (OIC) without consultation is an Islamic state.

Former President Obasanjo says that any attempt to engage in Muslim/Muslim ticket will not only amount to “insensitivity of the highest order but will also amount to very bad politics indeed”. I hope someone reminds him that it was under his Obasanjo/Atiku Christiaan/Muslim ticket, 13 northern governors institutionalised illegal Sharia, sent their youths to Sudan for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden and returned to form the nucleus of today’s insurgents’ groups.  General Aziza, President Jonathan National Security Adviser, shortly before a helicopter crash told us it was Obasanjo’s PDP that was behind the formation of Boko Haram to serve as balance of terror for political opponents.

With the above facts, it is difficult to fault those who say that warring southern Christians who instead of first removing the logs in their own eyes are waging battle on behalf of northern minority Christians are PDP sympathisers.

The only purpose religion shares with politics according to George Will in his ‘Statecraft as Soul craft’ is the emancipation of the individual through the education of his passion”. And if a section of CAN is nostalgic about their gains under Obasanjo/Atiku and Jonathan years of the locust want to know how Christians can lead by example, they can take a look at the life of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis who has a reputation of modesty and humility, eschewing trapping of office by living in an apartment where he made his own food and rode to work by bus.

Unlike our traditional political system where groups constituted the building blocks of society, democracy, the new imported value system celebrates individuals. The defeat of incumbent Governor Oyetola of Osun by dancing Senator Ademola Adeleke, last weekend was a celebration of democracy. The problem with our democratization process however has always been the conspiracy of our political elite who see democracy only as the shortest route to power and are ready to destroy political parties, an ingenious 17th century creation of political elite without which democracy can thrive the moment their interests are threatened.

While with the recent movement of Peter Obi from APGA to PDP, and PDP to Labour and before then, Atiku’s periodic shuffling between  PDP, to ACN, PDP, APC and now back to PDP, it can be said that the same demon afflicts all Nigerian politicians, the effect has been more destructive in the southwest perhaps because of their worldview.  For instance, while the Igbo political elite prefer a unitary  system which will allow Igbo to carry out their ‘buy and sell’ trade anywhere in Nigeria, the Fulani, following Uthman Dan Fodio’s conquest of Hausa states between 1804-1808 have come to regard Nigeria as an ungoverned land  reserved for the rehabilitation of the stateless Fulani across Africa.

Yoruba who on the other hand are by nature federalists have worked harder than any other group towards institutionalization of a federal arrangement that will liberate groups and individuals from the tyranny of the Nigerian state. Federalism and democracy are of course like twin brothers and are both required for elite consensus needed for the management of diversities in deeply society like ours.  Assaults on these values which unfortunately have always come from the southwest since independence remain the greatest betrayal of our own visionary Yoruba leaders who labored to bequeath a federal constitution unto us at independence.

For instance, on May 29, 1962, following disagreement over sharing of dividends between AG major shareholders, Chiefs S. L. Akintola, Ayo Rosiji, Okunowo and Akerele were sanctioned for anti-party offences.  But rather than behave like democrats and loyal party men,  they chose to sell their leader and the Action Group, it’s modernization agent to Azikiwe’s NCNC and Ahmadu Bello’s NPC.

UPN suffered the same fate in the second republic when Akin Omoboriowo, in order to upstage Ajasin, his boss, invited the ruling NPN that purportedly secured for him “landslide and seaslide’ victories in opposition strongholds. Iyiola Omisore similarly joined PDP to destroy his party and derail the development programme of his principal in Osun. Just as Sunday Afolabi, Bola Ige’s deputy as Oyo State governor joined NPN where he was made a minister after working for the downfall of his principal. Ige himself betrayed his Afenifere fellow cult members and their AD party to join Obasanjo’s PDP as attorney general because he lost out in AD presidential ticket contest. Sadly both died tragically working for Obasanjo. One assassinated in his room on December 23, 2001 by yet to-be-identified assailants and the other while awaiting trial over alleged $2m bribe from Sagem, a firm then handling the national identity card project.

Aregbesola , sidelined by APC Southwest major shareholders  was quoted as threatening to ‘stop Oyetola in Osun as Ambode was stopped’ by his estranged godfather in Lagos’,  Early this week, from faraway US, he celebrated the defeat of his predecessor and his party, with quotes from the Bible. His supporters have also linked the decimation of their party to the internal wrangling within APC while Senator Adeleke, the Osun governor-elect admitted on Channels TV programme, last Monday that Aregbesola’s men worked for him.

As 2023 beckons, Yoruba must work against this self-destruct tendency which in Yoruba translates to – ‘If the rat cannot eat beans inside the calabash, it can scatter them in the sand’.

Our current socio-economic problems including corruption, religious intolerance, terrorism and banditry are but symptoms of absence of a workable federal constitution that helped us to manage our diversity until 1966. It was Yoruba politicians’ undermining of that constitution and our party system that resulted in its replacement with ‘Decree 24’, a baleful legacy of Igbo/ Fulani and their military fronts that according to Alabi Isama, ruled our country between 1959 and 2015.

And if the challenge of 2023  is electing  a visionary leader who must eschew  injustice, ensure fairness and must have demonstrated his capacity to build an elite consensus needed for the management of our diversity, we must start by interrogating the legacies of Obi and Tinubu as governors of Anambra and Lagos at different periods and  that of Abubakar Atiku as vice president who presided over the sale of Nigeria’s total investments of about $100b for a paltry $1.5b to cronies who had access to state funds.

Of the three, Tinubu so far has been the one that has come under serious scrutiny by his Yoruba compatriots despite having never worked with the federal government, secured contracts or collected grants to set up media empire. And Igbo-Lagos urban immigrants who cannot go to their states for fear of terrorists and kidnappers have joined his Yoruba detractors to do “O to ge” for him in Lagos.

Similarly, Igbo Christians are the loudest critics of his Muslim-Muslim ticket even when it is not likely they will vote for him even if he decides to pick an Archbishop as his VP candidate from the East. Available records of voting pattern have shown the southeast and south-south led by Pa Edwin Clark, rather than identify with Yoruba aspirations, have, since independence aligned with the north.

Those Yoruba who never see anything good in Tinubu even though he is head and shoulder better than his other two rivals, always assume they can impose their culture on a nation at different levels of cultural development.  For them, even Awo, the sage, who a British leader said would make a successful British Prime Minister or US President was not good enough. They joined his detractors to send him to jail.  Another Yoruba leader, MKO Abiola who in spite of Igbo and Fulani political elite’s conspiracy, won  a pan-Nigerian mandate died in prison for winning the most credible election in the nation’s history. Obasanjo, an imposition by Igbo and Fulani elite to spite the Yoruba   publicly admitted he is not a Yoruba leader. He will be remembered more for exploiting Yoruba quest for restructuring to humiliate our revered Afenifere leaders.

Finally may we remind Yoruba pastors teaching our children how to speak in tongues while Israeli  and their Arab half-brothers are teaching their children science and mathematics to prepare them for the challenges of tomorrow, that Adeleke with his Christian/Christian ticket in a predominantly Muslim Osun last week,  defeated a sitting Muslim Governor.

As discriminatory voters who are never blinded by religious emotions and who Awolowo said would not vote for someone because he is Yoruba, Tinubu is assured of 50% of Yoruba votes.  I guess he thinks by the choice of his vice presidential candidate, he can complement that by sharing the northeast votes with Atiku. As for the northwest, whose son he helped to power twice and on whose behalf, Tinubu stoically carry the scars of arrows aimed at Buhari by frustrated Nigerian victims of herdsmen and bandits attack, he expects one good turn deserves the other.

Again, the Kuje prison tragedy is but one more symptom of collapse of governance in our country – and no thanks to President Buhari’s administrative style ‘of delegation by abdication’, euphemism for absence of governance. At an age when government has become a science, President Buhari puts round pegs in square holes and while not flying around the world in search of loans for his legacy projects, he simply sits back watching his ‘loyal gatekeepers’, serving other tendencies in his government sow seeds of social dislocations that today threaten the very survival of our nation. Since there are no rules, his political appointees set their own standards which make accountability or sanctions unnecessary.

While our children spend several months at home because of ASUU strike, the president said little as self-conceited ministers of education and labour arrogantly strut and swagger around. They even breached the constitution trying to seek elective positions as government employees paid by taxpayers. The naira is said to be worth less than the paper on which it was printed while the CBN governor, in pursuit of his presidential ambition was setting up structures and hiring lawyers to defend his abuse of position.

Fuel scarcity whose daily consumption moved from 35million litres per day in February 2018 to 65.7million per day in January this year and jumped to 72.07 million litres a day, in May this year, is biting hard. Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of NNPC blamed increase in fuel consumption which attracted over N500b subsidy so far this year on smuggling across borders.

Bandits, herdsmen and other insurgents call the shot. Kidnapped train victims have been kept in captivity for close to three months.  Relatives of recently released seven were said to have raised N800m to liberate their loved ones while 57 remain in captivity. The president who is under stress and strain got little relief from ministers of information, defence, petroleum and digital technology while Abubakar Malami, another round peg in square hole, chose the moment of the president’s tribulation to assault sensibilities of Nigerians by increasing his harem to three with solemnization of marriage with the president’s 41-year-old divorced daughter which, newspapers reports claim, already have six children.

If we needed more evidence of absence of governance, all we need to do is to interrogate the president’s lamentation as to “how terrorists organize, have weapons, attack security installation and get away with it” during his brief stop-over at the damaged Kuje Medium Correctional Centre en route Senegal where he secured more international loan for his legacy projects and Senegal’s highest national honour for his service to Africa.

But then President Buhari is the only one who can answer those questions. He alone knows why he appointed Mohammed Maigari Dingyadi as Minister of Police Affairs. Dingyadi, a former secretary to Sokoto State Government and one-time chairman National Commission for Education is undoubtedly an accomplished Nigerian. But without any form of training or experience in the security department, it is only the president who can say if there is anything that qualified Dingyadi for the job other than the accident of coming from Dingyadi Sokoto.

Dingyadi was honest enough not pretend to be what he was not while explaining the relative ease with which the terrorists accomplished their mission. He had said to reporters: “I think what helped them was the number of people they came with and their superior weapons”. But to underscore the tragedy of our security architecture, his answers contradicted that of the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola who insisted there were enough forces and equipment in Kuje which he said is “medium by size but maximum by the security provided”. He then spoke of a “a platoon of military officers and men … the highest grade of military police and other security forces for deployment for protection.”

And since both are round pegs in square holes, they did not bother to explain how 300-armed terrorist travelled for hours through the various police checkpoints and military formations around Abuja and why their exits with their priced haul of 60 hardened Boko Haram terrorists could not be blocked.

Again, only President Buhari knows what qualified Rauf Aregbesola for Minister of Interior after his uninspiring outing as governor of Osun State with a legacy of unpaid salaries. His other enduring legacy was fanning embers of religious intolerance among a people that had coexisted peacefully for centuries as traditionalists, Muslims and Christians with Hijab controversy to cover his inadequacies.

It is no surprise that as a round peg in a square hole, Aregbesola has spent the greater part of his seven years as Minister of Interior trying to derail his successor’s more focused administration. According to a recent Daily Trust editorial “Between him and the Controller General of Nigerian Correctional Service, Haliru Nababa, there has been more prison breaks than at any time in living memory”.

In fact, some said there has been an epidemic of jail breaks during their period. There had been jail breaks in Imo, Edo Bauchi and Lagos during which thousands of criminals were set free just as last week’s attack on Kuje was the third in the last two years. Yet the facility’s perimeter fence was not reinforced while both the president and the president of the senate raised questions about the functionality of the CCTV if at all available.

It is within Aregbesola’s department to address the daily flooding of Nigerians by immigrants who take refuge in the ungoverned forest of the north from where they visit violence on innocent Nigerians. Many of them ferried by lorries to the south take refuge in the urban slums with no name or any form of identification. Sheik Gumi who has visited those he described as aggrieved Fulani herdsmen making outlandish demand such as government pardon and integration into our security architecture seems to have been more visible than the Minister of Interior.

It is tragic not only for President Buhari who often shoots himself in the leg by the manners of his appointment but for the country that bear the consequences of such actions. President Jonathan back in 2013 admitted that Boko Haram had infiltrated his government and all other levels of government in the country. But President Buhari’s trusted aids still went on to populate his government with Boko Haram sympathisers. Although it was elder statesman, Theophilus Danjuma that first spoke of infiltration of the military by criminal elements, some of governors of besieged northern states today believe the military is compromised.

This why it is therefore not enough for the military top hierarchy to say “the claim by Femi Fani Kayode that soldiers were withdrawn from the Kuje Correctional Custodial Centre before the attack is laughable” or “that he is ignorant of whose responsibility it is to guard prison,” as recently argued by the Defence spokesman, Maj.-Gen. Jimmy Akpor.

They should tell Nigerians how ‘the platoon of military officers – the fighting wing of the army in the most sophisticated battle’ Aregbesola talked about, melted into the thin air at the approach of Boko Haram terrorists and why between them, the DSS and the police, the movement of over 300 heavily armed insurgents in and out of Kuje was never captured by intelligence.

Frustrated Nigerians, safe neither in their homes, work place or places of worship have come to terms that they are on their own. But the successful daring rescue of incarcerated terrorists from subdued state actors that could not rescue their kidnapped citizens from terrorist den even with payment of ransom, is a warning to those playing the ostrich in Aso Rock that there are no more sacred areas.

With a small number of Fulani ethnic irredentist who supported Buhari neither during his first three heroic failed attempts at the presidency nor during his 2015 pan-Nigeria mandate but today hold him hostage while their foot-soldiers wage war against Nigerians, Buhari has no enemies. And if a leader heralded to power with a pan-Nigerian mandate ended up as a Fulani president as against the greatest Nigerian president that ruled with justice and fairness as predicted by Maitama Sule, Buhari will go down in history as a leader who missed an historic opportunity because of his leadership style.

It is an open secret that Miyetti Allah, their foot soldiers and their patrons are behind our nation’s current nightmare. They did not even wait for Buhari’s inauguration before declaring war on Nigeria. They threatened to make the country ungovernable if anti-grazing laws were not abrogated in 21 states of the federation and they carried out their threat by owning up to killing 73 innocent Nigerians in Benue. The president’s tepid response in form of appeal to victims of mindless killings to be good hosts only emboldened the herdsmen killers to extend their killings to other parts of north central and north-western states of Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto. The president’s mainly northern controlled security apparatus at the beginning gave the impression those visiting violence on Nigerians were invincible.

Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers, Fulani enablers and sympathisers in government share the same mind-set with the rampaging herdsmen-foisting Fulani agenda including open grazing which they claim is part of Fulani culture, illegal occupation of federating states’ reserved forest and government funded RUGA settlement for Fulani from all over Africa.

But Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers are loyal only to the tendencies they hide under his government to serve. They share neither his pan-Nigerian vision nor his pains in government. The arduous task of nation-building is complicated by betrayal by his disgruntled Fulani compatriots. And while facing legitimacy crisis as Nigerians, safe neither in their homes nor in churches, blame him for their nightmare  and openly accused of pursuing “Fulanisation and Islamisation” agenda by  Nigeria’s elders statesmen and leaders of ethnic nationalities, his Fulani compatriots add nothing but agony to a president overwhelmed by third world post-colonial crisis of legitimacy, crisis of penetration and crisis of identification as sub-nationalities struggling for self-actualisation demand for dismemberment of the country.

Yet out of sheer perfidy, this most depressing period was the time his trusted gate keepers and enablers of herdsmen in his government chose to return to the National Assembly, a controversial water bill perceived by the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum as a strategy “to grab land around waterways for cattle herders’ by clipping “the wings of state and local government authorities as well as individuals from making use of the water at their backyard without permit from Abuja”. But driven only by the pursuit of their selfish agenda, the president’s ‘loyal gate keepers’ could not be restrained from inflicting more pain on their caged president or assaulting the sensibilities of Nigerians by returning the Waterways Bill earlier rejected by Nigerians and the 7th and 8th National Assembly that threw it out in 2017 and in 2020 when it was represented by Abubakar Fulata as an Executive Bill.

This is the same bill dismissed by The Guardian editorial of August 16, 2020 as “The repugnant and detestable land-grabbing bill, which obviously is suspected to grant Fulani herdsmen and Miyetti Allah cattle breeders, unfettered access to land and water resources in Southern Nigeria, can only trigger national upheaval”. But beyond the editorial, this is a bill already declared unconstitutional by various judicial pronouncements.

The desperation of the sponsors of this Waterways Bill only reinforces the suspicion of sceptics about the usual treachery against our nation. Nigerians remember Babangida and his junta’s similar desperation back in 1993 when they on the eve of their departure from office, promulgated “Decree No. 52 of 1993 which vested the ownership, control and management of all lands within 100 metres limit of the 1967 shoreline of Nigeria and any other land reclaimed from any Lagoon, sea, ocean in the Federal Military Government of Nigeria”.

With the sharing of over 300 Osborne plots among his soldiers of fortune and their friends, it turned out, the obnoxious decree since struck down by the 2000 Justice Odunowo judgment “on grounds of inconsistency with the rights of the indigenous land owners in Lagos State” was designed to corner Lagos State’s priceless land along with other coastal states in Nigeria.

But then perfidy has been the major operating instrument of Buhari’s loyal gate keepers. In September 2020, Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, and Suleiman Hussein Adamu, his water resources counterpart, dismissed widely- held views that the National Water Bill would cede a vast swathe of land along river banks to herdsmen, and encourage the widely rejected Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) programme of government. But there is no perfect crime. Boss Mustapha, current Secretary to Government of the Federation joined the debate by declaring on Channels Television Morning Ride programme, that Lagos cannot lay claim to her waterways because the source of Ogun River is not in Lagos. The objective of those behind the bill cannot be any clearer.

The same perfidy was at play with the recruitment of Isa Pantami, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Shari’ah (SCS) who once argued that “Jihad is an obligation for every single believer in Nigeria” from Islamic University of Madinnah in 2016 as the Director General/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to preside over the sensitive NIN project. The loyal gate keepers, recruiter of Pantami owe us no explanation as to why the main beneficiaries of the project are today terrorists whose attacks have become more coordinated with seamless ransom telephone haggling with victim’s relatives.

It was the same deceit that informed President Buhari’s first Minister of Defence, General Mansour Dan-Ali’s response to the rampaging Fulani herdsmen, ranked in 2015 by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest in the world. His unrestrained assault on our sensibilities was “If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen? These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together with one another”.

Of course it was the same deceit, dishonesty and betrayal  when the president’s ‘loyal gate keepers’ opposed the southern states’ demand for state and community policing while looking the other way when political sharia states set up 10,000 strong Sharia Hisbah police corps whose duties included arresting anyone sporting “indecent dress”, preventing “gender mix in commercial vehicles” or sealing-up hotels selling  alcohol while bandits and killer herdsmen govern the ungoverned forests of the north.

The reintroduction of a controversial water bill amidst security challenges that have forced Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna to call for summary elimination of terrorists, Katsina’s Aminu Masari’s  call on his people to arm themselves and Baba Ahmed of Northern Elders Forum’s(NEL ) to call for the president resignation because “We cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security” is a measure of how much sympathy Buhari’s loyal gate keepers have for their principal.

Nigerian opinion leaders like playing the ostrich. The argument about Muslim/Muslim ticket has suddenly become ‘the issue’ with pastors issuing warnings and failed political leaders threatening fire and brimstone in an attempt to hide under religion to cover up their failures.

But we must not lose focus of the problem. The nation’s scourge are herdsmen terrorists, bandits and kidnappers who hide under religion to wage war against the nation, sacrilegiously torching churches and mosques to massacre worshippers and attacking subsistence farmers and confiscating their farm land. They took control of our ungoverned as well as reserved forests from where they visit violence on our highway travellers and train passengers, kidnapping Christians and Muslims without discrimination for ransom.

It got worse under Obasanjo/Atiku Christian/Muslim ticket. It today threatens the survival of our nation under Buhari/Osinbajo Muslim/Christian ticket. Those heating up the polity over Muslim/Muslim ticket are therefore only begging the question.

We must not forget how we got to this sorry path. Our problem is neither Christianity nor Islam. It is the exploitation of the religious sentiments for political gains which started in the north, populated by Hausa/Fulani, 95% of whom profess Islamic faith.  It became an art with Uthman Dan Fodio’s conquest of the Hausa states between 1804 and 1808 in the guise of promoting orthodox Islamic practice to a people that had embraced Islamic faith since the 11th century. But to prove it was a ruse to grab political and economic power, of the 11 Emirs, Dan Fodio, the revered Islamic teacher appointed after the pacification the Hausa states, only one was Hausa while the rest were his brothers, cousins and others of Fulani extraction.

Their defeat by the British did not change the narrative. While they lost to their British conquerors, political and economic power, they retained their control over religion, a more potent instrument of domination described Karl Marx describes “as opium of the people”, which ‘drugged, numbing their senses and disposing them to put up with their wretched existence so that  they would be rewarded in a ‘mythical’ after life”.

The only serious threat to their iron grip on those treated as serfs through exploitation of religion sentiments, came from Awolowo who in the late 1950s tried “to bridge the educational gap between that region and the western and eastern region” because   he saw “the lack of education as a stumbling block against political enlightenment of the whole northern region”. But Awo lost the 1959 election because ‘the voters could not make up their own minds and make their own choices. Rather, the innocent people of the north had to be dictated to by emirs and the elites who feed them on a regular basis”.

Although he was jailed by vindictive hegemonic power in the north partly for attempting to liberate those kept under servitude in the name of religion, he however predicted that “sooner than later, the leaders of the north will see the repercussion of their selfishness and carelessness in their attitude towards western education” when the northern youth start asking their leaders some hard questions.

The exploitation of northern poor in the name of religion continued unchallenged under successive northern civilian and military leaders including Babangida who unilaterally dragged the nation to Organisaton of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the fourth republic northern ‘political sharia’ promoters. For instance, Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State, claiming implementation of sharia will ‘assist the state to achieve  social and economic transformation” on October 27, 1999 launched the sharia system in contravention of section 10 of the 1999 constitution which bars the federal government or the state government from adopting of any religion as state religion.

Other states including Bauchi, Niger, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Kebbi, Gombe, Adamawa and Taraba soon joined Zamfara political sharia train. In fact, some of the hypocritical northern governors sponsored youths for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden then hiding in Sudan with not a few radicalized graduates returning to form the nucleus of today’s insurgent groups.

The introduction of Sharia law according to one observer had only “forced people to withdraw into the womb of their religions since people’s religion and ethnicity today determine access to power, resources and privileges”. In Zamfara where it all began,  Yerima and his successors after 20 years, left  a legacy of a state under siege and in ruins where most schools  have only a teacher each,  where the state lost 20 doctors because of the state inability to pay salaries leaving 20 doctors to the state’s 23 hospitals according to one time Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole.

The story is not much different from other Sharia states where some of the eight million of out-of-school northern children have become easy but angry recruits for radical graduates of Bin Laden School of terrorism.

The chicken finally came home to roost as predicted by Awolowo. The neglected angry young men who found relevance only in terrorism are today making the north ungovernable. Overwhelmed by the new challenges, the response of some northern leaders was either playing the ostrich or, make some deliberate effort at exporting the northern self-inflicted problem to the south.

In government we have President Buhari’s ‘loyal gatekeepers’ and outside government the likes of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who in a statement issued on March 11, 2019 claimed that Nigerian Fulani herdsmen, rated by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world, coming after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab, “are peaceful and live in harmony with other ethnicities”.

We have Miyetti Allah Kautal  Hore who while threatening ‘more blood will flow in Benue if the ranching law is not rescinded’ during his May 30, 2017 Abuja World Press Conference’ called on Fulani herders in all of West Africa to come into Benue to help them reclaim their land’. We can add Alhaji Sale Bayeri who while demanding for an un-hindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states warned that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if herdsmen and farmers’ conflicts are not resolved in a way that is acceptable to all sides”.

The good news however is that on the side are equally influential Fulani leaders. Here we have the tribes of  Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna  who is not only addressing the problems of Nigerian herdsmen but has also called for elimination of bandits and killer herdsmen he describes as “non-Nigerian Fulani from Niger, Mali, Chad and other such places”. We have Aminu Masari of Katsina and Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano who are rehabilitating herdsmen from their states.

The solution to or current challenges is not going to come from a northern vice presidential candidate from northern 5% Christians but the 95% Hausa/Fulani Muslims and their leaders with pan-Nigeria outlook. With those identified above, Nigerian stakeholders can start from where Awolowo stopped by blackmailing northern political sharia states to embark on free and compulsory education for their youths.

Police as a vital state institution often defines a society. Nigeria stakeholders can have new partners in these new northern leaders to instituionalise community policing that can draw a balance between public safety, social order and individual liberty and freedom, hitherto frustrated by those holding President Buhari hostage.

And finally, since the national question is what often defines identity and loyalty, with President Buhari’s failure to seize an historic opportunity to become a statesman by restructuring the country, I think there is now a window of opportunity for Nigeria’s stakeholders to join hands with these new northern leaders towards saving our country.

It was a miracle APC survived the apocalyptic prediction of its imminent fragmentation under the weight of intrigue and contradiction which were in full display during its last week convention. Tinubu while savoring his well-earned victory after  brutal  two-nights of many knives convention in which all his opponents, treacherous  protégées and a cabal hiding under Buhari’s presidency to serve other tendencies were roundly defeated, assured all those who did not vote for him  have nothing to fear. Those who know the Jagaban as a politician with malice towards none know he meant every word of his solemn undertaking. Some of those who served as his foot-soldiers in the exercise were in no distant past his political foes and one should not be surprised if those who  betrayed him last Tuesday  are found brainstorming with him in his sitting room in no distant  future. Tinubu is therefore a political analyst’s nightmare because he alone knows how best to fight his own battles. All a keen observer of the Nigerian political process and its self-serving, political governing class can do therefore, is to put all the macabre dance and chilling scheming by aspirants and party leaders in those two nights of many knives in perspective.

First the APC convention confirmed that our political governing class have faith neither in democracy which they see just as a method to buy their way to power nor in the party system which they see as nothing other than a vehicle to power. It also exposed the southern political ruling class  as a groveling self-serving gamblers and traders with no abiding faith in anything while their northern counterparts demonstrated that politics is not a dirty game but that what we have are dirty politicians for  whom in the words of Kashim Shettima, ‘anything goes’.

First the public disrobing of the cabal at war against Nigeria.  Before last Tuesday when it climbed the tree beyond its leaves by underestimating Tinubu’s resolve to fight rough and an unexpected patriotic stand of northern governors, many of whom may not necessarily like Tinubu’s guts, against Mai Buni and Abdullahi Adamu’s attempt to foist Ahmed Lawan as APC consensus candidate fraudulently using Buhari’s name, the identities of the cabal that have held Buhari and Nigeria hostage for the greater part of seven years remained in the realm of conjecture. But last week’s APC vicious intra-party battle changed the narrative.

But for the northern governors, with Buhari’s ‘government of delegation by abdication’, Adamu  and Mai Buni would have by their pursuit of selfish and parochial agenda created more social dislocations for a deeply divided society where an irresolute president  has mismanaged crisis of nation building. Sadly a trip through memory confirms this has been the pattern of the cabal’s operation in the past years.

We all remember how Bukola Saraki by his own admission in 2015, literarily stole the senate presidency, with Shehu Garba speaking for a vacillating president saying  ‘the cure for headache was not cutting off the head’. The country was made ungovernable for four years after that. It was the same when church massacre (similar to recent Owo tragedy) was first carried out in Benue, followed by sacking, confiscation of community land and condemning of survivors of mindless killings to IDP camps. An unrestrained response of Buhari’s minister of defence was to blame everything on encroachment of pre-colonial and pre-36 states creation grazing routes.  Governor Ortom’s anti-open grazing laws was similarly criticized by the minister while ex-emir, Sanusi Lamido  from his far away Kano fiefdom encouraged Fulani immigrants in Benue to resist their host state’s anti-open grazing laws.

It was not different when Governor Akeredolu of Ondo ejected AK-47 wielding criminal Fulani herdsmen illegally operating in his state’s reserved forest. Garba Shehu, Abubakar Malami and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed viciously attacked Governor Akeredolu quoting the fraudulent 1999 constitution.  Similar strategy was also adopted when Shehu Garba purportedly speaking for Buhari, rejected the 36 states’ demand for state and community policing citing problem of funding and equipment.

Now let us turn to the groveling consensus-seeking presidential aspirants. If Rotimi Amaechi, who long ago destroyed his political base had any preparation for his presidential ambition, it was humouring President Buhari. How about his claim the president is infallible, locating University of Transportation in Katsina and buying into the president vision of extending rail line to Niger Republic? For his pains, the cabal assured the Daura-turbaned Amaechi of becoming Buhari’s APC consensus presidential candidate.

The ambition of Kayode Fayemi, the adopted son of the caliphate was also probably predicated on the promise of Mai Buni, his friend that he could emerge Buhari’s consensus candidate.  Although eminently qualified, it was doubtful he would have contested against a benefactor that helped him to retrieve his stolen mandate after three years and rehabilitated him when condemned to political wilderness by PDP and Fayose. Ibikunle Amosun who lost his political base to Osoba and Tinubu was probably also thinking of becoming Buhari’s consensus candidate on account of his closeness to the president. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi was also probably bitten by the cabal’s “consensus” bug.

They discovered too late on the nights of many knives that they have all  been outwitted by Adamu and Buni who named Ahmed Lawan as President Buhari’s consensus candidate and outsmarted by Tinubu who did not just work hard to earn the trust of some northern governors but also took sacrifice to ‘esu’, the Yoruba god of confusion with the centre unable to hold between the cabal and their northern governors.

Of course the cabal are the masters of the game. They planned for the future by honouring past promises. They proved as Nasir El Rufai has argued, ‘you can go to the bank with their words’. They also know southern politicians have prices. In the first republic, with promises of positions and contract, the Yoruba politicians turned truth on its head to nail their leader. In the words of Hubert Ogunde, they ‘invited the thief and also invited the owner of the farm’ to catch him. This time around with the promise of consensus candidacy, they suddenly realised Tinubu, their leader was dictatorial and ambitious and they prayed hard that God may bring him down. But swindled by Buni and Adamu, they sang a new song about Tinubu being their brother.

Of course the cabal knows the Igbo political elite more than they know themselves. If a group that created a permanent enmity between those who look up to them for direction and Yoruba, their chief hosts because Zik was prevented from becoming the premier of the West in 1952 when a Yoruba man cannot contest for local council councillor in Igbo land in 2022, why will they not swallow the bait they could reap where they did not sow in 2023? Kalu Uzor Kalu, Rochas Okorocha  and other Igbo contestants believe the cabal would persuade Buhari to declare one of them a consensus APC candidate as if Igbo votes alone could secure for them the presidency. But the cabal knows that for the Igbo, politics is the art of the possible. They didn’t waste time licking their wounds before falling over each other to join Atiku or Lawan. The cabal knows, in Igbo, the north has an ever ready and willing beautiful bride.

The death of over 35 worshippers including women and children during last Sunday attack on St Francis Catholic church Owo by bandits using guns and explosives was a sad reminder of how vulnerable Yoruba country, encircled by immigrants who lust over their land due to what someone describes as “greed economics” or as home for some stateless immigrant Fulani herdsmen from all over Africa, has become.

It was also a moment of truth. The Igbo and Hausa/Fulani we host have never identified with our aspirations. The former, have always chosen to play the second fiddle to the northern hegemonic power, as they did in 1959, 1979, 1983, 1999 and early this week when they directed Igbo APC delegates to vote for a northern APC 2023 presidential aspirant. Our streets and alleys are run by their youths who engage in illegal street hawking of largely smuggled goods. And for the latter, their largely uneducated youths have turned the streets of our major cities to death-traps as dare-devil Okada riders and our highways and forests into a killing field by AK-47 wielding bandits and herdsmen with neither names, addresses nor any form of identification.

And for those serving other tendencies in President Buhari’s government using him as a cover who out of envy had always wanted to replicate the self-inflicted tragedies of the north in the Southwest, last Sunday will be a day of triumph. A short journey through memory will show this.

It is for instance on record that Nigeria’s stakeholders who correctly predicted the price we today pay for treating bandits and herdsmen with kid gloves insisted back then that the president as an elected sovereign failed in his primary responsibility of ensuring security of life and properties of citizens and their rights and reconciliation of differences that naturally exist between groups.

In June 2020, Professor Ango Abdullahi, the convener of Northern Elders Forum alerted the nation about “criminals who attack, kill, maim, rape, kidnap, burn villages and rustle cattle, while President Buhari issues threats and promises that have no effect”, accusing him of not “demonstrating a higher level of concern and sensitivity to the plight of traumatised citizens, especially in Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Plateau and Taraba states’.

The Indigenous People of Katsina, the president’s home state also complained of how their people “are being slaughtered like sheep and goats; how communities are being invaded and how families and kindred are being wiped out by bandits while security agencies appear helpless”, with Masari their governor asking them to take up arms to defend themselves. General Theophilus Danjuma, a former Minister of Defence following many cases of unresolved murders also told his people of Taraba to defend themselves instead of putting their hopes on the Nigerian military which he believed was already compromised.

Instead of quenching the inferno in their house, those holding the president hostage seemed to be more interested in replicating the self-inflicted northern tragedy in the southwest. This could have been the only reason they embarked on virulent attack on Governor Rotimi Akeredolu for daring to eject AK-47 wielding criminals from Ondo’s forest reserve they illegally occupied in the same manner they took over ungoverned forests in the north. And this is why it is today difficult to fault the reasoning of concerned Nigerians who believe those who celebrated the Fulani’s penchant for vengeance during their acerbic  exchange of hot words with Governor Akeredolu over the issue need to be questioned over last Sunday killings in the governor’s home town.

And I think we can also add that the unprovoked barbaric attack was a moment truth for the Yoruba that with the passage of their illustrious visionary leaders who as foremost nationalists bequeathed on to us a working federal constitution, liberated us from colonial rule without bloodshed and who as NADECO members humiliated the military out of power and out of our lives, that we have been orphaned. We remember with pride that even in incarceration, Awo sought audience and told Balewa the truth about the damage he and his conspirators were doing to the health of our nation. And we recall that with just one public lecture at the University of Ife, the scandalous 1973 census result was condemned into the dustbin.

Today, Kayode Fayemi the adopted son of the caliphate; Osinbajo, Buhari’s vice president for seven years; Amosun, his dependable ally who hosts him whenever he comes to Lagos are not bold enough to tell their principal the truth viz: that the root cause of social dislocations in our country is the fraudulent foisting of a unitary constitution on Nigerians and that the restiveness in the country is about devolution of power to the federating units aka restructuring so that Abuja does not have to decide the water we drink, the air we breathe and the education of our children.

Our self-serving current leaders have found the standard set by their predecessors who established six statutory corporations to, in the words of late Professor Hezekiah Oluwasanmi “perform functions that were of fundamental significance to the economic, social and cultural development of the people of western N igeria” too high.

The corporations include the Western Regional Marketing Board, the Western Nigerian Development Corporation, the Western Nigerian Finance Corporation, the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation and the Western Nigeria Printing Corporation which guaranteed jobs for products of Western Region’s higher institutions, decent housing for the emerging middle class and created a new entrepreneurial and managerial class ready to develop vast resources of the region. They gave more scholarships to western Nigerian youths in one year than the colonial masters gave to Nigeria youths in three years, set up four different ranches, imported cows from Brazil, built the first national stadium, the mini Wembley in Ibadan and the first skyscraper in Nigeria.

Similarly, none has tried to meet the standards set in four years by Alhaji Jakande of Lagos, Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun State, Bola Ige of Oyo, Adekunle Ajasin of Ondo and Prof Ambrose Alli of old Midwest in the second republic.

For instance, there is no reason why the Yoruba governors cannot access loans to build a network of roads between Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Akure and Benin.

As for the warring Afenifere who have found it difficult to reconcile with their children for the common good of Yoruba nation, I have been wondering what they will tell Awo, their leader in whose name they all swear when they get to the great beyond.

Some 60 years ago, our development was derailed and Ayo Adebanjo with his colleagues were sent to prison alongside Awo, their leader by vindictive Igbo and Hausa/Fulani political elite for no other reason other than trying to liberate the Middle Belt minorities that Ahmadu Bello insisted were his grandfather’s slaves and the South-south minority tribes colonized by their more aggressive Igbos neighbours. Today at 94, Pa Adebanjo, leader of Afenifere is still criss-crossing the nation with leader of South-south and Middle Belt forum, the 95-year-old Pa Edwin Clark. The duo are canvassing for Igbo presidency as if the Igbo who, like the South-south and Middle Belt Forum have since independence identified with leadership of Northern hegemonic power, do not know what they want.

With his people held hostage in their own land, I think it is time someone tells Pa Adebanjo: physician, heal thyself!

If the three Nigerian major ethnic groups, the Igbo and Hausa/Fulani have always known what they wanted out of Nigeria. The former, a unitary system where citizens of their landlocked country are free to thrive in other people’s land and, the latter, a feudal system where no one questions their entitlement to power. The Yoruba is the only group that canvassed for a federal arrangement to, in the words of Bode Thomas, ‘‘prevent the country from being ruled by a one-eyed king”. They took the battle to the 1957 London Independence Constitutional Conference where Awo insisted “Nigeria cannot be regarded as free if any part of Nigeria is under bondage”. The other two groups cared less if the country was ruled by one-eyed king or a blind man. To them, politics, as Otto Von Bismarck (1862-1890) said, ‘is the art of the possible’ where idealism gives way to pragmatism.

The voting pattern during last Sunday PDP presidential primary validates this.  The Igbos after months of threat in the event that the presidential ticket of PDP, a party they faithfully served for 21 years was not ceded to the southeast, ended up voting massively (95%) for Atiku Abubakar. Despite calls for justice and fairness, the dominant view among the northern Fulani hegemonic power is that democracy is about group interest and therefore had no problem rallying round Atiku Abubakar.

With his emergence, it is hoped, the battle cry by Yoruba promoters of Igbo presidency – Pa Adebanjo, the chief campaigner, Obasanjo, the whistle-blower on Buhai’s perceived “Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda, and Bode George and other anti-Tinubu elements threatening to commit suicide if one of their own becomes APC flag bearer, as APC convention comes up next week end will be: “physician heal thyself’.

Atiku and Tinubu are undoubtedly illustrious Nigerians. The former, a northern Cameroon-born Fulani who enjoys all the privileges membership of the Fulani caste confers, moved from school into a waiting rewarding job in the Customs, retiring into a money-spinning business as a government contractor. When he joined politics, his only challenge was making a choice between being a governor of Adamawa and Nigeria’s vice president.  As VP, he presided over PDP privatisation programme described by the National Assembly probe as dashing away of our national patrimony with Nigerian total investment of over $100b sold at less than $1.5b.

His running judicial battle in the United States, Obasanjo’s verdict on his character,  his Intels’ 17 years collection of NPA revenue in dollars at  30% discount  have never threatened his four years periodic presidential contest since 1993 just as it counted for little during his last Sunday adoption by his Fulani compatriots.

The latter, on the other hand is a Nigerian of Yoruba descent who struggled through his village, Lagos to Chicago where he did odd jobs to earn a degree in accounting, returning home into a lucrative job in an American oil company. He has no link with the federal government either as a worker or a contractor. But for the love of his country and passion for democracy, he deployed personal resources to fund NADECO and sold houses to fund underground media that joined it (NADECO) to humiliate the military out of politics.

Pitched against a vindictive President Obasanjo that illegally withheld Lagos State federal allocations, he creatively increased Lagos Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from N600m to about N15b with 15% to the private company that handled the project. Those who ate the difference between the two figures joined others Tinubu had outsmarted in business and politics to whip up public sentiments alleging immoral and unconstitutional breach. They might be right. But a self-assured elected sovereign is allowed to breach the constitution in the overall interest of the people.

A vindictive Obasanjo humiliated the Afenifere elders, spitefully destroyed their AD political platform along their legacies from first republic leaving the old West, a haven of school dropouts and area boys. It was the lot of Tinubu to restore the honour of his fathers by building and nurturing a new political party.

He hired over 50 British expert card-readers at huge cost for a judicial battle that led to the successful retrieval of stolen mandates in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun, an endeavour that earned him the commendation of Pa Adebanjo, his estranged political father, who publicly praised him for liberating the southwest from the stranglehold of Obasanjo.

He spare-headed the formation of APC, repackaged Buhari after three earlier heroic failures into a winning candidate in 2015 and 2019 and took the mainstream Yoruba political tendency into the centre for the first time in the nation’s history. That he was outwitted by those who serve other tendencies in Buhari’s government was not due to lack of political versatility and brinkmanship. It has been part of political hazards for all those the Fulani hegemonic power perceives as threat. Ahmadu Bello, according to Trevor Clark, made it clear he was  opposed to any southerner wielding executive power and went further to assert they would prevent the south from ruling themselves.

Awo, the first victim, was slammed with treasonable felony charges.  The proofs according to Justice Sowemimo and Basil Adedipe, the Director of Public Prosecution were: the entry in Awo’s diary that he dreamt he was prime minister and that two or three of his members had visited Ghana. Others include procurement of powerful torchlight  to be used by Chief Awolowo and others like Dr Chike Obi,  Dr Maja, Jakande, Onabanjo, Adebanjo , Ikoku,etc  after they might have plunged Lagos to darkness by switching off the electricity grid at ECN Ijora, to capture the prime minister, Ikeja airport and the Royal  Naval Base in Apapa  after which Awo would walk to NBC Ikoyi to broadcast to the nation that he had assumed power as new PM.

Next was MKO Abiola, who after investing heavily in ordinary northerners was rewarded in 1993 with a landslide victory including in his main opponent’s (Tofa) Kano base. One of the reasons, Babangida claimed he annulled the most credible election in the nation’s history was that Abiola was not acceptable to the northern establishment.

Tinubu’s taste of deceit of ‘Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers’ first came when Buhari who according to Akande, offered him the VP slot before Tinubu helped him to defeat Atiku at the primary, reneged on his promise attributing his change of heart to opposition to Muslim/Muslim ticket by some of his supporters. Scheming to cut Tinubu wings by those who pretend to know what the president wants started as soon as Buhari won the 2015 election.

Today’s anti0Tinubu elements in the presidency know Jonathan cannot defeat Atiku and will be disqualified in the unlikely event he wins; that Yoruba will not vote anyone associated with treachery or someone who sheepishly followed the president around for seven years, unable to help as he mismanages our crisis of nation building and that none of the pretenders have the structure to face Atiku in nationwide presidential election. The strategy is that, end or tail, the north wins.

Since we all swim in the same political murky waters, it is time Yoruba leaders stopped pretending a part can be holier the whole.

And if democracy is about group interest, it will be unpatriotic for Yoruba leaders who pursued the interest of Atiku in 2019, that of Igbo in 2022, and others privy to perceived Buhai’s “Fulanisation and Islamisation” agenda not to support Tinubu who they all know is better equipped to tackle Nigerian problems.