Ethno-Religious Agenda Paralyzing Nigeria

Nigeria remains a country of many nationalities who are qualified to

stand on their own as other nations. Some genuine efforts had been

made by some nationalists such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, to get the

multi-nationalities to forge one common objective, which could make

Nigeria a truly united nation.  But these have continued to be

thwarted by ethno-religious champions, who see the federation as their

father’s estate, where they should cling to power while enslaving

others.

Vindictiveness, vengeance, discrimination and oppression now reign

supreme in Nigeria, as South-East people are schemed out of political

appointments, while North-West and North-East people dominate the

power configuration, at the Executive, Legislative and Judicial arms.

Gestapo and judiciary seem to have been let loose on perceived

opponents as exemplified by the jaundiced judgments of the Rivers,

Akwa- Ibom, and Taraba Governorship Election Tribunals that sat in

Abuja as well as the trial of Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and

Mr. Godswill Orubebe for alleged wrongful declaration of assets by

Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).

The impunity, with which South-East people were deliberately excluded

by President Muhammadu Buhari, in over 30 strategic appointments he

has made, cannot be overlooked.  Under Buhari’s discriminatory regime,

Igbo are excluded from the headship of military and paramilitary

agencies, and consequently denied attendance at any security meeting,

and he is not concerned about national inclusiveness, integration or

cohesion.  Much as the prerogative of appointing political

office-holders resides with the President, the appointments violated

the tenets of the fundamental objectives and direct principles of

State Policy known as federal character, as enshrined in section 14(3)

of Nigeria’s Constitution.

It directs that “the composition of the Government of the Federation

or any of its agencies and conduct of its affairs shall be carried out

in such a manner, as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and

the need to promote national unity, and also to command national

loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of

persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional

groups, in that government or in any of its agencies.”  No sane person

will accept the Presidency’s claim that the appointments were I based

on merit and no Igbo made it, since from all indications, Buhari has

come to widen the ethnic gaps among the peoples of Nigeria and not to

unite them.  Was the Federal Character Policy not introduced because

of the fear that Igbo will dominate positions, if based on merit?

Marginalization of Ndigbo in the Military, Police, Customs,

Immigration and Civil Defence are among the reasons for the renewed

intense agitation for Biafra as Igbo youths are piqued that Nigeria

has been unfair to Igbo, and Ndigbo rightly believe that they will

never get justice in Nigeria.  They believe also that JAMB cut-off

marks are skewed against Igbo, who usually score higher marks, so as

to favour northerners who score lower marks under the guise of federal

character. Igbo youths are denied employment through quota system,

which ensures, that people get jobs not based on merit or competence,

but because of where they come from.  Buhari wants us’ to believe that

there are no qualified and honest persons outside the North-West and

North-East zones. A pressure group, Movement for the Advancement of

National Transformation (MANTRA) decried the lop-sided appointments,

pointing out that “Buhari has shown that he is a President to only

northerners.”  Right-thinking people see the breaching of the

country’s constitution by disregarding federal character policy in

appointments, to favour a section of the federation as corruption just

as stealing public funds.

The President must be reminded of his oath of office, especially …

“I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic

of Nigeria … I will do right to all manner of people, according to

the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.”  It is widely

known that at Buhari’s insistence, the Speaker of House of

Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, changed his earlier decision to

ensure that the principal officers of the House, were zoned equitably

across the 6 zones of the federation, leading to the sudden loss of

post of Deputy Chief Whip by South-East to South-West, which also has

the post of Deputy Speaker.  Buhari is mounting pressure on the Senate

President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to dispense with the services of the

Deputy Senate President, Barr. Ike Ekweremadu, a South-East Senator.

Buhari had masterminded the December 1983 military coup to stop Dr.

Alex Ekwueme, the then Vice President who was poised to replace

President Shehu Shagari in 1987, at the end of his second tenure, in

line with the country’s constitution and that of their party, the

National Party of Nigeria (NPN).  Dr. Ekwueme who exercised only

delegated authority from President Shagari was clamped down in

Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons while President Shagari was placed

under house arrest after that coup. In an interview with THE SUN on

May 31, 2008, Buhari’s former Aide De Camp, Mustapha Jokolo confirmed

that the 20-month military regime collapsed, because it lacked

blueprint and could not implement any, stressing that “By the time we

took over government, we did not know what to do with the government”.

At the 1985 Organization of African Unity (AOU) Summit of Heads of

State which Buhari attended, Presidents Nyerere of Tanzania, Kaunda of

Zambia, Gaddafi of Libya and 3 other African Heads of State implored

Buhari to support the confirmation of Dr. Peter Onu, an Igbo

technocrat as the Secretary General of AOU who had acted in that

capacity for 3 years then. Buhari refused and rather supported Alhaji

Idi Omaro, a fellow Fulani moslem from neighbouring Niger Republic for

the post, thereby becoming the first African Head of State to vote

against his own country man, at international level.  Buhari demoted

and retired erstwhile Department of Security Service (DSS) Director of

Information, Marylin Ogar, and had gone ahead early September 2015 to

dismiss Ogar’s sister and 64 other DSS cadet Senior Intelligence

Officers, out of 420 of them who had undergone 9 months’ training

locally and abroad, and were due to be commissioned in October 2015,

because of their ethno-religious background.  Dr. Junaid Mohammed,

Prof. Ango Abdullahi, Alhaji Ibrahim Coomassie, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma

and their ilks must be very comfortable with these

unconstitutional and discriminatory acts, which serve their

ethno-religious agenda of dominating the power structures of Nigeria.

However, thanks be to God for such well-meaning people as Alhaji Tanko

Yakassai and Alhaji Balarabe Musa, who have repeatedly cautioned

Buhari on his unconstitutional acts that widen the ethno-religious

gaps and can dismantle the federation.  It is on record that the

opposition of the North to the 1914 amalgamation with the South had in

1947 (the year of the inauguration of the Richards Constitution) been

loudly expressed by one of the Northern members, Mallam Abubakar

Tafawa Balewa, later to become Prime Minister of Nigeria in 1960. He

said, “We do not want, Sir, our Southern neighbours to interfere in

our development. We have never associated ourselves with the

activities of these people.

We do not know them, we do not recognize them, and we share no

responsibility in their actions. We shall demand our rights when the

time is ripe. If the British quit Nigeria now at this stage, the

Northern people would continue their interrupted conquest to the sea.”

In 1953, the Northern political leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, told the

House in Lagos: “The mistake of 1914 has come to light, and I should

like it to go no further.”  In his autobiography ‘’My Life’’, Bello

recalled the strong agitation for secession by the North and stressed

that “it looked very tempting” but for the difficulty of collecting

customs duties along a land border, and the unreliability of access to

the sea through a neigbouring independent country. In 1957, the

Sarduana of Sokoto said “we the people of the North will continue our

stated intention to conquer the South and to dip the Quran in the

Atlantic Ocean after the British leave our shores.”

Three years later, on October 1960, the Premier of Northern Nigeria,

informed Parrot Newspaper: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an

estate of our great grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly

prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as

willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow

them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their

future.”  That same year, Bello said: “I will allow Sir Tafawa Balewa

to go and become Prime Minister and lead the unbelievers of the South

while I will stay in the North and lead the faithful.”

In 1961, the Premier of Northern said in a BBC Television interview, in a

response to whether his “northernization policy” would be a temporary

or permanent feature, “In actual fact, the policy is a northerner

first. If you cannot get a northerner, then you get an expatriate like

yourself on contract. If we cannot get that then we will employ

another Nigerian from the South on contract too. This is going to be a

permanent policy as far as I foresee.”  Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon in his

first broadcast on August 3, 1966 after the murder of  , General

J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi and the North was set to secede but for British

advice, declared “I am doing it conscious of the great disappointment

and heartbreak it will cause all true and sincere lovers of Nigeria

and Nigerian unity, both at home and abroad, especially our brothers

in the Commonwealth … Suffice it to say that putting all

considerations to the test, political, economic as well as social, the

basis

for unity is not there, or is so badly rocked, not only once but many

times.” On October 2, 2014, one Aliyu Gwarzo told Pointblanknews:

“When I say that the Presidency must come to the North next year, I am

referring to the Hausa- Fulani core North and not any northern

Christian or minority tribe. “The Christians in the North are nothing

and the minorities know that when we are talking about leadership in

the North and in Nigeria, Allah has given it to us, the Hausa-Fulani.

-v • “They owe us everything. This is because we gave them Islam

through the great Jihad waged by Sheik Usman Dan Fodio. “We liberated

all these places and all these people by imposing Islam on them by

force. It was either the Quran or the sword and most of them chose the

Quran.”  “In return for the good works of our fore-fathers, Allah

through the British gave us Nigeria to rule and to do as we please.

Since 1960, we have been doing that and we intend to continue.  “No

Goodluck or anyone else will stop us from taking back our power next

year. We will kill, maim, destroy and turn this country into Africa’s

biggest war zone and refugee camp if they try it.

“Many say we are behind Boko Haram. My answer is what do you expect?

We do not have economic power or intellectual power.  “All we have is

political power and they want to take even that from us. If  they

don’t want an ISIS in Nigeria then they must give us back the

Presidency and our political power.  “Their soldiers are killing our

warriors and our people everyday but mark this: even if it takes 100

years we will have our revenge.  Every Fulani man that they kill is a

debt that will be repaid even if it takes 100 years. The Fulani have

very long memories.”  It is Gwarzo’s desire and that of his ilks to

conquer and subjugate Southern Nigeria and restore northern

denomination in the Nigerian affairs in perpetuity. This unbridled

quest for northern domination had led to a brutal Nigeria/Biafra war

between 1967 and 1970 in which millions died.

It gave rise to pogrom after pogrom bordering on genocide in the

north, and series of coups and counter coups, one of which Major

Gideon Orkar led in 1990 that could have enforced the excision of the

North-West and North-East  States from Nigeria, if it had succeeded.

This monster led to the annulment of Chief MKO Abiola’s presidential

election victory of June 12, 1993 which led to the brutal suppression

of the South by General Sani Abacha and the attendant murder, torture,

incarceration and exile of many southerners.

It generated stiff opposition to the government of President Olusegun

Obasanjo under the guise of “political Sharia” in the north, and

finally led to the most barbaric opposition to President Goodluck

Jonathan administration in the form of unrelenting Boko Haram and the

reprehensible acts of rape, murder, kidnap, destruction of crops and

burning of houses by” Fulani herdsmen”. It is worthy to note that the

current crisis of confidence facing Nigeria arose from lack of true

federalism and marginalization, and not corruption.

Therefore to sustain the existence of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,

Buhari should expeditiously present an Executive Bill to the National

Assembly for a law implementing the resolutions of the 2014 National

Conference, which would also enthrone EQUITY, JUSTICE and FAIRNESS in

the federation.  Alternatively, he should present an Executive Bill to

the National Assembly for a Law dissolving Nigeria along the

compatible ethnic lines, thereby reversing the 1914 amalgamation so

that everybody would return to his father’s homeland, as we were

before the arrival of the British colonialists, in compliance with the

United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007,

and Articles 19 – 22, Cap 10 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990.

 

 

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