By BOBSON GBINIJE
“Shall I ask the brave soldier, who fights by my side
In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree!
Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried,
If he kneel not before the same altar with me.”
– Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Nigeria is a country labyrinthined in the miasmatic mélange of a socio-economic and political farrago. Because it is a nation formed as result of the agglomeration of multifarious cultures, religions, socio-political interests and heterogeneous group of peoples. The mechanics and dynamics of power structuralisation and sharing constitutes the fundamental underpinning in the stability and progress of the Nigerian polity and social landscape.
The Lugardian albatross of 1914 that led to the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern protectorates could be said to sound the political death-knell of the southerners. This was further compounded by the introduction of the Direct and Indirect rule political and administrative formula, so much so that at the point and time of independence in 1960, the enforcement mechanism of complete dominance of Nigeria by the Northerners-Hausa/Fulani oligarchy and their stranglehold on all weapons of coercion through the military institution had been perfected.
We walked into the cauldron of a so-called independence trapped in the horrendous and macabre dance of Northern dominance. And they have masterfully kept the political scenario to their advantage. We saw a Parliamentary Constitution which had Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as the real enforcer of policies whilst our own president Nnamdi Azikiwe rigmaroled as a figurehead.
We do not need the adumbrations of a political sortilege to know there has been an overwhelming dominance of the leadership by the Northerners, be it military or civilian government. After the January 15th 1966 coup General Yakubu Gowon came on stream followed by Gen. Ramat Mohammed who was assassinated by their own Buka Suka Dimka in a failed coup. This was followed by our own Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo then Shehu Shagari followed by Gen. Buhari, evil genius Badamasi Babangida, Shonekan, the despot extraordinaire Sanni Abacha, Abdusalam Abubakar , Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’ Adua and now President Ebele Jonathan.
It is clear that the dominance is the basic plan and Objective of the Northernisation Policy as put in place by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Ahmadu Bello. The Northernisation Policy as the name implies is the complete no-holds-barred Northernisation of Nigeria. The systematic tilt of everything in Nigeria (political leadership, Economy etc.) in favour of the Hausa/Fulanis. It must however be realized that the middle-beltans have recently come to the realization that they have been used by the Northerners to their disadvantages for too many years. This has therefore given rise to a new geographical restructuralisation. The middle-beltans are now aware of the political fraud inherent in being designated as northerners. They are now clamouring to be alone as middle-beltans. But can they sustain the struggle?
The Northernisation Policy has created a culture of fear and a recherché of terror in the south through blackmail and intimidation. Once the northerners speak it becomes law. Once “AREWA” says NO or YES it’s views must prevail. The Kaduna mafia, Barewa Old Boys, Northern military Generals and the Northern feudal oligarchy are the de facto and de jure rulers of Nigeria. Southerners are a collectivity of follow-follow zombies (apologies to Fela).
The Northernisation Policy has over the years dehumanized the Southerners through the tacit and criminal connivance of our very own Southern leaders. So when the Senate President said that the legislature is an “endangered species” one feels he actually wanted to say the legislature is a “Frankenstein monster”. Our southern legislators have told us from their covert and overt actions that they were elected to serve their solipsistic proclivities and their Dionysian exuberance. The recent revelation by President Olusegun Obasanjo that a secret pact signed by some southern politicians which palpable objective is the perpetual mortgaging of southern Nigeria to the North speaks volumes for the fact that we southerners are our own enemies. The recent gasconading verbal phillipic and virtupurative phosphorescence of AREWA CONSULTATIVE FORUM (ACF) over President Jonathan and the 2015 elections lends credence to these facts.
The vendorisation of our conscience and the antics of southern political jobbers have continued to compound the Northerners’ asphyxiating hold on our political jugular. It is so easy for the Northern leaders to kick up a rumpus amongst southern politicians, scattering our arrowheads. Before a southerner can walk tall as a consummate politician he must go to the north to be rubber-stamped as a political puppet and surrogate. He then prides himself as a power broker for his northern masters. This southerners’ political inferiority complex drama has been unfolding since 1914 and this splendiferous theatrics is on the ascendancy.
The time has come and it is now for southerners to come together and assert our constitutional rights and privileges. We must do an implosive political surgeonisation of ourselves and eviscerate our bowels of all blacklegs. The Yorubas must shame history by learning to work with the Ibos and vice-versa. The southern minorities must begin to fine-tune logistics towards ensuring a noble place in the scheme of things. Shakespeare asserts that “the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in us that we are underlings.” We must at start a “SOUTHERNISATION POLICY” as a counter-vortex to the “NORTHERNISATION POLICY.” Yes, Alexander Pope asserts that “let the ends of things disjoin it is the whole world that suffers.”
One must however concede that the Northernisation Policy has virtually turned full circle following the amendments inherent in our various constitutions and the political tie-breaker of President Ebele Jonathan’s victory in 2011. One only hopes that the liberalization of the strangle hold on to power by the northerners will find a place in Nigeria as we make our political peregrination down the boulevard and promenades of democracy and nationhood.
Finally, there is the imperative imprimatur of a Southernisation Policy as a political vortex and counter-vortex against the Northernisation Policy which has been used to bamboozle and hoodwink the southerners over the years. The time has come and it is now for the southerners to orchestrate actions, perfect logistics and fine-tune strategies for the establishment of a Southernisation Policy that will take us to the political el dorado. Hence, the poet and essayist Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) said “where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives? Whatever the land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue.” The Southernisation Policy is a task that must be started now to safeguard the socio-economic and political interests of southerners within the ambit of ONE SOVEREIGN UNITED NIGERIA.
CHIEF BOBSON GBINIJE
MANDATE AGAINST POVERTY (MAP)
WARRI. 08023250378
