Arewa and its politics of survival 

BY 

TONY NWANKWO

Sokoto State, the undisputed home of the caliphate chose a befitting motto for their people: "Born to Rule". Why not? They are descendants of Uthman Dan Fodio who led a jihad from Northern Africa down here, killing, maiming, pillaging and emasculating the owners of the land `the Talakawas’ and installing his cousins and children as their rulers. They have kept their booty to this day. They took the whole of the core North to Maiduguri, but were violently resisted by the Christians of the Benue Plateau. They have continued to hold on to the territories they overran centuries back.

Confronted by Western civilisation, the Arewa leader at the time, Sir Ahmadu Bello, snubbed independence from the British in 1956, delaying the country’s independence by four years. A nationalist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who worked with the leaders of Arewa, accepted a ceremonial presidential position while Tafawa Balewa became the Prime Minister. And ever since, the country had been conquered in many ways. The Arewas have systematically been re-arranging the nation and its peoples while holding faithfully to the conquered lands. In 1964, for instance, Tafawa Balewa, capitalised on a political misunderstanding in the West to declare a State of Emergency in the region, the purpose being to silence an over-bearing and uncompromising Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The man was later arrested, prosecuted and jailed and the region was quieted.

Then came what ordinarily was a patriotic coup plot to remove corrupt politicians of the era and install a sane polity. The coup led by Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu failed, but the Arewas were not going to allow investigation, because they never wanted rulership to shift. It took six months for soldiers, mostly from the North to murder their supreme commander, Aguiyi Ironsi and his host Adekunle Fajuyi at Ibadan in retaliation of Balewa and others killed in January 1966, coup. Not done, soldiers unleashed terror on their colleagues in the barracks in the territories they were in majority in Northern Nigeria, killing and maiming their colleagues and raping their wives.

While soldiers led the mayhem, civilians of the Arewa group moved in to the streets and made mince meat of those who lived within their enclave. Pregnant women were disemboweled and unborn babies slaughtered and roasted, so were thousands of men, women and children of Eastern origin, whose only sin was that they shared a tribe with the coup leaders, the fact that coup plotting was never a matter to be discussed in village meetings, notwithstanding. Historians are yet to comprehensively assess the shameful, ungodly and irresponsible psyche of a generation who killed the defenceless for fun.

Bloodied but unbowed, the Easterners, led by Odumegwu Ojukwu catalogued their injuries and proposed a slight withdrawal to enable the murderers to come to terms with their sin. But the swords dripping with blood were still in the sky, roaring to go and others were willing to join in. Even the Yorubas of the West, who were the initial targets were willing collaborators in the genocide that saw over a million innocent armless civilians, many of them in the prime of their lives, murdered, bridges were blown apart, structures destroyed and Igbo properties pillaged. The Nigeria/ Biafra war was never a matter of resource control as our modern- day rulers, who would prefer to stand history on its head will let us hear.

To achieve their objective, the Arewa people recruited leaders of the South-South, led by Ken Saro-Wiwa and others from the region. Ken Saro-Wiwa, a playwright and environmentalist, saw the opening, partly to free his people from the fabled Igbo oppressors whose offence in the Nigerian enterprise are their hardwork and their flair for competition. He succeeded to an extent, but was later consumed by the forces that initially cultivated him. One recalls that in 1979, while on a campaign trail, a television interviewer had asked President Shehu Shagari what he thought of the mineral resources of the Niger Delta. The man educated his listeners that Nigeria had not always depended on oil. According to the man who later became President: Nigeria had relied on the groundnut pyramids of the North, the palm produce of the East and the cocoa of the West, and that oil was a resource which with time had come. The devastation caused by exploration and exploitation of oil, obviously mattered little, neither does it matter to the anti-Igbo campaigners of the Rivers people that the 13 per cent derivation they currently enjoy was resisted by those who they now wish to fraternize with.

Now, feeling uncomfortable that compared to that of his boss. The Igbos recall how Ebitu Ukiwe was unceremoniously removed as Chief of General Staff by General Ibrahim Babangida.

All along, the Yorubas were sitting on the fence, hoping that with the decimation of the Igbos, the spoils could be theirs. Their leaders reneged on their promise to stand for justice at the outset of the Biafra crisis when they reasoned that a defeated Igbo race would be to their own ultimate advantage. Afterall, the twenty pounds general refund for Biafrans, the indigenisation decree and such other policies were intended to emasculate and impoverish the Igbo people in the Nigerian state. But those who formulated these policies must be surprised how much the Igbos have gotten.

For half a century, the Arewas have shown that when the issue is political power, they know no friends, they don’t pretend to have any. They are born to rule. The Yorubas got that message clearly in 1993, after one of their own, Moshood Abiola, was told in an unmistakable term that though he could win in a free and fair election, he was not fit to rule. His beautiful, brave wife, Kudirat went with the struggle, he too was murdered even when the man who kept him in custody had died. Others who complained openly were either killed, threatened or detained, many went on exile. The late call for a Sovereign National Conference is that the snake that bite the Igbos had crossed a tail on the path of the Yorubas.

All these could have been history had the Arewas who proudly told millions of Nigerians that they installed Olusegun Obasanjo as President not been disappointed by the resolve of the man to be his own. He had seen them all. But he is keeping his promise. Probes are not going round, there are still sacred cows. The Sharia issue is a case in point. But these people are an impatient lot. They believe they have given Obasanjo so much time, and they want power back in 2003. And the Igbos, they are their own enemies. The Jos convention in 1998, is a true pointer to the spoiler their own can muster. There, prominent Igbo chiefs who wanted to be President dusted their Hausa language, disgracing themselves in the process. They are still around. In under sixteen months, there had been three Senate Presidents, and none was removed without the consent of Igbos in the Senate.

But then, the oppression has gone round. The Igbos have shown they can’t be wished away, and like Ike Nwachukwu said recently; "only those who wish us well will be our friends", and add this to the pronouncement of elder statesman, Chief Smart Ndem Okpi, who advised thus: "The Igbos will get nowhere, until they know how to respect themselves".

Like Joshua was told as he made to the Promised Land: "Today, I take the shame of Egypt away from you". One day, the Lord will take away the shame of defeat away from Biafra, and the people will be free from the oppression that the Nigerian nation had held. Maybe then, they and the nation they occupy may know peace.