Northernisation as a Major Dynamic of Nigeria’s Deepening Insecurity: The Independence and Parliamentary Foundations

By Bola A. Akinterinwa

Nigeria was a problem unto herself before, at, and after, independence. Before independence, the prevention of Southerners from settling down in the old cities of the North, was the epicentre of the problem. The ultimate objective of the prevention, by then, was to avoid the corruption or contamination of traditional culture, values and patterns of behaviour by foreign or strange elements. As explained by Nigeria’s former plenipotentiary High Commissioner to Botswana and Lesotho and Professor of Political Science, Dr. Alaba Ogunsanwo, ‘after the amalgamation of Nigeria, certain policies, adopted by the colonial administration at the behest of some of the traditional rulers, inadvertently created migration centres designed to ensure the non-contamination of traditional culture, values and patterns of behaviour by foreign or strange elements. The phenomenon first emerged in the northern part of the country, where the traditional rulers succeeded in persuading the colonial officials to ensure that Southerners were not allowed to establish their settlements or places of abode near the old cities. These settlements where ”strangers” elements lived were quite some distance at the time from old traditional cities.’

Professor Ogunsanwo, who was also Nigeria’s ambassador to Belgium with concurrent mandate to Luxembourg and the European Union, has noted that ‘what was troubling was the translation of the inner feeling of ”you are different from us and, therefore, should not stay among us or near us,” into policy. That was to lay the foundation of future distrust and discord. There was, of course, discrimination and it continues today, as the Ibrahim Zakari panel set up recently by the Northern States governors pointed out in its comprehensive report on the extremely slow pace of development in the North.’ (vide Alaba Ogunsanwo, Selected Essays on Politics and International Relations [Ibadan: Concept Publications Limited, 2015], p. 230 et s.).
Even though Professor Ogunsanwo noted that the phenomenon began in the northern part of Nigeria without pinpointing the Fulani as the main traditional rulers involved, subsequent empirical cases clearly showed that the phenomenon is essentially about the Fulani. Let us begin with a cursory look at the Official Report on the Parliamentary Debates in the Senate, during the 1961-62 Session, covering the period from November 25 to December 1, 1961.

Discrimination at, and After, Independence
A 27-year old primary school teacher, Mr. Modiyu Adeniyi Odunowo complained bitterly about how Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was mistreated at the time of independence celebrations. Aggrieved by the shabby treatment, he said: ‘let’s have our own Pakistan. If they could rubbish Awo like this, sooner or later, they will be defecating on our heads. Let’s have our own sovereignty.’ He was assassinated five years after, but there is no information on who killed him Whatever is the case, the foundation for suspicions had been laid and Government has not prevented the deepening of further suspicions since then.

On, on Tuesday, 28th November, 1961 at the Senate, Chief O.A. Fagbenro-Beyioku, representing Lagos, introduced a Notice of Motion, entitled ‘Discriminatory Practices in the Federal Territory.” The motion stipulated that ‘this House deplores all forms of discriminatory practices, either in the National Policy of the country or in the Public Service Administration of the Land, which are capable of creating tribal disaffection among the several millions of the peoples of the Federation, thereby endangering the solidarity of the Nation.’

Put differently, Senator Fagbenro-Beyioku was directly complaining about discriminatory practices that had the potential to generate tribal disaffection in Nigeria. In his eyes, ‘the only way we can bring about that situation of developing, that sense of feeling at home anywhere in Nigeria, is to make sure that our National Policy, as well as everything we project, has roots radiating from the minds of Nigeria. There is one thing that we must keep ahead of us, and that is that nothing shall be done which shall injure the feeling of one tribe or one class or one religion. As long as we are able to do that, we will be building the Nigeria that we all love so much and will be making things really very easy and sweet for ourselves.’

The background to the Motion is interesting: Senator Fagbenro-Beyioku referred to press reports according to which ‘some sections of the Senior Service are asked to quit their quarters for another Section of the Service, and whereby there was a statement that the Government was committed to providing quarters for a Section.’ He was so disturbed to the extent that he expressed his disbelief as follows: ‘I can never believe that it is the policy of our own Government to single out a Section of the Community for protection against the interests of another Section of the Community. All these things must be clarified and have to be discussed, and we must know the policy of our Government on all these things.’

In sum, Senator Fagbenro-Beyioku moved the Motion so that Government could ‘set yardstick by which we shall measure our national policies and by which we shall remove entirely from our national policies anything that stinks or anything that suggests discrimination, either tribal discrimination, clannish discrimination, favouritism, Regional discrimination, or any form of discrimination.’

Rising to second the Motion, Senator A. E. Ukattah, representing the Eastern Region, submitted that the motion was a desideratum and that ‘if we allow this situation to continue, the consequences which will follow shortly will, indeed, be tremendous. In most of our establishments, and in nearly all our offices today, we find third-rate and second-rate people displacing the most eligible, the most suitable and first-rate people, who offer their services to the nation. The danger is there. This leads to frustration.’

In fact, Senator Ukattah asked the Senate why he should not be frustrated if he were ‘the most qualified and able man and the one who should merit promotion’ and he was ‘pushed aside on grounds of discrimination.’ Considering that discriminatory tendencies and practices were then very rampant in the country, and had, before then, not always existed, Senator Ukattah said the motion was clear, its aims were lofty and required seriousness of purpose, and therefore, seconded the motion.

The debate that followed the motion was heated, especially that the Minister of Lagos Affairs, Hon. Mallam Musa Yar’Adua, tried to stop the debate by invoking Sessional Paper Number 2 of 1960, a government policy, arising from the final report of the Parliamentary Committee on Nigerianisation of the Federal Public Service. In the ‘Sessional Paper,’ ‘Government accepted the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee that everything possible should be done to increase the proportion of Nigerians of Northern origin in the Federal Public Service and that a careers (sic) officer should be appointed for this purpose.’
Senator Ukattah raised a point of order on the basis of Section 29(1) of the Revised Standing Orders, according to which debates upon any Motion, Bill or Amendment, except in the case of a Substantive Motion for adjournment of the House and also on the basis of the Revised Standing Order 26(2) on Rules of Debate, which required a member to ‘confine his observations to the subject under discussion and may not introduce matter irrelevant thereto.’

The President of the Senate, Senator Chief Denis C. Osadebey, ruled against the point of order, arguing that the Minister’s point was relevant and that the Minister should continue with his submission. On this basis, the Minister explained that ‘in the administrative and professional grades, out of 1,203 Nigerian officers, there are only 34 officers of Northern origin; in the Executive grades, of 1,150 Nigerian officers, there are 30 officers of Northern origin; in the clerical and technical grades, of 16,770 Nigerian officers, there are only 381 officers of Northern origin.’ From this submission, the Minister was simply drawing attention to the fact that there were fewer Northerners in the Federal Public Service. He did not explain whose responsibility it was for the situation.

In his response to the specific issue of housing discrimination, the Minister had it that the case of some Nigerian officers who ‘were asked to vacate their quarters for newly appointed Northern Executive Officers… arose from the recent appointment of 17 Assistant Executive Officers of Northern origin to the Federal Public Service. It was urgently necessary to provide temporary accommodation because of the difficulty that they would experience in Lagos if such were not done. It would, in fact, have been impossible to persuade them to take up appointments in Lagos if no quarters were to be made available to them.’
The question arising from this submission is why should senior officers be asked to vacate quarters for newly recruited junior officers? If the senior officers were already in such quarters, why were they allowed to be there? If it was public policy to accommodate public officers temporarily, when was the ‘temporariness’ to be removed? This question is necessary because asking an occupant to vacate his residence under emergency can be very disturbing.

In this regard, the Minister explained that ‘those non-entitled Nigerian officers who were warned that they might have to give way to these officers were those who had been occupying quarters for such periods that should reasonably have allowed them to find alternative private accommodation in the town, knowing as they did that they were only allocated government quarters on a strictly temporary basis.’
Even though Senator Fagbenro-Beyioku attempted to withdraw his Motion and some Senators objected to it, submitting that once a Motion was tabled for discussion, it could no longer be withdrawn, there were proponents and opponents of the Motion. There was the particular perception of deliberate discrimination, largely induced by northernisation agenda: that of Senator Chief T.A. Doherty, one of the representatives of Lagos.
In his words, ‘we all know what the situation is in this country today and we have only been going round the fence rather than getting to grips with the problem. Even the mover of the Motion was guilty of the same thing.’ More notably, he said ‘discrimination means tribalism, in plain language; we should not beat about the bush, the Northerners are in control of the Federal Government today, and Easterners are playing second fiddle. That is the position in our country today.’ Again in his eyes, ‘in the Federal Public Service, when the Federal Government took office, the first thing they did was to remove the Chairman of the Public Service Commission and to put a Northerner there. The Northerners know where they are going, and we are not going to sit down unconcerned, while our rights and liberty are being invaded.’ Above all, he said ‘we do not say that Northerners should not come into the Federal Public Service, but we insist that they should come in, in a proper and honourable way. We should behave like brothers to one another…it is not by serving some people with eviction notices and asking the Northerners to take their place that we can have unity in this country.’ The foregoing was a major pillar of Nigeria’s deepening insecurity and crescendo of intolerance of what is considered as Northernisation, and particularly Fulanisation as at today.

Fulanisation and Foreign Policy Dimensions
Many Nigerian notables, including former President Olusegun Okikiola Obasanjo, have said that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) has, not simply a northernisation, but particularly a Fulanisation agenda. In the view of many other observers, the agenda has been in the making for quite a long time but reaction to it has been that of ”wait-and-see’ strategy: what will be the modus operandi? The modus vivendi? The leading dramatis personae? The strategic format? The strategic implications? And at what costs? Many questions but few answers. True, PMB has taken many decisions that clearly suggest that he supports Northernisation and Fulanisation agenda per excellence. Some critical examples for illustration purposes will do here. First, PMB appears to be giving expression to the perceived Fulanisation agenda in three main ways: institutionalisation, abuse of politico-constitutional powers to appoint, and reckless disregard for the rule of law and public opinion.

As regards Fulanisation by institutionalisation, PMB approved the establishment of an Air Force University in Bauchi after that of Police College in Kano, Defence Academy in Kaduna, Defence College in Abuja and an Army University in Borno. In the eyes of observers of PMB’s politics, why should all the defence institutions be concentrated in the same Northern region?

On abuse of politico-constitutional powers, PMB has been appointing Northerners, or ‘the people he knows,’ to the top echelons of strategic institutions in the country. One good illustration is the NNPC, where the first twenty topmost positions are all occupied by Northerners. In this case, the principles of fairness, nation-building that is predicated on fairness, equity, equality and Federal Character, etc, have all been thrown into the garbage of history. The 1999 Constitution, as amended, some observers have posited, is believed to enable PMB to hire and fire and that PMB may not be blamed.

Second, PMB is, at best, very self-contradictory in virtually all his policy pronouncements. He made it clear to all Nigerians in 2015 that his three main areas of focus and emphasis would be anti-corruption, economic vibrancy and national security. If he can be said to have done his best, there is no disputing the fact that his best has not been good for Nigeria in all the three sectors of national life.

For instance, in a lecture he gave at the Chatham House on February 21, 2015, PMB asked many questions: ”what is the difference between me and those who elected us to represent them, absolutely nothing? Why should Nigerian President not fly with other Nigerian public? Why do I need to embark on a foreign trip as a President with a huge crowd with public funds? Why do I need to go for foreign medical trip if we cannot make our hospital functional? Why do we need to send our children to school abroad if we cannot develop our university to compete with the foreign ones?

PMB, who, in October 2011, when he was yet to be elected, said that ‘if anybody says he is subsidising anything (fuel subsidy) is a fraud,’ not only discovered, following his election, that there was really a cabal fuel subsidy, which he has failed woefully to put an end to. In truth, PMB did precisely what he preached against. He travelled in presidential aircraft with huge crowd. Foreign medical tourism is his preference. His administration is corruption-ridden to the brim. The current controversy surrounding the where-about of the funds earmarked for the military to fight the Boko Haram insurgency is a case in point.

PMB’s double-standard approach in the political governance of Nigeria is also manifested through his Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who said those threatening national unity should be killed, while he pleaded with Nigerians not to retaliate the killings by the Fulani herdsmen. In the words of the Vice-President, ‘IPOB is a threat to Nigeria’s unity and we the Federal Executive should crush them and their activities by fire, by thunder. So we beg true Nigerians to provide our security agencies with IPOB’s information plan, activities for proper action to be taken immediately.

As regards his position on the herdsmen, Professor Osinbajo has a plea: ‘I plead to Nigerians, don’t retaliate Fulani herdsmen killings. Pray for them instead. Just as we the Federal Executive are praying hard now.’ In the eyes of many Nigerian observers this is political hypocrisy.

There is another irritating case of double standard and hypocrisy: the silence for a long time of the Federal Government over the illegal mining of gold in Zamfara State for years. It is very ridiculous that there is what is referred to as ‘Zamfara Private Jet,’ believed to be owned by the British, which lands in the middle of the forest in Zamfara, a constitutive State of Nigeria, and which does not have any airport. The jet is secretly exporting gold from Zamfara, reportedly without any government official knowing. Underground resources are said to belong to the Federal Government, but the Zamfara government has been mining it and has also said it is vending it to the Central Bank of Nigeria.

How does the jet manage to escape government radar in Nigeria’s airspace? Where were the security or intelligence agents when the tarmac, though not tarred, for use by the jet was being constructed? There are allegations against the Government of enforcing international border closure in the South but remains very lax about them in the North. Knowledge about this mining exploitation and exportation became more embarrassing when PMB ordered a no-fly order in Zamfara, where there are flights without an airport. This is one side of the coin.

The other side is at the level of the South-South people who have been agitating for control over their resources for a long time but who are being repressed for their agitation. If the people of Zamfara can have the right to their own resources, why is that of the South-South people an issue? Without any shadow of doubt, this is why insecurity has become recidivist in Nigeria and why the foreign policy dimensions must be very cautiously addressed.

Third, there is criminal politics of insecurity in Nigeria. The PMB administration borrowed N6.16 trillion out of the N8.499 trillion pension fund (vide The Punch newspapers online) and yet the sum of $2.41 billion voted for the military to fight against the Boko Haram was criminally shared by some people. In PMB’s interview with Christiane Amanpour of the CNN International in London, she was very astonished that the money meant to fight insurgency was diverted. Amanpour told PMB in the following words: ‘you are kidding, the money you designated to fight your major terrorist group, Boko Haram, they put it in their pockets.’ PMB admitted and recalled the ‘few instances where N2.1 billion were voted for military hard and software for the operations against Boko Haram. Those responsible sat down as if they were going to have lunch or dinner, shared it and put it in their accounts.’ Where are those responsible for the ill-gotten money today? Parliamentary suggestions include the recalling of the immediate past Service chiefs. But how does the recall help stopping the deepening insecurity in the country?

Insecurity in Nigeria has been largely fuelled by Northernisation agenda. The idea of secession of the former Eastern Region was first mooted in 1962 before its actualisation attempt in 1967. Even though the genesis of the centralisation of power is traceable to Decree 34, promulgated under General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Ibo man, to foster national unity, General Yakubu Gowon did not succeed in fostering national unity by restructuring the regions into 12 States. Power was not decentralised. Today, PMB is hostile to restructuring but has no control over quests for self-determination and foreign policy implications: those funding the Boko Haram are in Saudi Arabia; the Yoruba have asked the UN to organise a plebiscite on their intention to exist as a separate sovereign State. This request cannot but have the support of proponents of self-determination. The war scenario cannot but be between the North and the South, and therefore, PMB will need to secure an entente with either Cameroun or Benin Republic to have access to the seas for military supplies, for reasons of being landlocked. Also, the Foreign Service Officers will be divided. Defending Nigeria, in whatever ramifications, will be conflicting. Consequently, PMB must address the issue of Northernisation with seriousness of purpose and must not make haste slowly in preventing the destruction of Nigeria.