By Ikechukwu Amaechi ONE of the most remarkable happenings in the Muhammadu Buhari presidency is the rate at which sundry Northern g...
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
ONE of the most remarkable happenings in the Muhammadu
Buhari presidency is the rate at which sundry Northern groups are giving other
Nigerians ultimatums. They are either dishing out quit notice or demanding
compensation for imaginary crimes. In the wake of the president’s recent
genocidal threat on Ndigbo and the backlash against his dot in a circle
rhetoric, the Armageddon threats have quadrupled.
Many of the incidents for which these ultimatums are given
are contrived as any discerning Nigerian can easily decipher. Unfortunately,
the target audience of such spurious narratives are not discerning and the idea
is to incite them to violence.
Last week, the Northern Consensus Movement, NCM, hitched an
inglorious ride on the rickety ultimatum wagon threatening genocide.
“We have done it in the past, we will do it again,” Awwal
Abdullahi, president of the group, intoned gravely, albeit boastfully, at a
press conference on Thursday, June 17.
And what was his grouse? Abdullahi said Northerners were the
economic heart of Nigeria, an apparent pushback to those he claimed were calling
them parasites. Fair enough.
It will be incorrect to say that any part of the country
contributes absolutely nothing to the commonwealth.
But to pivot such assertion on lies, a deliberate attempt to
wheedle the unwary, is unacceptable.
Abdullahi claimed that the North owns the country’s oil
wealth because crude “was discovered and harnessed with Northern Nigeria sweat
and money”. “The money of groundnut pyramids and cotton was used to research,
discover and build the refineries that some other parts of Nigeria are claiming
to be their personal property,” he said. It is interesting to note how the
story of who owns Nigeria’s oil is mutating in the North.
At a Northern Leaders Conference in 2014, Dr. Usman Bugaje claimed that Nigeria’s crude
oil is actually owned by the North.
“Whatever mileage you get in the sea, according to the
United Nations Law of the sea, is a measure of the land mass that you have;
that is what gives you the mileage into the sea … and the land mass of this
country that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is
because of that 72 per cent of the land mass of this country, which is the
North,” Bugaje claimed.
“The investment came from the Nigerian state and the
territory belongs to the Nigerian state …. What they claim is offshore oil is
actually the oil of the North …. There are no oil producing states.”
But had Abdullahi restricted himself to the issue of oil, as
incorrect as his claim is, perhaps, there would have been no need to comment.
He didn’t. Instead, he claimed further that “those that got any education from
the South-South, Southwest and Southeast got that from the Northern economy,
from our own money, from the Northern sweat.” So, Northerners are so charitable
that they used their hard-earned resources to educate Southerners but not their
own. Interesting!
I don’t know how old Abdullahi and his co-travellers on this
boulevard of delusion are. But they need to be reminded that the Igbo State
Union set up schools which they exclusively funded in Northern cities such as
Jos and Kano in the colonial era. Many Northern leaders acquired their early
education in such schools.
It may also interest them to know that the Eastern Region government was the only
government in the First Republic and, indeed, in the world that invested 45 per
cent of its revenues in education.
As Prof. Tekena Tamuno, historian and former Vice Chancellor
of the University of Ibadan, noted in an article, Igbo are the makers of modern Nigeria: “The
East had the highest number of schools; the highest school enrollment; the
broadest penetration of medical services; and the best modern road network in
West Africa.”
Indeed, according to the Harvard Review, between 1954 and 1964, Eastern Nigeria was
not only the “fastest growing economy in the world”, it outpaced countries like
China, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. What stopped the renaissance was the
civil war and the fact that Southeast has remained part of a country where in
the 21st century when other countries
are exploring the Mars, its leaders are engrossed with cattle routes.
Truth be told, the North has never fed Ndigbo. Neither
yesterday, nor today. And definitely not tomorrow. But had Abdullahi stopped at this infantile
hallucination, this article would still have been unnecessary.
He didn’t. Instead, without any shred of evidence, he
accused Southerners of genocide against Northerners in the South.
But his narrative was full of contradictions. In one breath,
he lamented “the number of our people that are being killed and property being
destroyed in the South-South, Southwest and Southeast.” Yet, in another breath,
he claimed that “the number of Igbos that are resident in Kano and Kaduna alone
are far greater than the number of Northerners that reside in the entire
South-South, Southwest and Southeast.”
He sought compensation for Northerners whose properties have
been destroyed in the South, yet, he acknowledged that “all our people in the East are either tomato
sellers, wheelbarrow pushers, okada riders, suya makers, shoe shiners and
finger nail cutters. Those are the northerners mostly resident in the
South-South, Southwest and Southeast.”
He also admitted that “the billions of investment of Yorubas
and Igbos in Kaduna and Kano alone is far greater than the investment of the
entire northerners in the South-South, Southwest and Southeast if we remove BUA
and Dangote who are international businessmen.”
Asking rhetorically, how much investment do we (Northerners)
have in the East, he provided further insight: “But if you go to Kaduna and
Kano and other parts of Nigeria, an Igbo owns a personal house, with C-of-O; he
owns a “skyrocketed” building that he is renting out to even Northerners
themselves. You go to the remotest village, you find him owning a farm of his
own, personal farmland. You don’t have any Northerner owning a house in the
South-South, Southwest and Southeast.”
If he knows this much, who then are these Northerners
whose lives are being destroyed in the
South? What property does a tomato seller, wheelbarrow pusher, okada rider,
shoe shiner and finger nail cutter possess that an Igbo will waste his time
destroying?
Then Abdullahi thundered: “We are passing this message to
the Federal Government, the Eastern and Western state governors that every
Northerner that has been killed, every property of every Northerner that has
been destroyed, we are saying that the governments of those states that those
incidents happened must pay our people. You must pay compensation. We will no
longer tolerate the killing of our people, we will no longer tolerate the
destruction of the properties of our people anymore. If not, we have done it in
the past, we will do it again.”
Some Nigerians believe that such fringe groups should be
ignored. I disagree. Not when President Buhari has joined in reminding Ndigbo
how much property they have in the North. Why are northerners so obsessed with
the properties of Ndigbo? Why is the government tacitly endorsing these vile
and incendiary rhetoric? Why are security agencies promoting these dangerous
narratives? Some may have forgotten how in April 2016, the Department of State
Service, DSS, raised an alarm that it had discovered mass graves of
“Hausa-Fulani” residents allegedly abducted and murdered by members of the
Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, in Abia State.
“The Service has uncovered the heinous role played by
members of … IPOB, in the abduction/kidnap of five Hausa-Fulani residents,
namely: Mohammed Gainako, Ibrahim Mohammed, Idris Yakubu and Isa Mohammed Rago
at Isuikwuato LGA in Abia State,” the then DSS spokesperson, Tony Opuiyo, told
bewildered Nigerians.
“The abducted men were later discovered at the Umuanyi
forest, Abia State, where they were suspected to have been killed by their
abductors and buried in shallow graves, amidst fifty (50) other shallow graves
of unidentified persons,” DSS claimed.
Till date, DSS refused to disclose the identities of the
other 45 “victims”. Were they also Fulani herdsmen? They didn’t say.
Apparently, they had achieved their goal which was to incite Northerners
against innocent Igbos living in the North. Why would a government security
agency funded with tax payers’ money play such dangerous games? They answer, as
they say, blows in the wind.
But that pattern has been consistent. Unknown gunmen
breached the security in Imo State and even when Governor Hope Uzodimma insists
that over 70 per cent of the 400 people arrested were non-Igbos, the Police
blamed Igbo youths.
Ahmed Gulak was gruesomely murdered in Owerri. Uzodimma
cried foul, insisting it was political assassination and urged the police to
carry out thorough investigation. Police said there was nothing to investigate,
having caught up with the culprits where they were sharing “onions from the
North” barely one hour after the crime was committed. The alleged assassins,
who were labelled IPOB members were all killed and their bodies burnt beyond
recognition. Case closed! Investigations were concluded even before Gulak was
killed.
Many Northerners believe their own lies. That is, perhaps,
the greatest threat Nigeria faces today because as Fyodor Dostoevsky, the
19th century Russian author and
journalist, once noted: “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie
comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around
him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect
he ceases to love.” That explains the carnage all around us.
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