2027: President: Tinubu and his northern teachers

WHEN last week, Professor Ango Abdullahi threatened that “the North is watching” what did he mean? You must love the professor of agronomy for his unambiguity. He is not the type that leaves his audience wondering. He concluded his lamentation with a call for action.

The North, he reasoned, must demand accountability and be united against the ‘injustice’ meted out to the region. Hear him: “We must be proactive. We will be asking questions. And this time, we expect answers. If we do not speak up and insist on fairness, the marginalisation will continue, and our children will inherit a more broken and divided nation.”

The government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is just 26 months old. But the North lays all the problems bedevilling the region at the helmsman’s feet. Leaders of that region said that Tinubu and his government should be blamed for the entire woes that have been the lot of the North. They said so with a sickening entitlement mentality and the finality of a Presiding Bishop. That is a big shame!

They were also magisterial in a manner that depicts a no-nonsense cane-wielding class teacher. The North, their leaders submitted, would, through its mouthpiece, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), write to President Tinubu to demand explanations on “some developments” in his government.

The region’s elders were not joking. Tinubu must, for instance, explain: “Why the sudden relocation of CBN departments (from Abuja to Lagos)? Why the mass retirements (where and when)? And why were 15 new directors recently employed with only four from Northern Nigeria?”

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Those were the words of Professor Abdullahi, NEF Chairman. He spoke last Tuesday at the Government-Citizens Engagement Forum put together by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF). And President Tinubu had better assemble convincing explanations for “these developments.” Why?

The former Vice Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, warned: “These are not coincidences. They are decisions with CONSEQUENCES, and the North is watching!”

I do hope Tinubu knows the implication of being watched by Big Brother. If I were Mr. President, I would simply pad my buttocks like we used to do in our primary school days, when we stuffed exercise books into our pants to cushion the effects of the strokes of cane from our teachers. Of course, like Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, those eagle-eyed teachers always found out our naughty games, removed the exercise books and flogged us like the last cow to the herder! Is the President ready for the flogging of his northern masters?

When will the North be asking President Tinubu those ‘pertinent’ questions? When will the region be demanding for “answers?” While we are hazarding a guess, let me summarise the North’s position as enunciated in Kaduna last Tuesday: it is obvious, and very obvious, too, that Nigeria is never one and can never be one!

This is the Nigeria of our time. Those who midwifed the contraption called Nigeria must be turning in their graves reading what the northern elite are saying concerning the backwardness of the region.

I am not Steve Cavanagh, the author of The Devil’s Advocate. I equally don’t want to play the devil’s advocate here. Tinubu has enough men and women, his night soil men, to carry his can of smelly chamber pots for him. My mission here is to ask us to examine the North and its claim of ‘marginalisation’, ‘injustice’, ‘unfairness’, ‘insecurity’ and ‘education backwardness’ in relation to out-of-school children and determine who is to be blamed.

There is a Yoruba saying that has a deep meaning. One cannot put the coral beads on the waist of another child whereas one’s child has a rotund waist, the saying goes. It is a Yoruba call for solidarity. The surface implicature is that one should rally round one of his own.

In the deeper sense, it means no matter how bad one’s child is, his conduct must be accommodated in the true sense of solidarity. It is saying that such a badly-behaved child should be preferred to another child from outside the family. In essence, ethnic solidarity should take the front burner above common good. Do I subscribe to that philosophy?

I answer by saying that our tendency to condone everything the political class offers us in the name of tiwa n’ti wa (our own is our own) is the bane of our development as a nation.

Our inability to call out our relations eating bad insects is the reason why we have not been able to sleep peacefully because of the intermittent whooping cough from the relations. What is bad is always bad. A President should not be supported based on where he comes from.

Our solidarity, our fidelity and devotion methinks, should be to sterling performances and not to the ethnicity of the driver of our collective destiny. We should be more concerned about abundant life for the people rather than the ethnic background of the President.

A North that kept quiet when Muhammadu Buhari drove the vehicle of this nation to the bottomless pit has no right to complain if Tinubu decides to put the vehicle back on the reverse gear with his Stone Age economic policies. Likewise, Tinubu’s brothers and sisters will be eternally wrong to clap and cheer when the man who promised hope is delivering hopelessness!

No nation moves forward that way. No meaningful development can take place in a nation populated by the máa jó lo mo nwo eyin e (keep dancing, I am watching your back) orchestra even when the percussion churns out discordant tunes! Nigeria can only become a success the day we individually and collectively agree that once one’s child comes with a twisted waist, the coral beads should be tied round the waist of a child with a well-formed waist irrespective of who sired her!

This is why I love the balance in the Yoruba worldview. The elders of the land who say one cannot put the coral beads on the waist of another child whereas one’s child has a rotund waist, also caution that it is only when one’s masquerade dances very well at the arena that the one holding the cincture will be proud and happy (bí eégún eni bá jóo’re, orí á yá atókùn). Only a child that is doing very well deserves the support of the clan.

The average Nigerians are not necessarily tribal jingoists. No! The elite, for their selfish reasons, are the ones fanning the embers of disunity. It pays them to see the masses divided alongside ethnic interests. An average Nigerian, the common man on the street, craves for results, successes and any good policy that can put food on his table. Nothing more.

Give the presidency to Ibrahim Momoh, the vice presidency to Musa Adamu; the Senate presidency to Jalingo Tundunwada and the speakership of the House of Representatives to Chiroma Abdumalik. Then make life more abundant. Guarantee security, build roads and supply uninterrupted power for 24 straight hours every day of the week, common Nigerians on the streets will go about their normal businesses and celebrate the good things of life they have in abundance. The problem of ethnicity, ‘marginalisation’, ‘imbalance’ and what have you are creations of the rapacious elite!

It happened recently when our Super Falcons won the 10th WAFCON trophy for us. Check the team, check the composition. Nobody complained about any imbalance or marginalisation. Nobody talked about Federal Character, our euphemism for sacrificing merit for mediocrity. Nigerians were all united, cheering the girls to victory.

We hugged one another, we backslapped one another, and we celebrated when the girls won. When they were two goals down at half time, we all prayed for their victory. When eventually they won, we forgot that Imo State alone had six of its girls playing for us!

That is what success is all about; that is what achievements bring. Our unity as a nation is more defined in the beautiful performances of our leaders.

If a loaf of bread goes back to N250 today; if a litre of petrol sells for N120; If Nigerians can travel from Lagos to Maiduguri on the highways without any fear of kidnappers or bandits; if farmers can plant and harvest their produce in peace, I take a bet, Adamu Abubakar in Maiduguri will celebrate Tinubu; Okechukwu Okafor in Ikeduru will forget about the nzogbu-nzogbu drumbeat of war in the South-East and Jumoke Abodunde in Emure Ekiti will tie her wrapper and dance to celebrate the president’s achievements.

The masses of the North, and the peasants of the South are united by one denominator: abject poverty. And they also have one common enemy: the elite, the political power holders who have become the proverbial locusts eating the vegetation of the nation.

So, whether the elite gather in Kaduna, congregate in Ibadan, assemble in the Coal City of Enugu, or foregather in the swamps of the Niger Delta to lament our present parlous state, they are not doing so for any altruistic reason. The masses should know that the communiques issued on regional marginalisation, infrastructural decays and the alarming number of out-of-school children in those gatherings are not because the elite love the masses.

2027: President: Tinubu and his northern teachers