Nigeria as a Problematic and PMB as Nigeria’s Problem: The Physiognomy of Possible Break-up
By Bola A. Akinterinwa
Nigeria’s problem is largely a resultant from Nigeria as a problematic. Put differently, what makes Nigeria’s problem problematic? Nigeria is a problem unto herself but why is Nigeria a problem unto herself? Even though, ordinarily speaking, a problem is considered a noun and problematic as an adjective, we consider here as problematic the ingredients of what constitute the problem of Nigeria. In this regard, President Muhammadu Buhari is Nigeria’s main problem as at today, and by so doing, necessarily makes Nigeria a problematic by mania of governance.
Nigeria as a problematic is largely predicated on a tripod of inordinate ambition of the Fulani, use of constitutionalism to achieve the inordinate ambition, and political chicanery by manu militari. As such, this is why the governance of Nigeria has been driven by dishonesty of purpose in design, conduct, management and orientation, and more significantly, why there is a wrong make-belief that there is a Nigerian nation State that is truly working towards becoming a true nation and that will be sovereign, strong, powerful, united, indissoluble and indivisible.
Without any jot of doubt, at the epicentre of Nigeria as a problematic is the question of whether Nigeria, as amalgamated in 1914 or as united with the independence Constitution or the 1999 Constitution is indissoluble and indivisible. And true enough, if a Constitution provides for indissolubility and indivisibility of the country and the people, as a required constituent of a modern nation-state, complains that the Constitution that provides for indissolubility or indivisibility is fraudulent, why should the Constitution not be set aside to pave way for a people-driven constitution? PMB says complainants should address their problems through the National Assembly (NASS), which is considered by the coplainantsas a resultant of a fraudulent military Constitution. This is one reason why PMB is a problem and an obstacle to the making of a truly united and vibrant Nigeria, which is currently also a problem unto herself.
Nigeria as a Problematic
The foundation of Nigeria as a problematic is not only the vision and wishes of Sir Ahmadu Bello, as published in The Parrot newspaper on 12 October, 1960, but also the misperception of Nigeria in his mind. In the words of Sir Bello, ‘the new nation, called Nigeria, should be an estate of our great grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future.’
This statement is problematic because of its many operational words of concern: ruthlessness of action to be taken in preventing others from ruling the North; the whole of Nigeria as an estate or as a property; and southern Nigeria as a conquered territory or
subservient people. The problematic questions are not far-fetched: why should the North be considered as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory? This question is necessary because Nigeria has already been partitioned into two in the statement. The division is intrinsic in the statement by the mere fact that the North of willing minorities will be the tools, the South of conquered or enslaved people are to be political subjects.
More importantly, why the need to ensure the permanency of Fulani rule? Is it not because of the need to maintain the status quo or to prevent a change of power that electoral fraud has remained a desideratum or that Fulani power is also considered indefinite in terms of timing? Without gainsaying, this statement of Sir Bello has sent different signals to people in the southern part of Nigeria and the signals have also compelled the perception of Northerners, particularly the Fulani, of domineering slave masters who must now be resisted. The period from 1960 until now is seen as the period of tolerance, that has also reached its crescendo. In the words of Dr. Sina Okanlomo, the Secretary General of the Yoruba One Voice (YOV) in Johannesburg, South Africa, ‘the clamour for a Yoruba Nation became imperative amid various imbalances in the administrative structure and employment, the amalgamation treaty, continuous violation of human rights, nepotism, corruption, nepotism, corruption, injustice, insecurity and terrorism under President Buhari’s watch.’
And perhaps most notably, Dr Okanlomo said ‘Yoruba independence is not negotiable. We cannot attain our full potential within a contraption called Nigeria. As long as we remain in the geographical boundary created by the British, we are not free people, but slaves. How can we accept Fulani domination as an alternative to British colonisation? This is shameful, it must be totally rejected by all and sundry at all cost’ (vide Daily Sun, Wednesday, June 16, 2021, p.28). This perspective is popular among Yoruba Diaspora and majority of Yoruba at home.
Second, probably on the basis of the belief that Nigeria is an estate of Uthman Dan Fodio, the Fulani wrongly believe that there is terra nullius in Nigeria. For instance, the National President of the Miyetti Allah Kauta Hore, Mr. Abdullahi Bello Bodejo, strongly believes that ‘any forest in Nigeria is for every Nigerian, that it does not belong to an individual or to a community.’ This is a dangerous problematic that directly challenges the Land Use Decree No. 6 of 29th March, 1978, which was not only re-enacted by the National Assembly of Nigeria into a subsisting Act under Section 315(5)(d) of the 1999 Constitution, but also still vested the right of land ownership and control on State Governors, who hold it in trust on behalf of their people. It is this wrong belief by some Northern leaders that land does not have any individual legal title, that largely explains the imbroglio between herdsmen and farmers. How do we explain PMB’s archaic suggestion of return to the old grazing routes of the First Republic? Where is PMB’s modernity in this case? Where is his wittiness?
Third, the structure, in various ramifications, built on Sir Ahmadu Bello’s foundational statement, makes the problematic more complex. For examples, the World Bank has listed in its report, entitled ‘Universal Access to Sustainable Energy will Remain Elusive Without Addressing Inequality,’ Nigeria as one of the three countries (Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia, which replaced India) with the largest electricity deficits in the world. The World Bank also listed Nigeria as one of the top twenty countries with the greatest number of people lacking access to clean fuel and technologies for cooking (The Punch, June 8, 2021, p. 19).
Fourth, Nigeria is a problematic from the perspective of her 1999 Constitution. The Constitution is believed to be skewed in favour of, and imposed by, the military and the Fulani. For instance, the 1999 Constitution provides for secularity but the same Constitution only recognises Islam contrary to Sections 10 and 38. Some observers have said that the words, ‘Muslim,’ ‘Sharia’, and ‘Sharia Courts’, etc, are mentioned several times while the words Christian, Churches, etc, or other religions are never mentioned in any part of the 1999 Constitution.
Additionally, in the eyes of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, ‘the framers of the 1999 Constitution created Sharia Courts for Muslims. This explains why a Christian cannot be appointed as Kadi under the laws of the States or Grand Kadi of the Sharia Court of Appeal.’ In fact, the Catholic Bishops Conference has it that ‘while Muslims exclusively have a Court that regulates their affairs and to which they can exclusively be appointed as judges, the same cannot be said for the Christians, or other religions. This shows a constitutionally backed gap of inequality and under-representation in the Nigerian judiciary’ (The Punch, Friday, 11 June, 2021.p.7).
Fifth, Nigeria is currently playing host to the highest number of terrorist attacks. In between 2017 and 2019, according to the ACLED Media Reports, MDM Intelligence, Nigeria had 4,382 cases compared to Somalia’s 3,060 (2nd position), Libya’s 1,923 (3rd Position), and Sudan’s 821 (4th Position).
Sixth is the problematic of domineering of, or preferential treatment for, Nigerian politicians. Adetutu Balogun @Tutsky22 has compared the healthcare budget of N46bn for 200 million Nigerians and the education budget of N48bn to the budget of N125bn for only 465 legislators. Why is the political world given better treatment? The implications of this imbalance for national development cannot be far-fetched.
Seventh, there is the problematic of internally generated revenues. Let us, from the reports of NBS@statiSense, look at the year 2020 for an example: Northern Nigeria generated only N385.18bn (North Central region, N181.61bn; North west region, N146.73bn; and North East, N56.84bn) while Southern Nigeria generated N920.89bn (South West, N561.01bn; South South, N263.17bn; and South East, N96.71bn). In this regard, Southerners simply think that they are labouring unnecessarily for Northerners, hence the quiet animosity. In fact, it is also frequently submitted that alcoholic drinks are banned in the North, but those who ban the drinks are quick to take a share of the generated taxes on alcoholic drinks from the South. Nigeria, indeed, is a country of many self-imposed contradictions.
PMB as Nigeria’s Problem
If you ask Dr. Reuben Abati, former media Presidential Adviser and Journalist about the personality of PMB, especially on the basis of the interview granted on 10 June, 2021 by PMB to Arise News Channel and anchored by Prince Nduka Obaigbena, in which Dr. Abati took an active part, he will say that PMB does not sound like a Jibrin from Sudan. As Dr. Abati further saw him during the interview, ‘he was alert, alive, informed, confident, relaxed, witty and capable of disarming humour. He was not the invalid or the senile old man that his critics say he is. He didn’t sound weak either.’
From the perspective of physiognomic analysis, Dr. Abati might be correct, but only to an extent limitata. The interpretative variants considered by Dr. Abati in concluding that PMB is alert, alive, informed, etc, are quite questionable, because PMB’s integrity is not supported by the same variants identified by Dr. Abati, especially when an empirical deductive methodology is applied. For reasons of psychology of human differences, I accept the tenability of Dr. Abati’s submission, but will, however, argue to the contrary on the basis of PMB’s mania of political governance, which does not allow one to agree in total with Dr. Abati’s evaluation of PMB’s integrity, not only in terms of his character but holistically in terms of what he stands for.
First, and most unfortunately, civil servants, public officials and those who are meant to secure Nigeria and defend national sovereignty cannot be said to be patriotic. Under the presidency of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the issue of lack of patriotism was raised when President Jonathan declared openly that there were Boko Haram agents in his government, hence the failure of his government’s anti-Boko Haram efforts. The problem of BokoHaramic informants is accentuated under the PMB administration and many Nigerian notables have variously accused the Government of PMB of aiding and abetting boko haramic insurgency.
More disturbingly, General Theophilus Y. Danjuma also openly accused the Nigerian military of also aiding and abetting the Boko Haram and, by so doing, the enslavement of the people of Nigeria, particularly the people of the Middle Belt. As he put it in a television programme, ‘the Armed Forces are not neutral, they collude with armed bandits that kill people, kill Nigerians. They facilitate their movement. They cover them. If you are depending on the Armed Forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one.’
In the same vein, Dr. Obadiah Malaifa, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a former presidential candidate, not only submitted that the PMB government is an accomplice in the Boko Haram insurgency, but also alleged that the Northern establishment is planning a civil war in Nigeria, come 2022.
And more recently, the Governor of Niger State, Mr. Sani Bello, revealed how government’s decisions are leaked to criminals, even decisions taken during meetings at Government’s House. As explained by the Governor during the inauguration ceremony of a 161-member of a Special Vigilante Corps, ten Vans and motorcycles in Minna, ‘there are people providing information to bandits, especially within the political circle. They send messages directly to bandits, disclosing whatever strategies government adopts. Whatever we discussed, details are already with the bandit; they call to tell us exactly what was discussed. The informants are everywhere even in the Government House… While Government is trying to stop kidnapping, politicians were busy strategising to make money out of it… No successful kidnapping takes place without informants. They guide and tell them when to come and where to follow. They tell them the movements of security agents and, in some cases, ambush them’ This is why Governor Bello said he could not ‘trust anybody any longer’ (vide John Adams, ”Politicians, Government Officials Aiding Bandits – Niger Gov,” Daily Sun, Wednesday, 16 June, 2021, p. 7). How do we explain PMB’s integrity, especially in terms of alertness to duty and responsibility as Dr. Abati would want to have us believe?
Secondly, PMB is Nigeria’s problem from his attitudinal disposition towards institutional corruption. On the one hand, his government will accuse someone or a political appointee of either embezzlement or mismanagement of public money and therefore would sack the individual, but on the other hand, would still give a letter of commendation to the accused for serving well the country. Is this how to prevent or deter corruption? What type of political or economic integrity is this?
PMB himself has noted that Nigeria’s social problems are traceable to poor Local Government (LG) system. In his words, ‘Local Governments have been killed. The three tiers of government, if they are being followed properly, we would not have been having these social problems. But the problem is that they have been virtually killed and that is not good for this country because those who become the LG chairmen are being compromised. If your LG is supposed to receive N300 million, a letter will be prepared for you to sign that you have received the money and you are only given N100 million (The Punch, Sunday, 11 June, 2021, p.2). When PMB knows that this is what the LG chairmen do, how has his witty character impacted on this problem of corruption? Of what purpose is possession of knowledge without capacity to apply it for developmental purposes or for conflict management and resolution purposes?
Thirdly, apart from Nigeria being internationally perceived as fantastically corrupt, at least from the perspective of a former British Prime Minister, there is nothing to suggest that PMB has any clear understanding of what corruption is all about beyond financial malpractices. He does not see an act of nepotism as a reflection of corruption. When PMB finds it convenient to argue that he has the constitutional right to appoint whoever he chooses to appoint, especially in light of who he knows, he easily also forgets the need for the application of the Principle of Federal Character. This easy forgetfulness is an expression of corruption.
When PMB was Minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo, he was accused of squandering N135bn, of mysterious disappearance of N500 million and also incurring N800 million on personal estate (vide Newswatch,12 March, 2000). Even though allegations or accusations still remain what they are, not yet crimes until so proved, the problem remains the questions of integrity raised.
Fourthly, PMB apparently has little or no clear understanding of the issues he publicly talks about. One issue is that of the gazette on grazing routes. PMB directly showed express support during his Arise News interview for open grazing by asking the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to find the gazette promulgated under the First Republic. PMB wrongly believed that the gazette provided for grazing routes. Even though the existence of such a gazette has been questioned, the principle of lex posteriori derogat lex anteriori on the same matter necessarily applies. In this regard, PMB cannot be said to be well informed on the matter. In fact, the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has reminded that the former Western Region created farm settlements in Oyo and not grazing routes. Rapulu Nduka, the National Publicity Secretary of the Nigeria Bar Association and Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) have also posited that the Land Use Act has annulled every pre-existing gazette on land matters.
To borrow the words of Rasheed Adegoke (Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN), ‘the fons et origo of our laws is the Constitution, which has integrated the Land Use Act as one of the Acts of the National Assembly.’ Besides, and perhaps most interestingly, the character, the integrity, the mental alertness, the wittiness, etc, of PMB are also raised in the concerns of another SAN, Ifedayo Adedipe, who said: ‘what worries me the most is the fact that the President seems so fixated on this grazing issue involving the Fulani. He is the President of Nigeria for crying out loud, not the President of the Fulani. His position on the issue is so embarrassing.” (The Punch, Friday, 18 June, 2021, p.2)
Fifthly, there is nothing to suggest that PMB has productive capacity within the framework of his governance of Nigeria. What he is simply doing is to borrow and over-borrow to finance development projects without being able to raise the bar of local technological knowhow. According to the Debt Management Office, Nigeria’s debt was only N12.12 trillion as at 30 June,2015. The debt increased sharply to N32.92 trillion, of which N26.91 trillion was owed by the Federal Government and N6.01 trillion was owed by the constitutive States of Nigeria, as at 31 December, 2020. In other words, there was an increase of N20.8 trillion or 171.6%.
In the same period, unemployment rate increased from 8.19% in 2015 to 33.28% in 2021; GDP growth rate declined from 2.35% in 2015 to -1.92% in 2021; GDP value also declined from $492.44 billion in 2015 to N429.42 billion in 2021; exchange rate was one dollar to N197 in 2015 as against one dollar to N410 in 2021; etc. While extra-PMB factors can partly explain Nigeria’s economic setbacks, there is no disputing the fact that PMB’s misplaced policies largely account for the problems, particularly in the light of the country’s institutional corruption.
In fact, Nigeria’s political environment has become so inclement under PMB to the extent that professionals have now settled for a policy of self-emigration. For instance, Dr. Seun Yusuf, the President of the Nigerian Doctors in the United Kingdom, has it that the number of Nigerian trained doctors that migrated from Nigeria to other countries in the past three years was about 6,000. In her words, ‘in the last three years, more than 6,000 would have left Nigeria to different places, but because the UK is the easiest place, the pathway becomes very easy, so the UK gets a higher percentage of Nigerian doctors migrating. Some people are still in the UK writing their exams and they are not included in these statistics.'(vide Eniola Akinkuotu, ”200 Fresh Nigerian Doctors in UK Swell List to 8,384,” The Punch, Wednesday, June 9, 2021, p.8).
The emigrating Nigerians cannot be blamed because the environmental conditioning of their work in Nigeria is not propitious: while the World Health Organisation requires a ratio of one doctor to only 600 patients, the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria says the total number of registered doctors in Nigeria is 74,543 for the more than 200 million people in the country. This means that, even on the basis of 200 million people, the medical ratio is about one doctor for 2,683 people.
What is crystal clear from Nigeria being a problematic and PMB being Nigeria’s problem is that, in the eyes of most Nigerians, especially Southerners, PMB might have done his best, but his best is not seen to be good. Political observers make a mockery of his administration in different ways. Senator Shehu Sani says ‘whenever the bandits kill, we see the evidence of their dastardly and cruel acts.
Whenever you (PMB/Nigerian military) kill bandits, let’s see the evidence of your courageous and heroic acts (Daily Sun, 16 June, 2021, p.15). This observation simply doubts Government’s claims. Thus, the issues of alertness, being alive, well informed, confident, relaxed, and witty, as observed by Dr. Abati raise more questions than answers. PMB might have shown Dr. Abati’s observed values purposely for the Arise News Channel interview. However, such attributes have not been clearly shown in his political governance of Nigeria. PMB has been variously accused of nepotism, Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda, etc, but has not been able to respond to deny or confirm the allegations. In fact, national insecurity, nepotism, agitation for self-determination, and heightened terrorism have remained the hallmark of PMB’s administration. This is why Nigeria’s corporate unity is now under serious threats pointing to possible disintegration of Nigeria for which PMB must take responsibility.
