“THE MOST EFFECTIVE CHAINS ARE THE INVISIBLE ONES. WE ALREADY HAVE YOU IN THOSE CHAINS BUT YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT. IT IS TRUE THAT WE CAME FROM FUTA TORO AND FUTA JALON MANY YEARS AGO AND CONQUERED THE NORTH. EVERY FULANI WHETHER FROM MALI, SENEGAL, GUINEA, NIGER, CHAD, CAMERON, ANYWHERE ELSE IS OUR BROTHER AND HAS A RIGHT TO BE HERE WITH US. WE ARE FULANI BEFORE NIGERIANS AND OUR ALLEGIANCE IS TO OUR FULANI BROTHERS ALL OVER WEST AFRICA MORE THAN YOU. WE WILL CONQUER (THE) SOUTH AND WE DO IT IN THE NAME OF ‘ONE NIGERIA.’ IN THAT ‘ONE NIGERIA’ WE SHALL REMAIN THE MASTERS AND YOU SHALL REMAIN THE SLAVES. NONE OF YOU ARE GOING ANYWHERE. NIGERIA WILL NEVER BREAK. WE WILL NOT ALLOW IT.”
ALIYU GWARZO
[A Nigeria Fulani man]
Aliyu Gwarzo is a courageous, vocal and Nigeria Fulani man, brutally frank and straight to the point. Though he comments on political matters, he is not the Nigerian-type politician who would not call a spade a spade. One thing is certain about Mr. Gwarzo. He doesn’t believe in rhetorics because whatever bitter truth people will prefer to hide or be courteous and diplomatic about saying, he will come out to say it point black. For these qualities, Aliyu Gwarzo is both hailed as a hero and respected amongst the Nigeria Fulani ruling stock.
The statement of Aliyu Gwarzo quoted about provide the basis for much of what I shall write in Part 2 of this work as I explore the only alternative of restructure, which to my understanding is the most viable way to solve the problems of Nigeria without incurring bruises. I shall also endeavor, within available space, to address the impurity with which the Fulani’s have ensure Nigerians of different ethics entices as shown in Mr. Gwazor’s statement and the possible reason for their sudden change of mind to allow an Igbo man to become the president of Nigeria after fifty years of glass ceiling imposed on the Igbo’s
Like Aliyu Gwazor gave his Fulani brothers the road map to their conquest of Nigeria, I shall end this work with a clear road map for Nigerians of all other ethnic nationalities to escape from the long-set trap of the Fulani immigrants of 1804 to sustain their conquest of Nigeria.
Many groups across northern Nigeria have held different meetings, arising with only one conclusion to re-echo the words of Aliyu Gwarzo that Nigeria is indivisible.
This may probably be because Nigeria as presently structured favours the northern Fulani stock more than it favours the rest of Nigeria including the indigenous Hausa people who Aliyu Gwarzo admitted that they are their slaves, having been conquered.
One of such meetings held recently in Northern Nigeria was the parley of the NEF (Northern Elders Forum) which rose; issuing a statement that the north cannot be stampeded into restructuring Nigeria.
With due respect to fellow elders, I think that they misunderstood the demands of Nigeria. Let us look at the issue more objectively. It takes two to tangle, so if you have something in common with another party and that party says that he wants a renegotiation, because he may have discovered flaws in the original agreement, it is not like you are being stampeded.
Life and even God Himself is dynamic for which reason nothing on earth is foreclosed, for which reason also human beings die because their living on earth is not foreclosed.
Secondly, a party may demand for a renegotiation because a renegotiation will work in favour of avoiding a stalemate, so convincing the second part the reason why you think a renegotiation is not timely, by sitting down in a dialogue table, is actually what to do and you must be able to adduce reasons why you think so.
To take a hard, unbending stance on an issue and interest that is mutually held in common bond of association between two parties is both selfishness and authoritative. It is naturally not acceptable, and may possibly elicit and degenerate into more audacious expressions, if the issue is further dragged against the will of the party who calls for a renegotiation.
Ordinarily, this would be easy for the elders of northern Nigeria to understand unless they want us to believe that, like Aliyu Gwarzo had said, all the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria are slaves under them as the masters, and slaves, like everybody knows, lack the power to renegotiate with their masters.
Apart from the master/slave relationship, there is another way I can explain the hard stance of northern elites against the restructuring of Nigeria.
Pareidolia is a peculiar trick of the mind that causes people who are used to certain fixed visual opinions and values to see, impugn, and have self-soothing and reassuring interpretations of things they see where such things do not exist.
Though it happens more to the visual artists and people of very high creativity, this mimicking by the mind, as has been shown in Nigeria, can also happen to politicians who have internalized the born-to-rule attitude to life.
In his pareidolic man, a born-to-rule type of northern Nigeria politician sees everybody and everything around him as tools both for his career, sustenance and happiness. Pareidolia therefore, can be an illusion that drives people who are normally believed to be sane, to delusion.
By pareidolic only, can I explain echoes from different quarters across northern Nigeria in respect to a restructuring of the country.
All the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, including the indigenous Hausa natives of northern Nigeria, but excluding the Fulani immigrants of 1804, has accented to the restructuring of Nigeria. A former deputy governor of Lagos state and a chieftain of Afenifere, the pan Yoruba socio-cultural group, Chief Mrs. Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele expressed disappointment over the recent meeting of northern governors where they maintained that Nigeria was invisible.
Speaking with The Daily Trust Newspaper, Chief Mrs. Bucknor-Akerele said that the south was more concerned with restructuring Nigeria than the 2023 presidency.
If the opinion of the Afenifere which Chief Mrs. Bucknor-Akerele represented tallies with that held by the Ohaneze Ndigbo, the MBF (Middle Belt Forum), the PANDEF and other socio-cultural organizations across the different ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, then, it is ‘Uhuru’ for Nigeria.
Obviously echoing the words of his principals, the Minister of Information repeated the opinion that the government is not ready to be stampeded into restructuring Nigeria.
Let us use this opportunity to say something about this ministry.
Information management is a very sensitive process, the outcome of which can make or mar any organization or corporate entity whose image must be smoothened and tempered within the ambit of public perception to achieve the projected opinion of the organization or corporate entity to the public audience.
Information management is supposed to be a two-way feeder path whereby both ends – the source of information, and destination of information – are adequately fed as the passage between the two ends is oiled with the truth, facts and figures.
Not being able to exercise this simple discipline in information management, the managers of the image of government in Nigeria are doing more harm than good to their principals by their consistent misrepresentation of facts.
By trying to put wools over the eyes of Nigerians in matters that are clear and audible to both the blind and the deaf respectively, the government spokesman derogatorily referred to as what courtesy and good reason will not allow me to mention here, should stop believing that Nigerians are stupid and should be so deceived all the time.
A good information manager should know that it is easier to manage the truth than it is to manage falsehood. As a matter of fact; it is impossible, in the long run, to manage falsehood because one lie must lead to another lie, ad infinitum, till the person selling the dummies by telling or covering the lies exposes his myopia and stupidity.
The failure to adhere to this dynamics of information management is the reason why Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Chief Propagandist, failed woefully after all his concerted effort to justify Hitler’s murderous campaign against the Jews in particular and the world in general.
In the same manner that Josef Goebbels failed, the incompetent managers of the image of government in Nigeria who think that they can hoodwink all Nigerians to look away from their pressing issues of survival by nagging the organized media and muzzling dissenting opinions, are bound to fail woefully.
The Minister of Information is bothered about the preponderance of fake news in Nigeria. The social media as is being hosted in Nigeria is not the problem. There are more social media platforms hosted in Europe and America than are hosted in Nigeria. He must therefore, be told why fake news flourish in Nigeria. Fake news flourish in any country where government is run in cult-like manner.
Government is supposed to, through the information ministry, make its activities known to the citizens before such activities are embarked upon, and clear the air as to the completion or non-completion of those activities. This process of accountability is necessary because both the government and its officers hold their offices in trust for the citizens.
The Nigerian government hoard, withhold, or part-release information that should freely and fully have been discharged in the public space. When a vacuum is created, fake, unfiltered, and incomplete or over-complete information begin to sift out and circulate to satiate the citizens’ apatite to be informed.
Public exuberance is an essential and integral part of any democratic political administration, because, basically man is a political animal – whether he is in his home, in his office, at play, or even in the market place.
There are enough laws in the Nigerian statute to take care of abuses of freedom of expression as guaranteed by the constitution, without muffling the dissenting constructive views of Nigerians, or casting aspersion to the aspiration of Nigerians to restructure their country.
Rather than yield to the diversion of an Igbo president in 2023, now is the best time to realize the common aspirations of Nigerians to be free of the contraption of the 1914 amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates because all the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria had been sensitized through common injustice to understand that Nigerians are under siege.
The northern political elites are striking the drumbeat of an Igbo president in 2023 to the highest crescendo because it will strengthen the weak chain of the tenacious grip on Nigeria, which is at the point of tearing into shreds.
Their sudden change of position to support an Igbo man to emerge as the president of Nigeria is symbolic of the legendary chameleonic approach of the Fulanis to political conquest, and may be likened to the former opinion of Mr. President as a presidential contender before the 2015 change of the presidential baton crowned him the Czar of Aso Villa. Making reference to the previous government subsidy on petroleum products as a presidential aspirant in October 2011, Mr. President said, and I quote “if anybody says he is subsidizing anything, the person is a fraud”.
The Chatham House proclamations and deceit of the international community which was aimed to promote his bid to the presidency was a fraud. Several years later in 2020 and with all the failed promises of change 2015 and the consecutive regimes of hike in gasoline price, etc., Nigerians now know who the fraudsters are.
An Igbo language proverb has it that what is discussed on the way to the stream does not necessarily constitute the subject of discussion on the way back from the stream. The unwritten rule in the Nigerian political chess board is that as long as the north retains power, the end justifies the means as both promises and former official positions do easily swap places with the need just to be in power.
A friend of mine, a fellow Igbo man, and a very senior officer at the helms of affairs of an agency of the federal government in one of the states called me to express his dissatisfaction in my choice of words in addressing some members of the Ohaneze Ndigbo, and some other Igbo politicians who are throwing spanner in the wheel of the achievement of common aspiration to restructure Nigeria. He was referring to Part 1 of this work.
My friend who have grown in the civil service ‘paying his dues’ and have imbibed all the characteristics of the Nigerian civil-servant-politician having gone through the dangerous and complex terrains dealing with the intrigues in the Nigerian civil service; was of the opinion that I needed not to wash the dirty Igbo linings in the public. He further said that the politics of Nigeria has been unmindful of any sacrifice the Igbo’s have made and are still making to grow Nigeria.
He was suspicious that the Igbo’s may be betrayed again if they make the first move by abandoning the 2023 presidency in favour of restructuring Nigeria. He further opined that the Igbo’s are not the worst-off in Nigeria. He believes that those whose heads are used to beat the drum, the sections of Nigeria who experience and suffer abject poverty and those whose natural resources are lifted to oil the economic wheels of Nigeria, should take the lead and champion the course of restructuring Nigeria.
I listened to him very well and understood the points he was making. His brilliant presentations were good from the self-protective point of view. He will be reading this work now as I respond to a matter that may be at the center stage of the decision of many Igbo politicians to decamp from the PDP to the APC political party where they speculate that the king makers will fulfil their promise to lend them Nigeria presidency in 2023.
Firstly, one thing I found out in my friend’s presentations is the reason why I cannot be a politician in Nigeria because that profession will take away the humanity in me and make me not to feel the pulse of others who are suffering because I still experience some comfort myself.
The next thing I found out from him is that Nigerians of different ethnic nationalities must find a way urgently to deal with some existing remnants of the traditional mutual suspicion and distrust which separated them, which has also been the albatross to the execution of all joint decisions needed to solve their common problems.
Thirdly, my own understanding of life is that he who fails to assist to put off the fire when it is ravaging his neighbor’s house may soon discover that he has to contend with the fire alone when it engulfs his own house.
Since I made a case here, not only for my Igbo ethnic nationality whose ‘turn’ it is to present a candidate for Nigerian presidency, but also for all Nigerians including the poverty-stricken and illiterate Fulanis neglected by their leaders, it is not improbable that I may be misunderstood by some of my Igbo brothers including my bosom friend whose deep fountain of wisdom and knowledge I benefit from each time I have the opportunity to be with him.
Yet my position can be seen through an Igbo proverb which says, that “ohu na-anuri na ejighi ya lie ozu eze, ochetakwara na eze ozo ga-anwu?”
Translated to English, this proverb literally means “the slave who rejoices that he was not used as sacrifice to bury the king, did he not remember that another king may die?”
So, my take is that it will not be inappropriate for the Igbos as the light bearers and the arrow heads they have been in championing solutions to the problems of Nigeria, to alternate the opportunity of their 2023 presidency to work in tandem with the other ethic nationalities in the country to restructure the country and liberate Nigerians.
The unfolding drama where Igbo politicians must vacate one political party to join another in other to secure Nigerian presidency implicates the apparent weakness of the zoning system and its susceptibility to being tampered with, as has been said before, by the northern self-appointed and usurpers of political king making in Nigeria. This does not reflect the true spirit of democracy.
Though I still believe that we must all retain our sense of humanity to love our neighbors as ourselves, I think the Igbos and the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria should learn a lesson from the statements of Aliyu Gwarzo that we first must belong to our ethnic nationalities before being Nigerians as it is said in Igbo, “ozu sibe usi n’elu uwa, enyi ka nwanne ya laa”. Igbos should collectively move on now in the war and fighting spirit of “onye aghana nwanne ya”, yet working in understanding with the other Nigerian ethnic nationalities.
It is obvious that the lone-ranger type of patriotism and pan-Nigerianism of the Igbos, the type practiced by the great Zik of Africa (as compared with the quiet diplomacy of Awo which would have long solved the problem of Nigeria) have failed the Igbos in Nigeria.
The same lone-ranger approach by the Igbos was actually the major reason for the defeat of the Igbos during the civil war. Ojukwu had everything to win that war including the crude oil resources domiciled in the south. The only thing he lacked was quiet diplomacy to attract and reach understanding with allies already placed on his part by providence with whom to win the war and share the booties of war. Selfish and inordinate ambition as is also being replicated today robbed the Igbos of victory in the Nigerian civil war.
It is very clear now that to achieve result, the Igbos must do things jointly with other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and there has never been any perfect opportunity after the failed attempt to secede during the civil war before now. Who knows what will happen next as every region of Nigeria will want to maximize its cultural, religious, ad economic independence which they may have attained as a result of the restructure. We must all disregard the fear of the unknown, but rather work towards the future with good plans and equanimity.
As Igbos should first begin to think Igbo, fostering unity within its bloc, they must in unison with other indigenous ethnic nationalities of Nigeria quickly decide what to do with the failed Nigerian project and how to sort themselves out from the fierce grip of the Fulani immigrants of 1804 or face the alternative possibility such as I will narrate now. That possibility is that; just last week, it appeared as a breaking news in the media space that the Nigerian Senate approved immediate reconstruction and dualization of Kano-Niger Republic road.
What may have informed the choice of this misplaced priority, Nigerians asked, in the light of existing cases of lack in the funding of essential services in Nigeria, including the ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) pending matter.
So many people were asking the question as to what is actually going on in Nigeria. Aliyu Gwarzo, the Nigerian modern epitome of the historical and legendary Fulani Trumpeter has given Nigerians an idea of what is going on in Nigeria. Here him, “we are Fulani before Nigerians and our allegiance is to our Fulani brothers all over West Africa more than you….”
So, you may ask: if this is the common understanding of Fulanis in Nigeria, why wouldn’t a government headed by a Fulani man not influence the Senate to approve the immediate construction and dualization of a road leading to a predominantly Fulani-occupied country? As if what Gwarzo said was the government agenda to use the resources of Nigeria to develop Fulani-habited countries, the government neither disowned Gwarzo or his statements nor has it arrested him for what is obviously a hate speech against the other ethnic nationalities of Nigeria.
With all these developments, how can Nigerians believe in northern political elites that maintaining the status quo in Nigeria with Igbo presidency in 2023 is not to postpone the evil day and use the resources of the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria to build a modern Fulani empire in the land mass covered within the Fulani countries mentioned by Gwarzo. A Nigerian songstress sang “there is fire on the mountain and nobody seems to be on the run”
Dazed with shock as to the level of impunity with which the government in Nigeria takes flagrant decisions against the overall interest of Nigerians, the citizens seem to have lost all senses of calculated response to sustained wicked provocations.
Recently, it was announced to Nigerians that the country has swapped places with both Chad and Niger Republic in international petroleum products trade and infrastructural development. Before now, Nigeria used to export petroleum products to Niger Republic but that country’s refineries are presently exporting petroleum products to Nigeria.
This swap of positions may not after all be indeliberate and sudden as it appears. It may have been planned over time. Nigerians were once told a story of baboons and monkeys soaking in blood along Nigerian streets. It may not be unlikely that some people in Nigeria may have traced their ancestral origins to both Chad and Niger Republic. As they make Chad and Niger republic ready for excellent habitation while Nigeria is being destroyed, the fast-moving and smarter monkeys may safely zoom off to the woods leaving the duller and heavier baboons to perish in the destroyed Nigerian economy along the blood-stained Nigerian streets.
Most unfortunately for moralists, inducement and coercion have been widely accepted as modern instruments of negotiation. Al Capone, the intelligent Chicago boss of a mafia group was quoted to have said that you can get something done with a kind word, but much better and faster with a gun and a kind word.
Advising Princes of the first century principalities to feign, but not show kindness during political competition, Nicolle Machiavelli writes in the book “The Prince” that mercy and kindness in a political aggression is a risk that the bearer may not live to tell stories about.
The above two methods have been used in the Nigerian political chess game by the north against the south which shows a surprising naivety and lacks knowledge as to how to wriggle itself out from the pugnacious grip of northern Nigeria. For example, this ruthless and extreme gestures at the protection and restoration of power has respectively been exercised in dealing with two Christian leaders in Nigeria. First was the case of a former Roman Catholic Arch Bishop of Lagos who was deceived and sent to medical treatment overseas where he was quietly led into an amorous trap by agents of a former military president of Nigeria while the second incident was the wicked attempt to implicate the former CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) in a phony South African arms deal.
As I write this, there is no clear-cut plan by the south and indigenous nationalities of Nigeria to emancipate themselves from the oppression of the Fulani elitist class. The peace and unity of the Igbo ethnic nationality is already dangling because a small 2023 presidency ‘bone’ has just been tossed on them, if I may use the exact words of Aliyu Gwarzo.
The south and the indigenous ethnic nationalities of the north should drop the mentality of “victim’s consciousness” and face the challenge confronting them. In one of my books (WOMAN: The Mystery, the Secrets) written with the pseudonym, Rabbi Abram A. ben Uriel, I had defined “victim’s consciousness” as that feeling which makes a person sue for pity in matters where he or she is able, eligible, and well-placed to compete.
Southern politicians and the politicians of the indigenous ethnic nationalities in the north are guilty of “victim’s consciousness”. Victim’s consciousness explains the rash actions in surrender by these politicians (including their willingness to sell-out in what I call political pouching) when they throw-in the towel, having felt that they have either been outsmarted or shortchanged. Rather than compete, a person suffering from “victim’s consciousness” will prefer to sulk and complain.
There is this truism, and I have commented on it before that once freedom is cunningly or forcibly usurped, nobody restores it to you on a platter of gold. He who desires to recover his lost freedom must be ready to bear some costs. There are risks involved in the restoration of lost freedom.
So many years ago, a teenage companion and a close friend for more than 50 years wrote his doctoral thesis on the international diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, a one-time secretary of state in America, and the US foreign policy to earn his PhD in International Relations. I think it is high time academics from southern Nigeria pay greater attention to the events in Nigerian politics which equally need serious academic scrutiny as well as intellectual recommendations as position papers. There exists an urgent need to address the specific issues of colonialism-inspired African under development such as presently happening in Nigerian leadership inequity in order to disparage the erroneous view presently held within bourgeois academia that Africans shall forever remain political toddlers.
It will be easier for subsequent generations of the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria to act out of an intellectual revolution which must have sensitized them of the socio-political shortcomings of the country. The Lower Niger Congress (LNC) is doing a great job creating the type of awareness needed by southern Nigerians to unchain themselves from the British-inspired control of Nigeria by the North.
More intellectual work needs be done and more awareness created as we take our turns to see that freedom, justice and equity are commodities shared in equal measure to all Nigerians.
ABUCHI OBIORA
abuchiobiora@gmail.com
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