CALL FOR TOMPOLO'S ARREST: DANJUMA'S MISADVENTURE AND CHALLENGE OF NATION BUILDING
The recent call for arrest of High Chief Government Ekpemupolo alias Tompolo, and other Niger Delta agitators for freedom, is capable of stripping General Theophilus Y. Danjuma (rtd), former Chief of Army Staff and Defence Minister, of the garb of elder statesman. Danjuma, by this call, sign-posted the deep-seated greed of a few northerners in offensive mission that is only recently beginning to dawn on other Nigerians.
Barely fortnight after independence, Sir Ahmadu Bello, reportedly stated: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to have control over their future” ( The Parrot Newspaper, October 12, 1960).
Apparently tired of concealing the foregoing defining rule in their relationship with Nigerians of other regions, a few in the North in which Danjuma may now be classed and which I herein call the Danjuma clique, have come out in unwitting confession by openly resisting the Tompolos perceived to be threat to the Ahmadu Bello agenda! The Danjuma clique must call for the arrest of the Tompolos resolved to resist Ahmadu Bello's enslaving mission, bully at us and keep harassing President Jonathan, unopposed, out of power—because Nigeria is not our country?!
In the Danjuma clique's greed for power, it is not only Northern minorities and the conquered of the South that must suffer “ruthless” barricade from power; even the almajiris must be denied “control over their future” by the liberating power of education in Jonathan's transformation of their lives! Despite establishing more universities and functional almajiri schools up North, despite railway transport rebirth therein, despite Agricultural revolution felt more in the North, and more, the progress-loving good people in the North have a hard time selling President Jonathan to the few Northerners in incorrigible pursuit of Ahmadu Bello's dream.
Many do not understand the “righteous indignation” of Tompolo and others, which is not altogether about President Jonathan as a person but more about the future of the Niger Delta and its people. Danjuma was trusted to know this! When Isaac Boro who had great respect for Tafawa Balewa of the North, rose up against Nigeria not long after independence, it was not about President Goodluck Jonathan! When Ijaw youths envisioned the Kaiama Declaration during Abdulsalami Abubakar administration in 1998, it was not about a transient President Goodluck Jonathan's tenure! When other Ijaw and Niger Delta groups rose up in oil wars against Nigeria under General Olusegun Obasanjo and subsequently under President Musa Yar'Adua, it was not about President Jonathan. The Tompolos and their predecessors had fought injustice against the Niger Delta and made sacrifices at varying degrees. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, their brother eventually emerged Vice President and then President in a nation they think is also theirs and for which they have for decades been, in fact, the money spinners! Halting their agitations for him to resolve their problems, Jonathan is playing an unprecedented Nigerian President, doing less for his South and more for the North where Ahmadu Bello's apologists nonetheless throw tantrums at him by the day. The Tompolos hope that in the fullness of Jonathan's second term presidency, the promise land would be near. But obviously executing Ahmadu Bello script, the Danjuma clique see Jonathan as they saw former President Olusegun Obasanjo and others, as accidents, never mind that in 1982, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in presidential campaigns in Bonny, Rivers State, predicted Nigerian President of Ijaw extraction—a prophecy that then held zero chance!
But a Buhari, had in 2010, pre-presidential election he contested, thundered: “There may be no Nigeria…, because I draw parallel with Somalia so many times. Somalia- sation of Nigeria; I am scared about that”! (Daily Sun, Sunday, 8 August, 2010). Behold, Boko Haram insurgency, in the orchestrated plan has upped the tempo! They are on rampage, destroying, ridiculously demanding the moslemization or stepping aside of President Jonathan from power of their avowed patrimony! The green-white-green goes down for the flapping flags of Boko Haram, gaining territory in undermine of the corporate existence of Nigeria! Yet, a Buhari is not done: “If what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dogs and the baboons would all be soaked in blood”! Imagine the future of Nigeria, of Jonathan and the Niger Delta! If this is not war against Nigeria, if this is not war against Jonathan, if this is not war against the Niger Delta, what is?
Let me humbly invite General Danjuma to consider a possible interpretation of his statement: The Tompolos are not equal Nigerians, if Nigerians at all! When Buhari and his ilk in the North were declaring war on not just Nigeria but on Brother Jonathan, the Tompolos must not follow in the footsteps of Buhari and declare war on Nigeria if Brother Jonathan loses his second term presidential election bid. Is the raging war against Nigeria and Jonathan not waged because Jonathan before now won? When the Tompolos, feeling insecure in Nigeria, threatened to go to war with Nigeria, in reaction , to stop the flow of oil for which they are not considered good to be in control even for a limited period, they crossed the bounds of second class citizens in their own country?! They should not rise up in defence of their brother-President who has not been given space for governance from the blast of the whistle. Yet, the Tompolos must not talk where Buhari threatens fire and brimstone! The Buharis, Adamu Ciromas, Junaid Mohammed and others can freely run venomous expressions in Nigeria and the rest of us must retreat in silent obeisance! What is good for the goose is not good for the gander? The law of arrest is reserved for the Tompolos and not for the Buharis. The Tompolos must not talk back when Jonathan is stoned in the North during his electioneering campaigns there. Tompolo must shut his mouth up when bombs reportedly trail President Jonathan's political campaigns in Gombe up North while Buhari makes a triumphal entry into Tompolo's Niger Delta and exits with the swagger of the General! The Tompolos must not talk because Danjuma now feels more secure to secure his oil blocs under Buhari while the Southern bearers of the oil have no oil blocs! Nigeria is Danjuma's country!
Understanding the foregoing concerns of the Tompolos would have made Danjuma, an elder statesman, to be more temperate and tread softly, softly, instead of the call for arrest of the Niger Delta agitators. A blanket call for caution to all would have been better than the selective call for arrest. Danjuma need not have added salt to injury! He should have spared the Niger Delta and indeed other parts of Nigeria the born-to-rule provocative bravado of the Danjuma clique in the North. Methinks it is only in the implementation of Ahmadu Bello's grandiose agenda of “ruthlessly” holding on to power that one can fix or understand Danjuma's flight of decency in this particular statement of the revered elder statesman. This outing fully resembled and revealed the underbelly of the evil intention/mission of few elements in the North that “Nigeria is our exclusive nation”, which the Tompolos, on our behalf, have resolved is a mission impossible.
Danjuma's misadventure embarrasses and is at variance with views of the vast majority of the good people of the North who together with President Goodluck Jonathan abidingly believe and pursue the Nigerian project. It is however unfortunate that in his search for national rebirth and transformation, President Jonathan had no capacity to play the all-seeing God! Rather than a Northerner who unshakably believes in one Nigeria, it was the “new Danjuma” that he appointed as Chairman of Presidential Advisory Committee on assumption of office! It was the “new Danjuma”, that he appointed Chairman of Boko Haram Victims Support Fund! Truly, William Shakespeare had noted: “There is no art to know the mind's construction in the face”!
It is unhelpful to Nigeria for the Danjuma clique not to realize that the Tompolos, like Isaac Boro and Ken Saro-Wiwa before them, are birds of passage in the irrevocable determination of the Niger Delta people to stand up as equals in the Nigerian project. The arrest of Tompolo would surely ignite the emergence of more Tompolos whose voices the Danjuma clique would not capably shout down.
It is not too late for Danjuma to tread the path of nation building by being more statesmanlike as other sections of Nigeria are watching how the Danjuma's born-to-rule class vows on to make our collective patrimony their personal estate. Danjuma should make hay to assure Nigerians we are together. Danjuma should build confidence he has regard for the good people of the North and other sections of Nigeria! The Tompolos and other ex-agitators of the Niger Delta have a record of respect for so many leaders in the North; their response to Danjuma's outburst, was only a necessity. Danjuma's clique should demonstrate that we have equal political space in the Nigerian democracy! The Danjuma clique should jettison the Ahmadu Bello agenda and let others and Jonathan be, for the sake of one Nigeria? Danjuma, holding on to a nationalist and elder statesman position, has a duty to prevent the threatened war against Nigeria by reaching out to his northern brothers in the Ahmadu Bello agenda to understand the expressed worries of the Tompolos by replaying what he commendably did for Jonathan in 2011 by reportedly garnering Northern votes, so we know that his mistaken outburst was for the well being of Nigeria and not for the promotion of an offensive agenda.
I read calls on Danjuma to apologize over his utterance. My take on this: My General, it is statesmanship and nationhood and not so much for Tompolo and co that an apology is necessary. Your apology, preceded by self-evaluation, is not cowardice but a courageous act capable of igniting process of rebirth of a nation where “though tribe and tongue differ, in brotherhood we stand”!
Written by Bulou Kosin, (B.Engr. (Mech.); B. Sc (Mass Comm.)
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