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A Broken Mirror: The mirage of the old North or the new Arewa A Rejoinder to MR. Isa Abu Yusuf. By I read with dismay the comment on what I was reported to have said or written by one Isa Abu Yusuf in the Sunday This Day of March 7, 2004. He was supposed to be reacting to my essay titled ‘NEW CAMPAIGN FOR BUHARI: IBB BEWARE’ published in the Daily Independent of March 4, 2004. I stand by everything I said in that piece.
May I use this medium to call Mr. Isa Abu Yusuf’s attention to the well-written piece recently titled, “Awoniyi and the ‘New’ Arewa” by Dr. Wale Adebanwi in the www.gamji.com of February 23, 2004 as a response to what I said about the Mopa Chief, Chief SB Awoniyi, the current Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF)?
May I also use this medium to call Mr. Yusuf’s attention to my essay titled ‘Chief Sunday Awoniyi and his Arewa fantasies published in the www.nigerdeltacongress.com In the above say, I stated as follows: 1. Why it is unnecessary and futile to unite the northern leaders against the south. 2. Why he should not dabble into and personalize the assumed quarrel between Generals Buhari and Babangida, which arose from their contrasting vision for Nigeria. 3. Why Chief Awoniyi should allow the Nigerian people decide and choose on the basis of their vision for Nigeria as and when the time comes and not for the new Arewa to force one on the Nigerian people.
THE OLD NORTH OR NEW AREWA AS ‘A BROKEN MIRROR’ I want to further elaborate on my assertion that the ‘north is a broken mirror’ that no one including Chief SN Awoniyi and the disparate group he heads should try to put together or reinvent. It appears this was where Mr. Yusuf thought otherwise. This is not new with me from my records as a scholar. Mr. Yusuf should go back to the paper that I read in 1976/7. This was at an International Conference on Federalism under the auspices of the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs. My paper was on ‘Representation in a Federal System: States or Ethnic Groups’. I am glad that this paper is still available for anyone to read.
Mr. Yusuf, please go back to this paper in a book on ‘Federalism’ from this conference edited by Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, Dr. Patrick Dele Cole and Dr. Walter Ofonagoro. My view then as a private citizen and a University Professor from the University of Benin was forcefully argued before we started talking of the buzz word, the ‘Federal Character’. My view then was and still is today that States should be used as the ‘unit of representation’. In that paper, I strongly argued against the use of ‘ethnic groups’, which are units in a plural society. During the discussion, everyone at that conference agreed with me that the Caliphate of Usmanu Danfodio or the north of Lugard or the old western or eastern region or other areas that may be called zones today would be inconsistent with the fact of new states.
In a country where many people claim authorship of what they did not know, do I have right to claim that I was a contributor to the argument that led to the definition of ‘Federal Character’ that takes States in the 1979 Constitution as the units of representation? May I call Mr. Yusuf’s attention to the effort I made in the past to warn some of my former colleagues in the NPC Club at the University of Ibadan and some erstwhile NPC leaders in the Constituent Assembly that the new Turks from the north were reading the Nigerian political dynamics wrongly? One recalls that only Mallam Yaya Gusau appreciated what I was saying.
Under the auspices of the Centre for Democratic Studies, I used many fora to educate the political class on what it would take to win election especially the national election. Unfortunately except General Yar’Adua, others in the old north could not grapple with the rational behind the decision of President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida to ‘force’ on the country the two party system in 1989. One would recall that President Babangida’s idea was informed by the nature of ‘political dynamics’ of Nigerian ‘federal system’ predicated on ‘cultural pluralism’. Has that changes today? I’d say no! Do I still believe in the two party system especially at the national level? Of course, I’d say yes! This is an issue that I would like to discuss at another time and occasion.
May I therefore counsel such commentators as Mr. Yusuf that the apostles of ‘one north’ should not mislead those who want to seek political offices at the national level to think that the north could make them so. Such a belief would be inconsistent with the requirements for winning power today at the national level under the democratic process called the ‘geographical spread’. I urge them to reject the wish of the apostles of a new north. They are fixated with the past; they are oblivious to the present and the future. Let me reproduce what I wrote in the essay titled: “Chief SB Awoniyi: Allow the Nigerian People and not ‘His Arewa’ choose between Buhari and Babangida”.
ISSUES IGNORED BY THE ACF LEADERS 1 A FEDERATION OF 36 STATES The leaders of the ACF ought to have known that Nigeria is a federation with 36 states. These states should cultivate their character. They are recognized as the units of representation under the Federal Character provision in the Constitution. Chief Awoniyi is leading a campaign to undermine the states. This is why he should be stopped so that federal system may thrive in Nigeria.
MANY FORMS OF IDENTITY IN NIGERIA There are other forms of identity in the geographical north such as religion, geography, language and ethnicity. The proponents of the myth, ‘we are northerners’ seem to ignore the system of identity in the north. Nigerians were born into one ethnic group or the other. The duty of political leaders is to manage ethnic relations and not to ignore them. It is my counsel that political leaders and government should do something to reduce the political salience of ethnicity, religion and so on and not to exacerbate it. This was what I devoted my life to achieving under the two party system and through the CDS in the past under General Babangida. To me, this is still a possibility.
That mistake of 1977 is being repeated today under the auspices of a Yoruba and a Christian from Kabba for that matter, which is unfortunate. General Yakubu Gown who presided over thirty months of Nigerian civil war should have warned the ACF leaders that they should go their states and be good federalist. It is a pity that Chief Awoniyi and General Gowon from the Middle-Belt and both Christians are using the ACF leaders to mount pressure of the President and the PDP to ignore the existence of the Middle-Belt and the Northern Christian as forms of identity. What surprises me is that Chief SB Awoniyi fought against this in the past. What ha s changed since then?
One would recall how some leaders of the NPC thought of themselves as the authentic leaders of the north and that the newly elected members of the Constituent Assembly including Chief SB Awoniyi from the new states in the north were irrelevant. We from the south especially from the southern minority were told not to deal with the like of Chief Awoniyi as the true leaders of the north from Kwara, Plateau, Benue, Gongola and Niger states were at home. This was wrong then and Chief SB Awoniyi said so then. Why is he working against what he believed in, in the past? He now wants to be ‘more royal than the king’, more Fulani than those who had the Fulani Empire.
3 30 POLITICAL PARTIES IN NIGERIA There are 30 political parties in the country today that are supposed to be national in scope and program. One is still to see one of the parties calling itself the party founded to advance the interests of the north. The ACF leaders are ignorant of the political dynamics in a plural society like Nigeria. They are oblivious to the interplay of democratic forces and the use of political parties to become the President of Nigeria. Is Chief Awoniyi asking the former Chairman of ACF, Alhaji MD Yusuf and Alhaji Balarabe Musa to wind up their political parties? Is Chief Awoniyi asking the Nigerians from his ‘north’ to subscribe to one political party?
4 TO BE A NATIONAL LEADER DEFIES NORTH AND SOUTH ETC. The politicians from the different parts of the north are staking their reputation to lead the Nigerian state in 2007. Does Chief Awoniyi appreciate that it would be a colossal mistake to make the reliance on the geographical north the basis of their political activity? This could be a recipe for political disaster. These politicians should speak out.
5 OBVIOUS DISTORTIONS IN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT It would appear that during the 200th anniversary of the Jihad of 1804 His Royal Highness, the Emir of Kano seemed to be equating the Sokoto Caliphate created by the Fulani with the north created by Lord FD Lugard and ran by the late Sir Ahmadu Bello. (See Daily Trust online of February 23, 2004). This is an obvious distortion of Nigerian history. The Sokoto Caliphate was the area affected by the Jihad of 1804. It only covered the Muslim section and did not apply to the north created by Lord Lugard and later ran by the late Sir Ahmadu Bello. Certainly the Caliphate did not extend to an area called the ‘pagan area’ by Lord Lugard.
The three changes that Lugard effected in the north during his three tours of duty are beyond the territory under the Sokoto Caliphate. This was the history I was taught by the pioneer Nigerian History Professors at the University of Ibadan in the early 1960s. I had since confirmed this independently as a mature person. Those who are interested in this episode should read, Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority (London, 1960).} I hope Mr. Isa Abu Yusuf would take note. I hope he would watch his language. I like healthy debate but not one laced with insult.
We should encourage healthy debate in a democracy. All this craze for unanimity among the leaders of the north in preparation for the 2007 is unhealthy. It is an attempt to deny the Nigerian people the opportunity to learn from their mouths why they did what they did in the past as military political leaders. There is no way this would not come up in a presidential debate if both of them were Presidential candidates.
My view is simple Chief Awoniyi and people like him should encourage Generals Buhari and Babangida at a future date to go the Nigerian people with their visions for Nigeria.
March 2004
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