The Loud Echoes of the Southern Governors

Eddy Odivwri

Twice they have spoken, twice they have shaken the polity. First, it was in Asaba, Delta State (last May 11) and just last Monday, they roared again, this time in Lagos, the city they have declared as the permanent secretariat of the Southern Governors’ Forum.

Only the naïve can either dismiss the 17 governors of Southern Nigeria or trifle with the points they have made. The message from the governors is as clear as crystal. And it is not far from declaring that the status quo cannot be allowed to continue. And this does not have anything to do with party affiliation or a warped sense of loyalty to some insensitive political leader. Both governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or even All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). The resolve seems to be like saying, we cannot be slave to party loyalty at the expense of the lives and safety of our people. This has been expressed on all fronts.

Only dull-brained people will not see the dangers ahead. Perhaps what is even more frightening is the fact that the federal government, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, does not seem to appreciate or correctly interpret the implication of the gathering clouds.

For a long time, the governors of the southern part of Nigeria have not had such a rousing consensus on national matters and concerns. But pushing all their partisan differences apart, they are all agreed on the issues of the safety of their people. What else is governance all about if it does not accommodate the interest, safety and well being of the people?

Under President Buhari’s administration, too many things have gone wrong and unchecked in a way that they now seem to be like the normal. I am sure the southern governors were simply tired of waiting for things to change. It is even doubly worse for the APC governors. How can they convince their people that the man whom they voted for is in power and they are under the heavy burden of insecurity and hunger? How can they explain that farmers can no longer go to their farms, or that people can no longer travel freely on the highways without being harassed, kidnapped or even killed by Fulani herdsmen? How do they engage the people on any governance discourse and not talk about such danger in the polity?

Yes, Nigeria is an amalgam of disparate groups and people. Since independence, it has been the responsibility of all leaders to effectively manage those differences in a way that there is a semblance of a united Nigeria. But sadly, the present administration has not been brilliant in this regard. And the consequence is that the fault lines in the country are not only getting heavily defined, but are getting bolder and deeper. There is now so much deference to primordial considerations like region and religion. There is now no pretence about fostering the narrative of a united Nigeria.

That is why the Southern governors were manifestly regional in their advocacy and demands. Charity, they say, begins from home.

The president has been repeatedly and publicly accused of nepotism, and rightly so. But that has not changed anything. The malaise of ethnic superiority among the Hausa/Fulani, for instance, is no longer a mere feeling, but a practical, bitter experience in the Nigerian system. It is there in the Nigerian civil service, it is there in the Army, Customs, Immigration, Airforce etc., just everywhere. A friend told me very recently that in her parastatal (under the Ministry of Transport) there are no middle-level southerners at all. What that means is that when the present crop of senior officers retire, the parastatal will be completely in the hands of people from a particular section of the country. Yet, there is an entire section of government meant to manage and project the ethos of regional balancing, called Federal Character Commission.

It is instructive that the Southern governors have been forced to get united, courtesy of the dare devilry of bandits and herdsmen who have literally seized the peace and quiet of the region. Now, the fire has been lit. the flame can only be managed, not quenched.

Now, irrespective of whatever the position of the various political parties, the 17 governors of the south have resolved that the presidency must come back to the South in 2023. Interestingly, some of the Middle Belt governors plus Governors Abdullahi Ganduje and Babagana Zulum of Kano and Borno States respectively, have endorsed the position of the Southern governor. This as some of the governors in the North have not only called Ortom, Ganduje and Bulum as sell-outs, they have argued that the principle of rotational presidency is not in the Nigerian constitution.

Indeed, governors like Yahaya Bello (Kogi), Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Aminu Tambuwal (Sokoto), former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso and even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar have all been warming up for a shot at the presidency, even as a northerner would have occupied the seat for eight full years (by 2023). The north needs the south as much as the South needs the north. But there is a vexatious sense of arrogance among the northern political elite that seems to suggest a sense of entitlement in the Nigerian federation. The Southern governors, by their declaration, last Monday in Lagos, have declared that such cusp of arrogance can no longer be accepted.

The Southern governors also declared that the new Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) being passed by the National Assembly is not only offensive to good thinking, but also inconsiderate to the host communities. They rejected the ownership structure provision infused into the Bill. How can it be explained, for instance, that states where the petroleum pipelines pass through would automatically be regarded as Oil-producing states, just so they can benefit from the proposed five or three per cent equity holding in Host Communities Trust Fund? This is hilarious and vexatious! This is not to even mention the reluctance, if not refusal of the upper chamber to raise the equity holding for host communities to five per cent like the Lower Chamber did. Yet, a wholesome 30 per cent of the fund is approved for exploration of oil in far away dry zones like Borno and behind the deserts. Some of the provisions of the PIB seek to undermine the collective intelligence of the Niger Delta region and its people. The National Assembly cannot afford to cut their nose to spite their face. Nobody tests the depth of a river with both feet at once.

Rightly too, the Southern governors have argued that if indeed, they are the Chief Security Officers of the various States, as the constitution merely ascribes them, then they should be in the know before federal security agencies carry out operations in their various states. This is believed to have arisen from the dawn attack of the residence of Sunday Igboho, about a week ago. How could the DSS, for instance, have carried out such a massive attack on the home of Igboho, without the governor of the state (Oyo) having a wink of the operation?

It was so heartwarming that the Southern governors have also resolved that all state Assemblies of the Southern States would have passed a law banning open grazing in their various states. The ban is expected to take effect September 1, 2021.

This is regardless of the President’s search for colonial gazette of ancient grazing routes in the country.

In all, the Southern governors have squared up to the president, looking him eyeball-to-eyeball, and saying, No More! This is a delicate curve in the journey to nationhood. How well Mr President negotiates this bend will determine how well the ship of state will sail therefrom. We watch. We Wait!

El Rufai, Kidnappers and Other Matters

Eddy Odivwri

Did you hear that over 348 school children are in the hands of Bandits in Northern Nigeria in the last one month? Yet, the concerned state governors are sleeping and waking and making merry?

What do you expect the said state governors to do? They should enter the forest to look for the kidnapped children?

What kind of question is that? Are you not a father? Is that what you can say in the face of this dire problem facing Northern Nigeria? Do you realise the eventual consequence on education?

You want me to join you in heaping all the blames on the governors? Do you know the efforts the various state governors have been making to ensure that abducted children are safely rescued and returned? Some of you just think….

(raise his palm) Stop! Don’t typecast me. I am not among the ‘some of you….’ What we are saying is that we cannot see any effort at all. What is the outcome of this so-called effort? Imagine the 136 toddlers and infants of Tegina Islamiyyah School, in Niger State kidnapped since late May, are still in captivity. The headquarters of school pupils’ abduction seems to be in Kaduna State with a major abduction taking place every forth night. Yet the Governor, Nasir el Rufai, remains obstinate about solving the problem.

You talk about efforts. What efforts? What do they do with their huge security votes?

There you go again. Gov El Rufai maintains that he will not negotiate with bandits, since they have elevated kidnapping to a major lucrative going concern. He argues that negotiating and paying them ransom makes the crime a commercial venture that should be sustained. In a way his argument makes sense.

Yes, the governor’s argument makes sense, but has it solved the problem? Was he not the same one who started it all in 2016 by inviting and settling the bandits? Have you asked yourself why the kidnappers seem to have all relocated to Kaduna State? Need you be told that it is all aimed at teaching El-Rufai a lesson of how not to be cocky and refractory on such sensitive matters about life and death?

Who is willing to use his son or daughter to test the efficacy of the strategy of the governor? When the bandits shot and killed those five abducted undergraduates from Green Field University, did El-Rufai’s strategy bring back those children?

Do you think it was out of normalcy that the parents of the remaining students gathered N180 million to rescue their children from the hands of the kidnappers? Yes, N180 million!

Now they have kidnapped 140 students from Bethel Baptist High School , Kaduna, on Monday. How many rivers do we have to cross to end this scourge?

But for how long will a government condone this height of brigandage among its people?

Are you asking me? Go and ask Gov El Rufai? And don’t forget to also ask him why he withdrew his two children from public schools? Didn’t he say even if his child was kidnapped, he would not negotiate with bandits?

You can be sure no mother would allow that kind of experimentation. Don’t forget, “wisdom is profitable to direct…”, as the scripture says. You know that his children will be prime targets for the bandits, just to prove a point.

So, whose child is fit for this test-of- stubborness experiment? You see what the people mean by saying what is good for the goose is good for the ganders?

Watch it!, you cannot accuse Gov El Rufai of being partial in the application of his principle. He merely withdrew his children from school. He did not secretly go to enroll the children in some fortified schools. In fact, he had gone ahead to close down 13 schools which he suspects are prone to attacks.

So, is that the solution? He is treating the symptoms of the disease and not the disease itself. How does closing down 13 schools forestall the big buzz in the business of kidnapping school children?

What are the alternatives? What are the defence strategies? What are the baits to discourage the banditry? Can the whole world not see that the hard-headedness approach is not paying off? Is there no wisdom in the saying that if you want to catch a monkey, you behave like a monkey?

Those of you hell bent on defending the malaises of Gov El Rufai should tell him that when strategies are proven to be ineffective, they should be reviewed. Even if it means playing the fool, to achieve a given end, it will be adjudged a wise decision. It is called the doctrine of Necessity or even Expediency.

Sticking to your guns and allowing such degree of banditry and unrest to practically seize the state, while sacking the workforce in the state civil service amidst threats of doom and danger are surely not means of ending a scourge that has come upon the people. He should be conscious of how history will judge him at the end of his tenure.

We should pray for the courage to do the right things.