Tag: Gen Buhari

I closed the first part of my letter last week with the following words: “I know you have what it takes to change and save Nigeria. I wish you luck in your election – and I wish Nigeria luck”.

I mean those words sincerely. Your record in our country’s public service shows that you honestly hate public corruption, and that you can sincerely wage war on, and suppress, public corruption. I have also read your manifesto and, from the simplicity of its presentation, I am persuaded that you sincerely mean all you have outlined in it. Though I have ceased belonging to any political party for a long time, I believe it will be good for our brutally vandalized and tottering country if we voters choose you as president at this critical time.

Our mutual sincerity encourages me to utter the following pleas and words of advice. Certainly you are aware that many Nigerians are concerned and even fearful about the persistent claims by some of the Hausa-Fulani political leadership that their Hausa-Fulani nation must dominate Nigeria as a sort of colonial overlord. You know as much as anybody that that thorny fact has been a very major factor in the making of our country’s disunity, conflicts, and instability. Usually, people do not accuse you personally of sharing in that mentality; but since you are Hausa-Fulani, and since some of your people perpetually noise that claim and make efforts to achieve it, it is a large though mostly unspoken factor in the coming presidential election. It would be a pity if this should cause serious problems for such a good candidate as you at this time.

Therefore, I urge you: use your undoubted capabilities to put an end to this terrible tradition – in the interest of our country. Realistically, no single one of our nationalities can dominate all the rest of us. It is impossible. How can one nationality, even if it is larger than all the rest of us put together, dominate all the rest of us in any full or lasting sense? And we do not have any numerically dominant nation like that. Our three largest nationalities (Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo) are very close in population size, and each of them is a minority in Nigeria. How can the Hausa-Fulani succeed in subduing and dominating the large and capable Yoruba or Igbo – not to talk of all the nationalities of Nigeria?  Talking about domination and trying to achieve it has only bred hostility, crookedness, and instability in our country. It is time we remove that obstacle from the path to our country’s stability, progress and prosperity – and you can lead us to do it. Please sincerely strive to do so. Let it be one of your immortal gifts to our country. Nigeria is a country in which we all can prosper – and together build a world power.

That leads me to another but related subject. The reason most of the Hausa-Fulani elite are forever angling for a bigger, more powerful, and more resource-controlling Federal Government, is that they believe that, by having that kind of federal government and ensuring their own control of it, they will be able to subdue and dominate all of Nigeria. But it is a nebulous and disruptive venture. Yes, they have succeeded in pulling power and resources into the hands of the federal government, but have their homeland or anybody else gained anything from that? The most important result is that the federal government has become a podgy, ponderous, incompetent and repulsively corrupt monstrosity, a constant manipulator of elections and other vital processes across our land, a destroyer of development and progress in our country, and a disgrace to our country in the wide world. You acknowledge almost as much as this in your manifesto.

The federal government’s obstruction to development is hurting all parts of our country. For instance, our Northern Region saw a great deal of development and progress under the regional leadership of the late Sir Ahmadu Bello. Since all the power and resources for development have been gradually pulled together at the federal centre, has the North not steadily declined in economic progress? Is the same not true of the East and the West? Obviously, the answer is to take away much of the ponderous powers of the federal government, reenergize the different parts of our country, and thus bring development close to our people again. Empower the elite of our various parts to handle the development of their people, and our country will pick up again. Moreover, leave each part to elect the local men and women who will handle their affairs, and stop the destructive assumption that those who control the federal government have the prerogative to choose rulers for all parts of Nigeria. Flush corruption out of our elections. These are things you are capable of leading us to accomplish. We have high hopes in you – and we will support you.

Then, I wish to offer some counsel concerning your fighting corruption. Our country’s experiences show that going after those who have been corrupt and punishing them is an unreliable and problematic approach, potentially capable of generating division and even conflict. This is because, in a country in which ALL public servants (politicians, civil servants, judges, and all) have descended into the culture of corruption, punishing some people tends to degenerate into a process of selective justice. Groups that feel that their own leaders are being punished selectively cannot be blamed if they feel bitter. For instance, even though I hate public corruption as a destructive evil and fought it passionately throughout my service to Nigeria, it hurts me to remember that, among the generally corrupt Nigerian leadership of today, my prominent kinsman like Bode George was sent to prison, or that the federal government started a vindictive case against Bola Tinubu some time ago. If punishment is one of the weapons you decide to employ against corruption, please make sure that the process is manifestly even-handed.

First of all, I congratulate you warmly for winning the nomination of your party for the presidency of Nigeria.

Though you and I are different in ethnicity and religion, we have many important things in common. I am about two years older than you – which means that if you and I had been Yoruba boys  born in the same Yoruba town or village, we would have belonged to the same age-grade association ( with us Yoruba, age-grade loyalty is traditionally a very important factor of life).  Moreover, you and I were young adults in an era, the 1950s, when our up-and coming country of Nigeria was a source of great pride to its citizens, and an emerging titan eagerly awaited by most informed people all over the world. The three regions of our federation (East, North and West) were engaged in an ambitious rivalry for progress and for improvements in the quality of life of our people. They were able to do that and achieve considerable successes because our constitutional structure gave them much leeway to manage their own affairs within the common Nigerian family. We arrived at independence in 1960 believing that our country was set on the path to becoming the Blackman’s world power of modern times.

Unhappily, now that you and I have arrived at our grand age of near 80, there is nothing left of our country’s ambitions and pride – indeed, there is hardly anything left of our country itself. Relentlessly crooked up, violated, robbed and depleted since 1960, our Nigeria seems now to be stumbling towards its demise.

As you prepare for your election, I decided to write you this open letter concerning our country, because I know you will understand the pain and expectations behind my words. The purpose of most of Nigeria’s rulers since 1960 has been to weaken and even destroy regional and local initiatives in order to gather all power, control and influence together at the federal centre. Their success in doing that has enabled them to remove the management of development far away from our people, and to institute at the federal centre a viciously corrupt,wasteful and incompetent monstrosity.  Reduced to the status of beggar clients of the federal robber barons, the state governments, as well as the local governments, collapsed and fell in line as submissive incompetents and mini-robbers.

In the process, real and productive enterprise quickly declined among our people, as the best and most ambitious rushed to join the ranks of the sharers of fraudulently acquired wealth from the public coffers. Our schools and universities, our public service, our police force, our military, our judiciary, all our governmental agencies (electoral commission, secret service, central bank, ports service, immigration service, public examination bodies, etc) – all collapsed under the weight of crooked control, massive corruption and generalized disloyalty. Poverty descended mightily into our country and became the lot of the overwhelming and increasing majority of our people. Our government itself admits that, today, about 70% of our citizens live in “absolute poverty” and that that percentage keeps increasing. With the growing poverty have escalated horrific crimes, a culture of dishonesty, a rush of our youths to Salafist fundamentalist terrorism, and mass flights of the educated to other lands – all of which are compounding the poverty.

From your well-known record as a leader of our country, I know that you are not only aware of these things, but that, in common with many members of our generation, you are seriously pained by them. I confess that I was very angry with you during your brief stint as military ruler, 1983-5. First, you seemed to me to be power-drunk at the time – because you made no distinction between the corrupt who had been stealing and sharing public money under Shagari and those who were known to have been resisting the robbery. I belonged to the frontline of senators who were well known to have, on the floor of the Senate,  resisted the mass corruption, and yet your military government detained me (and many like me), and I languished for four months in prison without any accusation – even without being asked any question by any official.

And then, you and Idiagbon expended most of your obviously shining  capabilities in pursuing nebulous and amateurish programmes like WAI (War Against Indiscipline), when what our country really needed was (after you had fiercely shot down corruption as you did)  to massively divert our enormous oil revenues into investments in the lives of our people – through programmes for expansion and diversification of education, modern job skills development, entrepreneurial  development, small business development, promotion of modern farming, policies for improving the quality and reputation of our labour force and thereby attracting investments and businesses into our country, policies for promotion of exports, etc. Put a people to work and persistently multiply the economic opportunities available to them, and the attraction to prosperity through competitive enterprise will gradually suppress indiscipline in their land. Fanciful programmes like WAI can have no lasting benefit or future – as I hope you must know by now. That is why the man who ousted you, Babangida, was able quite easily to wipe out all the patriotic gains of your regime.

Furthermore, I though t it was a pity that you did not appear to recognize that the over-centralization that was being given to our federation was the foundation of our ills as a country. You were wrong in thinking that punishing the corrupt leaders would destroy corruption abidingly. What is needed is to change the system into which corruption has been built. In our country’s case, we needed (and we need) to reduce the magnitude of our federal government and empower our lower levels of government, nearer the people, to bear most of the burden of development. Then we need to give recognition and respect to our various nationalities in building the system – which should mean that our larger nations would each constitute a state, and contiguous groups of our smaller nationalities would be assisted to form states, just as the Indians sensibly and profitably did in the 1960s.

By refusing g to go that route, Nigeria has abysmally depressed its nationalities. For instance, my Yoruba nation came into Nigeria in 1914 as easily the fastest modernizing nationality in Black Africa; and we entered into independence with Nigeria in 1960 as the development front-liner and pace-setter in Africa. Today, we are a battered, poor, and disoriented nation, and most of our achievements have been wrecked, thanks to our being part of a Nigeria that destroys its peoples. Every other Nigerian nationality has similar stories to tell. My brother, I am, by nature and by upbringing, averse to merely lamenting an evil development; I act to change it.  My potential urge, even as I write this, is to exert myself with others like me towards pulling my Yoruba nation out of Nigeria if Nigeria will not change course – and that is something that we Yoruba are perfectly capable of achieving if we start upon it. And the same is true of some other persons and nations.

In short, let’s not ignore or minimize the danger of Nigeria’s dissolution. I know you have what it takes to save Nigeria. I wish you luck in your election – and I wish Nigeria luck.