It’s Time To Salvage arewa

To some Nigerians, restructuring, in its narrow sense, is all about the ill-advertised breakup of Nigeria along ethnic and/or religious lines. This is one narrative often told by segregationists, diversionists, fifth columnists and all manner of saboteurs about their country, Nigeria. What this means, in the opinion of tale bearers, is that Nigeria is unwieldy and, therefore, should be dissolved to replace the contraption of a one, united Nigeria that came into existence in 1914.

Sadly, the promoters of a breakup do not take into account God’s own hand in the historical events that gave birth to the ‘contraption’ called Nigeria in 1914. It is taken that several misrepresentations about Nigeria are hatched outside the country’s shores but the improbable talk of a breakup, either now or in the immediate future, is a home-grown fallacy. It is one bad product which some Nigerians exported across the shores of the country. Simply put, the funny idea that a north- south, ethnic or religious divide exists in Nigeria is a lazy and epidermic thesis forced down the throat of Nigerians.

At best, the idea of a north-south, Muslim-Christian or ethnic divide is a deliberate distraction, woven by a crassly-incompetent political elite to stoke the fires of disunity. Unfortunately, the narrative is so robust, so repeatedly rendered and made to sound so sweet to the ear to have excited late Libyan strongman, Muammar Gaddafi. Himself a strong advocate of one, indivisible United States of Africa with one central government, Gaddafi once advocated, though he later recanted, for Nigeria to be dismembered, Sudan-style: one, supposedly, for the Muslim north and the other, supposedly too, for the Christian south. This is for another day.

We should not delude ourselves that Nigerians fear a breakup, Czechoslovakia or Sudan style. Hell! No! The worry is that some of those who clamour for a breakup see the north as a major drawback, an albatross of sort, around the neck of Nigeria. And, why not? Since oil became the mainstay of the nation’s economy, an increasingly clueless, criminal and inept political leadership in the northern part of the country have been happy to parasite on monthly federal allocations realised from oil revenue from the Niger Delta at the expense of promoting and exploiting the abundant non-oil resources in the north.

If truth be told, it is this nauseatingly lustful glances cast at oil revenue that fuelled the scornful and ill-depiction of Northern Nigeria as one large, inhospitable plain inhabited by Almajiris who contribute nothing to the kitty. It has never always been this way. If history is a good guide, the Northern regional government, in the years preceding independence and up till the oil-boom years, relied on non-oil resources to transform the region and had enough to contribute to the federal purse. In fact, money from non-oil resources played a significant role in the exploration of oil in the Niger Delta.

The late Premier of the north and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, did not have to cast lustful glances at the resources of other regions before his government laid the solid foundation for the region. Even with the abundance resources at his disposal, Sir Ahmadu Bello did not have to loot public funds to live a false style or build mansions at home and abroad. Today, the deceptive and vainglorious political leaders in the north who shamelessly bandy the Sardauna’s name at the drop of a hat have turned the vast plain of the north into a bastion of banditry, kidnapping, despair and poverty, resulting in a situation where the average northerner is disdainfully viewed by their contemporaries as lazy and parasitic.

That the late Sir Ahmadu Bello succeeded was largely because he was what many of us are not. Nearly six decades after he was brutally cut down by some drunken and over pampered soldiers, his name is still mentioned in the present. Even the meanspirited politicians who shed crocodile tears each time the name of Sardauna of Sokoto is mentioned do not pretend to replicate what the man stood for. Unlike what obtains with our men and women of the moment, the late Premier had a heart that was large enough to accommodate everybody and anybody, even with those who held contrary to his. And what is more, he had foresight. Fifty-Eight years after his death, the north has been turned upside down.

The prevailing but better-forgotten sanguinary image of the North that stares Nigerians in the face is the product of ever-complaining, ever-insinuating and ever-lamenting politicians who find themselves in government, mostly through means that are foul, violent and criminal, only to selfishly execute their offices to hijack the commonwealth. If truth be told, the pervasive socioeconomic miasma in the north, and the killings and socioeconomic dislocations arising from insurgency, banditry and kidnappings have their roots in deficit and deficient leadership.

For Northern Nigeria, things are dangerously falling apart and the centre appears incapable of holding. The region has inflicted so much damage to itself due to the avarice, gluttony and shortsightedness exhibited by the political leadership, a situation that has thrown the north into jeopardy. As a result, the increasingly economically marginalised region is at great risk of losing its soul. Aside the jeering and sneering the north and its people have continued to be subjected to, the region has witnessed enough blood-letting and, there is no point pretending that more innocent lives will not be lost if the current cluelessness of the politicians does not abate.

To its credit, the north has a huge reservoir of human and natural resources to transform itself into a giver, not a perpetual beggar, territory. The story of the North could and should have been different but any amount of cries of lamentation and collectively throwing up of arms up in despair will not change anything. Rather, there is need for a collective appreciation that much damage has been done and a collective resolve to change the narrative. To begin with, there is need for urgent and continuous moral reorientation to promote empathy. A situation where people aspire to capture political office with the sole intention of heartless looting of public funds, for whatever reasons, is not the way to go. Stuck with this kind of mindset, any thought of returning to the halcyon days when the glorious old north literally set the national agenda will, at best, remain a pipedream.

In essence, until the behemoth in it stirs itself awake, the north will not be taken serious, compatriots will continue to jeer and sneer at northerners and the drumbeat of breakup will continue to sound even louder.

Magaji <[email protected]> writes from Abuja