Times are really hard for the Northern Nigerian political establishment which has "administered" the country for 31 of the 40 years of Nigeria’s independent existence.

For the first time the establishment, like a fish outside water, has found itself in a very unfamiliar terrain: Powerless and not in a position to use the instruments of state for it’s self-aggrandizement, and wastage of the limitless opportunities availed to it. Nigeria could have been launched into becoming a first rate nation considering our God given blessing of abundant resources, both human and natural. But alas, the opportunities were squandered

The Northern Nigerian political establishment, for the purpose of fairness, can be categorized into various groups:

Those who were at the helm of affairs as heads’ of state and did well or at least worked hard. And whatever shortcoming during their leadership tenure, are probably due to human frailties and not an orchestrated plan of evil.

Those who, as chiefs’ of state, were evil or incompetent or both and Nigeria came out the worst for their periods in office.

Yet still there are those who served, not as heads’ of State, but in positions of authorities as Governors, Federal Commissioners, Ministers, Special Advisers etc. Within these group also can be found those who served sincerely and to the best of their abilities without betraying the trust of the office in which they served and were required to execute. But there is a large cadre within this subset that really screwed-up Nigeria – They were corrupt, profoundly incompetent and except for nepotism, should never have been allowed near these offices which they were supposed to execute in trust for us and our posterity.

The object of this article is to examine those periods, in Nigeria’s history, that person’s of Northern Nigerian origin were at the helm of affairs with a view to taking an honest, critical look to see where and how, we northerners, went wrong. How it was that northerners, generally acclaimed within the Nigerian political context, as excellent politicians and people of high moral rectitude come to be so despised politically. How is it that the Northern Political establishment found itself out in the proverbial cold? And how, can Northern Nigeria redeem its’ political reputation so thoroughly trashed by leaders from our regional origin? It is only when the North, especially led by it’s current crop of highly educated youth, look itself honestly in the face, do a thorough soul searching, show contrite disposition and accept the truth. That some of the leaders from our region have bungled critical opportunities, can we win back the respect and political admiration that we have traditionally enjoyed from our fellow compatriots.

Further, we must accept that some leaders of northern origin indeed acted in an outright irresponsible manner, and we Northerners must resolve never to allow such to occur again.

This is especially critical in view of the ground swell of noise from a potpourri of interlopers masquerading as defenders of Northern political interest, with the hope that they might be able to pull another act of subterfuge on us. This attitude in my opinion is sine qua non to any talk of "reconciliation" between all component parts of the Nigerian Nation in order to move the nation forward. Particularly in view of the ongoing "battle", between the centrist majority (northern and southern) and the extremist minority (northern and southern), for the very essence of the soul of our dear nation’s existence as one, indivisible entity.

I shall also attempt to point out that, despite what some people of other regional origins may believe through misinformation or otherwise, not all northerners are culprits to the charges of corruption. Or for that matter are uneducated, or lazy, or undeservedly rich, or attain whatever level of relative success in their lives through nepotism. Hence it will, for instance, help in our national discourse if the rhetorical hyperbole coming from the Lagos-Ibadan press axis is toned down. That is the only way we Nigerians of different ethnic, regional and religious background can rationally talk to one another with a view to coming to a mutual consensus about the best way for the component parts of the nation to live together in mutually beneficial and complementary harmony.

A lot has been written about the virtues of the first generation of Northern Nigeria’s political leaders especially the likes of the Late Sardauna of Sokoto, the Late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Late Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, the Late Mallam Aminu Kano etc. and I will not bore readers with repeating most. Nonetheless, it will be note worthy to point out, with no fear of contradiction, that the period in which they – especially the Sardauna at the regional level and Sir Balewa at the federal level – led, can be regarded as the golden age of Northern Nigeria’s political glory. These was the period when Northerners in politics were revered by their peers and their opinions highly regarded even if not agreed to by contemporaries because they were totally patriotic and passionate to their causes. During this golden age, other regions will preferentially rather "do business" with the North politically, even if they disagree with it, than do business with other regions. The leaders from the North during this period, are respectable and, integrity is an honor they live by.

They were incorruptible and had the best interests of their constituencies at heart. Politics for them is not a personal wealth-making endeavor, as it is the case with most of the later generation of leaders of Northern Nigerian extraction, but a call to leadership and service. The guiding principle of these leaders’ are: Duty, Honor, and Country.

These same statements can not, regrettably, be made without exception about the subsequent generation of leaders of Northern Nigerian extraction both at regional and state levels. To varying degrees, the progress that the first generation of Northern Nigerian leaders achieved for the region and the nation at large were allowed to waste and in most cases reversed.

General Yakubu Gowon for instance presided over the initial period of the Nigerian oil boom that was not put to concrete foundational use. I am not in any way, shape or form suggesting that the respectable Dr. Yakubu Gowon was a bad or corrupt person.

On the contrary, General Gowon is a fine gentleman of high moral integrity, who was thrust into the position of having to steer the ship of state, at the relatively tender age of 32 years. It was a very difficult time in our history and the work he did during that time will go down as a most enduring legacy.

Nonetheless, the General Gowon period, especially after the civil war, was a period of missed opportunity. General Gowon was badly advised, by the people he came to depend on, in very crucial aspects of the reconstruction of our economy. Especially as it relates to a nation, like ours, coming out of a devastating civil war.

Why on God’s green earth did Gowon give the Udoji Salary award for instance? A student of elementary economics will know that when monetary supply out strips goods and services, as was the case with the Udoji salary award of 1975, inflation kicks in. That ill-advised salary award has forever remained the watershed period in Nigeria’s inflationary history. The money wasted on the award could have been used, for instance, with better planning, to secure the nation’s industrial and agricultural base to create Jobs; a network of roads to feed commerce across the whole nation could have been built; or educational facilities, nation wide, modernized and endowed etc.

It was also during the General Gowon period that the initial seeds of the bitterness and cry of the genuine marginalization presently coming from the South-Eastern Geo-political zone was sown. How does one justify giving every Igbo man 20 pounds, no matter how much money one owned in a bank prior the civil war? Gowon was badly advised on this issue by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then Federal commissioner for Finance.

General Murtala Mohammed was like a comet that shone bright but only momentarily in Nigeria’s dark sky. Unfortunately his life was cut short by the abortive putsch of Lt. Col B. S Dimka.

The period in office by Alhaji Shehu Shagari was a disaster in the classic sense of the word. This was a period when mediocrity thrived, from the top to the bottom of the administration. The very few in the Shagari administration, like Alhaji Umaru Dikko, who were endowed with some intellect regrettably elected to use their talent to defraud the government and the interests of the people their oath of office swore them to protect. Of course they were shown the way out by the Buhari- Idiagbon duo who did their best to right the wrong of the Shagari mal-governance.

However, as honorable as the intentions of the Buhari government were, it still fell a victim of the fundamental fault of military in governance i.e. that military men are, by nature, training and predisposition, not made to run governments. They are supposed to defend the security and territorial integrity of the nation against foreign and domestic enemies. They are practitioners of the art of managed violence and not governance.

Buhari and Idiagbon believed so much in the righteousness of their actions. So much so that individual rights were abridged, with utmost zealotry, and no regard to due process of the law.

A classic example of this is the execution of the 3 drug pushers, one of whose death penalty was imposed retroactively because at the time this drug Pusher committed his offense, drug pushing was not a capital offense in Nigeria. That was very cruel and unusual in view of the finality of a death penalty. You don’t take one’s life that way! It was immoral.

Along with a host of other missteps, Nigerians became disenchanted with the Buhari government and in our usual rambunctious manner, we, led by the press, complained - A lot! Thus, giving IBB the excuse to shove Buhari/Idiagbon aside and started what, in my opinion, could be described as the greatest act of subterfugery and rape on our collective posterity as a nation.

There is no doubt about the fact that Babangida is a clever man, at least so it appears. But as a leader, he was a total failure no matter what parameter people who want to hold brief for him may wish to apply in defending his administration as they tried recently to do in Jos. Particularly when one applies the gold standard that governments are to serve, protect, ensure equal justice before the law and administer to the well being of lives, liberty, property and the posterity of the governed.

IBB cannot rewrite the events of the June 12^th annulment. Nor can he change the fact that it was during his interregnum that corruption was elevated to the level of state-craft. It was also during the Babangida administration that the extremely dangerous and flammable variable of religious intolerance was introduced, full fledged, into the Nigerian political equation. It was the Babangida administration that tried to sneak Nigeria into the organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) as a full member. Worst of all, it was IBB that created the monster called Abacha.

Abacha, more than anything or anybody, is symptomatic of one the major failures of northern leadership, i.e. the tendency to protect and enhance the careers of "our own", no matter how incompetent and mediocre, and no matter how injurious to the overall national interest. But for nepotism, Abacha should never have risen beyond the rank of Major in his army career having repeatedly failed his command and staff college examinations (meaning he does not have the capacity and capability to hold command and staff positions). Only in a dysfunctional system as operated in Nigeria, under northern leadership, could such a soldier rise to command the Army. He nearly ruined the nation but for divine intervention.

The Nation could have been spared of him if he had been retired, as required by Army regulation, after he showed himself to be asinine by repeatedly failing the one examination by which the Military selects officers with higher command aptitude. No wonder, because he was daft, he could not comprehend the economic ramification of taking out billions of dollars from the nation’s banking systems and economy, into rooms in his house and banks all across the world. Nor did he appreciate how perilously close, he drove Nigeria into another civil war.

The synopsis above, coming from a northerner, is not out of self-hate nor is it treachery as some may want to consider it, far from it. In fact, I am very proud of, and loyal to, my Northern Nigerian origin and heritage, and would not change it for anything. Instead, it is an honest attempt to say that we have, in all honesty, had our shot and we did not run the nation as best as it should have. Not because Northerners are inherently incompetent or corrupt, but because those that had the opportunity to lead, are unfortunately incompetent and evil, like Abacha; or inexperienced and ill-advised like General Gowon; or were cut short midstream, like General Mohammed was; or are just simply not up to the task, like Shagari; or were overly ambitious and dishonest in their cause like Babangida.

Moreover, very competent, principled and honest Northerners are either denied opportunity to serve, or are frustrated out of service, or are just thrown out for example Alhaji Balarabe Musa Ismail, Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar and Col. Yohanna Madaki.

Incompetence and graft reigned supreme. Religious bigotry, sycophancy and usery were the order of the day. They betrayed our collective trust and honor.

In addition, Northern political establishment took its continued stay at the helm of the Nigerian Leadership as a given. It viewed it, with arrogance, as a birth-right. The political establishment started to see leadership as entitlement and not a bestowed honor, and viewed other compatriots with arrogant contempt borne out of profoundly warped sense of superiority complex. We started taking our fellow Nigerians for granted.

At the extreme, minorities – tribal and religious - were mistreated and denied their due in the Nigerian enterprise.

Now that power no longer is controlled by this establishment, there is noise, irritatingly so, coming from the very same people who let the opportunities to build an enduring legacy for the North in particular and Nigeria in general slip away. One hears the senseless and callous talk of "we shifted power and we can take it back" coming from the likes of Alhaji Wada Nas (aptly dubbed Wada Noise) by his friends in the Lagos-Ibadan press axis.

To hear this man, Alhaji Wada Nas, talk sends shivers to any reasonable individual’s spine especially against the background that he was at one point a Minister in a Nigerian "Government". Which bespeaks much about the type and caliber of government in which he "served". For a man of Wada Nas’ type who was, for all practical purpose, a veranda boy to Abacha to now seemingly transmute into champion and defender of Northern interest is, to my mind, an insult to all Northerners. Wada Nas neither has the stature or the intellect to stalk any claim to being a defender of the Northern Nigeria’s political interest or to speak for the North. One only has to look up some of his writings on the Net to see what I am talking about. The man does not have any logical thought faculty, which makes sense given his uneducated sartorial background (no offense meant to all the good people in the garment making industry).

I do not begrudge Alhaji Nas, however, for exercising his right to free speech (which incidentally, he and his master Abacha denied the rest of us during the period of their mal-governance) especially in this bountiful medium of the world-wide-web. But Wada should speak for himself and not claim to speak for the North. Who gave, he Nas, the mandate to speak for the North any way? Who? The North does not need any body to speak for it especially if that somebody is a mountebank like Alhaji Wada Nas.

In the same vein, our fellow compatriots from the south, especially the south west, should desist from giving demagogues like Nas the ammunition to use in further driving a wedge between the various components of our Nation. Commentaries on simmering national issues should be balanced and fair. For to do otherwise will invite misinterpretations and hence give chance to avowed enemies of our national progress.

Take for instance the persistent call for a Sovereign National Conference which, I think, is a bad Idea and an obvious recipe for disaster.

Persons like Professor Mobolaji Aluko will not miss a beat without asking or pontificating for a sovereign conference without giving a thought to how it will be interpreted in other parts of the Nation, especially in the North.

There is no doubt about the fact that there is aplenty wrong, and skewed about the Nigerian Polity as it is today. Especially with regards to revenue sharing, State police, Niger delta, Rotational Presidency etc., but I do not believe that a Sovereign National Conference is the answer to all these problems.

The answer lies in a genuine and honest national discourse with each component "nation" putting it’s self in the other’s shoes.

Say for instance, how will the others feel if they are the Ogonis or other people of the Niger Delta, with 90% of the National revenue being derived from their region. Their ecological systems and means of livelihood destroyed and yet they have nothing to show for it? How will the others feel if they "sponsored" a candidate (Obasanjo) against the massive and overwhelming opposition of "his people" (the Yorubas), got the said candidate elected only for "his people" (the Yorubas) to now turn around to claim "ownership" and, sometimes, credit? How will the others, feel if a candidate from their tribe was elected in an election acclaimed to be the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria only for the election to be annuled, and the said candidate jailed to death?

How will the others feel if they are the most industrious and commercially enterprising, but yet still are persistently marginalized politically as are the Igbos?

How will the others feel if they are used, as the Middle Belt peoples are, by the northern oligarchy to secure power only -- with no visible economic dividend to their peoples?

When all of us put our selves in the other persons’ shoes then, may be we can start to appreciate where the grievance of the other(s) is/are coming from. And may be then, we talk to one another in genuiningly honest and reasoned manner.

The call for Sovereign National conference will not solve these problems as long as we continue to condone corruption and unfairness or even their seeming ness.

We have democratic structures on the ground that could be used to solve whatever societal ill that plague the nation. In so far as we elect and/or appoint the right people to do the job without regards to regional or tribal origin, and religious persuasion.

There is nothing wrong with Nigeria today that cannot be made aright by what is right with it.

We have a constitution, albeit, not a perfect one. But then which Constitution is? Afterall, the constitution of the longest continuous democracy in the world today (The U.S) is still a work in progress -- two and a quarter centuries after it was first written. That is why there is a provision for amendment to the constitution. And if there is any provision in the constitution, which will have difficulty to its being amended, for instance the Sharia Issue, and some person feel strongly about its legality or otherwise, then it can be challenged in our courts to test its constitutionality.

We do not need a Sovereign conference. At best we can have a national conference to iron out the grievances we have against one another; but please, no sovereign powers. To insist on sovereign power as advocated by, and persistently led by its chief apostle, Professor Mobolaji E. Aluko, is very suggestive of a subterranean secessionist plot. And all Nigerians will agree that this was a path we have traveled before and it bore us all no good. And quite frankly, Nigeria at this period of it’s greatest need, expects more from a person of Dr. Mobolaji Aluko’s stature than to be champion to regional or tribal cause as a lot of even some of his best articles on contemporary Nigeria issues subtly do. I think it is beneath the professor’s academic eminence and exposure. Some of us will want to look up to him. Please ejo don’t fail us.

The problems with Nigeria today are not insurmountable. Too many of us think they are. They are manmade and therefore they can be solved. To think otherwise is defeatist. The Nigerian enterprise is not a finished product but a work in progress whereby each generation should see itself as generational watchmen/women and builders whose main purpose is to bequeath a nation that is better than what was handed to it.

In so doing, we need to draw from national endeavors that have worked and proven worthy in other nations and also to take heed to avoid both the mistakes of the past and those actions that have proven adverse in other nations.

Nigeria is abundantly blessed so let us put aside the shortcoming of the past as a nation, never ignoring however to tap from the benefit of the wisdom that comes by learning from mistakes of the past.

Quoting President John F. Kennedy and paraphrasing him into the Nigerian context, "let us not be caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle with suspicion on side breeding suspicion on the others…. Let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. For in the final analysis, our most common link is that we inhabit a small part (Nigeria) of this planet. We all breathe the same air. We cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal".

We have tried regional, tribal and religious politics to our collective ill. Now let us try meritocracy and empathy for one another. It was President Jerry Rawlings who said "I don’t know economics or politics but I know when my stomach is empty". How about if we as Nigerians plead a collective "I don’t know" to tribal, religious and regional politics and adapt meritocracy and collective empathy and see if it does not take us to the promise land? It should fill our stomachs and provide cover over our heads and ensure our children’s future.