MORE than two months after a coalition of some 16 northern youth groups gave the Igbo living in the North a quit notice, pressure from politicians and traditional leaders in the region has finally led to a rescindment of the order. The notice was unprecedented, quite nothing like the self-determination agitation embarked upon by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) seeking presumptuously to disengage the Igbo from the rest of Nigeria. The northern youths’ October 1 quit notice was issued on June 6 and it, in turn, spawned other quit notices, particularly from the Niger Delta. However, what is significant about the quit notice was not its unusualness but that bar a few dissenting voices, it seemed to have been well received in the region.
The notice was issued in Kaduna. But shortly after the governor, Nasir el-Rufai, deprecated it and called for the arrest of the coalition leaders, he quickly kept his peace. Even the police waffled over the notice, insisting that arresting the youth leaders would complicate what the law enforcement agency had by then linguistically elevated into a crisis, and fan the embers of hate and discord. It then turned out that, with the exception of a few politicians perhaps with an eye on a future presidential race, many respectable northern leaders were not averse to the quit notice. In short the notice was popular, and the Igbo quickly discovered the depth of animosity much of the far north exhibited towards them. In addition, a hate song soon followed, bellowing indescribably venomous statements about the Igbo, particularly how they were seen as the problem of Nigeria.
Meetings after meetings, some of them between unauthorised northern representatives supposedly acting on behalf of the 19 northern states and self-appointed Igbo elders, the notice has finally been rescinded. At the rescindment meeting itself last Thursday were notable northern leaders and at least a governor who chose shockingly to dignify, if not in fact canonise, the youth groups’ perplexing measures and statements. These elders were not present when the youths gave their quit notice. It is a little baffling that they were present when the youths rescinded their order. The youths hinged their actions on IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu’s excesses, but they said nothing of the fact that IPOB seeks Igbo exit from Nigeria, not the exit of other ethnic groups.
Present at the rescindment press conference were the Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to find some sort of resolution to the needless crisis, a former Agriculture minister, Sani Zangon Daura, and a former Kano State governor, Kabiru Gaya. It was suspected that the northern youths had popular support in the North, even among their elders and leaders, but the presence of notable elders at the press conference last week appeared to indicate that the support was much huger than the southern publics suspected. Though unintended, it is becoming clear that the country appears roughly divided into two. It was this knowledge of hardening division that should have made the northern leaders to rebuke their youths, disavow the quit notice, and distance themselves firmly from their activities and unconstitutional and apparently counterpoising notice.
There was of course nothing wrong with northern leaders deprecating Mr. Kanu’s methods and objectives. He was avowedly separatist, with all the unconstitutional and violent connotations that go with that campaign, and his speeches were highly provocative, hateful and unsavoury. If northern leaders were clear about the absolute wrongness of Mr. Kanu’s cause and methods, it beggars belief that they would seem to lend the northern youths any support or legitimacy. Few doubt that the northern youths had huge regional support. The youth leaders in fact indicated that their elders supported them, and would not countenance the law enforcement agencies moving against them. And so rather than offer leadership to their youths by refusing to associate with their meetings and press conferences, the northern elders indicated that they associated with the youth’s nefarious methods as well as surrendered moral leadership to them.
Much worse is the appalling indifference, if not connivance, of the federal government. They have openly indicated their unshakeable opposition to Mr. Kanu and his IPOB, and in fact arrested the pro-Biafra leader and rightly put him on trial. The same government should have arrested the northern youth leaders, as Mallam el-Rufai first suggested though apparently half-heartedly, issue a forceful rather than tepid denunciation of the quit notice, and announce that any state in the North or indeed elsewhere that threatened peaceful coexistence would attract harsh response. Had they done that, had northern leaders distanced themselves from the youths as they complained Igbo leaders were reluctant to do, Nigeria would have served notice that its government existed to uphold the constitution.
It is of course possible that both the government and northern elders are celebrating the peaceful resolution of the quit notice crisis. They celebrate too early. If they are familiar with the lessons of history, they will know that sometimes a peace deal can be more prohibitively expensive than forceful action. The government has yielded an inch, nay a yard; they will rue the consequences of what this inadvisable move holds for the future.
