“In politics, like in marriage, Cheaters always want you to be loyal while they are being unfaithful”- Anonymous.
The political romance between the geopolitical North and Bola Ahmed Tinubu was supposed to wax stronger following a successful transition of power from Muhammadu Buhari to Tinubu in line with the agreement that brought the union called APC into place in 2014. But instead, the passion that greeted the marriage in 2014 is drooping and becoming flaccid ostensibly because it’s foundation was laid mainly for the fraudulent acquisition of power for self-aggrandizing rather than for national interest. The North and Tinubu political romance is very much akin to the trending Brain Jotter’s ‘Gwo Gwo, n Gwo’ dance tales about the tortoise and elephant desire and deception story.
Note that in this conversation I will deliberately be using Tinubu and North being in romance instead of Southwest and North because I am aware that in going into the political love affairs in 2014, Tinubu didn’t go with the Southwest but with his political structure. But the North went into it as a region in a gang-up that included both the then ruling PDP and the then main opposition APC to undermine Goodluck Jonathan’s Presidency. That was the history behind ‘It’s My Turn’ by Tinubu, which even Buhari, out of conscience, could not challenge. My turn was within the context of the marriage agreement. All the PDP members who were misled by regional interest to dump their party have all been in regret as some of them have gone into political oblivion, with some others oscillating between PDP and APC in search of elusive political relevance.
In a Janus-faced society like ours, where cheaters don’t think cheating is wrong until they get cheated, in just 15 months of power changing hands, the North appears already disgruntled in the marriage and has been screaming blue murder and even in a hurry to end the marriage with Tinubu before tomorrow comes. Is the North justified in their early frustration in the relationship? Not a few will answer in the negative because they entered into it greedily without observing the marketing caveat; buyers beware, and for that, they should feel the brunt. The only way a political union can endure is if approached with national interest and justice as its driving force.
The national protest tagged # Endbadgovernance has come and gone, but its ripple effect will continue to linger for some time. The protest left many trails in our sociopolitical and security lives enough to jolt the system. The pre-protest hype given by the planners to herald it, coupled with the counter move by the government and its agencies while trying to subvert it, all combined to raise the cacophonous noise that ensued, even from the South East that excused themselves from the protest still came a deafening and impactful silence.
But no zone recorded a significant impact from the protest more than the three geopolitical zones in the North East, North West and North Central. This was understandable given the availability of more unemployed and idle youths in the area. If the protest was triggered by hunger, naturally, the impact would be greater where there is more lack of food and more mouths desiring to eat. Northern Nigeria is indisputably the poverty capital of the World; it has more youth unemployment, more out-of-school children, more malnourished children and more of all other indexes of poverty in a society. Ironically, this region that has more idle hands also has more uncultivated land but is prevented from maximizing it by so many vices.
The region which used to feed the rest of the country and create groundnut pyramids in addition when it was one region under Sir Ahmadu Bello, even with less technological inputs today, cannot feed itself. Why? Over time, successive leaders failed to explore their potential due to two variables: the over-dependence on the resources that were coming from oil and the latest factor being the insecurity that prevented normal farming activities in the region. This is not minding that they were more in power.
Added to all these was the disgruntlement copiously already being displayed by Northern leaders against the Bola Ahmed Tinubu regime. Before the protest, the administration of Tinubu had been thoroughly de-marketed in the region but the regime supplied them the materials. What the #Endbadgovernance protest did was only act as a catalyst.
While political pundits agree that the Tinubu administration is not showing any judiciousness in appointments and allocation of resources, the North who instituted and executed such biased governance with their brother Muhammadu Buhari for eight years shouldn’t be the one complaining too early just 15 months at the receiving end, after all, there is a region like the South East that has been on the ground and no longer fears any falls. But I can hear a voice saying do you want us to be like you?
What the Northern region displayed in a very loud voice in the message they copiously passed during the protest was that they were not going to take marginalization even though they started it and did it to other people. A clear case of I don’t want what I did to the other person to be done to me. A concept that negates the principle of natural justice and is embedded in the preachings of holy men and expounded by the holy books of all religions. The Bible says in Math 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.’
Islam says: “Do unto all men as you would wish to have done unto you, and reject for others what you would reject for yourself.’
The Quran went further to urge its faithful to try and repel evil with what is good. “41:34. Nor can goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better.
In Buddhism, it says: “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others (Buddha, Udanoh-Varga 5.18).
It’s only when we can manage to refrain from harming others in our everyday actions and words that we can start to give more serious attention to actively doing good and, in so doing, build a just society of our dreams. In any endeavour, politics inclusive, anybody who is charitable in good things as an individual or group will receive the same and Vice versa. The World knows it more as the golden rule, a word first used in 1604 by Charles Gibbon to guide factory operations. It also exists as the law of reciprocity.
The absence of golden rule in our political lives as a nation is the genesis of our problems in this land. So long as we dwell in the gerrymandering with political positions at the expense of justice, equity and fairness, so long would we be in turmoil. No factory that abhors its golden rule produces good products and grows. Both Tinubu and the North should know that none of them qualifies to seek God’s face in their supplications on Nigeria’s political situation because they have no clean hands, they are not practising the golden rule and they are not putting on the right garb guarantees them entry into God’s house where justice, equity and fairness prevails. What they should be doing is confessing their sins and approaching the throne of grace with contrite hearts.
So, if in 2015 Tinubu and his political gang assembled to form a political party with the sole purpose of hijacking power and enthroning a Northerner for eight years after which he comes, and in less than 15 months, the Northerners are screaming and calling for a military coup against him, then something fundamental is wrong that we are ignoring.
If Tinubu and the North are political enemies today, it’s certainly not because of injustice on each other but due to the injustice they combined to execute against the Nation by helping to perpetuate inequitable and inharmonious political arrangements not designed to please the whole country but an isolated few.
In less than two months, precisely on October 1, 2024 Nigeria as a country will be 64 years old and have been in self-rule these years, with the geopolitical North (46 years) and the West (13 years) the duo sharing power between themselves with only two accidental interventions, late General Aguiyi Ironsi six months and Goodluck Jonathan five years. Jonathan got it providentially by Umaru Yar Adua’s unexpected death. Now the North wants power returned to them and is even seeking Russian help while Tinubu, hiding under the South’s cover, wants it for eight years.
Yet in all these, they are hypocritically calling for one indivisible Nigeria, with the glaring exclusion of a people and one of the tripods upon which the foundational history of Nigeria is standing.
Pundits desiring a new Nigeria are even reasoning that If Tinubu needs to give way, that is, be removed through any means, either forcefully or through a ballot, it should not be because the North is unhappy. It should be because both Tinubu and the North have destroyed the country and needed to give way to a fresh air of hope and progress to return to our land. It would be because in a democracy, the people should matter, and their interests should be the determining variable in any alliances and interests. It should be for the sake of justice and equity, it should be because the country is now comatose and at a critical juncture of no return.
What is obvious and very disheartening is that the nine-year-old political romance between Tinubu and the North is not based on justice and equity and, therefore, bound to fail along the way as the picture is showing now. The reasonable thing to do in the circumstance is for the two selfish regions to do some introspection, a kind of soul-searching and put their thoughts right towards genuine healing for the injured, equity for the unfairly treated and above all see poverty as a disease that needs urgent treatment which cannot be eliminated with the current corrupt and unjust structure in place. God help us.
