By Ahmed Yahaya Joe
We can only speculate on what these two political titans in the attached picture were actually discussing back in 1956.
Just a few years prior ahead of the Sawaba Declaration of 8 August 1950, which marked the formal promulgation of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), Mallam Bello Ijumu (left) from the Mopa Division of Kabba Province in present-day Kogi State had invited over 30 stalwarts.
Only seven persons turned up due to the all-pervading fear of the Kano Native Authority’s dreaded policemen under the sway of the mainstream Northern People’s Congress (NPC) behemoth.
Those who managed to evade marauding NPC thugs to appear at Mallam Ijumu’s Sabongari residence in Kano were Messrs. Abba Maikwaru, Babaliya Manaja, Musa Kaula, Abdulkadir Danjaji, Garba Bida, Mudi Sipikin and Magaji Dambatta.
Notably, absent was Malam Aminu Kano (right), later leader of NEPU who would declare to members;
“He allows himself to be arrested for a crime he did not commit and will be expelled from the party, but if he resists and comes to us on a stretcher, he is a hero.”
Fast forward to the present-day North post-Buhari-era when whatever topic of political discussion or even the most constructive criticism of President Bola Tinubu by Northerners is carefully punctuated by more discerning discussants with the caveat “We were eight years in power,” reminiscent of the same words Ta-Nehisi Coates entitled his 2017 book on the 44th US President, Barack Obama.
Coates had actually borrowed the title of his collection of essays chronicling the two terms of Obama 2009-2017 from an elected African-American US Congressman, Thomas Ezekiel Miller (1849-1938) who after serving a prior stint as a South Carolina state legislator 1874-1882 resoundingly declared;
“We were eight years in power. We had built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions…we had reconstructed the state, and placed it on the road to recovery.”
On March 25, 2024, Iliyasu Gadu posted an opening answer to his own question “2027: Can the North stop Tinubu? (I)” affirming that as Mr. President’s first term plays out;
“Tinubu’s game plan will be to systemically strip the North of its advantages thus weakening its competitive edge in national politics.”
On April 2, with “The road to 2027: Can the North stop President Tinubu? (II)” Gadu continued;
“The first order of things is for the north to take a look at itself. To be honest, the North is no longer the cohesive political factor it used to be.”
Gadu had the candour to conclude;
“The North handed President Tinubu the mandate in 2023 on a platter of gold based largely on sentiments and without critical assessment. And now that the North has lost the plot lock, stock, and barrel, it must learn to live with the consequences of what it wrought by its own hands.”
Eventually, Mr. President would lend his voice on any perceived aggrievances in the North against him in an oblique manner while addressing the Sheikh Bala Lau-led delegation from the region to the Villa ahead of the August 1 protests;
“I have no cabal. I have no sponsors. The money I spent on the (2023) election was my personal fortune.”
As Gadu had prior affirmed;
“Money power is the game changer. It is the instrument that penetrates and unlocks all probable resistance with the debilitating poverty stalking the land.”
Then, there is the pervasive insecurity that has been afflicting the North. Why couldn’t former President Buhari wrestle this monster to the ground?
Hear him at Chatham House on 25 February 2015, ahead of the March 28 presidential election;
“What has been consistently lacking is the required leadership in our battle against insurgency…Let me assure you that if I am elected president, I, Muhammadu Buhari, will always lead from the front.”
How would Bello Ijumu and Aminu Kano have discussed the way forward for the present-day North?
They would have remained consistent with the NEPU ideals that is how. The Sawaba Declaration of 1950 stated in part;
“For a population of some 15 million people, there is only one Missionary trained medical doctor who is a Northerner while there is no single engineer, economist, lawyer or educationist,” and recommended “Mass and compulsory Free Education for all Northern youths of school age.”
NEPU also understood;
“That the shocking state of social order existing in Northern Nigeria is due to nothing but the Family Compact Rule of the so-called Native Administration (NA) in their present autocratic form;
Owning to this unscrupulous and vicious system of administration by the Family Compact Rulers which has been established and is fully supported by the British imperial government, there is today in our society an Antagonism of Interest, manifesting as a Class Struggle, between the members of this vicious circle of NA on one hand and the ordinary Talakawa on the other;
This antagonism can only be abolished only by the Emancipation of the Talakawa from the domination of these privileged few.”
Today, while the “NA” and “the British imperial government” have since passed away albeit resurrected into other contemporary political forms of continued existence the same historical “autocratic form” and “Family Compact Rule” including “Antagonism of Interest manifesting as Class Struggle” are all still very much alive to the continued detriment of the “ordinary Talakawa” predominately across the North to date.
It is against this enabling background three fundamental questions Malam Iliyasu asked sequentially in his March 25 intervention will continue to remain largely unanswered by Northerners themselves;
“How come the North cannot solve the challenges of banditry, kidnapping, and insurgency in the region?
Why is the North so content with poverty, underdevelopment, and vast inequalities?
Why do some Northerners feel as if they are more Northern than others?”
No doubt the problems of the North are legion. So are its issues and contradictions.
There are, however, still common denominators that act as binding factors irrespective of prevailing differences and historical disagreements.
The recent percussion played by Ambassador Emeka Anyaoku-led “Patriots” during a recent presidential audience sounded like the drumbeats of re-structuring Nigeria.
Why is relentless pressure on extra-constitutional change always prevalent whenever the North is not in the Villa since 1999?
First, it culminated in the National Political Reform Conference in 2005. Second, manifesting in 2014 as the National Conference. Both with archived reports.
If so, why summon another jamboree?
President Tinubu might currently be like Mike Tyson in his prime with the North down. Being out, however, remains to be seen.
Anybody who thinks Nigeria can be restructured without the North’s acquiescence is probably living on the moon.
