There could have been Independence

Happy 61st Independence Anniversary Nigeria and that is with a question mark. This is because Nigerians everywhere hold that there are scant reasons to be happy about Nigeria and its dishonest leaders and their acolytes. But, we keep grinding on while numerous primordial shenanigans hold us down.

Last week was dominated by two Nigerians who taught lessons and got tutored. But this week has been about the aftertaste of the words by President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode and Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed. There’s nothing to say about the president’s 61st independence anniversary speech: It is like a “whited sepulcher” while the other two attracted opprobrium. They came in a ugly sequence.

Before Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, there was a big, rancorous F on the main stage. Nature, like a bewildered examiner is, with a palm under the chin, watching majority of Nigerians with equal amount of sadness and dismay. His students of history, which all of us ordinarily should be, still act like those who gleefully run to embrace that which ‘F’ stands for in an examination. One social media user from a South-South state noted humorously that there are “too many F in one name” and that we shouldn’t take things too seriously. We should interpret that however we like as we move. But as a people, we should not be lost in the high-sounding nothingness of the current times. Something was noted in a poem as “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

We were in that melee like in a scampering of a goat in the market until Hakeem Baba-Ahmed happened. He said we should beware, that the north can do anything, including concede power because it has got the numbers. And numbers is all that matters in elections.  Now, we seem to have in our hands two conflicting scenarios: A man from the outside, who has no home to return to, attempting to pitch his tent with the other man who does not want to share his space, even if illegally acquired, with any man other than his brother. The wanderer does not care if he had heard credible stories of snake in a manger, stab in the back, betrayal and cruelty. He has no mother and he has not acquired any wound on the back. He’s there just for the sound, the information not necessarily intelligence, and the food.

The Nigerian ruling class is fine; it has not got any ugly creases. Those in there know no divisions, they have no boundaries and they share freely at the top. When it comes to a usual scramble for who gets what, they balkanise with eyes closed. Their eyes are open only when it’s time to get what they can get for themselves or for attracted adulation. The impact of the inhumanity that trickles down to and bites hard at the bottom is not their business.

That is why millions of Nigerians turned in utter discomfort when Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed spoke about power and numbers recently. Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is the Director of Publicity and Advocacy of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF). He is a former university teacher  and is known as one of those who have not spared this better-forgotten government led by also better-forgotten President Muhammadu Buhari. Dr. Baba-Ahmed and his NEF had always scored a hit on Buhari and his administration. It has always been a bull’s eye whenever NEF speaks on the policies and activities of the government as it concerns Nigeria as a nation and Nigerians at the lower wrung of the societal ladder. This is so much that one of senior media aides of President Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu had to react at some point to deflect some of the stinging punches NEF was always throwing at Buhari and his government. At the height of it, atop which was the submission by the NEF chief that Buhari’s “government has run out of ideas” Mallam Garba Shehu retorted: “This is a government elected democratically. Happily Dr. Baba Ahmed taught social sciences in the university. He has been commissioner, secretary and a member of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Governments in a democracy come into office through periodic elections. If you have a government in office as we have, sponsored by a political party that continues to win elections, it is telling you that that confidence of the public is still there unless Dr. Baba-Ahmed does not himself believe all that he has been teaching young people all these years as a lecturer. People with strong voting ambitions just have to suppress this. Wait till four years and in fact, in our own case, two more years to go. There will be an election and President Muhammadu Buhari will not be a candidate in that election.”

That’s how much Baba-Ahmed and NEF did as we all wriggled and writhed in pain from the Buhari government. But now that issues have distilled and matters have come to power, the drumbeats have changed. Since the matter now is power, where it should reside, its acquisition, how to acquire it and who to give it to, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has abandoned Nigeria. He has become a northerner and an advocate for power for the north. This brave advocate for poor, degraded Nigerians has suddenly forgotten about them, their pains and their cries. As the wheel spins and gets to the word “power”, the injustice, inequality and disparity in parts of the country which Baba-Ahmed wanted corrected have either all disappeared or he has forgotten them. Or, maybe we should stop equating perpetual domination by one part of the country as injustice. As a member of the northern elite, power to the north regardless of the yearning of regions other than the north, is not an issue. It is now north versus south, no longer equity and fairness versus their opposites.

Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s north has, in a swift shift, become that one behemoth elephant that cannot be confronted by any power. How that incorporates a broken Benue, a battered Plateau and a tattered Taraba is a matter for the politicians to sort. But from the ordinary look of things, these beleaguered states and their people are all in the Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s numbers.

Also in the numbers must be those children shamelessly lined up as voters that were seen in unchallenged viral videos and disturbing photos. The numbing numbers NEF is bandying obviously include those figures that have not translated to any economic gain or human capital development for either that same north or any other part of the country. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s numbers has kept us down enough. We have had enough of negative indices in health, education, economy, security, human development and so on.

This Northern Elders Forum (NEF)  chief reiterated his stance on the numerical superiority of the north and explained to the southern governors that “if you keep demanding things rather than negotiating and doing some basic things of politics like concessions, convincing northerners that it is in the interest of the north, it is in the interest of the South, it is in the interest of everyone to have a president who comes from the southern part of the country, then do the work.” The southern governors who have been so advised by our northern lords and custodians of the numbers take heed. Do the work.

However, we must all be ready to plant, nurture and propagate truthfulness. North or south, east or west, otherwise a country we all can be proud of will remain a mirage.

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