“Armed native authority policemen were called in and for hours, there was a tense battle between demonstrators and the police.
“The police came into the drama when the 2,000 demonstrators were marching on Oba — of Ilofa in North Ekiti district, 65 miles from here (Ilorin) yesterday.
“Eight people, including six women, were wounded with batons and have been treated at the general hospital.
“The demonstrators who came from Offa, Ekiti North and Igbomina district were protesting against the Oba’s intimidation of people of Ilofa who are agitating for secession from Northern Nigeria…”
It is only the dead who have seen the end of war. The protest above was 56 years ago as reported by the Nigerian Tribune of 26 September, 1961. Less than a hundred years earlier, these areas of protest were theatres of war. The Fulani wars of the 19th century ate through Yoruba settlements, robbing them of their freedom. The Ilofa story is of a people’s battle for freedom so soon after Nigeria’s liberation from foreign rule. It is the story of a “local” struggle against domestic colonialism which was muffled on that day of anger. The resultant quietness has remained shrill in that corner of Nigeria. That community and all of “Offa, Ekiti North and Igbomina District” of 1961 are till today a part of Northern Nigeria. They are of the majority Yoruba stock restructured to minority in the north by a combination of fate, history, politics and military conquest. They, in fact, constitute the other (ugly) face of today’s Kwara state. Their situation typifies Nigeria’s peculiar way of dishing out varieties of misfortune. Such experiences are the legends of many language groups up north. The victims of yesterday are still the underdogs. Yet, some northern elders recently declared their unwillingness to drop the “advantage” their forebears won for them. And you ask, if these conquered territories are part of that inherited “advantage” of the northern establishment.
You discovered that the sculptor you venerate is actually a woodpecker, how would you react? In Yorubaland, an elder is the keeper and protector of societal safety. The soup in the belly of the elder is not supposed to dance like a python. Whatever moves like a snake in the dark is treated like a snake. When an elder allows the soup to move in his belly, he is fed with palm fronds. I have the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) in mind and the slimy spittle they recently threw in our collective face. And that is why I have reproduced the story above which tells anyone who believes Nigeria is his father’s inheritance about where we are coming from.
Butterflies may fly like birds, but they cannot enjoy the privilege of birds. Did you not hear Paul Unongo, leader of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) declare recently that the north would not drop the advantage it enjoys over other parts in the name of restructuring the country? “Today, we understand the advantage of being a big region. So, if today you don’t offer us anything and you say give us your advantage so that we can have a restructured Nigeria…I don’t think you will get many responses from the north. It will not be easy for the north to say take away our advantages and give us nothing…,” he said. When he said that, he was talking about political realities such as it was and (still is) in the Ilorin Division story above. But it is interesting that it was Unongo who made that statement. He is not a bird in the north. He is from the Middle Belt and a disciple of Joseph Tarka. The core north is the Eagle in the sky of that sphere. The butterfly of the Middle Belt can only delude itself if it thinks itself a bird. Unongo described himself as Tarka’s bag carrier. Tarka was the pre-independence Lion of the Tiv who built his political career around a struggle for freedom for the people of that sub-region. But Tarka is long dead and so have goals and roles changed. Unongo now speaks for inheritors of his conquered territory. Butterfly may speak for birds but it cannot be treated as a bird. Does the “advantage” of the north take care of the interests and the future of Unongo’s Middle Belt and its people?
Huge disasters are caused by insignificant causes. That is why the Yoruba warn that one does not walk one’s secret lover across the village stream. Some people’s ancestors did, and today, their descendants are slaves to the passions of the forebears. There is no part of the country that lacks a history of subjugation. The history of civilization itself is an interesting storybook of guile, conquest and oppression of the peasant clan by the powerful. Lugard, who is credited with the creation of Nigeria, has an interesting perspective on how the powerful enslaves and keeps his slaves. He notes that overlords come to you first as smiling guests, or as patronizing traders; then they introduce “treaties of friendship;” then they seek your alliance against their rivals; then they proceed to own you as their “sphere of influence” and then, finally, they claim “a kind of right of priority” over you. The British did all these but they were not original. The ancestors of today’s core north followed every of those steps identified later by Lugard. That was how the Fulani took Ilorin from Oyo and then spread their “colony” to the areas that have not stopped protesting the loss of their manhood. Inheritors of this imperial dominion over the land have also kept faith with the medicine that has never failed them. They treat Nigeria firmly as an inherited widow that must be kept and used whatever it takes. And they have access to uncommon wisdom, making even their victims speak for them. That was why the people in the 1961 report above found an enemy in their Oba and the Oba found a reliable protector in his conqueror.
Nigeria is a product of the arbitrariness that comes with chaos, war and conquest. The country’s vital parts started either as some persons’ sphere of influence, protectorate or colony. Unongo wasn’t just speaking for an abstract geographical entity called northern Nigeria. He was referring to the political north which could as well be properly called the Hausa-Fulani. It is a clan of the privileged in the far north. They own the yam and hold the knife by the handle. The historical advantage this clan enjoys over everyone else in Nigeria transcends the political and, even, the economic. It covers every facet of the Nigerian life and for some like the protesters in the above story, the overlord is in charge of their everyday life. The blame is on the laps of fate.
The one who wants the world to be well will not live in it alone. The current loud calls for a change in the structure of Nigeria is in the interest of all. The country as it is today is ill, almost terminally. The advantages the northern leaders think they have will die with Nigeria unless the country is re-booted. This is the age of unrest and uncertainty and secession and divorce from unfair unions. You have seen the worsening crisis between Cameroon and its English speaking population. It is not getting better. You have seen the tense agitation for self determination by the Kurds of Iraq. You have heard of grave fears of a civil war “in the middle of Europe” as Catalonia reportedly plans unilateral Declaration of Independence tomorrow. You have also seen the ‘civil war’ going on in the Buhari government over “privileges” and “spheres of influence.” You have also seen inexplicable silence and inaction in official quarters over infractions that merit instant rebuke. Now, you know Nigeria pampers persons from powerful clans. Nigeria says some persons can have wounds on their backs because they have mothers who will dress their injuries. Nothing happens now that hasn’t got its roots in the dysfunction of the country. It is especially in the interest of minorities like Unongo’s Middle Belt that we reset Nigeria on a track that faces the future. But sometimes the victim fights on the side of his tormentors. The Yoruba talk about this frustration of the unappreciated: We fight in defence of Oja; Oja asks who is that fighting at his backyard. Unongo and other minorities protecting the “advantage” of their overlords are the Oja. They spun their friend’s protective cries and fight for the advantage of their adversary. Nigeria is a country of thorns and spikes; butterflies like the Middle Belt have no chance there unless the overlord loses his ‘advantage’.
and then