A Rejoinder to "Grand Conspiracy" - Dr. B.J. Adamu's Contribution to the Debate about the Future of "Northern Nigeria"

By Dr. Paul D. Ocheje

[CANADA]

Forwarded By Dr. Moses Arigu

marigu2000@yahoo.com

I have read Dr. Baba Jibrin Adamu's recent article, which appeared on www.gamji.com, with great interest. Dr. Adamu deserves congratulations for the discipline he has exhibited in putting his views in writing. As Dr. Kole Shettima recently remarked in a different context, this is an honourable and transparent way of expressing views. The possibility of being misquoted is minimized, and, provided that the narrative is clear, the reader should know after reading the views where the writer stands on the issues at stake. The article finally brings home to us the debate that has been raging for a while now about the future of northern Nigerian geopolitics. Apart from the author's own mail to our group inviting us to read the article, the entire article was copied to our page by M. Ibrahim Hamza. 

Obviously, there are many thought-provoking views in the article. Political issues are inherently divisive, and it is the reason why, at its inception, it was agreed that ANNIC would be a non-political organization. Given that position, the appropriateness of this posting may be questioned. One can only hope that this is not an invitation to get ANNIC involved in this debate.

I have tremendous respect for Dr. B.J. Adamu - BJ as I often call him. In many ways, BJ represents the new northern Nigerian. Personable,  highly educated, urbane, articulate and relentlessly ambitious in a positive way, BJ comes across as deserving of attention when he speaks. He is also outgoing and blessed with outstanding entrepreurial skills. Given his personal qualities, and the message of his article, it may not be an idle exercise to speculate that BJ would probably take his place in the near future among the Nigerian political elite. As such, it is important that those of us who admire him must be quick to draw his attention to areas in which we disagree with him, if only to complicate his political metamorphosis. Complicated thinking is what a budding politician needs to grow into a sophisticated statesman/woman.

I observe, in the preliminary, that this article veers too quickly from issue to issue without taking a stand. Broaching issues and leaving them hanging takes away from the overall clarity and pungency of the article. One comes away with the feeling that the author could have made his point without going into some of the contentious speculations  and issues that cluttered the article. For example, there is the mention of ethnic clashes in which some northerners have been killed. It is not clear whether this is mentioned as evidence of the "conspiracy" against northern Nigeria. Ethnic clashes have occurred in the north, too, and it cannot be alleged that the press reports those that happen in the north while ignoring those in the south. Nor can it be credibly alleged that these clashes have been instigated by so-called outsiders. It is a messy issue, ethnic clashes in Nigeria, and, unless the author was going to take a stand on it, I believe that the article would have not lost anything by leaving well alone.

I disagree with BJ on a number of points. First, I find his dismissal of the case for the middlebelt as lacking in political sophistication and sensitivity. He refers to the appellation "middlebelt" as meaningless, and as a term of convenience coined by the colonial administration to refer to the areas that now claim it for identity. This is a strange position for someone who concludes by calling for unity among the people of northern Nigeria. Contrary to BJ's thesis, the emergence of the "middlebelt" as an organizational concept in the current geopolitics of northern Nigeria has nothing to do with the colonial administration. The middlebelt is a political force that has coalesced around the issues of fairness and equity in the politics of northern Nigeria. The people of the middlebelt feel that their association with the rest of northern Nigeria has not paid off in terms of their access to political and economic opportunities. They believe that they have been hard done by in the distribution of the opportunities of citizenship in a country whose constitution assures equal opportunity for all. They are arguing for greater access, and they believe that they must do so on their own steam, rather than rely, as they have always done, on the discredited politicians of northern Nigeria.

Secondly, the issues about which the people of the middlebelt feel aggrieved exist in other parts of northern Nigeria as well. I think it is a point upon which we can all agree that our politicians - and I use the term "politician" in a general way to refer to all who have held political positions, including soldiers and civilians alike - in northern Nigeria have failed us woefully. Things have changed a lot since the departure of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sakkwato. The Sardauna paid great attention to issues of equity and fairness among all the peoples of northern Nigeria. He appointed people from all corners of the north into government positions of responsibility, irrespective of their ethnic origin or religion. He related to an Alhaji Isa kaita in the same way that he related to a Michael Audu Buba. He was god-fearing, and the interest of the people was uppermost in the mind of the Sardauna. Not so the politicians who succeeded him. The successors to the Sardauna  turned their backs on all the 0ideals and principles which the Sardauna sought to establish as articles of faith in our politics. They are corrupt, narrow-minded, greedy, and intolerant. They are loud, ostentatious and uncharitable. Take a look at their record. By a convergence of historical circumstances not entirely of our own making, northern Nigerians have been at the helm of governmental decision-making longer than their counterparts from other parts of the country. They had an opportunity to ensure an equitable distribution of opportunity across our land, but they chose not to. The result is that, comparatively, northern Nigeria is poorer than other parts of the country. We produce on a per capita basis, more beggars than other parts of Nigeria. Northern Nigeria currently produces the lowest number of candidates for matriculation to Nigerian universities - something in the region of 2-3% - among the 36 States of the country. As a beneficiary of scholarships under the erstwhile northern Nigeria education policy, my heart bleeds at this reversal of fortune. What about drinking water, roads, healthcare, etc? The statistics are equally grim. This state of affairs calls for questions to be asked of our politicians, both at the federal and state levels. Those who ask those questions ought not to be derided, traduced or castigated. Such an attittude shows a limited understanding of the issues at stake.

It is a new northern Nigeria in the making - a northern Nigeria where people ask questions. There is no doubt that united we stand to gain more than lose, but unity does not necessarily mean that questions must not be asked, or that we should sweep our disagreements under the carpet and pretend that they do not exist. Questions, such as the ones that the middlebelt is asking are legitimate in a democracy. The honourable thing for our politicians to do is not to set themselves in opposition to the demands for responsibility and accountability, but to begin to address these questions intelligently and imaginatively. Unless they do this, it would be delusional for them, or for that matter, any one at all, to believe that it is business as usual in northern Nigeria.

All is not well in the house that Gamji built, and I submit that it is not correct to blame the situation all on the "grand conspiracy" of outsiders or the "southern-dominated" press. Such cop-outs are beginning to wear thin indeed. A lot of time was devoted in BJ's commentary to the allegation of conspiracy against northern Nigeria, supposedly by our fellow citizens of southern Nigeria and their media outlets. But no evidence is produced in support of this allegation. The article cites two policies of the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo as proof of a conspiracy to disintegrate the corporate existence of northern Nigeria. One of these is the policy on importation of used vehicles. BJ claims that there are more northerners in the importation of used vehicles business than other Nigerians. This is more speculation than fact, and the fact that it is put out there as fact does not lend integrity to the serious argument that he is trying to make. Then, he makes the claim that underfunding of agriculture is another policy which the Obasanjo government has devised in order to injure the interests of the north. But statistics show that about 70% of Nigerians are employed in the agricultural sector; ipso facto, any bad agricultural policy by the government of Nigeria must affect, not only northern Nigeria, but the entire country. In that regard, criticism of such a policy would acquire integrity if it proceeds from a pan-Nigerian perspective.

Employing this strategy of "us" against "them" is a ploy that has been perfected by the low-achieving politicians of northern Nigeria. They seek to divert attention from their failures by concocting theories of conspiracy, and I am surprised that BJ would subscribe to this strategy. It is a strategy that may yield votes among our vastly illiterate population, and carry some weight with the illiterate press, but it is one that has little credibility. One can agree that there is today a great deal of resentment by other Nigerians against the northern Nigerian political elite. The reasons for this are embedded in our past and recent political history. The resentment may also stem from the actualities of politics: afterall, politics is the art of who gets what, when, and how. Some of the resentment may be real, others are quite simply manufactured. That is life, and that, too, is politics. But it does not rise to the level of a conspiracy. To seek to blame the dissension that currently characterizes northern Nigerian geopolitics on the instigation of outsiders is to expose oneself to charges of banking on the ignorance of the people.

Threats to the corporate existence of northern Nigeria are not imaginary. They are real, and they are bred from within. One of them is the greed and intolerance of those of our politicians who consider themselves to be a privileged class, and consider others to be inferior and unworthy of opportunity either to serve or to benefit from government largesse. A recent example was the cry of marginalization of the "north" that accompanied the appointment of Isaac Alfa and Ibrahim Ogohi to high military/political positions in the Obasanjo administration. Alfa was appointed Chief of Defence Staff (from which he has since retired), and Ogohi was appointed Chief of Naval Staff. Both are northern minorities, but obviously this was considered by a segment of our political elite as appointment of "outsiders", not "northerners". The late Sardauna would have been ashamed of what now passes for northern identity. Remember that in his time, Daniel Ogbadu, Paul Achimugu, Sunday B. Awoniyi, Michael Audu Buba, all christian minorities, were appointed to ministerial and other high-ranking positions by the late premier. One of the premier's contemporaries recently disclosed how the premier once left the administration of the Northern Region in the hands of a christian - Reverend David O.V. Lot, when he travelled with most of the cabinet ministers to Mecca on hajj. Would that kind of thing happen today? Instead of building a geopolitical entity in which everyone would feel a sense of belonging, our politicians have focused on creating differences among our people. The manipulation of religion proceeds apace as we speak, and many citizens of northern Nigeria can no longer make their homes in certain parts of the north, for fear that they would be discriminated against on the basis of their religion.

I think that the cry of southern domination of the press is over done. We do have a respectable number of media outlets in northern Nigeria. These may not be of equal number with the outlets in the "south", but it is not as if there are no journalists, newspapers, radio and television houses in northern Nigeria. Indications are that we give out as much as we receive in the Nigerian press, and those who follow important debates in the Nigerian mass media would attest to this. Our real concern at this time should not be how many media outlets we have, but how many of our population can participate intelligently in a public debate, or how many of them are literate enough to analyze issues intelligently for themselves. Illiteracy is digging in among our people, while our politicians abandon the large issues of our corporate existence in pursuit of diversions, such as religion. In any case, if northern Nigeria operates today at a disadvantage than the south in terms of media outlets, who is responsible for that? When it comes to wealth accumulation, legitimate or illegitmate, our own people can hold their own against anyone from other parts of the country. Those of them who served in government, or did business with government patronage or otherwise, have accumulated stupendous wealth, with which they have built more houses, bought more cars, married more wives,etc. for themselves, their friends and relatives. But, obviously, they do not consider investment in public enlightenment important.

I found the last part of BJ's article to be the most interesting. There, he casts himself in the role of a peace-maker, conciliator, and a field general issuing a clarion call to his troops to rally against disintegration. He philosophizes about the virtues of unity and the need to participate actively in the process of improving the human condition. This is deep thinking, and it is an aspect of BJ that many of us are just now beginning to recognize. It is a process of thinking that must be encouraged, for the times call for it. The problems of human development in  northern Nigeria are enormous, and the politicians that would be taken seriously in the future are those who produce alternative and imaginative ways of thinking about the issues. As they say, only the deep can call to the deep.

Finally, if we must contribute to the awakening of a new style of thinking, a style that emphasizes the taking of responsibility for our mistakes and offers creative new ways of thinking about our problems, we must approach the task with sincerity. Our arguments cannot be just a rehashing of some of the things that have been thrown carelessly out there by sections of the illiterate press. To make assertions that have no factual foundations exposes us to charges of seeking to pull wool over the eyes of our people. We must go beyond the common fare, and show some originality and imagination. It follows that we need to inform ourselves of the basic facts of Nigerian politics by reading informative books about Nigeria's political history, ancient and modern, and being observant of the goings-on in our part of the country and in other parts of the country. That way we will be able to rely on our own conclusions rather than on the speculations that some other people have made.

Reply to Dr. Paul D. Ocheje

By Baba J Adamu

[CANADA]

Dear Benson Agi and my fellow ANNIC brothers and sisters,

I was pleasantly surprised to read an excellent rejoinder, written by Dr. Paul Ocheje in the most civil of styles, reflecting his meticulous and painstaking effort to present clearly, concisely and thoroughly his reactions to my article.  I, and indeed the whole of ANNIC members owe much to the like of Dr. Paul, whose good nature is matched by his competence, whose reaction to certain issues that effect Nigerian communities and Nigerians in Diaspora is instrumental, educative and imaginative. Quite true, there has been some apprehension, perhaps rightly justified; on the appropriateness of posting the article into ANNIC mailing group. Obviously, it was not intended to get ANNIC involved into this debate. I apologize, however I must admit that I was touched, stimulated and felt great pleasure and sense of togetherness to share fruitful dialogue on the future of northern Nigerian geo-politics. I am sure Dr Paul is aware that ethnicity is not even a static phenomenon. Ethnic groups change through time in complex ways. Of course, it is natural to belong to a category or group of people that are considered to be significantly different from others in terms of culture (dialect, religion, traditions, etc.) and even physical characteristics (colour of skin, body shape, etc.), however, it is necessary, within a defined entity, and in the interest of common survival or goals, to suspend one's own chauvinistic views in order to truly understand larger problems affecting the interests of all of the diverse groups that have been wedded together by geographical location and of course by a deliberate union of male and female in such a location. My point was to create the awareness that the region was being used to instigate tension in the north. A quiet revolution being brewed, one that challenges us as a people as well as the blossoming of our mutual co-operation. The sum total of my submission was that we really need consensus bridges of understanding and cooperation in the north if we are to play any significant role in future Nigeria. That was the obvious reason why I opened the cage and reduced the concept of the "Middle Belt" as an economic advantage only. A well-developed middle belt is obviously a plus to the north and Nigeria, and must be welcome. Dr Paul has made other assertions that I really wanted to gladly clarify. Unfortunately ANNIC is not the platform, but surely in my forthcoming book "The Reality of a New Dawn" backed with facts. Please allow me one more sentence. There is nothing in this disagreement that compromises my respect for Dr. Paul, and for his knowledge of history.

Dr. BJ Adamu