THE POLITICS OF ETHNIC NATIONALISM

The campaign of hate and the popularisation of hate speech in Nigeria is a legacy of Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign tactics which many people failed to see it for what it was because we were blinded by one sentiment or the other.  It first reared its head in the final days of the late Umaru ‘Yar Adua, his former principal.  After the death of ‘Yar Adua, it became Jonathan’s mantra – with his no shoes slogan saturating the airwaves and the print media.  We all forgot that most of us went to school without shoes.  Most of us were blind to the real meaning of the slogan – it was a barb directed at most Nigerians.  The other oft repeated refrain was Jonathan’s ethnic minority status and his religion.  These were presented as if there were people out there who are against the candidature/ presidency of Goodluck Jonathan on the basis of these two issues.  With the connivance of our security agents, Jonathan made it back to the Aso Villa.  The man’s true colours began manifesting.  All the credentials one need to be accepted into the president’s inner circle is your hatred for the north.  Apart from the likes of Edwin Clark, Reuben Abati and Asari Dokubo, Igbo leadership was falling head over heels to outdo all.

Igbo jezebels like Stella Oduah and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala were brought on board and given sensitive ministries to head.  They have so far discharged their briefs with diligence, may be surpassing their expectations.  The duo have effectively “igbonised” their respective ministries by ensuring that all departments and agencies under their ministries are headed by Igbos to avoid for a situation where a non Igbo may prove to be a spanner in the works.  Two examples of Oduah’s “success” may suffice here.  She worked extra hard to make Mallam Aminu Kano Airport redundant and one would not be wrong to rename the Nigerian College of Aviation, Zaria as Biafran College of Aviation because 90% of the management staff in the school are all Igbos.  Not to be outdone by Stella Oduah, Okonjo-Iweala ensured that almost all agencies and parastatals in the Finance Ministry is headed by an Igbo man or woman.  The Nigerian Stock Exchange, Securities & Exchange Commission, Bureau of Public Procurement, Budget Office, Debt Management Office, etc.  No one cares that the actions of the two damsels is in direct contravention of the Federal Character principle which is easily laid on any northerner who had the guts and the gumption to try something akin to equity.  But knowing the whole Igbo leadership and followership will stand by them and give them covering fire; they trudged on not minding whose ox is gored.

The recent revelation by the Nigerian Customs Service that the country lost about N1.4tr to waivers and concessions under Okonjo-Iweala’s watch put a question mark on the woman’s much vaunted integrity and economic expertise.  It only proves that she is not averse to telling lies under oath as was recently shown by her response to the House of Representatives Finance Committee.  With a straight face, she claimed waivers and concessions granted to some people “only” amounted to N170.7bn.  This was a woman whose arrival from the World Bank was heralded with a lot of hype on her numerous qualifications from Ivy league business schools around the world.  Nigerians were made to feel honoured that such a personage has “stooped” to be in our midst and be Finance Minister, a position her paid pipers made us believe is beneath her.  That she is sacrificing a career at the World Bank to come and fix a broken country and a battered economy.  I had cause to point out then that wasn’t it ironical that Christine Lagarde, the then French Finance Minister, was on the verge of leaving her post to take up the Managing Directorship of the IMF, the junior partner to the World Bank, while our own Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was resigning as the Managing Director of the World Bank to be a minister of a third rate rentier economy like Nigeria’s.  What we were not conveniently told was that she was a Managing Director - one of three Managing Directors - and not the Managing  Director.

While Madam Wahala was holding brief as our “Co-ordinating Economic Minister”, $49.8 billion got “missing”.  She presided over the voodoo explanations that Nigerians were subjected to without blinking her eyes.  For daring to question Okonjo Iweala’s integrity, we got heaps of insults from the Igbos.  We do not know whether the monies were stolen on behalf of the Igbos or not – what we know is that this huge amount of money got missing when Okonjo-Iweala is sitting pretty tight as the ‘Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy’.

We have also seen how the issue of Stella’s kleptomania is turned into an ethnic rather than a national issue as the Igbos went on a threat-issuing spree.  Another instance of this Igbo politics of threats is the announcement by Professor Ango Abdullahi that the Northern Elders Forum is contemplating filing of a case before the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Ihejirika, for atrocities committed by his troops in the country’s fight against insurgency.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the Igbos have a separate agenda from that of other Nigerians.  The threat by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) eastern region that the north should be prepared for a tribal war in the event the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) carried through its intention of taking Ihejirika to the ICC is very revealing to the unbiased.  What are the Igbos afraid of, what are they trying to hide?  Was Ihejirika an Igbo or a CAN, eastern region, Chief of Army Staff?  Was he not a Chief of Army Staff of the Nigerian Army?  Were there things that the former COAS did at the behest of the Igbos and the eastern region CAN that they are scared may be laid bare by a trial?  Or that people of Igbo extraction should not be held responsible for their actions or inactions, commissions or omissions while in office?

The fire of ethnicity and religiosity ignited by Jonathan in his 2011 campaign has turned into a conflagration with groups from the former eastern region trying to re-enact their despicable actions of January 1966, which took the country through a needless civil war.  While his kith and kin are insulting the rest of the country, Jonathan is busy summoning from pulpits across Abuja.  Nigeria will not survive another war and going by the beatings of the drums of war by the president’s supporters, we have to pray hard that one isn’t thrust on us.  An amicable parting of ways as happened in the defunct Czechoslovakia,  may be in the best interest of all concerned.  We can go our separate ways without a single shot fired and with everybody’s integrity intact.

It is also high time northern leaders across board wake up to the ;ossibility of such inevitability.  The display disdain, hatred and raw animosity is becoming more and more provocative.  It is apparent that what Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna, Okoro and company began on January 1966 and which Tony Nyiam, Jonathan’s white-haired boy, tried to finish in April 1990 but failed must be completed for these people to be satisfied.  The inheritors to the ‘five majors’ diabolical blueprint believe there won’t be more auspicious time than now – with a pliable and guillible president on seat – to realise their lifelong ambition.  Arewa, Ronu!

DANBABA SUNTAI: THE POLITICS OF RELIGION

Sometimes in December 2013, there was a news item in the newspapers to the effect that Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, the elected vegetating governor of Taraba State will be attending a Church service at the Dunamis International Church in Abuja.  According to the reports, all security arrangements have been completed including the installation of body scanners at the entrance of the Church.  Congregants were given thorough body search to forestall anyone with any unwholesome intention gaining entrance into the Church.  Alas, all the arrangements came to nought as Danbaba failed to turn up.  The explanation was that the service was very close to his flight schedule back to Jalingo, the Taraba state capital.  The man was to later “appear” at a crossover service on new year’s eve that was fortuitously witnessed by columnists who only accompanied friends to Jalingo from other places.  It was also reported that the governor went to his office and clearly remembered the things he wanted to do before his unfortunate accident.  A miracle of no mean proportion, if you ask me.  This is apart from the contrived “sightings” of this eighth wonder of the world.  For God’s sake, Danbaba is not Harley’s Comet to be sighted by a chosen few.

From all that has been happening in Taraba State since the ‘return’ of Danbaba in late August from his treatment in New Jersey, it is becoming glaringly clear to all that those who appropriated the man to themselves don’t give a hoot to his health status so long as he remains alive to give life to their ambition.  With a conniving and acquiescing wife, Danbaba is gradually being turned into a religious symbol rather than the politician that was voted as governor by all the people of Taraba State.  He is now usurped by a few to the exclusion of the rest of the people of the state.  He has being taken to everywhere bar the most important place of all – the State House of Assembly complex – lying next door to where he is imprisoned by those who love him and the state the most.  We have seen pictures of the man at a fishing pond and at the church but we are yet to see him at either the state’s legislative House or the NUJ Secretariat in Jalingo.

Their recent junket (pilgrimage?) to Abuja to see T. Y. Danjuma and Goodluck Jonathan “preparatory to Danbaba’s resumption of office”.  I wonder why go to all this trouble when they can simply walk the man into the legislative chamber to address the lawmakers and may be as an aside address the Correspondents’ Chapel in Jalingo instead of going to Abuja just to see T. Y. Danjuma, Goodluck Jonathan and then “address State House Correspondents”.  What purpose could the trip to Abuja serve that won’t be served by convincing those who elected him as their governor or their representatives in the state House of Assembly?  What is so important in visiting Taraba’s biggest masquerade and not the Speaker of the State’s House of Assembly?  How can addressing State House Correspondents be more useful than the correspondents in Jalingo?  Why are they scared in giving Danbaba unfettered access to his “people” – those that put him in the government house in the first place?

It may appear to objective minds that Danbaba is a hostage to religious bigots masquerading as politicians whose objective is to maintain the political strangle hold they have on the state.  The issue of good governance, the Taraba people or Danbaba’s recovery is of no significance to these vultures that are not averse to amplifying our religious fissures as long as they maintain their grip on the state.  Their attitude so far has shown that Danbaba symbolises religiousity not politics.  I would have advised them, ex gratia, to go the whole religious hog by paying homage to Ayo Oritsejafor, our numero uno religious ideologue.  They have succeeded in polarising the state along religious lines, which may not be of significance to them but it should and ought to be. 

If power shift is all that matter to these clique, why are they fixated to taking Danbaba to churches only and not other places that matter like the legislature or even the occasional State Executive Council meetings?  Are we to inteprete the actions of some few bigoted people as representative of the majority of the people of southern Taraba?  Can the Muslims of Taraba be fair to their Christian brethren by thinking that the shenanigans of these conceited few is the mind-set of Christians in the state?  Have these modern day “Turaiast” realise the implication of their actions on a state that is struggling with developmental problems?

Walking Danbaba Suntai to the State House Assembly will do all of them a whole more good than the merry go round of churches and visiting figures in Abuja, who cannot stand the heat at the national level and scampered to the comfort of their laagers to unnecessarily generate their own heat on a smaller platform.  Those hired to write on witnessing “miracles” on the night of the crossovers are doing more harm to Danbaba than good.  They are also doing more harm to the political and social cohesion of Taraba state.  Danbaba Suntai is mortal – he is human for God’s sake – with all human frailties and fallibilities.  Why are we trying to make him something else?  One of the unintended consequences of the clique’s desperation is to show the world that Danbaba was only a governor for the Christians to the exclusion of Muslims.  I don’t want to believe so.

Another unintended consequence of their actions is the unmasking of T. Y. Danjuma as a religious bigot and not Sardauna’s heir, as mistakenly believed by so many across the vast north (yours sincerely inclusive).  History presented an opportunity for T. Y. to play a statesmanlike role in resolving the stalemate in his state, but he chose to be on the side of those whose motives are far from noble.  The old general had gone down notches on the scale of respect people use to have for him across all divides.

Danbaba’s health status should be resolved post haste by all serious people irrespective of creed or ideology and should not be left in the hands of unscrupulous politicians looking for relevance or fading old men trying to play god.