USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The arrogant North by Adewale Maja-Pearce

I'm sick and tired of hearing that in this and that country on the African continent, tribe x or tribe y is the most superior, the tribe of all tribes, that at least, they are not cannibals. Like a certain friend of mine who is reported to have been going around saying that he is or was "the most educated Sierra Leonean" in Sweden. Who gives a dime if he is even "the most educated human being" in the world, in Nigeria, or in the United States of America or in all Africa?

This is just an aside – a slight aside  - not a frontal attack or collision with anyone or anything, not about, relatively speaking , what has been pointed out as Goodluck Jonathan's difference of approach with regard to Boko Haram and the Delta MEND people, or the mathematics of the late Senator Francis Ellah's proposed  revenue allocation bill premised on the fact that at that time (1981) Rivers State accounted for 56% of Nigeria's budget resource and on that count, Rivers State could be subdivided into thirteen additional states adding to the 19 states then in existence, to arrive at a more equitable  derivation- distribution of revenue allocations to the federal  states...

The nation Nigeria will prosper once the idea of the nation's wealth is regarded as the wealth that the nation has in common, its common-wealth, and that commonwealth would include all the mothers, the learned men, the medical doctors, engineers, builders, farmers...

This line comes up in many American songs about being unsociable, red lines etc - "don't cross the line "– the Mason–Dixon line

No one has to be amused or bemused by these facts:  There is a North – just as in the history of Israel  there was what was called "The Northern Kingdom" and moving to East Africa, there was what was once called North and South Rhodesia ( now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique), North and South Korea,  in a broader perspective there is a North Africa and a South/ Southern  Africa. Once upon a time there was even a USSR, till it was disbanded.

 The demarcations of Nigeria into a North, a South, a Middle Belt, an East and a West are not a figment of anyone's imagination or the imagination of just Lord Lugard– this reality and these definitions are as much a part of our political and regional consciousness as the consciousness that "There was a country" to deny which is to deny a distinct ethnic and cultural enclave that was Biafra.

 I have searched in vain for the communiqué from the Northern Elders Forum  some select bits and pieces from which Adewale Maja-Pearce has chosen to quote and then disparage and ridicule. IT would be better if we could read the full communiqué....

The North is conscious of its own distinctive cultural and religious character and pre-colonial history on which basis it could have been a country apart - before being welded together with the rest of what is known as Nigeria – a Nigeria so sacred that one of the holy principles of the National Conference being that a mere idea about the dissolution of the nation-state of Nigeria – even by referendum, is and will always be a non-starter.  Like a forced marriage of eternal love, without the possibility of a divorce. (Indeed, I hope that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit..." etc)

The discovery of oil in the South has contributed to Southern arrogance and to the idea that the North cannot do without the South and therefore at no time in the future would the North opt to separate from the oil source from which it derives its sustenance (even if at this point we may not know of the hidden mineral resources that are plentifully buried in the North – but should it be verified tomorrow that there are plentiful natural resources such as cobalt, uranium etc. buried up there, the impetus to create a unique state called Northern Nigeria would be unstoppable and the Northern Elders Forum's  claim to "its traditional position of providing leadership for the Nigerian polity'" would be easily reformulated to include only Northern Nigeria, without causing any distress to anyone in the South, the East or the West.

But how did Nigeria survive before oil was discovered?

Many history commentators have opined that the colonial authorities – consistent with divide and rule strategy, promoted the North at the expense of the South. How can this be true when it is from the South that Western Christian missionaries and colonisers penetrated Nigeria?  Is it not the South's Christianity  and to some extent acculturation to what passes as Western civilisation that many Southerners pride themselves as being civilised – like the ones who colonised them?  Is the notion "Boko Haram" not a reaction to Wole Soyinka's Lakunle schoolteacher, the misguided uncle-tom type of self-aggrandisement? The kind of idiotic arrogance that does not recognise literacy in Arabic or Hausa as education or learning? So, in the game of one-upmanship, the North reacts to misguided Southern arrogance of educated fools – (decorated by some western degrees), with some arrogance of its own, therefore the chest beating,"

And the first and second class citizenship that H.I.M Selassie 1 was complaining about, here

The wise ones have to guide the state to an overweening national consciousness of the type that we will all be harbouring in our chests tomorrow, when Nigeria takes on our friends in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the first round of the world cup football in Brazil (of course, as you know, the Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil will be rooting for the Nigerian Brethren....

All the best Nigeria,

 Sincerely,

We Sweden

I was reading with amusement a communiqué from the Northern Elders Forum. Nothing new, alas. It begins by saying that the 'majority of the northerners...are far more politically conscious of the two broad regions that make up Nigeria', and laments the 'dangerous trend' by the Jonathan administration 'aimed at weakening the determination of the North to reclaim its traditional position of providing leadership for the Nigerian polity'.

After taking a swipe at the traitors among them who have agreed to fall for Jonathan's divide and rule tactics, it reiterates its long-held belief that the North has a divine right to rule – 'it is the almighty that has destined it so'– which alone has kept the country 'stable and secure'.  All said and done, 'The North is only asking for what it does best in Nigeria: leadership.'

Read more: http://www.chidoonumah.com/2014/06/the-arrogant-north.html#axzz34bPPxCz8

Regards,
Chido Onumah
Coordinator, African Centre for Media & Information Literacy,
P.O.Box 6856, Wuse 11, Abuja, Nigeria
www.africmil.org
+234-7043202605