Why is the North always coming in late?

The news media were awash last week that the North’s governors and traditional rulers have come around to support state police after a meeting they held in Abuja; the reason for their about turn was given as the worsening security situation in the North. These are the same leaders that have often risen in stout defence of the administration of MuhammaduBuhari, threatening critics with mayhem and insisting, against the grains of evidence and acting like the ostrich, that the North is more secured under their own son, Buhari, than it was under his predecessor, GoodluckEbele Jonathan. The same North that has stood ramrod against calls for state police, labelling its advocates as enemies of Nigeria’s unity and oneness and threatening them with charges of treason, now wants state police to curb rampant insecurity, which they had hitherto denied was obliterating any semblance of governance in their part of the country! Na today day break, as they say? Why is the North always a late-comer to all things good in Nigeria?

A news medium reported the outcome of the Northern leaders meeting thus: “As Nigeria’s security challenge continues to degenerate, the Northern state governors and the traditional rulers councils have called for the establishment of state police as the solution to the problem… They made the call after reviewing the security situation in the North during their meeting which was held in Abuja. A statement issued in Jos on Tuesday after the meeting by the Director of Press and Public Affairs to the Governor of Plateau State and Chairman, Northern Governors Forum, read in part, ‘The Northern Governors Forum on Monday, September 12, 2022, met with the Northern Traditional Rulers Council in Abuja and came out with a resolution calling for the establishment of state police to tackle security challenges in the region and the nation at large’.Reading the communique after the meeting at the Transcorp Hilton Abuja, the Chairman of the Forum and Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, said the meeting reviewed the security situation in the North and other matters relating to its development and resolved to support the amendment of the 1999 Constitution to accommodate the establishment of state police. According to him, this will effectively and efficiently address the security challenges of the region…”

So they are just waking up to the reality of the parlous security situation confronting the North and its people! So they are now tired of acting like the ostrich? So they no longer see everything from the prism of “us” and “they” and the “North” versus the “South”? Are they now tired of playing politics with all issues, including those of security and development? My people have a saying: If you admonish the scantily-dressed to kit up and he/she snubs you, you don’t worry; the harmattan or General Winter will soon arrive to teach him or her object lessons! The harmattan or General Winter of insecurity is teaching leaders of the North the lessons they have ignored to take to heart these past years! But not until they have dragged the entire country down with them – with everyone having suffered huge human, financial, and material losses!

Why is the North always arresting the development of the entire country? Why are they always acting as a drag on other Nigerians eager to march forward? When, in 1953, Anthony Enahoro moved his famous “self-rule” or “Independence Now” motion that Nigeria should gain independence in 1956, it was the North that withstood him, the motion and other Nigerian nationalities in support of the motion. The Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) parliamentarians who were in the majority (as a result of British connivance in favour of the North) staged a walk out because, according to them, Nigeria was not yet ready for independence. And so, Enahoro’s motion was defeated. The truth, however, was that other Nigerian nationalities were ready for independence. Only the conservative and feudalistic North was not ready – but they dragged all the others along with them. Rather than state when they would be ready for independence, the North simply proposed an amendment to Enahoro’s motion to change 1956 to “as soon as practicable” Nebulous!

Not only did the North hold the others down, they also instigated the Kano riots of 1953 ostensibly in protest against the so-called maltreatment, in the South, of Northern parliamentarians and leaders who had opposed Enahoro’s motion. So, riots and bloodletting are not new to the North but predate Nigeria’s independence. And because they have always got away with it, they grew into it until what my people call “alab’orun” (make-shift or emergency robe) became, for them, permanent and proper costume! Anytime the North is aggrieved, they unleash on hapless, peaceful, law-abiding and innocent citizens their teeming hordes of urchins and almajiris who troop into the streets baying for blood. The end-result, over time, is the insecurity situation virtually defying solution in the North today. Had the North not always leveraged on riots and violence to achieve political ends, it would not have been in the near hopeless situation it is in today. And had the North not withstood calls for state police these past years, the insecurity in the North would not have fanned out into, and taken roots in, the South the way it has done today.

Had the North not held the rest of the country down in 1953, Nigeria, the self-acclaimed giant of Africa, would have gained its independence before our smaller neighbour, Ghana, which became independent on March 6.1957. What made the difference between Ghana and Nigeria was leadership. Nigeria’s nearest, even superior material to Ghana’s Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, was ObafemiAwolowo – but he was not allowed to rule: “The best president Nigeria never had”, to quote Ojukwu. Needless to say that Awo’s list of achievements: “first-this” and “first-that” in Africa within the period he was the premier of the Western Region (1954 to 1959), testifies to this.

Why is the North always a late-comer? When, in 1963, Nigeria was to become a Republic and the agitation was for more regions to be created out of the three regions of North, East and West, only the Midwest was created out of the West. The North withstood the demands of the Middle Belt people for their own region simply because they wanted to maintain the electoral and other advantages of a monolithic North. The East’s NnamdiAzikiwe, as a result of his Awo-phobia and the ever-present desire of the East to appropriate the West, supported the North to carve out the Midwest from the West while leaving both the Northern and Eastern regions untouched. The East has historically and politically never been friends with the West – whether then or now! Some reports have it that one of the greatest Igbo leaders, Michael Okpara, before his death on 17 December, 1984, regretted his own role in Zik’s politics of Awo-phobia, which has polluted East-West relations to this day. The North and the East acting together stifled the struggle of the Middle Belt for their own liberation from the stranglehold of the conservative and feudalistic North. They also frustrated the struggle of the minorities of the East, eventually triggering the 12-day revolution of Isaac Jasper AdakaBoro to forcibly create an independent region for his ethnic Ijaw people.

Boro (10 September, 1938 – 9 May, 1968), was born at Oloibiri, where crude oil was first found in commercial quantity in Nigeria on Sunday, 15 January, 1956 by Shell Darcy. A teacher, policeman, Nigerian army officer, undergraduate of Chemistry and students union president at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Boro left school to lead a protest against the mindless exploitation of the oil and gas resources in his native Niger Delta and the marginalization of his Ijaw people. He formed the Niger Delta Volunteer Force and declared the Niger Delta Republic on 23 February, 1966. Had the North and East allowed for the creation of the Middle Belt region in the North and the Niger Delta region for the minorities in the East, the agitations that cost many lives in the Middle Belt (e.g. the Tiv Revolts of 1960, 1964) and the AdakaBoro revolution would have been avoided! One author said “Many people were killed during the (Tiv) uprisings in 1960 and 1964. The Tiv attempt to create a separate region was blocked by northern Muslim-based political parties”. Eastern-based political parties were complicit in that and it was not until 5 May, 1967 that the then military Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, ameliorated the situation a bit with the creation of 12 states as a result of the exigencies of the moment and not necessarily out of any sense of equity, fair play and justice. A writer said it was in a move to check the influence of secessionist OdumegwuOjukwu in the East. The Nigerian civil war eventually broke out on 6 July, 1967 and ended on 15 January, 1970 with the Biafran surrender.

Aside from the brief periods of 15 January – 29 July 1966 that Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi ruled the country and Gen. OlusegunObasanjo’s similar inter-regnum (February 13, 1976 – October 1, 1979), Northern generals ruled the country and stifled democracy. When the pressure to rid the country of military dictatorship took hold all over the country, the North and its elites were the last to catch the bug. The June 12, 1993 presidential election won by MKO Abiola, adjudged the freest and fairest in the annals of the country, was annulled by a Northern general, Ibrahim Babangida. Another Northern general, SaniAbacha, brushed aside Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (27 August, 1993 – 17 November, 1993), seized power and hauled Abiola into detention, where he eventually died under the watch of another Northern general, AbdulsalamiAbubakar. It was not until 25 years after (12 June, 2018) that Buhari, another Northern general, saw the need to recognize and declare June 12 as Democracy Day, a clamour that had, for decades, ruled the South.

When Nigerian youth staged #ENDSARS in October 2020 in the South, the North mobilized to break it, saying it was targeted against their beloved Buhari, whose reign and “achievements” they swore suited them fine! The same North, however, turned round soon afterward to lambast and lampoon the same Buhari and his government! If you want the North to jump at anything, get the South to reject it! In like manner, if you want the North to reject anything, even if it is in their best interest, get the South to embrace it! Why is the North always like that? Now that they have belatedly come around to accepting that this country needs state police, how long will it take them to realise that the battle cry now is not just for the tokenism of state police but for full-blown restructuring if, per chance, we are to stave off the country’s eventual disintegration?

If history is anything to go by, the North will arrive at that bus stop very late! It will only attempt to shut the stable door after the horse must have bolted! Tell me if you know: Why, why is the North always coming in late?

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