The Arewa cancer
By
Cancer, from all reports and from physical manifestations, is a very debilitating illness. I have read some reports that have put its malignancy in no doubt. It attacks all sorts of places - the eye, the mouth, the colon. The women particularly hate it. Does it not attack them even in their high points - the breast; the cervix?
Its virulence is such that when you think you are coming on top of it by donating part of your anatomy, it rears its ugly head somewhere else and then the battle starts afresh.
The intention of this article is not to write about the dreaded disease of cancer. I am the most incompetent to do so. I hold no medical degree nor do I have the medical training. I am merely using it in allusion to the political situation on the ground in Nigeria today.
If care is not taken, the Arewa cancer will devastate all of us; it will put paid to this country despite all our pretences to the contrary.
Who can say that all is well with this country? The fact that all is not well with us is being demonstrated in all the aspects of our country’s life. The root cause of our economic failure; the bane of our social dislocation has been the inappropriate political system we run. From an agreed federalism, we had gone through military dictatorships, through oligarchy. No one can truthfully define the political system that we run today, regardless of whatever name we give to it.
Of course, it is natural that a system like the one we run, not based on consensus, would give no satisfaction; the tenseness that we experience; the apprehension that has become our daily fare can only result.
The Arewa Cancer may be undated; but it has an history of longevity that dates back to many years. It hibernates when some temporary conditions intervene like when its members are in full control and dictate the political pace; it manifests when it loses political ground as it is now. Yet no hypocritical group exists anywhere that I know that can match its Machiavellian streak. Like the cancer, it (Arewa) is infinitely ingenuous.
Anyone who intends to deal with cancer with kid gloves have found that the dividend can only be frustration. And that is the way I feel as I write this about the fox called Arewa. It has found, like the fox in the Yoruba folk lore, that the red crown on the cockerel is not fire but succulent meat after all.
Most people think that getting over our political problem is a simple matter of getting the ground rules right. I was one of them but since the year the diminutive Dan Masanin Kano let us into the working of the Arewa mind in his Kaduna lecture, I had changed my mind. Arewa would do everything in its power to collect power and retain it.
Maitama Sule, has not recanted publicly his thesis that the North is born to rule and that the rest of us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for the pleasure of the master race.
When news was abroad that some leading monarchs were trying to put our ship of state on an even keel, I thought we might yet succeed in calming the waves for this country. My conviction did not come from the initiative of the Ooni of Ife; most Yoruba have written him off as a friend of the North - not for the sake of friendship but for the sole purpose of "buttering his bread". Many thought he would sell the race down the track. Yet we all gave him the benefit of the doubt; after all something good did come out of Israel. The Good was Jesus.
If the quality of people that gathered in Abuja a few days back in the guise of leaders of thought can be pooh-hoohed, I want anyone to show me a better quality. Senator Abraham Adesanya - Afenifere or not, is the generally acclaimed leader of the Yoruba; Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN) is a jewel in the crown of the Igbo annotating quality in intellect and professionalism and encapsulating the tradition of his people.
Paul Unongo, boasted that he owned the Benue, not in the manner of a landowner over the serfs, but in the political understanding of a man who represents the ethos of his people; Solomon Lar, by common consent owns the Plateau in the political defining of Paul, the Unongo.
Someone expressed surprise at the passion exhibited by usually placid David Dafinone; Senator of the Republic. Dafinone of course is acknowledged as a brilliant man. Otherwise he would not have gone that far. Don’t people say that still waters run deep? For those who do not know: Dafinone is an alumnus of the school: Abeokuta Grammar School, renowned for making gentlemen and sportsmen -not only in the physical sense but also in the sense of spirit of contest. Beko and Fela are representatives of a fine tradition of rising against injustice. Dafinone was before their time at the Grammar School.
Horsefall might have been made nondescript by his years in the civil service but he has the ears of his people. I am however surprised that Suleiman, Maitama, who is usually a man of candour exhibited the opposite at the Leaders of Thought meeting. He reverted to splitting hairs and speaking from both sides of the mouth. I cannot see what he contributed to the solving of the problem in hand.
He reverted us back to the discredited debate of cultural democracy; the kind that Babangida ordered us with when he designed to take us on a merry-go-round. Rather than untie the Godian knot, he added a few of his own. His North-East counterpart was no help either. It was clear that the duo-representing and not representing their regions - were merely performing according to a script written at Arewa House.
And I wonder where M.D. Yusuf, the new leader of Arewa was. I understand he said he got his invitation late. Which again is not true. I have been reliably informed that not only was the letter of invitation sent on time, the Arewa submitted the names of its representatives which represented their North and those names did not take into account the true representatives of the Middle Belt.
They were to be represented by proxy. This was pointed out to them. Arewa wanted to speak for the whole North. And that casts a lot of suspicion on the posture of the cop who had the chance of being believed but has now flopped it.
No one can dispute that it is not well with the Republic. Every part of it is complaining of one thing or the other. Even the North is complaining. Everybody agrees that something has to be done about it. Now, when a meeting has re-emphasized the ills; underscored the need to do something about it, a part of the country just throws a spanner into the works. Like cancer.
The bane of this country today is its constitution; its National Assembly is a creature of that constitution. For anyone to say that that troubling creature will be the arbiter is not just a joke, it is a very sick one indeed. That is what the North wants because it is in its favour. That is what the rest of the country deprecates because it minimizes their importance as stakeholders in the union.
The Arewa attitude is in bad faith and its arrogance is odious.
In retrospect, one may find the Orkar position of 1990 not out of tune though brash. And this time around, Arewa will fail. It’s allies, its sustaining force - the Middle Belt now starkly knows it (Arewa) has its own agenda that has nothing to do with its (Middle Belt) welfare or well-being. But with their serfdom. The South-South and the South-East must have been shocked.
The North must be warned about the tick that attaches itself to the dog. It convinces itself that it is killing the dog, yet it will kill the dog alright, but what happens to it after that? Both would be buried together.
If one is not convinced that Arewa action was deliberate before, the question about the quality and the source of finance for the meeting clearly shows its hand. However, if anything, this Northern recalcitrance will make matters worse in the months ahead. The Arewa Cancer will ensure that.
It can be an ill-wind that will blow nobody any good.