YES TO SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE

The recurring call for the convening of a national conference – sovereign or otherwise – is more and more sounding like a broken record.  But to me, the call is sounding more like a bargain or blackmail tool, which some people use from time to time to help them achieve certain objectives.  This is very okay with me because it shows a sense of purpose on the part of those using this particular tool for gaining advantage in every national discourse so far.  What riles me is the perception of some of us that the convocation of the conference will be to our disadvantage.  I cannot fathom what informs this line of reasoning by, particularly the political class of the north.  The call for the convocation of the conference has been on since after the Beninoise convoked their own and booted out Matthew Kerekou.  This also coincided with Babangida’s annulment of the June 1992 election, which some ethnic bigots fortuitously interpreted to mean that a section of the country is against the presidency by a Yoruba man.  So for all intents and purposes, those calling for a Sovereign National Conference are simply copycats and also merely ethnic champions masquerading as nationalists.

In the years between 1992 to date, there have been at least two national conferences that readily come to mind.  The one convoked by the late General Sani Abacha in 1995 – 96 that succeeded in fractionalising the country further into six geo-political zones by adopting the Ekwueme model and the one called by Obasanjo in 2004 – 2005 to specifically amend the constitution to make way for his ambition to rule Nigeria for as long as he lives.  These are the two that readily come to my mind and from where I am sitting none addressed the myriad problems we are faced with as a nation.  Rather, the Abacha conference succeeded in breaking up the north into three “zones” – a project began in the 1960s and a lifelong ambition for some.  Though they have succeeded in splitting the north, the region’s politicians helped in no small measure in bringing this reality to fruition by either being complicit or docile in some instances.  Today, northern Nigeria is the most fractured of the entire pre-military foray into politics in 1966.  This fractionalisation, sadly, is not only physical but also mental.

The call this time may not be unconnected with the ill-advised call for the revision of the revenue allocation formula by some northern politicians, particularly our governors.  In all the previous conferences, the north got the short end of the stick due to our self-imposed roles of guardians of the sanctity of the unity of Nigeria.  But we always come out bruised literally and metaphorically.  The region is perceived by outsiders as weak and a burden to the rest of the country due to the way it has been projected by our politicians in the last thirty years or so.  Flowing from leadership failure at all levels in the north, we are more fractured today than at any point in history.  The region is racked with crisis that is destroying what remains of its commercial activities; our governors and other leaders care less what happens in critical sectors like education, health and agriculture; our youth are ill-equipped to face the challenges of present day world because since they are not “ex-militants” government doesn’t care whether they go to school or not; and our elders are all busy playing the ostrich while the region is gradually sinking into pre-historic times with mini-wars raging all across the region.  If these problems are not enough to call for a conference, then I shall be damned! 

I am all for a national conference (sovereign or not) for all the “ethnic nationalities” to come together and chart a way for either our continued existence as a country or for the breakup of Nigeria into 250 or more countries.  But before then, I would like to call on the conveners to carry out a census of the “ethnic nationalities” with a view to determining who is what so that ALL should be represented.  This is to avoid a problem where all northerners can be lumped into a convenient contraption called ‘Hausa. Fulani’.  This will raise more questions than provide answers.  Beginning from my state, Adamawa State, I know a Yofo man will never allow himself to be represented by a Yandang or Gengle or Sate nor a Chamba Leko be represented by a Chamba Ganye.  In the Numan Federation alone, the Bachamas are distinct from the Mbulas, the Battas, Lungudas, Kanakurus and the Kwas.  The Mumuye of Tola has nothing in common with the Chamba of the area.  The Fulanis have the Wuitis, the Kesus, the Ba’en and the Mbororos.  The Veres of Fufore don’t see eye to eye with their Batta neighbours.  In Karim Lamido local government of neighbouring Taraba State, you have twenty-seven distinct “ethnic nationalities”.  This is the local government that the late Deputy Inspector General Police, John Haruna came from.

I am pointing out these “nationalities” to educate some of us on the diversity of the “nationalities” that make up Nigeria because as I write this piece, I am already all set for the conference and I would not like to be part of any talk shop regarding the future of Nigeria that one single “nationality” will be excluded from.  We have seen how every subset of a tribe call itself a “race”, a “nation” and a “kingdom” in the last thirteen or so years.  Therefore, to give every local potente his dues, I suggest that every subset be represented at the conference table.  The hunger that drives the rise in ethnic assertiveness must be satiated for we, the poor to have peace of mind otherwise the demon unleashed by politicians who are comfortable in being ethnic chauvinists than truly community or national leaders will devour us all.  The fad now is that whoever fails to make an impact on a larger platform retreats to his ‘laager’ for relevance.

Northern politicians, community and business leaders screaming for an increase in the allocation of federally generated revenue will do well for the region to get cracking on how to prepare for the inevitable national conference.  They must also prepare an economic blueprint for the region because we will very soon be weaned from suckling the crude oil tit that we, as we are being told to our face, contributed nothing in its production, transportation, refining or even retailing.  I am thinking of going into the processing of cow products (being a mbororo, you know).  I am looking for partners to start the processing of things like fresh milk & yoghurt, kpomo and transportation of frozen meat because my agenda does not include interstate transportation of live animals.

Such a conference may be the only way to awaken us from our oil-induced stupor to rediscover our dignity and revive our economy and other institutions of the region inherited from those founding fathers of the north long gone to the beyond but still remain our reference point.  If nineteen governors cannot manage the New Nigerian Newspapers, NNDC, Arewa Textiles and various BCGs scattered all over the north, then it is time to sit and consider turning over the region to our traditional rulers, whom the British used during the days of indirect rule.  Those were the days when the north was feared and respected by all.  Not now when a suspected armed robber turned “militant” will be rewarded with a $103million contract for insulting the collective people of a whole region.

IN OIL THEY TRUST

It is now becoming crystal clear to me why and at what price northern leaders, temporal and spiritual, sold out the North to the likes of Asari Dokubo, Ateke Tom, Tompolo and the rest.  The recent calls by our political elites led by Babangida Aliyu, Niger State governor, for an increment in their “share” of the federal revenue allocation, gave us a window to what it is all about.  Their price is nothing more than their continued stay in office to resume funding their voraciousness from the oil proceeds dispensed from Abuja.  Their commodity for sale?  The collective present and future of the region, its people and its economy.

While the average northerner is struggling to survive one day at a time and therefore doesn’t have the time or inclination to find out what happens to what is already ‘allocated’ to his state, our governors are finding it difficult maintaining their lifestyles, with their “share” of the oil money that is becoming more outrageous by the day.  While over 95% of northerners cannot afford to eat three times a day, or send their kids to school, or even take their pregnant wives to the hospital for safe delivery, Babangida Aliyu went to town with a begging bowl ostensibly on behalf of northerners to beg for an increment in their monthly ‘stipend’, which a friend called “irresponsibility allowance” for our governors.  I have been wondering how any such increment will impact on the lives of the people of the north, who have seen the deterioration of infrastructures in the region in the past thirteen years – schools, hospitals, roads, manufacturing concerns and agricultural activities.  In the same vein, Dubai, England and Germany have stealthily entered the everyday lexicon of the poor, because on a daily basis he is told his chief executive is in one of the countries visiting either as a medical tourist or on vacation.

Watching the Yoruba elites unfold what they called Developmental Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) made me wish I had such focused leaders as our “rulers”.  The people of the old western region, despite their unmatched educational, infrastructural and developmental levels are still determined enough, committed enough and honest enough to think of a collective developmental agenda for their people without a thought as to whether the federal government will increase or decrease states’ share from the federation account, or even think that the oil wells may very soon dry or any force majeure.  Lagos State at a point in time during the Obasanjo presidency went for more than two years without its allocation for local governments.  We did not see Tinubu, the then Lagos State governor grovelling before Obasanjo or wailing for the release of what was rightfully theirs.  Yet northern leaders are begging Ali Baba (as in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves) to increase their own share of the ‘loot’.  I am yet to read anywhere of a governor in the north unfolding plans on how to improve his state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). 

When countries like Vietnam, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan and even Japan with smaller land mass and population than the north, are tilling their soil and maximising their human potentials to become economic powers, our leadership is making an issue out of revenue allocation.  Why should the allocation to northern states be increased?  What moral or fiduciary justification do Babangida Aliyu and his colleagues have to call for such a sacrilege?  Is he trying to turn every northerner into a servant because he is one?  We are already almajiris and parasites but to add servitude to the legion of our negatives will be too much for anyone to bear. 

My advice to Babangida Aliyu and those who clamour for more money to fund their consumerism is to put their acts together by exploring and exploiting the resources found in their respective domains, rather than looking down south for succour.  They should, for instance, come out with an agricultural blueprint that will take the north to at least back to the 1960s.  Our present crop of leadership has succeeded in taking us into the 12th century and it appears that they are proud of their achievement.  They have spawned Boko Haram and turned its violence into a franchise.  I have always maintained that the Boko Haram is an offshoot of political thuggery created and nurtured by our leaders.  Such groups like the ECOMOG in Borno of Ali Sheriff and the Kalare of Goje’s Gombe can easily be turned into killer squads.  With no education or jobs and therefore nothing to live for, they could be available to any would be mischief-maker.  To people like this, whose hands are soiled with the blood of innocent political opponents, it is better to commit suicide than to remain hopeless.  With their principal employers now out of government houses, no “work” is readily available.

While the northern political leadership see nothing wrong in begging an increasingly recalcitrant Niger Delta militants for scraps, and while falling head over heels in trying to outdo each other in eulogising Ojukwu, a man directly responsible for the massacre of over a million souls and vicariously responsible for the total wipe-out of post-independence northern political and military leadership, the atrophied infrastructure of the north is bombed out of existence.  Do they really care about how the families of the Balewas, Sardaunas, Akintolas, Ogundipes, Maimalaris, Pams, Largemas et al, may be feeling.  While they were busy rewriting history by helping turn a rebel into a statesman, has it occurred to them that it is the same money they are complaining as being inadequate that will, if properly applied, turn the north into an economic Eldorado.

Our leaders are very comfortable importing rice from distant lands like Brazil and Thailand while our land lies fallow.  Let us not even talk about mineral resources.  Let us just assume we are not going to dig further than is necessary to plant a seed.  The north is blessed with vast arable land, with a rainfall of about 1000mm per annum, which is just right for farming, many rivers, lakes and streams and a population looking for what to do.  What are we doing with these God given resources? Nothing!  This crime is on a par with genocide, as far as I am concerned.  I am strongly of the opinion that resources should be controlled 100% by inhabitants of where the resources are located.  Northern governments and northerners should be denied access to any revenue accruing from oil sales so that we may be forced to look inwards. 

The South Africans extracted fuel from coal during the apartheid regime when sanctions were imposed on the country.  It is a proven fact that the north is literally awash with coal but since the advent of the ill-fated Lagos state/ ENRON IPP project up to this moment, no single northern state deemed it necessary to generate its independent power supply and, therefore, our economy is at the mercy of PHCN.  While most industries in the south can rely on gas as an alternative power supply, nothern industries had to fold up for lack of power.

Mr Jonathan, please if you can do us a favour – the northern lumpen, that is – STOP THE MONTHLY FEDERAL MONTHLY ALLOCATIONS.

Arise, O Compartriots!

There are two issues that are topical in this harmattan season that has dominated the commentary and opinion pages of our newspapers and airwaves. These are the twin issues of insecurity and the unwarranted in the pump price of petrol (PMS). These two issues that ushered in the year 2012 brought the country to the edge of the precipice and nearly sent us over just in the first week of the first month of the year. So much has been said and written on the two issues, particularly the increment on the price of petrol, that whatever one may say will just be gratuitous. This one issue has succeeded in uniting and bringing out Nigerians on the streets for the first time despite the contrived religious crisis that is tearing the country and personal relationships apart. For the first time, the political class in Nigeria failed to gauge the mood of the masses correctly by imposing such crass hardship on a citizenry already overburdened by poverty, insecurity and uncertainty. A citizenry getting to grips with the fact that the leadership is not ready to provide basic necessaries of live like schools for their kids, hospitals, potable water, etc. because the political class take their kids abroad for schooling and travel abroad for such ailments like headaches and stomach discomfort.

With Jonathan’s ill-advised increase in the pump price of petrol, he has unwittingly introduced another dimension to the sufferings of the people and has further compounded everything by projecting a “to hell with you attitude” to the same people he claimed voted for him 99% just seven months back. He refused to even glorify their protest by keeping aloof from the melee of strikes organised by labour and civil society to remonstrate his high-handedness. Apart from a colourless and uninspiring speech he delivered through the Goebbels era look-alike NTA, the only other time he deemed fit to come down from his Olympian height to talk to us was in a church, where he told a partisan congregation that Boko Haram has now taken over his government. With these two evils bedevilling the land, Jonathan has missed a chance to be ‘president’. Rather he chose to be an Ijaw Christian leader in the mould of Tompolo. Asari Dokubo and Ateke. Though the increase in the pump price of petrol affected all Nigerians that are not political appointees, the man has resorted to making it an ethnic issue, inviting ethnic thugs like Asari Dokubo to threaten nationalists. I was of the mistaken opinion that Jonathan is the president of Nigeria and not that of the Ijaw ‘nation’.

This leads us to the heightened level of insecurity. Jonathan’s conduct and style of governance, in my view, is directly responsible for the impunity by the murderers now marauding the northern part of the country. In the past two years since he took over as acting president through the campaigns and the subsequent massively rigged 2011 elections his conduct has been that of deception camouflaged as timidity and dovishness. But beneath this veneer of timidity lies a calculating mind that is proving to be very dangerous for the corporate existence of the country. Sadly enough, there are no elders around Jonathan to tell him to change course.

A pattern is emerging from the madness of Boko Haram that is fast becoming a part of our existence where, in one breath Jonathan asked Nigerians to learn to live with and in another told us that the movement has taken over his government. What are we to believe and act accordingly? The emerging pattern is that some people, apart from the followers of Mohammed Yusuf, have taken over the brand name and patented it for their motives. A Christian woman, Lydia Joseph, was arrested in Bauchi in the process of burning the biggest Catholic Church in the town. Four months on, the only explanation we got to hear is that she had a problem with one of the congregants and therefore decided to burn the church. How plausible is that? Then in December last year another Christian, disguised as a nation muslim complete with a turban, was arrested in the process of burning another church in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State, Jonathan’s home state. Must he be disguised to settle his score with the Church’s leadership? Again Nigerians were told that the man had a problem with the church, this time the pastor. Much earlier, about two years ago, when a Christian in Calabar attempted to ram his car at an aeroplane at the Calabar airport, Nigerians were told the guy was a loony. In July last year, Yakubu Bitiyong, a member of the Kaduna State House of Assembly and a former commissioner in the state was arrested for terrorists related activities and the case just fizzled out without any explanation. But when a person of indeterminate pedigree accused a sitting Senator of the federal republic, the lawmaker was picked up pronto with a compliment of photojournalists and branded the masquerade behind the terror campaign in the land. What message is the government and its backers sending to the populace? That some people can commit murder and go scot free while others cannot?

We have just seen Nuhu Mohammed, an alleged boko haram sponsor and his son paraded before media men by the military authorities, in handcuffs and a display of things recovered in his house, in the same Kaduna where Bitiyong was arrested and many cannot even tell you how he looks. What message are we sending to the citizens of this blighted nation? That justice is Janus faced?

In the heat of the petrol pump price increase imbroglio, Jonathan commissioned some old men, claiming to be elders, from his south-south geo-political zone to meet and issue threats to the rest of the country on a matter that affects the whole nation. Jonathan has taken the nation to its lowest point by playing this divisive card on Nigerians who rigged him into office. While campaigning across the country, he didn’t mention anything like being a president for the Ijaws or the south-south zone. He craved for trust by Nigerians with his “I was not born rish” slogan. Some people genuinely bonded with him, but even then I had my reservations for a man who repudiated an agreement he signed simply because he want to contest the presidency. Again I was not comfortable with the way he manipulated the issue of zoning at his party level to make it look as if northerners are against him simply because he comes from the south and not because as a ‘gentleman’ he should make his word his bond. Anyway, Nigerians irrespective of whether they voted for Jonathan or not really went through hell the past week.

The most dangerous game played by Jonathan is the issue of insecurity in the land. I am not sure, but my reading of the situation is that insecurity in northern Nigeria is rising directly proportional to the rise in peace in the Niger Delta. Is there is a correlation? I don’t know. Recently in Adamawa State, one of the most peaceful states in the country, a spate of killings racked the state from Mubi in the northern part of the state to Yola the state capital. While the killings in Mubi was discovered to be among rival Igbo businessmen, the one in Yola had to do with a pastor transferred from his church for financial recklessness. But since it was convenient to lay the blame on our current bogeyman – Boko Haram – mum is the word on the true position of things. Is that how we are going to progress. To heap insults on the collective psyche of Nigerians, some people from Jonathan’s region are threatening to secede simply because the rest of the country had the sense to oppose a senseless economic policy by their “son”. Is secession the agenda? Why wasn’t we told before the election?

My advise to the rest of the country is to prepare for such an eventuality which may come before 2015, the year the Americans predicted we will disintegrate. With the way things are going, I am sure we won’t disappoint the Americans. My Christian brothers and sisters from the north should be well advised to disregard anyone telling them that they don’t belong with Muslims in the north. For those who do not know, there is no state in the north that has no substantial number of adherents of both Islam and Christianity. The script is unfolding a page at a time. Let us all give it the desired attention verse by verse not to miss the next instalment.

FLIPPANCY OF OUR LEADERS – ORITSEJAFOR AS A SHEPHERD

Let me begin this piece by extending my condolences to those who lost their loved ones to the many bomb blasts and gun shots across the country and also congratulate the remaining living on the unprecedented new year gift by our shoe-less president – the doubling of the price of petrol. This gift is from a president who we were told we can trust with our lives; a man that was touted as a listening man because of his humble background. We can now definitely wait for the rest of the gift from fellow Nigerians who provide services and goods to take a cue from Goodluck Jonathan. For sure, the rest of us will be transformed into the living dead.

I had always hesitated to comment on issues that border on religion or ethnicity but this government is sure to make the deaf talk. Though the government came to office illegally, but I thought they would use the dubious legitimacy conferred on them by the courts to be just and fair to all. It has become clear to all that the government is not ready to be a government for all but for a select few. Emerging events like the government’s actions, pronouncements and those it associates with doesn’t give one the confidence that a better Nigeria will be realised in this eon. I am now scared that the promised “fresh air” may after all may turn to be asthmatic. The symptoms for a fragmented Nigeria are emerging daily, though we appear to be playing the ostrich. The result of the divisive campaign of the PDP is gradually coming home to roost. With political turning a blind eye to atrocities committed by their “supporters”, while religious stoke the embers of hatred in the name of ‘protecting’ their herd.

The spate of killings that ushered in the Jonathan government graduated into bombings and indiscriminate destruction of lives and properties by faceless groups loosely called Boko Haram. No one as yet has claimed meeting the leadership or representative of this killer group, therefore for all we know it can be anybody or any group from any part of the country. The bombings and killings are mostly concentrated in the North East corner of the country, with Maiduguri and Damaturu, predominantly populated by Muslims, bearing the brunt of the group. Political, religious and even traditional leaders in these two cities and environs were targeted, mostly in broad daylight and killed while our security men looked on helplessly. The deployment of soldiers to these areas only heightened the spate of killings and insecurity. No one is safe in these two cities. While the killings were going on, nobody deemed it worth his trouble to either condemn the killers or compel the government to act decisively with a view to bringing to an end the massacres talking place around the north east and to some extent, Plateau state, another theatre of war that refused to end since 2001. Through all these years, not one person was arrested, prosecuted and punished according to the laws of the land. This attitude from the government emboldened the killers to start killing people in worship places like what happen at the Eid praying ground in Jos when Muslim faithful were massacred while praying. Nobody of substance came out to condemn this dastardly act. Again they struck at the St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla. This time around the cacophony it generated in terms of condemnation was unprecedented. The Sultan of Sokoto, the Jama’atu Nasrul Islam (JNI), the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) all came out to condemn the reprehensible act in no uncertain terms with the Sultan going to Abuja to restate his fealty to Jonathan.

Then came Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). When the pastor visited Jonathan, he was practically frothing at the mouth while threatening the nation with a retaliatory act against the Muslims for an act that was universally condemned by all and sundry, irrespective of religious affiliation. The pastor’s logic for holding the Muslim community responsible for what happened in Madalla left me wondering if the spate of killings in the North East had his imprimatur. I cannot remember him coming out to condemn the killings, maiming and wanton destruction of properties in the northeast or condemning the Niger Delta militants when they held the country hostage before the amnesty programme extended to them by ‘Yar Adu’a. Another thing was that right after Oritsejafor made his threat, two explosives were thrown into an Islamic School in Sapele, in Oritsejafor’s state of origin. Will Muslims then be right to hold him responsible for this barbaric act, going by his reasoning? What are we to assume from the arrest of a man from Delta State dressed in kaftan and turban, a dress code associated with the northern Muslim, attempting to bomb a church in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State? Are Muslims, Oritsejafor’s subjects of hatred, to assume the would-be bomber is one of the pastor’s soldiers?

It may appear that Oritsejafor’s threats worked because a day after his tirade, Jonathan declared a state emergency in four northern states. Ironically, on the day the emergency was declared two communities in Ebonyi went to war with each other purportedly over land dispute where at least sixty people lost their lives while properties worth millions of naira were destroyed. Mum was the word from the CAN president. I thought we would hear the now well-known acceptance of responsibility from the Boko Haram.

As long as our leaders can give tribal marks or religious affiliation to violence in whatever form, then Nigerians will continue to be in trouble. The 2011 elections begot the violence that we are condemned to today with all Nigerians sleeping with one eye open or not sleeping at all. The recent violence unleashed on the populace is the increment in petrol prices, which is threatening to snuff the life out of our living dead. Am yet to hear Oritsejafor condemn this inhuman act that may put over 90% of his constituents into a life of penury and servitude. And if his statistics are to be believed, then majority of Nigerians will bear the brunt of Jonathan’s provocative act.

Before I am verbally lynched, I want us to ponder certain questions and give ourselves honest answers. Does the fact that Jonathan, Azazi the National Security Adviser (NSA) and Oritsejafor all come from the Niger Delta, has anything to do with the exponential rise in violence in the country? Does this fact confer immunity on the perpetrators and therefore their impunity? Lest we forget, Azazi was the one indicted by an Investigative Panel set up to unravel how weapons got missing from the Armoury of 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Kaduna while he was the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Division. It was the biggest theft ever of arms and ammunition in the military and all the weapons were traced to the Niger Delta militants. The man resurfaced as the NSA without answering questions raised by the findings of the Panel under his kinsman. To complete the troika, Oritsejafor emerged the leader of the Christian faithful in the country.

The demographic configuration of northern Nigeria is drastically different from the southern part. Of the fabled 250 ethnic groups in the country, over 240 should be found in the north, with practically every tribe having adherents of either Islam or Christianity. It is not unusual to see siblings belonging to different religions. This therefore calls for restraint among and between us. It is on record that a month after the convocation of a conference of “ethnic minorities” in Jos in 2001, communal violence broke out and ten after, peace is yet to return to this once destination of choice. If some people succeed in igniting a religious war between adherents of the different religions in the north, only God knows when, how or where it will come to an end. Retreating to either our ethnic or religious shells won’t help us out of the material poverty we find ourselves in. let us tarry awhile, think deep and try to unravel in whose interests these killings are taking place.

We should all come together to fight the poverty elevation of the Jonathan administration, its educational apartheid policy where you have over six thousand people from the Niger Delta are currently in various countries undergoing one training or the other while not a single person from all the three political zones in the north, Muslim or Christian, is considered worthy of being trained or educated. The unemployment and lack of opportunities ravaging the north does not discriminate religion or ethnicity. If you go through the list of projects the Jonathan said they will execute with the ‘windfall’ from the petrol price increase, you realise 90% of the projects are to be located outside the north.

How does fighting each other improve our educational level or employment opportunities or even reduce our poverty situation? It is time we sit up and realise we are in this for the long haul. Our common enemy is the government and not Muslims or Christians among us.

WHAT IS IN A NAME?

A very dangerous pattern is emerging in both the politics and socio-cultural relations of the people of Adamawa state that in my opinion will not augur well for the state if left unchecked. These days whatever action or inaction taken by either the state or federal government is given religious or tribal connotations. Failed politicians are running from pillar to post trying to convince a large segment of the people of the state to always look at actions of the various tiers of government with suspicion. Those who lost out in the political chess game systematically embarked on a deliberate campaign of hate against a certain group. Rather than retreating to re-strategize and fight another day within the civilised norms of political battle, they resorted to taking the Hutu solution for their perceived Tutsis. The conflagration that may be the consequences of this primitive approach may affect everyone when the shit really hits the fan.

People who should know better than to stoke the embers of ethno-religious hatred, unfortunately are at the forefront of this campaign. People that ideally should provide leadership to all, irrespective of creed or tribe – those who were once trusted with leadership positions, academics, technocrats, etc. – in trying to reinvent themselves, are the ones beating the drums of war and hatred on flimsy excuses, banking on our naivety and gullibility. My take on this is that, while holding public and civil service offices, these people never took a single decision that wasn’t coloured in either religion or ethnic sentiments. The current ethnicisation of issues in the state (in the open, anyway) began barely five years ago with the lost of power by some people and to them, the surest and easiest way of getting back to reckoning is to appeal to these twin primordial sentiments – particularly religion – which is a very emotive issue to all and sundry in Nigeria. Every single decision taken by any of the tiers of government, particularly as it affects Adamawa State, is interpreted to be in favour of a certain segment of the society not minding that it may not be in the interests of those perceived to be benefitting.

The recent renaming of the Federal University of Technology, Yola provided an opportunity for these opportunists to once again come out with the usual unthought-of rhetoric. The federal government decided in its own wisdom to rename its university in Yola to Modibbo Adama University of Technology, from the Federal University of Technology, in honour of the founder of the Fombina Emirate over two hundred years ago. The Fombina Emirate once extended to as far as the Cameroun and in its diminished form the foundations of the present Adamawa state. When the colonialists came to the area and discovered an administrative and judicial system that was at par with what obtained in their country, if not better than their own, they were so impressed that on the creation of the Northern group of provinces, the area was named ‘Adamawa Province’ in honour of Modibbo Adama. This was done without prejudice to any tribe or religion. It was purely done to give honour where it was due. His pioneering administrative skills were what were honoured by the colonialists and nothing else. The current emirate and chieftaincy system all over the state owe its existence to Modibbo Adama.

When the Babangida regime decided to split the defunct Gongola state into two, one was named Adamawa state and no one read any meaning into it. Before then, General Buhari had downgraded this same University that its renaming is turned into a matter of life and death for some, to a campus of the University of Maiduguri and named it Modibbo Adama Campus. Not a single eyebrow was raised because no political capital was to be made out of it then. It was the Babangida government with Professor Aminu as Education minister that upgraded the school once again and reverted to its former name of Federal University of Technology. Yola (FUTY). No one complained of any ethnic biasness. Why is it now that the federal government has decided to rename the school once more in honour of Modibbo Adama, the decision has suddenly taken such a nihilistic dimension? Why do otherwise cultured people, including academics, threatening thunder and brimstone for such an innocuous action by the federal government.

Institutions and other government establishments have been named to honour or immortalise certain individuals in the country since time and this was never done with any ethnic or religious biases, as far as I know. University of Sokoto is now Usumanu Danfodio University. We have Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Bayero University Kano, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nsukka, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi and so many other institutions of higher learning are named after individuals whom the government believed have contributed immensely to the development of the area one way or the other. Yet these names hasn’t improved or decrease the quality of scholarship of the institutions. In every state capital of this blighted nation roads, buildings, bridges and other important places are named after individuals not because of their religious or tribal affiliations. There is even a road in Bauchi named after Boni Haruna – I can’t fathom his contribution or connection to the town. I believe I have more claim to being honoured by the people of Bauchi – at least I attended the defunct Government Secondary School, Bauchi.

With the rumoured intention of the federal government to name the Yola International Airport as Aliyu Mustafa International Airport, the knives are out once again. For those who do not know, the late Lamido Aliyu Mustafa is the immediate past Lamido Adamawa and the father of the current Lamido. He died in 2010 after being the Lamido for fifty-seven years. His reign was firm, decisive and just. He had worked with administrations from the colonialists to the current Nyako administration. The late Lamido was a father to all and was never known to turn back anyone from his presence. His sense of justice and fairness was what endeared him to all that came to his court. That was why he was able to reign for such a long period of time without any problem. How can immortalising such a man be a threat to the peaceful coexistence between and among the people of the state? If there is any ulterior motive to this opposition, then we should know.

Resorting to ethno-religious ‘cold war’ will not move us forward but rather retard our growth. It can only endanger suspicion and mistrust among the people of the state. Those at the vanguard of promoting such will be well advised to stand before their mirrors and ask themselves soul-searching questions. Most, if not all, of them had the opportunity to write their names in gold and be counted when the time for counting comes but chose to write their names in charcoal. It was nobody’s fault that they are now footnotes in the developmental history of the state.

I just hope the common folk will wake up from their slumber to realise that ethnic irredentist always use them as cannon fodder for their politically motivated violent battles.

A "DOVISH GOODLUCK JONATHAN & A HAWKISH BUDGET

The budget presented by Goodluck Jonathan to the joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday December 13^th, 2011 is exactly what Nigerians deserve as far as I am concerned, warts and all. What we got is a budget that is long on rhetorics and short on promise, though we shouldn’t have expected anything better from a government that is deaf and dumb as far as the problems of Nigerians are concerned. The people that went round the country begging for our votes six months back are now treating us like something the cat brought home from the streets. The oft repeated cliché that Jonathan never had a shoe to his name while going to school was to draw sympathy from poor folks who may expect empathy for their plight from a village boy who couldn’t afford shoes while a kid. Alas, what we got is a Jonathan who empathises more with the oyibo and their agents. What we got is a government that is more interested in taking out the small change in your pocket for their foreign junkets like birthdays in far away Australia or going to France to “seek for investors” when the French were hanging on the coattails of Germany for their economic survival. What we got is a Jonathan that always believed in good luck, a hostage to militants and their godfathers and a gullible man who is made to believe it is his destiny to rule Nigeria. Jonathan is a man without focus or any articulated agenda whose campaign revolved around the divinity of his mandate and Nigerians were swayed by primordial sentiments to “elect” him president. We all know this and accepted it.

The budget is in line with Jonathan’s provincial background and a mind set shaped by the militancy of the Niger Delta, led by the nose by the likes of Okonjo-Iweala, with her neo-conservative economic theories shaped by the American conservative establishment in charge of the Bretton Woods Institutions, and the hawkish group under the leadership of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Azazi. Here is a budget heavy on security (whatever it may mean) and wanting in all key ministries that is sure to engender security. While ministries like those of agriculture, power, education, health – critical ministries that will have direct bearing on employment generation and job creation are allocated measly amounts compared to security, Nigerians should be wiser as to why the government is bend on stealing the little money in their pockets by increasing the price of petroleum products. If we had a government worth its name, then they don’t need to be told that there is no greater security than a society fully employed and contented with life. A restive society is the greatest threat to peace and security, and this should be an elementary knowledge to any serious leader.

The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) a congress that is increasingly making itself irrelevant, will soon realise that the N18,000 minimum wage it threatened to bring down the country for, could hardly fuel their vehicles come January next year let alone put a plate on their tables. Jonathan and his promoters have promised us a “transformational government” in the run-up to the 2011 elections but we didn’t bother to find out the kind of transformation they were talking about. We are on the road to being transformed – only into a country of beggars.

Our crowd of environmentalists will have something to celebrate in the 2012 budget. With the anticipated increment in the price of petroleum products, there will be fewer cars on the road and still fewer generators to pollute the environment. I know it will be asking too much to know how the N921billion budgeted for ‘Security’ will be expended. But our docile legislators could not summon the courage to question the executive on the details of the allocations. The heightened state of insecurity in the country since Azazi became the National Security Adviser (NSA) needs to be interrogated. Is there a deliberate policy to generate fear among the populace in order to achieve a certain goal, part of which is the increment in the vote for security for some people to line their pockets? The allocations to critical sectors like education, health, agriculture and power says much about the direction of the government. Those who sold Jonathan as dovish and caring person may be forced to change their slogans before the end of the first quarter.

A whopping sum of N124billion is allocated just to the office of the NSA, what in God’s name does he need that for? What capital projects are we talking about under the office of the NSA that, to all intents and purposes, is just a clearinghouse for the other security agencies? Are they going to build barracks, state offices, buy armoured tanks, fighter and bomber planes, guns and ammunitions or what? Nigerians go to India and Egypt for ailments that, under normal circumstances, should be treated in our dispensaries because though the manpower may be available, our health institutions lack the necessary equipment. The kids of the rich and powerful go to other African countries like Ghana and Togo for elementary school because our public schools – the same system that afforded a poor kid from the creeks who couldn’t afford shoes to be educated up to Ph.D. level – have collapsed and the government is not ready to do anything about it. With a vast arable land and massive human resources to till the land, we still import the bulk of what we eat from far-off places like Thailand and Brazil. Power and potable water supply are luxuries reserved for only those who can afford a generating set and a borehole in their houses. Yet the total budgetary allocations to all the ministries concerned with the provision of these services are far less than what is allocated to security.

Has it not occurred to Jonathan and his praetorian minders that they are the greatest culprits in endangering the security of our lives and property? When there is no food or social security, how do you ensure “security”? coercion has never, ever guaranteed security else the Palestinians will have been long subdued by the Israelis or ‘Yar Adu’a won’t have bothered with the amnesty programme for the Niger Delta. Security cannot also be bought. If the government is serious about ensuring security in the country, they should address the social insecurity bedevilling the nation and not allocate huge sums of money that will ultimately end up in peoples’ pockets. It is not bought. It is achieved through good governance.

WHERE ARE OUR CONSCIENCES?

The issue of almajirai and almajirci has occupied many discourses both privately and in public for over a decade now with nobody willing to do anything about the scourge, particularly those that may be directly responsible for its burgeoning profile in the recent past. Today, in most of our major cities, particularly in the north, these hapless fellow human beings are a permanent eyesore dotting all major street intersections, shopping malls, fuel stations and such other places where people spend money. A recent report by one of the organs of the United Nations put the number of these “wretched of the earth” to be about 10.6million. The report scared me. But looking around, I realised nobody is willing to do anything about these unfortunate souls. An otherwise noble tradition of scholarship, the almajirci has now taken a negative toga due to the neglect of those involved in it by a society becoming more and more selfish.

Growing up in the early seventies in Yola, the almajirai we know were the itinerant students of Islamic studies going from house to house in the neighbourhood begging for food during mealtimes. Immediately after having their fill, they would go back to their schools located in the compounds of their mallams. Those days, the almajirai learnt the Quran, jurisprudence, fiqh, hadith and other branches of Islamic knowledge sitting in a circle around either the teacher or one of the senior students who must have graduated from the basic classes. Before graduation, most, if not all, learnt one trade or the other apart from the Islamic knowledge to help sustain them in life. Some would go deeper in their search for knowledge and eventually become mallams with their own students. In those days almajirci was really what it meant – scholarship – no more, no less. You could not meet them on the streets, fuel stations, shopping malls with their ubiquitous begging bowls making nuisance of themselves by harassing motorists and shoppers. Their begging was confined to their neighbourhood and only for what to eat.

Today the average northern youth, particularly in Hausa land, starts taking care of his needs at the age of five. This is the age at which these luckless kids are sent out to the streets to satisfy their culinary needs by whatever means. They grow up in the streets from such a tender age to the age of maturity with neither scholarship nor trade learnt since they spend all their waking moments on the streets. They are thus exposed to the vagaries of the streets and of the criminal elements constantly prowling looking for innocent young recruits for their burgeoning criminal enterprises in a country where crime pays big time. At a time when their peers are in school, they are denied the opportunity by an uncaring society made up mostly by those who enjoyed free education in their time. We see them struggling for vantage positions at fuel stations and shopping malls where we go to spend money on things we do not necessarily want or need, with our kids ensconced in the comforts of our cars with windows wound up, cool air conditioner blowing their ever glowing skins and music blaring from hidden loudspeakers, conveniently blocking their wails for assistance of “a taimaka mana da na abinci”.

Our consciences have been numbed by a choice of movies from a variety of sources watched on 42” Plasma/ LCD television screens while reclining on chairs made from the finest materials. Our worldview is therefore shaped by Supersport, Movie Magic and other entertaining foreign channels while theirs are shaped by the deprivations they go through and the “big men” who drive past them in glorified ambulances. We don’t feel moved whenever we past these hapless kids, moving between vehicles with their torn pants, licking fingers made dirty from the remnants of a Mr. Biggs takeaway thrown from the window of a moving car driven by one of us. We do not feel any pang of guilt in buying motorcycles for the children of the poor during campaigns and unleashing them on a society lacking any form of public transportation, to operate as commercial motorcyclists while our kids, their age mates, are in schools in Ghana, Togo, United Kingdom and the United States. We do not experience any feeling of discomfort when we park by the roadside to buy telephone recharge cards from their calloused hands while our kids, again their age mates, are sitting behind big desks as executives in the major companies and government agencies. What sort of animals have we become? We do not feel any remorse turning these kids into political thugs, street vendors, porters, shoe shiners, itinerant manicurists while our kids are trained from birth to be their patrons.

Even if for our selfish reasons, have we thought what future holds in store for us and those kids who in the next five to ten years will become grown men with needs like ours – craving to own whatever we own – the women, the cars, the travelling to far off places like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Dubai and the USA, places they only hear while eavesdropping on the conversations of “big men”, the shopping, the clubbing, etc. Have we ever thought that when the deprivations continue while as they attain the age of maturity with nothing to their names, and therefore nothing to protect, they may turn against us to wreck what we have amassed over the years through crookery, theft, corruption and denial of their fundamental rights to be well educated and provide jobs? When their collective anger boils over, are we certain it would not turn into a volcano that will rain its ashes on all of us? Can we be positive that we have not started seeing this in the violence rocking the country from Lagos to Maiduguri, Port Harcourt to Sokoto?

We should look around our GRAs and other highbrow areas and see God’s work on our own kids. Most junkies and drug addicts are found in our closets. This is God’s on way of telling us we are on the wrong path, yet we don’t see the irony. Let’s please search our rusted consciences and see if it is possible for us to retrace our steps from this route to perdition that we have taken. Let’s rejig our educational and employment system to incorporate those unfortunates. Remember, most of us were no better than them but we were given the opportunity to go to school and be gainfully employed thereafter not because of who we were, but because of what we were.

Either we quickly defuse this ticking time bomb, or it will blow up in our faces. The choice is ours.