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PEOPLES DAILY WEEKEND, SATURDAY 29 - SUN-
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Trouble with the North: Divided house
The large chunk of the problems troubling Nigeria today is perceptibly linked with the North. The trouble with the region at the moment cannot be far-fetched from the insecurity occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgency, social miasma and political disunity long linked with the insensitivity, corruption and social disequilibrium in society. News Editor, ABUBAKAR IBRAHIM examines how it may
Dan Masanin Kano, Alhaji Yusuf
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orthern Nigeria was a British colony formed in 1900 via the 1885 Treaty of Berlin which broadly granted it to Britain on the basis of their protectorates in Southern Nigeria. Along the line, Britain’s Governor Frederick Lugard, slowly negotiated with and sometimes coerced the emirates of the North into accepting British rule, finding that the only way this could be achieved was with the consent of local rulers through a policy of indirect rule developed from a necessary improvisation into a sophisticated political theory. Basically, the essence of Indirect Rule was to preserve the age-long and predominant Islamic tradition in the North if British colonialism was to succeed without resistance from an already established oriental culture, language and education deeply rooted before their arrival. This was aptly convenient before the eventual merger of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate with Southern Nigeria in 1914. Consequently, western-style socio-economic and political life gained ascendancy in the south. Even though the North had the love of the British colonialists through
political patronage because of her observable deference to the masters, much of the institutions, human capital and western education had already advanced before Nigeria’s independence in 1960. And so, we do not have to look too far to see where the initial Northern troubles started. And so, in the last quarter of the 50s when British resources dwindled to the Second World War, making her incapable of practically retaining its Overseas Territories (including Nigeria), then Premier of the region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, saw it expedient during the pre-independence negotiations in Britain, to ask for a two or three years moratorium for which he was strongly vilified. Nigeria was to be free in 1967. That was the first sign of lacuna and the trouble with the North in the competition for the sociopolitical and economic space called Nigeria the Sardauna endeavoured to bridge. He once said: “ I have been accused of lack of nationalism and political awareness because I considered that independence must wait until a country has the resources to support and make a success of independence. I have been accused of conservatism because I believe in retaining all that is good in our old traditions and customs and refusing to copy all aspects of other alien civilizations. I have been accused of many things”. Sagacious, relentless and visionary as the premier was, he played catch-up within three years, building an elite workforce ready for transition to a new Nigeria. After that, he aggressively set up institutions such as Northern Nigeria Development Corporation (NNDC), Northern Nigeria Investment Limited (NNIL), Bank of the North (BON); Broadcasting Corporation of Northern Nigeria (BCNN), New Nigerian Newspapers, Government Girls’ Colleges, Women Teachers’ Colleges, Kaduna Polytechnic, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU),
Alhaji Balarabe Musa
Governor Aliyu Babangida
Zaria; ABU Teaching Hospital, Kaduna, Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Hamdala Hotel and several textile factories and industries. He also trained youths here and abroad and demonstrated amazing incorruptibility. The Northernisation Policy he couched in April 1960 was aimed: to nothernise the Northern Region public Service as possible; to ensure for Northerners a remarkable proportion of post in the federal Public service; to secure for northerners a reasonable proportion of post in all Statutory Corporations; to increase the number of Northerners in Commercial, industrial, banking and trading concerns in the Region; to expand as necessary the educational, training and scholarship schemes of the Region in order to provide the qualified personal required for the Northernisation policy. But behind this striking veneer of success were socio-economic problems largely amplified by the discontinuity of Sardauna’s legacy by those who benefitted largely from his benevolence. Professor Ibrahim A. Gambari, the Joint Special Representative of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur, Sudan aptly identified what was amiss. In December 2013, at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua centre, Abuja where he presented a paper was titled: Leadership and Good Governance In Nigeria: Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Ghost of 1914 and the Audacity of Hope for Nation-building,
Professor Gambari then raised an important issue. “I imagine that many in this audience would be asking themselves: what has happened to all these institutions that our founding father left us? I don’t think this will comfort you, but similar questions are being asked in other parts of Nigeria. This is about the first level of betrayal of the vision. On the economic front, those of us who live in Kaduna know that the textile factories established by the Sardauna are dead. When they were at their peak, the textile industry was the highest employer of labour. They were killed by incessant power cut the high cost of production from running factories on generators and the flooding of our markets with cheap imported textiles. Workers have been laid off, fuelling unemployment and poverty. We also neglected agriculture the mainstay of our economy in pursuit of easy money. Professor Gambari spoke at length on the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 and wondered why our current leaders have always tried to find watery excuses for the failure of leadership. He queried “Why then is it, that since the collapse of the First Republic, more excuses around colonialism have been offered for the failure of the leadership than were heard in
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