THE NORTHERN NIGERIAN ELITE AND THE STRUCTURING OF NIGERIA BY CHARLES UWENSUYI-EDOSOMWAN

[OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU]

                                                                                                                            The Northern Nigerian Elite  and the Structuring of Nigeria

                                                                                                                                                Charles Uwensuyi-Edosomwan                                                       

                     

Hello again Toyin,

" ... To me, as Sheikh Gumi did in his  laudable but ambivalent critique of Boko Haram, describing the government as imposed, stating “It is important for those in authority to stop corruption and stop imposing themselves on people. Nigerians should be allowed to choose their leaders”  is another code for some members of the Northern elite thinking the North was cheated  of the Presidency which they expect to have got according to the PDP power rotation formula” ...Adepoju

This might well be the Northern elite's mind set but I cannot swear to it. If it is, it is self serving and insensitive to the rights of the rest of the country to a fair sense of fellowship in their own country. It brings to mind the real reasons why this same elite would cry wolf at military recruitment that do not overwhelmingly favour it.

Sheik Gumi stated “There should be fairness in the running of the affairs of the country, especially in recruitment of uniformed personnel. I was sad when I saw the list of admission recently released by various military schools. Muslims are being cheated and this is part of the things that cause unrest in the society”.

While, in fact, Nigerian Christians (mostly of the Igbo and South Southerners) feel that they are at the butt of [discriminatory] military recruitment which include admissions into military schools because lots of soldiering careers begin from there! This would be diametrically contra Gumi's claim quoted above, wouldn't it?

The Northern elite transformed a thoroughly professional military that had earned its pips abroad to an utterly corrupted political party whose reins were securely locked in its hands. Through this politically manipulated military, the structure of this country was unjustly altered by sometimes fraudulent census figures or at other times by bare faced oppressive states and local government creation that had nothing to do with equity and efficient national development, but everything to do with raw domination of the rest of the country by this elite.

Arbitrary states and local government creation that favoured the North also transformed into undeserving senate and federal constituencies to  the disadvantage of the southern parts of the country.

For example, Kano that was on paper once on the same pedestal with Lagos was subdivided into two almost doubling the number of local governments between the new Kano and Jigawa states while Lagos remained one state with about half the number of local governments as the new creations from old Kano!

Guess what? States and local governments being constitutional levels for revenue allocation from the Federation Account, it isn't difficult to fathom how the rest of the country was subjugated by this Northern elite deploying its control of the military.

All one needs to complete the Northern oppression tapestry is the fact that the peoples of the country especially of the hydrocarbon bearing littoral states of the South were by decrees promulgated by Northern dominated military administrations expropriated of their God given lodes of natural resources by seizing them for the use and enjoyments of this same Northern elite while reserving a miserly 13 % derivation accrual to them - the oil producing states!

Even the 13% further loses its value and quantum to dubious central government accounting that is marked by sharp practices. Nigeria came to have sheiks and Northern potentates and their retainers who don't know how the Niger Delta looks like owning lucrative oil wells as absentee landlords while oil producing communities are left to enjoy the unspeakable pollution, cultural dislocation and physical displacement from their lands being the natural and logical consequences of the unprincipled exploitations of these natural resources.

Northern elite sanctioned constitutional over-centralization got so bad that Nigeria is indeed a federation in name only or one turned on its head. This manifests when federating states cannot control the security of their geographies, cannot appoint their judges (a Northern dominated body - the National Judicial Council {NJC} appoints and disciplines them for states), cannot own their airports, sea ports, wharves, railways, power regimes, etc.

One ludicrous promulgation by Babangida [ex-military dictator head of state] with an eye for the high value Lagos fore shore real estate, even sought to expropriate littoral states of the rights to economic exploitation of their shore lands! Any wonder then why we are so inefficiently run and abused? Or why in spite of Nigeria's immense wealth in natural and high value human resources, the overwhelming majority of us are dirt poor?

More can be said in this vein but it suffices to say that this elite's grudge for the claimed PDP altered zoning formula is just an empty sack of beans or if you like, a sack full of putrefied beans, whichever.

Having ruled and ruined this country for 40 of the 52years of flag independence, what moral justification would the North have to complain about GEJ's [Goodluck Ebele Jonathan] (a first South Southerner President) presidency even in 2014 giving the circumstances of his ascendancy? Was it GEJ that killed Yar' Adua (RIP) [the last President]?

Whatever happened to belief and unquestioned acceptance of Allah's divine control of the affairs of man?

Hmmm ....[ Nobody] is anybody's fool.

CUE

04/08/12