Professor Yakubu and the South-South
By
"TO be at the mercy of buffoons is the ultimate insult. To find the instruments of state power reducing you to dust is the injury". The above quotation taken from Ken Saro-Wiwa's Detention Diary entitled: A Month and a Day, tends to justify William Ptaff's rather simplistic assertion that Africa's tribes and ethnic groups are repressive colonial inventions that are stereotypical in their psychopathic lust for power. Reuben Abati's "The strategy of the North" (The Guardian, July 19, 2002) prompted this article. Abati was, of course, reacting to a "strategic" paper written by one Professor Mahmoud Yakubu. The revelation that the paper entitled: "Working Paper on 2003 Presidential Election; Options for the North", was commissioned by the self-validating Arewa Consultative Forum justifies the fears of inhabitants of the despoiled Niger Delta region about the real motives of Northern power brokers.
Professor Arewa, sorry Yakubu characteristically propounded several jaundiced views about the power equation in Nigeria - especially as they affect the Northern strategy to recapture power in 2003. I am however not worried about his uninformed postulations on the geo-political equation of power among the so-called major ethnic groups which have the capacity to fight their own battle against Northern domination. My worry stems from a largely patronising statement by the power-drunk Professor that the "South-South lacks the financial and media clout of the other southern geo-political zones" to mount a serious challenge for power in Nigeria. His reason is that the South-South is "ethnically diverse and rancorous". The minimum concession Professor Yakubu wishes to grudgingly make to this "irrelevant" oil-bearing region is the Senate Presidency under a Northern overlordship to take care of the "full resource control gimmick"! A life and death matter a gimmick? Should it become inevitable that the South-South must make an intolerable claim to the exclusive presidency, then the zone must "take its natural turn after the major ethnic groups have had their respective rotational turns." Abati points out that even the so-called..."natural turn is put in inverted commas by Professor Yakubu, an indication that he has real doubts about anyone from that part of the country ever becoming President of Nigeria."
The constitution they made in the name of..." we the people.." allocated our huge resources to them in a bizzare unitary federalism that legitimises fiefdom. Professor Yakubu's paper is conclusive proof that we are not part of the signatories to the constitution; but helpless slaves of this Northern dominated slave-state called Nigeria. Northern power theorists forget that no group no matter how small or weak can be taken for granted by those "anointed" by whatever gods to rule them forever. Those who believe they "ceded" power to others must realise that Nigeria was only coupled together in 1914, a development prominent Northerners believed to be a "mistake". The unbearable misery in the Niger Delta inflicted by those born to rule the rest of us has brought us nothing but ruthless exploitation through the unbridled manipulation of state power. Yet the same champions of "national unity" were once the exponents of "Araba" or separation before oil was found in the Niger Delta. The oil interest of the North also defines its political relations in the South-South. They treat us with the scorn of stony indifference when we demand our rights. When Ken Saro-Wiwa challenged the complete devastation of the environment, by oil firms, political marginalisation and economic strangulation, the Arewa think-tank promptly hanged him as a warning to the rest of us. That was in 1995. The hangman has only changed his methodology. Now in the year 2002, Yakubu is declaring the South-South irrelevant to the geo-political calculations of the draconian North. Shortly after the civil war over Niger Delta oil by the majority tribes, the late Alhaji Dipcherima acknowledged the role of Eastern minorities to the success of the Federal forces, but added that even the vanquished Igbo group will count more in the Northern strategic thinking on account of their numbers. Our own Chief Philip Asiodu who became infected by the domino theory of the North advised his masters to forget the Southern minorities because "they cannot threaten national security", despite their clamour for equitable allocation of the oil revenue taken from their backyard! The dog of a king is indeed the king of other dogs!
This hell's half acre called the Niger Delta has no electricity, no roads, pipe-borne water, tarred roads, has high unemployment rate and heavy security presence. This scenario has created feckless city wild gangs threatening to explode. The dizzying spiral of cruel deprivation in the area may yet defy Yakubu's self-preservation theory on behalf of his Arewa brethren. They are merely widening the borders of ignorance. To the indigenous colonisers represented by the Arewa zealots, we warn that the days when we were forced to sleepwalk our way towards political, economic and environmental extinction are over. Martin Luther King warned several years ago that "if you don't bend your back, no man will ride it". The "rancorous" and "financially" bereft South-South geo-political zone bears our blood. It must also bear our will. Nobody can ride our backs anymore. We have had enough. The Arewa fraternity which has become so ignorant of its antecedents and arrogance because of the unconscionable appropriation of our oil money should look across their borders to see the level of poverty, disease and want that have made inhabitants of those arid countries humble. The deprived people of the Niger Delta also need to remind these avaricious majority cliques of how they privatised the miserable revenue that accrued from cocoa, groundnut and hide and skin derived from their areas before the advent of crude oil. It was politically correct then to share out revenues on the principles of derivation.
The "full resource control gimmick" may have been taken care of at the Supreme Court as envisaged by the naked emperor, but this legalised robbery of our resources will be challenged at another level because it is the inalienable right of the South-South to live preferably in an equitable Nigeria or outside it as may be defined by the owners of the land and anointed rulers.
August 2002