BASED on several agitations by Nigerians that the country should be restructured, right now, the APC-led Federal Government has set up a body led by Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State, to undertake the process, so what is the next step now?
Well, in a situation like this, there are things the Federal Government can do. Having the party controlling the Federal Government setting a committee to conduct public opinions is a good idea, but the Federal Government itself must be ready to do something. The Federal Government, after collecting all the information, can decide to set up a commission to use the information they have collected to advise Nigerians on how to proceed with restructuring just like the Indians did in 1953 under Pandit Nehru. They (India) set up a commission; the commission took on the job, advised the country that this would be the best way to restructure the country, and advised the authority to go on and on step by step. The government and the legislature followed the advice and got the thing approved gradually. It took some years but it was finally completed.
If we see that happening in Nigeria, we would know that the Federal Government is serious, is responding to the wishes of the majority of the people of Nigeria and, therefore, people would have patience as the Federal Government is carrying out the process. But what we are getting is not like that at all.
The Federal Government can also call a constitutional conference, the type that was called in 1978 by the Muritala/ Obasanjo military regime to sit down and really work out a new constitution for the country on the basis of what the people are saying now and we would go out there, the representatives of the people will meet there and work out a constitution. But there is no sign now. The word of the president and the body language and the type of things that are being said from officials of the Federal Government create the impression that there is a hard determination to hold on to the status quo and that is creating anxiety all over the country.
What’s the particular body language of Mr. President that shows that the government is not ready to undertake the process.
The president is saying from time to time that the people who are asking for restructuring are the ones provoking secessionist sentiment in the country that they are the people who are generating idea of breaking the country, but that is not true. That’s not true. I don’t know how the president has come to that discernment that it is the call for restructuring that is generating secession, no. What is generating secession is that people are sure that the Federal Government is determined not to change anything in spite of all the noise for restructuring and so on and in spite of the fact that they made the promise that they were going to change and do restructuring. In spite of all the big noise that is going on in the country about restructuring, a democratic government listens to its people and responds to them, but all we get in the present situation is the president telling us, you people who are asking for restructuring are the people causing secession, which is not true. That is what the president is saying. What is causing agitation for secession, as I have said, is the fact that people can see that this government is not going to do anything and people don’t want to continue to live under this arrangement as it is anymore. That does not mean they don’t want Nigeria; they just don’t want to live under this arrangement anymore and there are young men who would say okay, if you are not going to change, we would destroy the country, we would break it up, that is what is happening. I don’t think they should push our young people into that mode of mind. I think it is the way the leadership is managing things that is pushing our young people into that mode of mind.
I think if the president had been more conciliatory in the way he deals with this issue of restructuring, we would be having less of secessionist movements in this country. I am sure of that. What the president needs to understand is that we are a country of many nations, different ways of doing things, different desires, different ambitions, different capabilities and different modes of behaviour. If you are saying you are going to run Nigeria as one unitary state as it is now, you are going to have trouble. Nobody can do it; it cannot be done, and part of the reasons, part of the fundamental reasons is that we ran a federation before and it was good, reasonably good.
Even in the North where they started a little slower in education and so on than the South, they were doing very well, very well indeed under Sir Ahmadu Bello. Every part of Nigeria can develop and any single part of Nigeria that moves forward and achieves something is advancing the overall prosperity of Nigeria. That is the way rulers of Nigeria must look at Nigeria, that when any section of Nigeria takes steps forward, it is advancing the progress of Nigeria. There is no possibility of all our different sections of Nigeria taking the same step at the same time, reaching the same level of development at the same time. You cannot impose a uniform mode of development on a country as big and diverse as Nigeria, you can’t. But that seems to be what the Federal Government is trying to do and people are nervous about it and some people are even frightened about it and I think it is important that the Federal Government should let go and come to meet the people at the level of their readiness. And the level of their readiness is this, we want Nigeria; we want it to succeed. We want to succeed in Nigeria and the Federal Government holding things at the centre is making that impossible and we don’t want that. We want the Federal Government to support and spearhead diversification of power control, or resource control, but the Federal Government is determined to hold on to it and that is not good.
And when people say they don’t understand restructuring, I wonder because those of us who are adults, who were at least young people in the First Republic knew that this country was working. There is no doubt about it. You can’t compare today with it. Then the military came; we made a mistake and let the military come into our government and they came. The only thing the military knows how to do, the only way they know how to organise is that military does not democratise. An Army does not federate, an Army is constituted as a unit under one big commander, who commands all. That’s the way the military is organised in every culture in the world.
And so when we let the military came into our government, they just turned our country into a military establishment where whoever is a military commander in the centre, the military president or whatever they call him, is essentially a dictator, dictating to the rest of us by decrees. Even though you might have the semblance of a federation, the states, the regions or whatever you have, it is really the man at the top that dictates to rulers of the states or regions. He is the dictator to them and they are trained to obey him. There is no federation in any Army. An Army has to be a unitary arrangement, that’s what they brought to the government of Nigeria. In early 1984 when the Buhari administration was still in office, police were arresting young men all over Ondo State.
What was their offence?
They were accused of being those that caused trouble at the election of 1983 when an attempt was made to rig the election and the young people exploded and so on. Now the police were going from house to house arresting young people, large crowd of people were in court every day.
So I wrote a letter to Governor [Bamidele] Otiko, the military governor of Ondo State. I told him, please, do something about it, our state is plunging into trouble. All this filing into court everyday by our young people, young people are worried, patents are frightened, young people are running away and hiding in the bush, do something, do what Fajuyi did in 1966, declare a general amnesty, let’s free our state and let the state settle down and become a peaceful place.
So he asked me to come and see him and when I went to see him, he spent more than 90 minutes telling me, all this thing you are telling me I cannot do it. In fact, the Federal Military government back in Lagos thinks I am not hard enough in Ondo State. They think I am not tough enough and so if I go to them now and say let me declare an amnesty, I know what you are saying is good, I was born in this place too, but I cannot go to Buhari and Idiagbon and tell them to let me do what you are saying. They already think I am not tough enough. That would be enough reason to retire me. That’s the military government. That’s how it is. That’s alright; they ruled us according to their own understanding, according to the organisation they know.
And when they were going, that’s where the trouble is. When they were going in 1998, they wrote a constitution exactly encapsulating their own mode of government, the unitary government they had been having. They now put into the constitution for us and we accepted it and we are trying to rule ourselves like that. How is that going to happen, how is it going to work? It cannot work. We are not an Army; we are a country. And the earlier the rulers of Nigeria, because they are controlling the power now, they don’t want to let go. You know it is a personal thing, all these powers, all this money, but they need to be patriotic and let go. Let us return to a federal system.
In 1977, I wrote an article in an academic journal that Nigeria is no longer a country that owns an Army, it is a country that is owned by an Army.
What brought about that conclusion?
Although the Army has gone away, we are running the country in the way they were running the country and it cannot work.
Former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, in a recent interview, alleged that in spite of the promise made by the APC government to restructure Nigeria, it would not, because it was brought to power through a conspiracy between the South-West section of Nigerian bourgeoisies and Northern section of Nigerian bourgeoisies and that once they are there enjoying the system, they don’t know what other sections feel. Do you agree with that?
Balarabe Musa understands Nigeria politics much better than most Nigerians; he is a very knowledgeable person about Nigerian politics. So what he is saying about conspiracy between the South-West bourgeoisies and Northern bourgeoisies, I cannot comment on, but one thing I know, whoever, no matter where the conspiracy comes from, whoever finds himself as president of Nigeria is very unlikely to let go the powers and the control over money that he enjoys.
It is not easy. I was discussing with a very high up politician a few weeks ago and he was telling me, he was explaining restructuring. I appreciated it and say this man is serious, but then I said to him, sir, I am convinced that you believe in restructuring, I’m convinced your ideas are good and my fear is that if you become president of Nigeria, you would not do it.
Why did you conclude that way?
I was not sure that if he gets there that he would do it. He said why, Why? And I now said the reason is the combination of powers and money now in the hands of the Federal Government is not the type we can find any Nigerian who will sit down and say let us dispatch these. Ah, it is not going to be easy. The Nigerian president comes in controlling enormous resources, even when we are in difficulty here, our revenue base is weak by one thing or the other, we are still a phenomenally rich country. We have a lot of revenue flowing like a sea into the coffers of our country regularly and the man who is president of Nigeria is really not controlled by anything. He controls everything.
I said sir, are you going to wake up one day and say all these powers, all this money that I wake up and control, let us dispatch it so that the money can go to the governors and only a little would be left? I said you won’t do it. So the military has gotten us into a situation which is going to be tough to get out of and that is why those of us who believe in this restructuring must just keep fighting for it. It’s the only way to save our country.
Alhaji Balarabe Musa talked of perpetual alliance between the South-West bourgeoisie and Northern bourgeoisie, saying they are always in power and that it is always difficult to sideline any of them for up to a year but they can sideline other sections of the country like the South-East and South-South for several years without problem.
You see, what we must know is this, it is not a particular group that is able to control things at the centre like that and sideline other parts of the country, anybody who is in power in the centre can sideline any section in the country including the South-West. Under Jonathan, the South-West was sidelined.
But he said the sidelining in respect of the South-West cannot go for more than few months and cannot last up to a year.
No, we were sidelined for six years under Jonathan, we were. The South-West was sidelined for six years under Jonathan, yes. It doesn’t matter who you are or what conspiracy you belong to. When you are in control of Federal Government, you are in control of everything. You can sideline any section of Nigeria you want to sideline. So that angle of it, I don’t think my friend, Balarabe got it right.
The Federal Government has always sidelined people. The people of Western Region were sidelined in most of the military regimes. We were, and I don’t think anybody would say that was not so. The Western Region and Eastern Region were both sidelined under the military regimes. Today, even though the South Western politicians are part of the so-called conspiracy that created the Federal Government, the South-West is being sidelined now. Yes. Our boys led by Bola Tinubu, who entered there with all their expertise, their strength and so on, put a lot of resources together, created this government to make Buhari the president, but is the South-West enjoying the benefit of that today? Would you say so? No.
Are you talking in terms of appointments?
In respect of appointments, look at the way the Federal Government did its appointments. It’s one side of the country. It is one side of the country and people are screaming about it. Nobody is responding to them and you say the Western Region is sidelining anybody. The Western Region, the Eastern Region and the South-South are sidelined today in this arrangement; there is no doubt about that.
So the highly respected former governor is wrong about that; he is wrong about that. The government of Nigeria routinely sidelines one section of the country or other and I would say people of the South are more likely to be sidelined in any arrangement than the Northern part of Nigeria. And I would say that even when a Southerner like Goodluck Jonathan was president, he sidelined significant part of the South, especially the South-West and we grumbled and pleaded. Many times, leaders of the South-West went to Jonathan. I remember and I hope many people would remember and we asked what have we done? Please, don’t treat us like this and he would promise them and nothing would get done. We know, we should remember that. I am not saying any particular government is worse than the other. What I am saying is that the inherent tendency of the Nigerian Federal establishment is to sideline one group or the other in Nigeria. Today they are sidelining the South, but they are sidelining particularly the Eastern Nigeria more drastically than the rest of the South. The South is all catching fire, but the South-East is catching a bigger share of the fire.
In the same interview, which you must have also read, the former Kaduna State governor also talked about the secessionist tendencies on the part of the South-West more than the Northern part. What is your take on this?
I think the records are clear that we in the South-West have never asked to be allowed to secede from Nigeria; we have never asked for that even in the most difficult of times. What we were fighting for was for a better place for ourselves in Nigeria.
In 1965 when our young people took hold of the situation, they didn’t want to accept the way the Western Region was being brutalised and repressed and so on under emergency Sole Administrator, Commission of Inquiry and our leaders were put in prisons and even Chief [Ladoke] Akintola, who was one of them wasn’t really part of it, you know. They were just treating him like some subordinate person even though he was supposed to be their ally; we knew that. When people say Akintola was one of them, I say Akintola was not one of them; Akintola was a subordinate; he wasn’t part of it. The North controlled everything. He had alliance with them, but he wasn’t in charge of anything, he wasn’t in their confidence. People would say the North was in alliance with the West at that time and so the West was enjoying, the West was not enjoying anything; that’s the truth of the matter.
So I think my friend Balarabe Musa would look at that again and he would discover that, historically, he has made a mistake. There is no way you can say that the West has been perpetually in alliance with the North. In 1960-65, it was the East in alliance with the North and even the East was being sidelined in the alliance and that was what led to the trouble. The East was being sidelined; the NCNC leadership of Eastern Nigeria was in alliance with the NPC leadership of the North and the NCNC leadership of the East was being sidelined in the alliance.
In 1979, the NPP was the party of the East; it agreed to work with the Shagari Presidency and very soon, they began to complain that they were being sidelined in the arrangement and then they began to threaten that they were going to break away from it. And the NPN leadership of the North told them, get out and threw them out. So I think my friend, Balarabe Musa needs to look at the record again.
The former governor also went into the archive to say that as far back as when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was in the saddle in the Western Region, the Yoruba, the South- West had always been agitating for Oduduwa Republic that it was Chief Awolowo that had been calming them down to take it easy.
Every nation of the world, you belong to a country, but you are a nation. It is inevitable that in your house, there would always be a feeling that we ought to be a country of our own. The Irish have felt it for hundreds of years. The Welsh, these are little nations in Britain, they have felt it for a lot of time. The Welsh are now looking upon the city, their central city which they think would become the capital of their own little country when they become a separate country and so on. Even English parliamentarians, whose nation, the English control Britain are now coming together to say we want our own government too, an English government based in Manchester, saying the common government in London shouldn’t be controlling their lives. That is the way it is, but we Yoruba have never sat down to say let us consider secession from Nigeria. The idea of Oduduwa Republic is part of our heritage. There is no way you can jettison it. We are Oodua; we are a nation of Oodua and that’s the way it is. And it is because of this thing that a Federal Government of a country like Nigeria needs to handle everybody carefully. That’s it, because in the heart of every single nation in Nigeria, even the smallest like the Berom and so on, like Isoko in the Delta, there is that perpetual, undying realisation, or psychological position that we are a small nation, but we should be directing our own future and molding our own destiny. That’s inevitable and you don’t want to run a country like Nigeria in such a way as to wound them, as to hurt them. You understand,? You don’t want to hurt them. You want to run it in such a way that there would be a love amongst us to belong to the country.
Switzerland is a small country of few million people, but it is made up of different nationalities: some speak French, some speak German, some speak Romanch and so on and they have done very well. The principle of existence in Switzerland is that, we are not a nation, but we are a nation by consent, that is, we have all consented together to be a nation.
That is, every little nation is free within the context of Switzerland. So that freedom, that autonomy gives every group the joy to belong, to be part of that country. That is what we should be looking for in Nigeria. We are not a nation, but we can become a nation by consent, consent to which you know my interests are preserved in Nigeria.
If you read S.D. Munir, one of the intellectuals who went into the politics of India, he wrote a paper describing how Indian nationalities transformed after the restructuring, after the devolution of powers and granting of local autonomy to ensure that no nationality must be split into two, but be together. If they are tiny and they belong to a state in that state, make them a local government so that they would know this is we and that God has created enormous love for India among the nationalities. That’s what I want for my country; that is what we Yoruba want for our country. A situation in which Nigeria would be so organised that we will know that our nation is being respected in Nigeria and that we can achieve a lot on our own and then we would love Nigeria and every other group that is treated the same way would love Nigeria. We would have a great country.
Is it possible to have this Nigeria of your dream giving what the former Kaduna governor said about the North seeing themselves as superior and not wanting to let powers go from their hands in spite of their low education?
I teach Nigerian history. I have taught Nigerian history most of my adult life as a university professor. I know that there is a basic thing.
What is it?
Two things. One is that it is not their fault. The British didn’t handle the situation in the North right. When education came, it came through Christian Missionary effort. People who are Muslims cannot be blamed for not accepting it. Yoruba Muslims too at the beginning were hesitant until it became clear to them that education doesn’t necessarily have to be a Christian thing. Education is everybody’s heritage and our Muslims in the South-West are among the greatest movers of education in our land today. They are building schools, universities. There are universities built by our Muslim men in Yoruba land, everywhere. The Ansar-ur-Deen, the NAFSAT, Nawair-ur-Deen, and so on, those are all Muslim educational movements.
The same could have happened in the North, but the British wanted to control the North in a way that would be more comfortable for them. They didn’t like educated Africans, Colonial rulers never liked educated Africans. Before the British came, the Yoruba had been producing university graduates. The Yoruba were producing university graduates as back as 1860s, so by the time the British came in 1914 to unify Nigeria, we were already a highly educated people and the British didn’t like them. Lugard didn’t want to see Yoruba people; he hated Yoruba people and passed it on to the culture of British rule in Nigeria.
All over Africa, the colonial authority didn’t like educated Africans. They think the people are arrogant, they cannot be subdued. For instance in Lagos, there was segregation; the Yoruba intellectuals destroyed the segregation, you understand and the British government had to say, no, no, no, there should be no segregation, because these people won’t take it, they are educated; they don’t like it. They may yield, but would yield with anger in their heart, saying you, you don’t tell us what to do! That’s why the Yoruba were never liked by the British. There were hardly anything that the British had to decide that might favour the Yoruba people that they would ever favour the Yoruba people.
So the second thing is that the Fulani section of the Hausa/Fulani society was small compared with the Hausa. The Hausa is a very large nation; they are as large as Yoruba, very large. They are the largest single nationality in the interior of Africa, north of the Niger. The Yoruba were the largest single ethnic nationality in West Africa, south of the Niger and Benue, and then the Igbo, you understand. But the Fulani were just a scattering amongst very large Hausa nation and so with the coming of the British, there is this fear that they might be endangered in Nigeria and so that’s it. When you are afraid, you tend to become aggressive. So all this that Balarabe Musa says about superiority complex, no, I don’t think it is superiority complex; it’s a mixture of the fear of the future and the determination to prevent that feared future from happening.
And the answer really is that the rest of us in Nigeria must make sure that everybody is welcome in Nigeria, whether your nation is small or large or whatever, whether you are Fulani or whatever. If we can manage our lives in Nigeria to make all the peoples of Nigeria feel this is home, that would be good for our country. But that’s not the way we are running it. There is hostility; there is an endemic hostilities amongst the people of Nigeria. You go around, you can feel it.
And so in the past few weeks, something to be very happy about has been happening with the Yoruba and Igbo stretching their hands across the Niger and say listen, this is our country; we don’t have to hate each other. We are different, but we are citizens of the same country, let’s work together for the good of our country, for the good of everybody. That is what is now happening in what you called the Southern Leadership Forum. It’s a wonderful new development and Nigeria should really be happy about that it is happening. Elders of Yoruba and Igbo sit in a place and elders of the Niger-Delta and now elders of the Middle-Belt are joining and they are saying, this is our country, we have to make sure it works well and there is no breaking up. We ask for no violence and all this tradition of hostility must be gotten rid of. That is a huge asset for Nigeria; we should all be happy about it.
Your final word for Buhari, who has about two years to complete his tenure and do you think he would have enough time to restructure Nigeria?
President Buhari needs to do something; he needs to get rid of primordial holds on him as a Northerner and really thinks of Nigeria as a Nigerian and creates for himself a name that will never die. I wrote it in one article published last week where I say if President Buhari can rise to the level that everybody in Nigeria can feel this is our leader, it would be a great thing for him, and for us and for our country.
Where you find young men like Nnamdi Kanu, Buhari like the father of our country needs to find a way of coming close to the boy and says what is happening, what is the problem, why are you behaving like that, why do you want our country to break up, what can we do together to make everybody happy in our country? That I think is the real duty to perform. Sending an army after him was a horrible mistake to make, I don’t think he should have done that. No, I don’t think he should have done that. It tends to create the impression that you are representing a section of the country and whatever section that appears difficult, you go after them with a hammer. No, please don’t do that; it is not good for our country. You are sending the military to the South-West and South-East, why? Why are you accepting the advice to do this thing? Why do you let the military people advise you to do this thing and you accept that? You don’t do that. The military would tell you they can do this physically, yes, they can, but what of the psychological effect they leave behind? If I wake up in the morning and I hear that the army has marched into the South-West, the army is in Lagos, is in Ibadan, is in Abeokuta, is in Ado-Ekiti, I can’t do anything about it; I cannot drive them out, but am I happy about it? That’s it. That’s what our president should be thinking about.
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