The heuristic value of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s consultations with leaders of the North and South-east on the threat from some northern youth is clearly not in doubt. Its’ key constraint was the composition of the zones consulted.
At the last count, he had consulted with political leaders and traditional rulers from those zones as well as all governors. However, there are views that the consultations were not far-reaching to the extent they failed to factor in the south-west and south-south. The contention is that the issues that precipitated the meetings concern all segment of the Nigerian population and would be better addressed by involving all the constituents.
Not unexpectedly, leaders from the three southern zones have picked holes in the composition of the consultations. In a communiqué signed by Afenifere chieftain, Ayo Adebanjo (South-west), former Chief of General Staff, Ebitu Ukiwe (South-east) and former Director-General National Intelligence Agency, Albert Horsfall (South-south), they “rejected the attempt to reduce the current crisis in Nigeria, flowing from the unresolved nationality question to an Igbo and north affair”. For them, any further discussions on the matter should be between the entire south and north of Nigeria.
One cannot agree any less. It is true the discussions cropped up on account of the threat by some northern youth against the Igbo. That may have created the impression in the eyes of the government that the two groups have issues to reconcile. Hence, engaging leaders from the two areas in the calculations of the federal government is the best route to douse the tensed atmosphere.
But this thinking is flawed on several grounds. First, there is the presumption the agitations of the pro-Biafra groups is targeted against the northern youth and they had to rise to defend themselves. This is not so. Their grouse is against the Nigerian state. One begins to wonder on whose authority those youth took to self-help appropriating a challenge that falls within the realm of the state? There is nothing to link the so-called northern youth to the agitations to the extent of taking liberty to prescribe for the entire Igbo race a status within the Nigerian federation.
They went beyond their powers even as we are not oblivious of how such phoney groups are contrived. Definitely, there were behind the scene actors who had some selfish motives to achieve. That was not in doubt. Reducing the engagement to an Igbo and north affair would amount to plying into the hands of people masking as northern youths who do not really have the mandate of all zones of the north, as events have shown.
Besides, such an approach is loaded with the risk of reducing the Igbo race to a scapegoat in the Nigerian political chessboard- an agenda those behind the threat want to achieve. So the federal government has inadvertently played into the hands of northern ethnic jingoists and this could come with dire consequences.
Again, by limiting the consultations the way it has been structured, are we not giving the erroneous impression that any band of people could assume any name tag and appropriate the powers of remedying a perceived wrong on behalf of the federal government? Shall we not be left with anarchy if the government begins to respond to such threats in the selective manner it handled the case in point? What of the threat by a coalition of Niger Delta people to the north to vacate their soil and positions in the oil industry? Why did we not find it expedient to also factor that in the consultations? Or are we saying that such threats are of no consequence because they are coming from the South-south?
These posers have been raised to underscore the incongruity in the thinking that a parley with leaders of the north and south-east is all there is to multifarious challenges that have over time, stultified all efforts at genuine progress in this country. The consultations by the way they were skewed could produce the unintended result of pitching the north against the south-east.
Besides, those canvassing for the state of Biafra and the northern youths are not really representatives of the peoples of these zones. If they were, they should have been part of the consultations. But they were not consulted.
The crisis should rightly be seen as a manifestation of the unresolved issues of our defective federal order. To that extent, they transcend the borders of the north and south-east. They are matters that have to do with our being as a country which all sections have a stake in.
Even then, Osinbajo equally endorsed this view when he said at the meeting – “Let me say that we are not deaf to the legitimate concerns and frustrations arising from around the country. Every part of Nigeria has its own grievances”. That is the crux of the matter.
Those consultations have been rounded off. But that is not the end to the matter. We have been told there was consensus on the unity and indivisibility of the country. We were also told of the resolution of the governors that the unity of the country “is sacrosanct, non-negotiable and all have agreed to work together.”
Good enough, the vice president equally admitted that the issues are multi-dimensional and requires lasting and satisfactory solutions. He fingered clashes between herdsmen and farmers as one of the problems they discussed. Curiously, both the purveyors of these agents of death and those who bear the brunt of their deadly escapades, are states in the very north its youth issued an eviction order to the Igbo. If those youth were motivated by patriotic zeal, they should have first, removed the log in their eyes before the spec in the eyes of those they sought to evict for heating up the system though non-violent agitations for self-determination.
Nobody has issued any quit order to the north either on account of the killings by the Fulani herdsmen nor the four-year old Boko Haram insurgency geared in the main, to institute an Islamic state on the rest of us. We are all privy to the politics that had surrounded that challenge to the unity, indivisibility and secularity of the country. Just last week and against all the assurances we have been getting, they launched a deadly attack on a convoy of about 200 vehicles escorted by a heavy contingent of the army and police near Maiduguri.
So the challenges to our nationhood are fundamental and go beyond platitudes and sanctimony. It is not enough to regurgitate such ideas as non-negotiability and indivisibility of the country. Neither is it helpful pretending that all is well with this country. Those who wish it well must come to terms with the imperative of instituting the objective conditions and environment under which such deals will grow and flourish.
The Afenifere Renewal Group struck the right chord when they posed two salient questions in reaction to Osinbajo’s statement that Nigerians irrespective of ideology, race or religion “have agreed that Nigeria should remain one”. They asked: “Do we want to remain as one country? If the answer is yes, under what conditions?” The two questions sum up the uncanny dilemma we are confronted with. And the way they are answered, will chart the path for the future.
But implicit in those questions is the fact that there are several aspects of our being as a country that must be negotiated if we are to stave off the increasing competition between the central government and its constituents for the loyalty of the citizens. That has been the attraction of restructuring. Good a thing, the Senate has called for the report of the 2014 National Conference.
Osibanjo should move further in liaison with the National Assembly to set in motion the necessary processes to adopt salient recommendations of that conference as part of the grundnorm to guide the running of the country. That is the most practical and more enduring solution to the fission that is tending to tear this country apart.
We do not seem to have much choice on the imperative to restructure the country. Our parroting the unity, indivisibility and non-negotiability of the country without the necessary safety nets could produce direct opposite results.
