If we take the Central
Bank of Nigeria to Sokoto, will that translate to wellness for the seat of the
caliphate? The Central Bank of Nigeria recently announced a decision to send
back to Lagos some of its departments. The Federal Airports Authority of
Nigeria (FAAN) also announced a decision to go back to its natural habitat,
which is Lagos. The elites of the north are not happy; they are, in fact,
angry. They allege a plot by the Yoruba, through Bola Tinubu, to under-develop
the north by taking the capital out of Abuja. But what did Lagos lose by having
the Federal Capital moved to Abuja in 1991? What has corporate north gained by having the
nation's capital in Abuja since 1991? Has Abuja's existence closed, by even one inch,
the progress/knowledge gap between the north and Sir Lewis Harcourt's "southern
lady of means"?
People who knew what
Lagos was in 1991 and who know what it is now laugh at insinuations that
Lagos wants Nigeria's capital once more in order to develop itself. With the
capital in Abuja, is there any major investment which Nigeria, Nigerians - and
even foreigners - make that is not Lagos-dependent or determined? Why didn't
Aliko Dangote site his refinery in Kano or Kaduna or even in Abuja?
They are threatening
Bola Tinubu with "consequences" if he goes ahead with the movement of
those agencies to Lagos. Shouldn't they have learnt from the Olusegun Obasanjo
years that you don't threaten an elephant with a cane? On October 3, 2016, I wrote a column with the title ‘Tinubu's dance of the
elephants’. I anchored it on that year's Eid el Kabir celebration and how
Tinubu marked it with deep dance steps. An itinerant band of talking drummers
was in Tinubu's Bourdillon home in Lagos. They sang and gave him drumbeats of
meaning: Òpè ni wón o, won ò mo nkankan/Àjànàkú yo l'ókèèrè wón lo m'óré dání/
Erin k'ojá eran à nf'òpá lù...(They are novices, they don't know anything/
Ajanaku (elephant) emerges from a distance, they went for canes/ The Elephant
is more than an animal you beat with sticks...). Tinubu danced; stopped;
danced, smiled and danced. Those threatening him should go and watch that
video. If they like, they may also read my ‘Tinubu's dance of the elephants’.
Where I encountered
dawn, there is a bird that threatens to leave the forest whenever it is hungry;
it announces its commitment to the forest as soon as its hunger is gone.
Nigeria will never stop having issues that threaten its oneness. When a
northerner is the president, the south demands, stridently, restructuring and
true federalism. That noise is still now because a southern Daniel is holding
court. And it is a shame. When a southerner is in power, the north shouts
marginalization. I listened to the Arise News television interview of Alhaji
Bashir Dalhatu, chairman, Board of Trustees of the Arewa Consultative Forum, on
these issues. He said the north was "apprehensive" over the
relocation of those agencies out of Abuja and was opposed to the decisions. He
described the decisions as a continuation of what started in 1999 by Olusegun Obasanjo (another Yoruba man). Dalhatu
said: "In 1999, part of the ports authority was moved from Abuja to Lagos.
It was not a well-intentioned thing to do at that time..." His interviewer
reminded him that the ports authority should actually be where the ports are.
The ACF chief went on to other things and recalled "other government
actions that have put us backwards like the privatization programme." He
said the north was not positioned to participate in getting the government
enterprises because they were far from "the social wealth." He said
over 80 percent of the businesses that were sold went to the south. Again, was
it not a northerner (Nasir El-Rufai) that was in charge of that programme? When
you are used to being spoon-fed, you would complain when you are asked to feed
yourself. Dalhatu also had issues with recapitalization of banks. He said the
north lost nine banks because it could not raise the required N25 billion to
recapitalize each of them. How is that the problem of the south?
The interviewer asked
Dalhatu why the north always whips up divisive sentiments only when it is out
of power at the centre. You've had Yar'Adua; you've had insular Muhammadu
Buhari for eight years. You've had years and years of north-led military
governments. You thoroughly enjoyed their acts while they were up there in
power. Today you complain about being disadvantaged, you threaten everyone.
Poor eunuch is asked to
thread what he has on his bed, he switches off the light and starts threading a
needle. Of all the problems wrecking the north, should the location of a
federal agency or a department be its leaders' topmost priority? Plateau State
is supposed to be a valuable part of the north. A campaign of mass murder is
being waged against the people there by a pack of pampered wolves from the
north. There has not been a drop of tears from leaders who are crying blue
murder over what is ordinarily FAAN and CBN's internal matters.
There was a time the
north and the east threatened to break up Nigeria if the federal capital was
moved out of Lagos. Today, the descendants of those who wanted Lagos to remain
the federal capital are threatening the descendants of those who championed the
making of what we now know as Abuja. Abuja is a child of the West. History says
this is not just about the Akinola Aguda panel which finished the job in 1976. It goes as far back as the London constitutional conference
of 1953 at which Western Nigeria called for a neutral capital
outside Lagos. The West published a pamphlet which articulated this position:
"A large area of land should be acquired by the Federal Government near
Kafanchan which is almost central geographically, and strategically safe
comparatively, for the purpose of building a new and neutral capital. The new
capital should be built on a site entirely separate from an existing town, so
that its absolute neutrality may be assured. Being the property of the Federal
Government, it would automatically be administered by the Federal Government in
the same way as Washington, D.C. in the USA or Canberra in Australia. Such a
capital would be a neutral place..." (See 'Lagos Belongs to the West', 1953, page 27, cited in Jonathan Moore's 'The Political History
of Nigeria's New Capital'; 1984). The north and Nnamdi Azikiwe's Eastern Nigeria said no to
that proposal. They would have no capital for Nigeria outside Lagos. So many
interesting events later followed that era of intriguing politics. The neutral
place was eventually chosen in 1976 by a government panel made up of majority Yoruba. A
brand new city of gilded beauty was built out of the panel's recommendations;
it was called Abuja and was effectively occupied by the government in 1991. Today, the north owns that 'neutral' Abuja and loves it so
much that it threatens us with "consequences" if every federal toilet
is not located there.
Nigeria is a marriage
of convenience – a marriage in which the partners are married not because they
love each other, but in order to get an advantage (Cambridge English
dictionary). The British did not create Nigeria so that it could work for
Nigerians. It was purely a business decision. They were clear about their
objectives and the reason for forcing cohabitation on two strange fellows.
Have you asked, as I
did, why the British chose the long word, 'amalgamation' to describe what they
did with their two possessions – northern and southern Nigeria – in 1914? Why 'amalgamation' and why not the shorter, simpler word
'unification'? The Economic Times, in a piece, discusses amalgamation as a
business concept. It describes 'amalgamation' as "the merging of two
corporations, destroying both in the process and creating an entirely new entity."
Then, it explains as it asks: "Have you ever played with clay before? Or
water? Or sand? If you have, you might know that putting two pieces of clay
together forms a new piece of clay much bigger than both..." But what are
the prerequisites required for two objects like clay to combine and form the
same but bigger object? The Economic Times says for amalgamation to work, the
two entities must be identical "since we know that only clay and clay
makes clay...two companies while merging should have identical goals...only two
companies dealing with finance can make a financial company..." Were the
entities amalgamated in 1914 "clay and clay"? Were the aspirations of the
two the same?
In 1912 (two years before the 1914 amalgamation), there were series of meetings
in London of the Royal Geographical Society for briefings on the kind of
country they wanted to create. At those events, attendees thoroughly discussed
and analyzed the profitability of the country. They looked at the figures,
identified the loss centre and the profit zone. Because the proposed one
Nigeria was a business for them, they examined all the 'feasibility studies'
they had commissioned. The man who was being prepared to rule over the new
country as Governor-General, Lord Lugard, at one of the meetings, referred to
the "two Nigerias" as his country's "possession." Lugard
called the attention of the meeting to an earlier report which showed that "the
revenue from Customs in Southern Nigeria had increased from one million to two
million (pounds) in five years" and that "land revenue of Northern
Nigeria had increased from £16,000 to £460,000 in eight years." These figures, Lugard said,
"show that the country has enormous possibilities if only the merchants
and the people of the country itself will realize the outstanding fact that it
is all one country, and each part of it is interested in the development of the
other..." They discussed all those details and more. If you want more than
I have told here, you can read Frederick Lugard, Hasketh Bell and Wyndham
Dunstan's 'Northern Nigeria Discussion' published in the August 2012 edition of The Geographical Journal. But the summary of
that and other sessions was that the two unrelated 'businesses' would yield
better if they were merged into 'one Nigeria.'
But, can a hut harbour
rats and harbour snakes at the same time? At the close of the 19th century, the
British spoke of "the three Nigerias". By the beginning of the 20th
century, they spoke of "the two Nigerias." On January 1, 1914, Lord Lugard's amalgamation speech contained an admission
that what was being made to become one were two distinct countries. Where I
come from, we say Ilé ò ní gba eku kó tún gba ejò. The translation is the
logical answer to that question about rats cohabiting with snakes. The British,
in 1914, built a house for snakes and rats.
There has never been,
and there may never be, a national consensus on anything that will benefit the
country. In the house of commotion, the only product they brew is chaos. The
Merriam Webster dictionary says amalgamation "refers to a blending of
cultures." Since 1914, a clash of cultures and civilizations has robbed us of the
much-needed peace and progress as a country. We roll from one crisis to another
and waste generations after generations fighting friends and foes over
inanities. PwC Nigeria on Thursday released its 2024 economic outlook. Its projection is that
poverty levels will increase to 38.8% in the new year. I have not heard our ethnic
champions express worry on how this will impact the vulnerable mass of the
people. They have erections only when the vital interests of the power elites
are not served. The PwC Nigeria report says further that "security
spending in the past nine years amounted to N14.8 trillion." A simple check will tell us
that the collapse of everything in the north accounts for 80 percent of that
spending. The report laments that "despite increased spending, insecurity
remains a challenge and jeopardises national stability, negatively affects
economic activities and undermines investor confidence.” The N14.8 trillion expenditure has been money spent without
results. And that is because the last two decades have been years of
self-destruction in the north.
Bob Marley asks you to
"open your eyes and look within." The prophet of Reggae also asks us
to "light up the darkness." The north has been fighting itself while
it blames others. Its ways have made for it a deadly, cancerous colada of urban
and rural terrorism, unremitting illiteracy and grinding poverty. Northern
leaders do not see the odious choices they made (and still make) as the real
enemy; the enemy they know is anyone who tells them the truth. Some words of
Socrates should ring for them – and for us: "We can easily forgive a child
who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of
the light." We will keep talking.
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