By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Some Northern leaders have recently bared their minds in a tone contrary to their tradition. Northern leaders and elders are known to be reticent and pacific in discussing national matters even when their subjects are at the receiving end. Emirs in particular are not at all known to express their dissatisfaction in public no matter how they are affected by the issue. Even after the assassination of northern political leaders by Nzeogwu and other southern officers, not a single Emir made any public statement condemning the coup or promising fire and brimstone. With the exception of few, most other leaders like governors, religious leaders, intellectuals and politicians have walked this line to the painful dissatisfaction of their subjects.
If you take the inciting statements of the present President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ayo Oritsejafor, and those of one of his predecessors, Bishop Olubunmi Okogie, for example, you can hardly find their parallels among northern Christian leaders (like Bishop John O. Onaiyekan that is also a former President of CAN) or their Muslim counterparts in Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) or Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (SCIA).
One can imagine what the CAN President and southern leaders would say were a northern President to convene a national conference with two-thirds of the candidates being northerners or Muslims. There would have been an incessant barrage of abuses, threats and treasonable states. Southerners would have surely boycotted the conference until a balance in composition is restored. To the contrary, the highest that northern and Muslim leadership could do after Jonathan’s nominations were made public was to delegate the Sultan and other leaders of JNI to meet the President to register their discomfort over the lopsided membership of the conference. The Sultan’s response itself was belated as the conference was already underway and there is now very little chance to adjust the composition.
I am sure something like that would never be contemplated by Gowon, Shagari, Buhari, Babangida or Abacha. If any of them had done so, northerners would have come forward to reprimand him, as the likes of Col. Dangiwa condemned Babangida and Abacha on June 12 or the Tildes in support of Jonathan acting presidency when Yaradua was gravely sick. Jonathan has done it now and no voice from the south was raised in objection. The few we heard were only lame excuses and attempts to justify the discrimination.
Northern writers behave the same way whenever they partake in debates on contentious national issues. Following the opposition language of the First Republic and the propaganda style of the Civil War, using offensive language to address northerners by southern press became the standard except for some very few writers. While southern authorship is replete with pejorative language against northerners, it is difficult to find any northern writer or journalist who uses foul language against southerners. Something is there in the northerner that makes him restrained and reserved.
Unfortunately, this restraint is often misread as fear. There is the general perception among southerners that northerners are afraid of losing Nigeria so much so that on any national issue they latter is pressed to make concessions. The dialect is the same deprecating language, whether among southern political leaders like Chief Edwin Clark, renowned intellectuals like Itse Sagay or thugs like Dokibo Asari. It has become normal in the print media and worse it is now in the social media. I have never seen a people who have least regard for a section of their country as southern Nigerians have for the North and its people. The level of contempt is without parallel.
As expected, the push is coming to shove. Northerners feel pushed to the wall and they have started to change their tone. Let us examine here the latest response of some of their leaders.
First was the revelation by the governor of Borno State that Nigerian troops fighting Boko Haram are ill-motivated and poorly armed. The Presidency was shocked. The governor was summoned to Aso Villa to explain, which he did without hesitation. The President had no evidence to the contrary except a conjecture: If he were to withdraw the troops, the governor will be sacked by the insurgents in less than a month!
This was followed by the speech delivered by the governor of Adamawa state in which he bluntly indicted the Jonathan administration not only of negligence and ineptitude but also of complicity in the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency. Content apart, where he chose to say it was equally important: in faraway Washington before an international audience that included eleven other governors from the region. Never have I read a strong condemnation from a northern leader like the one I came across in that speech. The governor was gracious enough to let Mr. President have it all:
“The real big question in all this is who have been giving the ‘Orders to Kill’ the victims of all the Boko Haram atrocities and those who have been targeted but saved by the Almighty God?
“There have been attempted assassinations of a number of States’ Governors including my good-self and the Governor of Benue State; a number of top Traditional Leaders of the North including the Shehu of Borno and the Emir of Kano, our Senators and top Business people have also been attacked in broad daylight and escaped death by the skin of their teeth! Who had given the executive ‘Orders’ to kill us? Is Northern Nigeria facing another demonic Agenda similar to that which wiped away its Political and Military Leaders and killed a number from the Western Region in January, 1966? The Presidency should give us answers to all the foregoing serious questions and we do not want insults by aides in response or harassment by detailed Security operatives! We want the ANSWERS; Nigeria also wants the ANSWERS; the international community too should want the ANSWERS”
The conference itself was unprecedented. In the past, hardly would anyone expect northern governors to travel overseas as a group to discuss issues of our national security with other nationals. At least, it indicates that they have completely lost confidence in the capacity or willingness of the present administration to manage the security of the region effectively.
One may dismiss the two governors as opposition figures; that it is an APC conspiracy. But what can we say about the two strange reactions from the most conservative block in the North – the Emirs?
First was the Emir of Birnin Gwari who clearly expressed his disappointment over the nonchalant attitude of the Federal Government that left his emirate at the mercy of armed bandits, saying, bluntly:
“There is no effort being made by any authority. The only effort that I know of is when the incident at Dogon Dawa took place, soldiers were brought to mount roadblocks along the roads to Dogon Dawa and Birnin Gwari. Later, they brought some policemen and that was all. The rustlers are in the forest, not in Birnin Gwari town and they’re armed… The only option now is to decide on how to protect ourselves. For the past two years, because we have complained and nothing has happened, we resolved to pray to Allah, as only He can protect us. Those we think can help us have done nothing. The only thing they have done and we are grateful, was that they mounted roadblocks which are often negative, counter-productive and they do not help anybody. As I told you in the beginning, we don’t know whether we are Nigerians.”
The Emir, it is said, was promptly queried for expressing the truth in violation of the anesthetic role he is assigned to play on his subjects: painting white any black that government does or quelling any attempt by citizens under his domain to protest against injustice.
Another Emir was to serve the nation another shocker. Irked by the arrogant disposition of many southern delegates at national meetings especially on matters in which they differ from northerners, the Lamido of Adamawa, Alhaji Muhammad Barkindo Mustapha, did not waste time or words in expressing the majority view of present day northerners: they are not parasites and they can go their own way whenever necessary. To such insolent southern delegates, he said:
“If something happens and the country disintegrates, God forbids, many of those who are shouting their heads off will have nowhere to go… But I and the people of Adamawa and many others have got somewhere to go.”
This kind of reaction from a northern traditional ruler is unprecedented. The tradition was that he will only raise his voice at such meetings to appeal for maturity and mutual respect for the sake of one Nigeria. The frank talk would have been left to firebrands like Dr. Junaidu Mohammed.
The words of the Lamido instantly charged the polity and received momentous approval among northerners. When I posted his speech on my Facebook wall ( www.facebook.com/aliyu.u.tilde ), the reactions were numerous. All northerners that posted their comments on the wall praised the Emir and saluted his courage. More importantly, they not only affirmed his position, but their majority expressed the desire – with some even praying –for the country to “disintegrate” and the North go its way. A typical reaction was:
“Lamido of Adamawa has really made me proud and he clearly told those gullible Nigerians that we are not afraid of disintegration. LET US DISINTEGRATE.”
Earlier, another comment reaffirmed the position of the Lamido and shed light on the current thinking among most northerners. I beg to reproduce it here:
“The North has never been afraid of this uncomfortable union coming to a close, even if it were to end abruptly. The North is sick and tired of its being referred to as a parasite by some ingrates with very low and short circuited memory. It is worth drawing the attention of ingrates that this country did not start with oil as its prized source of income. This country was run with something other than oil before the discovery of the so-called “Black Gold”. Let us wear our thinking caps. The proceeds from those resources (that held and built the country – without any derogatory finger-pointing against the other) were that capital used to get the oil explored and extracted. Those who make too much noise about the damning oil today did not create oil in the first place… These brags made no contribution – whatsoever – to its exploration or extraction…because it was found on their land. But today you find them garrulous and foaming (like raining season frog), disparaging those who labored to make oil a reality. Let them be awoken to the glaring fact and reality that, oil is no more an exclusive preserve of any state or a collection of states (region); it is today found everywhere in the North. There is very high grade oil found in Niger, Sokoto, Bauchi, Borno and great many places, and in commercial quantity. Let us stop this empty and stupid brag about it. There are too many and huge facts of complementarity that we ought to, in our diversity, exploit for our common good as a people and country; instead of taking the unfortunate path of hate and disdain against one another.”
What explains this change in rhetoric among northerners? Three things are, in my opinion, obviously responsible.
The first is nature. Men are not accustomed to bearing humiliation indefinitely. Dignity is the ultimate treasure in man, more so when he is living in civilization. Northerners do expect that whatever is the difference among citizens of any country, efforts will be made to express such differences in civilized language. Here, northerners see southerners as not complying by this principle since the day in 1957 when northern delegates differed from southerners on the date of our independence. For the 57 years that would follow, things only got worse. Being human, Northerners are now “sick and tired”.
The second reason is engendered by what northerners perceive as the unfair treatment they have been receiving in the past fifteen years since the debut of southern presidency. The feeling of victimhood is pervasive among northerners. This is eloquently captured by a leading northern intellectual, Dr. Usman Bugaji, in a paper published in the Vanguard early this week:
“In the last 15 years the North has been systematically impoverished, its legitimate share of the federal resources diminished, its teeming population, especially its youth, abandoned to their devices, its economic activities paralyzed in the face of increasing insecurity, its presence in the Federal services pruned, its region increasingly garrisoned and now invited to participate in a National Conference, whose outcome would appear to have been predetermined by a leadership that has made, to quote one of the leaders of the North, “tribalism and nepotism state policy.”
Finally, we must not lose sight of the generational shift in the composition of northern leadership. Take the current governors and emirs for example. Most of them are well educated and middle aged. The emirs in particular have lived most of their adult life between the 1970s and today, the era of freedom. So they are more likely to freely express themselves than their predecessors of the colonial and military eras.
Northern youths, majority of whom are unemployed, are increasingly becoming agitated. Their revolt is facilitated by advances in communication technology and social media. Commentary in newspapers was the exclusive preserve of the educated that could convince editors of New Nigerian or Daily Trust that they can blend the correct grammar with proper diction, subject to the rules permitted by the military. These barriers are no longer there. The power of expression is at their fingertips and they are exploiting it without any restraint. They can easily reach out to thousands of citizens without the approval of an editor or the fear of censorship.
Whatever are the reasons, the past few years have shown us that the northerner is reawakening from his slumber. He feels pushed to the wall. And he is fighting back after “everyone considered him the coward of the county.” He hopes that through this not only will his opinion be heard loud and clear but also water, as the late Chibo Okadigbo once put it, will find its level.
As for Nigeria, there are indications the average northerner today, as far as separation is concerned, is ready to accept any outc
