*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf*
In ethnically heterogeneous Nigeria, contest for privilege and patronage among the different ethno-political groups is constant, and any presumed disadvantage is perceived as deriving from the malevolence of the contending groups. So, the spokesperson of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, was reported by Sodiq Omolaoye, in a story titled “We regret voting Tinubu, won’t repeat mistake in 2027, Northern Elders fume,” in The Guardian (Lagos), to have declared on 9 April, 2024: “The North made a mistake in voting Bola Tinubu to the presidency in 2023, and it is unlikely that they will repeat the same error in future.” Suleiman was also reported to have said: “They will prioritise someone who is more inclusive, less controversial, and more aligned with the interests of all regions.”
The Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, was reported by Leadership.ng to have reacted indignantly, in a 13 April, 2024 story by Tarkoo David titled “Northern elders, a burden to the region – Matawalle.” The Minister was quoted as saying: “The so-called NEF is more or less a political paperweight trying to embark on a destructive journey that will bring the North to disrepute for the group’s personal and selfish gains.” He was said to have further noted: “The group is seeking to erode other people’s rights in order to be recognised or made relevant in the scheme of things despite the failure of their sponsored candidates in the 2023 general elections.”
The Minister also charged: “The NEF has not deemed it fit to seek audience with Mr. President to discuss issues affecting the Northern region despite the numerous challenges facing the region as rightly highlighted by the president and being addressed by him.” Moreover, he was said to have observed: “The group is yet to visit any of the ministers dealing with issues of security, agriculture, water resources, police affairs, education, health, budget, foreign affairs, or any head of security agencies in the country so far for firsthand knowledge of government programmes and actions.” He was also reported to have asked rhetorically: “So, who is the NEF to want to undermine the president’s victory and even threaten to unseat him?”
It was in these circumstances, among other ethnic, regional and economic challenges, that a group of Nigerians declared that they had scheduled protests from 1 to 10 August, 2024. The organisers tagged the proposed protests “10 Days or Rage” or “#EndBadGovernance.” From the rhetoric of the organisers, the Federal Government of Nigeria perceived the scheduled protests as an undemocratic scheme to topple the democratically-elected Tinubu administration. As scheduled, the protests took off on the first day of August, and it saw unsettling vandalism, arson and killings in Northern Nigeria.
In a 4 August, 2024 interview with ARISE News, Ahmad Sajoh, Former Adamawa State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, said: “[W]hat played out was not a perception of Asiwaju by the North. What played out is a clear indication of the abdication of the responsibilities [of] we, the Northern elites. … We have abdicated our role and responsibilities to empower our young people. We’ve allowed a large army of uneducated, out-of-school children walking about in the streets, without homes, without families, without imbibing any values … And, imagine, when they broke into the National Library in Kano, they took away everything except books; not one book was taken by anybody. That tells you that … their direction is totally different from whatever you’re thinking of. We have neglected education in Northern Nigeria.”
Speaking further about these children, Sajoh said, “They have been the reservoir from where insurgents have been recruiting their army. They have been the reservoir from where bandits and kidnappers have been recruiting their army. … So, this is the kind of people we’re breeding in Northern Nigeria. … It’s a wake-up call to every Northern elite … that if we do not turn around this situation, if we do not address our out-of-school children, if we do not address the absence of skills in our children in Northern Nigeria, if we do not address the problems of unemployment by people who are uneducated, we will end up with a bigger crisis than we are facing.”
In a TikTok video which has been circulating widely for some time now, Vice-President Kashim Shettima recounted his friend’s story: “His wife and driver were driving through Kano City. And some young men came out and broke the windscreen of the car and told them in Hausa ‘Shegu, ku na jin dadi, mu mu na wahala’ (‘Bastards, you’re enjoying, we’re suffering.’) And those young men did not run away. It was my friend’s wife and driver that scampered away. And very soon, very soon, we’ll reach that boiling point unless we wear our thinking caps and work for the people.” How prophetic, considering the daring attempt by the protesters to overwhelm the security personnel and enter the Kano State Governor’s Lodge! And, how prophetic, considering the Kaduna protesters defiantly climbing and standing on top of a moving police Armoured Personnel Carrier and hanging on to its front, sides and back!
Moreover, in a 6 August, 2024 interview on the ChannelsTV programme “Politics Today” with Seun Okinbaloye, Shehu Sani, former Senator representing Kaduna Central, said: “[T]he new dimension … was that a day before the last protest, money was shared to youths, and then Russian flags were also shared. That shows that the whole intent of the protest is not simply about the policies and programmes of the government or objection to the removal of subsidy, but there was an attempt to create an atmosphere where there would be an overthrow of the government. And when you have this kind of situation, you would see that there is someone writing a script for anarchy, lawlessness, and disorder.”
Shehu Sani had earlier on 4 August, 2024 introspectively said in a post on his Facebook page titled “The North; After blaming others let’s probe ourselves”: “Most public schools are free, our young ones still don’t want to go to school. … Most parents in rural areas hand over their children to a religious teacher in the city and the religious teacher depends on the children to beg or steal in order to feed him and his family. For ethnic, religious and sectional reasons, we protected, defended, praised and refused to hold to account all our kinsmen who led the country at every wasted opportunity for over five decades. The bandits and terrorists that kill and kidnap our people and [prevent] our farmers from going to their farms and [prevent] our children from going to school are not from any country or from the South of the country; they came from our homes and from our families up North.”
In a 25 September, 2023 article titled “The North and Tinubu’s appointments” in his column in Nigerian Tribune, Lasisi Olagunju noted: “President Bola Tinubu gave our country’s Minister of Defence and Minister of State, Defence to the North; he gave the North Minister of Police Affairs and Minister of State, Police Affairs; he gave the North Minister of Education and Minister of State, Education; he gave the North Minister of Agriculture and Food Security and Minister of State, Agriculture and Food Security. Again; he gave the North the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare plus Minister of Steel Development and Minister of State, Steel Development. To the North, again, Tinubu gave Minister of Water Resources and Minister of State, Water Resources. I can go on and on … No part of the South has that privilege of having ‘couplet’ ministers managing key sectors. It is double, double blessing for the North. I don’t think any president has ever done that.”
Olagunju also observed that with these North-located strategic appointments, it could be argued that “the cluster pattern is the President’s way of ticking problems and attaching them to localised solutions.” He then asks whether with these strategic appointments, the North “should … still have the mouth to complain of lack of official attention to its endemic insecurity? … [S]hould it still rummage for policies that will wean it off the blight of mass illiteracy and of having uncountable millions of out-of-school-children? … [S]hould we ever hear it lament high incidences of child and maternal mortality and epidemics of preventable diseases? The whole of the agriculture ministry is ceded to the North; the entire Water Resources ministry belongs to the North. We wait to see how it will use these to feed its dying, hungry poor.”
Specifically regarding the problem of insecurity in the North, Usman Yusuf, a Professor and vocal member of NEF, said on 16 March, 2024 in an ARISE News The Morning Show: “We have a Vice-President, No. 2, who is from the North. We have a Speaker of the House, who is No.4, who is from the North. We have an SGF who is from the North. We have the senior-most military officer who is from the North. We have all the Ministers of Defence from the North. We have the Minister of Police from the North. We have the National Security Adviser from the North. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would look at us and say, ‘You guys have no excuse not to bring peace to your land.’ So, it is up to us to look at ourselves in the mirror, we Northerners, especially those of us in government, and lock the door and say, ‘People, how do we take care of these problems?’”
A 30 June, 2024 article by Suleiman A. Suleiman sombrely titled “The North in tatters” in Daily Trust outlined the bases of the Northern crisis: “First, an incline in religiosity has combined paradoxically but seamlessly with a precipitous decline in moral values right from the family level. Second, the traditional institutions, previously firm epicentres of Northern society, have been degraded by politics and the narrow-minded political ambitions of a few. Third, education, which should be a prized heritage of this very society, is either priced out of the reach of millions or lost its real value among many who have it. And where personal integrity was the default currency of all social transactions in Northern Nigeria to the envy and admiration of other Nigerians, money is the new god, such that people do just about anything in pursuit of it.”
In this article, the focus has been on the North, especially considering the cataclysmic and yet ominous turn of events in the region during the “Days of Rage” protests. This however does not mean that the South does not have its own serious or related problems. In fact, the South needs introspection as much as the North does; and the growing introspective consensus in the North may even provide an emulatable template for our Southern compatriots.
