It is not today that the North lost the key. The key went missing over 65 years ago, and it’s leaders are still looking for it in the wrong room. Yesterday, the Arewa Consultative Forum rose from a meeting with a resolution to support only a Northerner for the Presidency come 2027. As Dr Reuben Abati said on Arise Television this morning, “the statement is unintelligent and idiotic.”
The point to make really, is that the group believes that the fortunes of people in the North are ultimately better off if a man from its fold becomes president. But nothing can be further from the truth. Buhari, a very popular leader from the North amongst the elites and talakawas has just concluded two four-year terms as president of the federal republic, leaving behind, as in the words of the immutable Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti “sorrow, blood and tears”. In fact the gnashing of teeth today, even among the Northerners is a direct legacy of Buhari’s crass performance as president, during which he seemed unaware of any and everything around him.
Leaders of Northern Nigeria must realize that in the modern era, what sets people and communities apart in terms of economic advantage is not access to power. The answer lies rather in education, expertise and access to information. Many young people in Nigeria today are making a decent living basically from the information that is available to them. Hard work has long been replaced by smart work. The smart phone has become a legitimate wealth building office where millions of Naira are being earned from crypto trading and other legitimate online activities. Not contracts. Not selling of contract papers. Even corruption will soon run out of vogue.
Back in the late 50s some British colonial officer may have advised Northern leaders to push their people into the military. They did exactly that in the belief that the levers of power in Africa would always end up in the hands of the military. For a few decades that came to pass and officers like Generals Yakubu Gowon, Muhammadu Buhari, Sani Abacha and Abdulsallam became leaders of Nigeria. How the North benefitted from this power dominance is left for Northerners themselves to judge. If the North is so impatient to return to power so soon after it came down from the presidency, then Nigerians need to go down on their knees to apologize to the Ibos, who’s only head of state was dragged out of Government House, Ibadan, killed and dismembered on the asphalt road to Lagos no sooner than he assumed that office.
But thankfully, the Ibos have long moved on and carved out a niche for themselves. They drive trade and commerce in Nigeria and have been creating enormous wealth for themselves even though they have been almost permanently out of the leadership of Nigeria. This shows that creating wealth and a good living for one’s people have nothing to do with being in power. It is about locating what people need, solving problems and innovating for a better society. None of these would come to the North without mass education and a deliberate policy to broaden the people’s minds and opening up new perspectives without cultural and religious pull downs.
Tinubu is the president today, and by the way he is Yoruba. So what? Are the Yorubas buying cheaper energy, buying food at cheaper rates or immune from the ontowad vagaries that are the real time realities of people living in Nigeria today? That divisive rhetoric from Arewa Consultative Forum is very shameful and appears to be aimed at blackmailing the president who’s re-election comes up in a couple of years. There probably would have been no ‘One Nigeria’ today, if the North didn’t insist on it. Was their insistence based on the assumption that they would perpetually preside over its affairs? With over 200 million mouths to feed in Nigeria, the North doesn’t need me to suggest that they turn to massive cultivation of food crops to create wealth for its people.
The insecurity that is driving farmers from their farms today is a product of the religious fundamentalism that the leadership encouraged or at best condoned. It is not through far- right ethnicity that the North can find it’s lost key and get it’s groove back. The solution lies in loosening up the entire growth ecosystem in the North and teaching their children that Western education is the key to growth in modern society. The fact is that if being the president of Nigeria was the solution to poverty and deprivation then the wealthiest part of this country should rightly be Northern Nigeria. Truth be told, the North has a lot of work to do to lift it’s poor masses and the solution does not lie in the Presidency.
*Kidzu writes From Calabar.
