Why Kaduna Is Always Boiling

BY

MATTHEW HASSAN KUKAH

MOST people feel that to say, I do not know, somehow belittles their importance or knowledge. In the same way, I find it difficult to understand why we are all so emphatic about what we know in regards to our country. If indeed we knew so much, how come all our prescriptions have not been able to heal our wounds? What will it cost us to say we really do not know what has happened in Kaduna and Abuja?

 

Does any one really understand what has been happening? Sadly, there have been, far more answers than there are questions. Indeed, so anxious have the experts been in answering the questions that many people have ended up providing answers to questions that do not exist, are out of context or have not been asked. The result is that we are anxious to help, but it seems we are scratching the questioner where they are not itching. I had really not thought of writing or saying anything about the sad developments in Kaduna until one had recovered because a lot of it is so close to my skin: Fr James Iyere has just died. A man who was the first priest to be ordained for the Archdiocese of Kaduna. A man who has given his life to the people of the North, served in the army as a Catholic Chaplain and who, at well over 70 years is in retirement but still active. He is gone now, brutally murdered by men young enough to call him their grand father if things were different. He is the second priest to die in the hands of Muslim youths. My friend Fr. Peter Tanko narrowly escaped death. He has spent the last twenty or so years just collecting books, books and more books and who knows that when I visit his house, I visit his books first before him, has lost everything to those he and a few of us have been trying to point a new way to. As if the gods of death are insatiable, Kaduna is once again called upon to offer some precious lives on the altar erected by madness.

 

When Fred Ohwahwa asked me to answer the question, Why Kaduna, I wondered what to say really. With caution, I feel that deep down, I do not know. And no one does. We know the physically cost which we can count, but what do these issues really reflect? In speculating, we perhaps ought therefore to be more cautious. I believe that a genuine search for answers is actually better answered by asking the right question.

 

The name Kaduna resonates and has been part and parcel of the history of Nigeria. The Nzeogwu family loved it enough to give the name to their son, a young man who would later change the face of Nigeria. It was here that Mr. Ige came with his family and had their young son, Bola, who rose to become the Nation's Attorney General. Almost every senior military officer in Nigeria has sentimental attachments to Kaduna. Ditto all the students and teachers of the Ahmadu Bello University, Samaru. Zaria offered knowledge and career, but Kaduna offered respite, recreation and comfort. It is there that the likes of Chief Sunday Awoniyi and Adamu Ciroma cut their bureaucratic teeth. There are very few Nigerians who do not know some one who lives in Kaduna. If they do not, they know someone who aspires to live there. So, what has happened to the great city?

 

It is difficult to say, but somehow, there are questions that need to be asked. I believe that the circumstances in which we now find ourselves call for more questions than we are ready to admit. For example, when and why did things start to go wrong in Kaduna? Is there anyone or are there circumstances that we can hold responsible? What are the issues that are being contested? Are they that visible and tangible? What can be done and by whom? Are there any solutions and if so, what are they?

 

Are the problems religious or political? As usual, many already have the answers to the question and most of these answers are clever regurgitation of old and extant prejudices and assumptions merely made popular by repetition, but there is no barometer for testing them. Indeed, fewer people wish to submit their prejudices to any test since they are the main oxygen for relevance and constituency capture.

 

Everyone is speaking of Kaduna in nostalgic terms. True, time was when Kaduna was the place to be. Not now, many say. Those who love us say that they cannot understand why we are destroying ourselves. We seem to be on a suicidal mission. Yet, the more one pursues this line of reasoning, the more we begin to sound like those who are outside looking into Nigeria. The rise in the search for new identities has forced citizens to redefine themselves in many respects. Under the pressure cooker that was military rule, all were suppressed.

 

From Zamfara and its Sharia experiment to the Odua Peoples' Congress and their claims, it is clear that at the heart of all this is the search for the lost soul of the nation by a soulless citizenry. What has been glossed over is the unresolved issue of who exactly owns what in Kaduna and the basis of that claim.

 

When the colonial and then regional government conceived of Kaduna as the capital of the North, what were the reasons? Well, it is doubtful that the crocodile (Kado) after which Kaduna apparently derives its name was central to this decision. The contestation that has emerged as to who owns what has led to the crises around the country. The developments within the traditional power system in Ilorin show the nature of this contestation. The assumptions of power alignments of yesterday are no longer tenable especially as people feel emboldened by new developments arising from education, economic power and other forms of access to the power table. Kaduna has been presented as the city whose strength lies in its Neutrality. But in these days and age when, as I have noted, the concept of who owns the land have become so central, it is clear that neutrality has become a liability. For example, what is the culture of Kaduna and who is a repository of that culture? What is the tradition of the people of Kaduna and whom can the people turn to? It is the vacuum created by this cultural desert that has been filled by all comers who are staking claims with no restraint. There is no Emir, no Chief with any form of overarching influence to call for restraint. It is this vacuum that the so-called Kaduna Mafia filled.

 

If that group existed at all, it seemed to have had no agenda beyond the quest for primitive accumulation and the acquisition of strategic power points at the nation's centre of gravity. The Gbayis who originally owned the area migrated down South as the colonial earthmovers tumbled in and they ended up in the peripheral boundaries of Kaduna and Niger States. Those who claim to own Kaduna have no economic power to stake their claims. The economy of Kaduna is owned and run by mainly an assorted mish mash of Igbo and Yoruba traders or businessmen.

 

It is their hard work that makes life run as can be seen from their control of the entire gamut of business from mechanical workshops, shops, law firms, companies and so on. They own property ranging from hotels to real estate. The Northern ruling elite sprung on Kaduna from every nook and corner of the North. They are largely old and young bureaucrats, former Ministers and retired Generals who are defined by their stupendous wealth and not much more. They have no single economic venture beyond stakes in Federal government concerns and foreign capital from where they continue to draw extensive wealth to sustain themselves. Sadly, despite the fact that this wealth was made from representing us at the Centre, thanks to federal character, we cannot point at their factories, law firms, businesses or consultancies. Even the PTF engineered Consultants that sprung up when the North was awash with easy money has left no legacy. Thus, the precision and efficiency of the power alignments in Kaduna are suspect. The state is standing on a stool with uneven legs. The Southerners who are considered strangers are holding the state together by their sheer hard work, the Northern ruling elite, used to easy money from questionable sources continues to live up to its acquisitive instincts of primitive wealth acquisition.

 

Those who say they own Kaduna, be they the Gbayi or those from Southern Kaduna (referred to as predominantly Christians) are hopelessly too weak economically and politically to even begin to participate in the affairs of the state in any meaningful way. The social, economic, political and even bureaucratic inequalities that have been institutionalised in the state from colonial times up till now, have heightened the tensions that have turned Kaduna into a cauldron that is permanently on the boil. I wish to argue that indeed, most of the reasons for the tensions in Kaduna state just like elsewhere are intangible. The reside in the human psyche and do not immediately come to the fore, but they are there nonetheless. There is a strong feeling that Kaduna does not belong to all those who are in the state. There is a feeling of alienation perceptions of exclusion. Perceptions are not necessarily factual, but in human calculation, they are important because they breed suspicion, fear and anxiety. These are largely part of the combustible material that stokes the fires in Kaduna. But, spare a thought and find answers to some of these questions which I posed when I addressed Arewa Consultative Forum some time this year. For example, if there is equality between all peoples in Kaduna across religious, ethnic and political lines, think over these questions:

Why is it that the State House in Kaduna has remained off limit to any non-Muslim since the creation of the state in 1967? Christians have governed Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, or Kebbi. What is it about Kaduna State that even the most revolutionary of Nigeria's Heads of State could not, in all these years overcome by appointing a non-Muslim as a Governor?

 

In fairness, General Buhari did appear to have been sensitive to this. However, even the Air Vice Marshall that he appointed from Southern Kaduna State as a Governor was a Muslim!