Negotiability of Nigeria’s National Unity: Beyond the Babagana Kingibe’s Postulations

Bola A. Akinterinwa

“In a Dramatic Shift, Kingibe Says Nigeria’s Unity Negotiable.’ This was the title of a report by Festus Akanbi and Onuminya Innocent in ThisDay on Sunday of 17 October 2021. The report is very interesting and significant in many ways. First, the report raises the question of national unity: is it negotiable or not? This question has been generating a lot of intellectual and political debate. President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) is the chief apostle of indissolubility and non-negotiability of Nigeria’s national unity. He has even turned it into sloganeering. One possible rationale for PMB’s position may be because it is constitutionally provided for. He therefore constitutes one school of thought.

Another school of thought to which Alhaji Babagana Kingibe now belongs, argues that there is nothing like non-negotiability and indissolubility of Nigeria. This school predicates its belief on the very 1999 Constitution that also serves as foundation for the PMB school of thought. The 1999 Constitution, either as it was ab initio, or as amended, is fraudulent in design, intention, and content, simply because its opening statement purported that it is a people-initiated and people-driven constitution, when the truth is the contrary. Besides, even people who were elected and were to have the Constitution applied to them never had access to the Constitution until the last minute or when they got into office. In the eyes of the general public, the 1999 Constitution is, at best, a fraudulent military constitution.

Second, Akanbi and Onuminya talked about ‘a dramatic shift.’ This implies that, before now, the position of Alhaji Kingibe was non-negotiability of Nigeria’s national unity. If this was so, the natural question that arises is how to explain the dramatic change in position. What informed the change in perspective? What really does the new position of negotiability of Nigeria’s national unity mean? Some public commentators have noted that Alhaji Kingibe is simply seeking political relevance with his dramatic change. This may be true.

However, we strongly believe that Alhaji Babagana Kingibe is a man of honesty, conscience, dignity and objectivity of purpose, which should not be simply explained off in the context of 2023 presidential politics and national unity debate. One empirical illustration of his character to which I am a witness shall suffice here before our exegesis of the debate.

Kingibe and Public Integrity

If there are any ten good political leaders in Nigeria, I believe, and strongly too, that Babagana Kingibe must be one of them. In 2003, Mrs. (Professor) Uche Joy Ogwu was the Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). In that year, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, CON, was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He invited and appointed me as his Special Assistant, on the basis of which I applied to the NIIA Director General for permission to go on secondment or leave of absence. After waiting for about three months for a reply from the Director General to approve or disapprove, but to no avail, I reported my challenges and inability to accept the appointment to the Foreign Minister.

Foreign Minister Oluyemi Adeniji took the matter up with the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Obong Ufot Joseph Ekaette, another perfect gentleman of honour and dignity. Ufot Ekaette not only wondered much why it should be difficult to release a public servant to serve under the same Federal Government, but also simply authorized the Foreign Minister to ask me to resume duty as his Special Assistant. He explained that by the time I would have served as Special Assistant, Mrs. Joy Ogwu might not be there as NIIA Director General. This was how I left the NIIA to take up appointment as a Special Assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The understanding of the difference between a Special Assistant and a Special Adviser in the Public Service is necessary in understanding the logical rationale behind the decision of Ufot Ekaette. The position of a Special Adviser is necessarily political. That of a Special Assistant is not. It is professional. If, and when an individual is already an employee in an MDA (Ministry, Department or Agency) of government, and he or she is seconded or appointed to another MDA and call of duty, he answers Special Assistant. The implication is not far-fetched: assist your principal in the attainment of his or her policy objectives. Such assistance is not driven or defined by whether one agrees with one’s principal. As a Special Assistant, the one and only functional duty expected is to ensure the attainment and success of Government’s objectives. The functional duty of any Special Assistant is therefore supportive and unidirectional as may be required by one’s principal.

Unlike a Special Assistant, a Special Adviser is a political appointee and functions as made clear in the name-designation: to advise. An advice can be taken or rejected. Advice is expected to be given based on expertise and professionalism. After the tenure of a Special Adviser, he or she leaves government office while a Special Assistant returns to his or her former office.

In my specific case, I served as Special Assistant to Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji as Foreign Minister and as Minister of the Interior. I also served Chief Ojo Maduekwe, CFR, as Special Assistant when he was Foreign Minister. While Ambassador was a career diplomatist, Chief Ojo Maduekwe was an astute politician and a nationalist. The problem from the foregoing was that when I returned to the NIIA to continue my duty as a Research Fellow, as rightly predicted by Ufot Ekaette, Mrs. Uche Joy Ogwu was no longer the NIIA Director General. But she had simply facilitated the appointment of Professor Osita Eze as her successor. Professor Eze’s appointment was designed to have a temporary character because Mrs. Ogwu had the ultimate objective of possibly returning to the NIIA as the Director General. Considering that her appointment as Foreign Minister might be for a short period.

Perhaps more problematic is what was recorded in my file when I returned to the NIIA and on which Professor Eze officially acted. It was recorded that I had ‘absconded’ from office. Absconded from where to where: from the NIIA to the Foreign Ministry? Regardless of one’s status before appointment as a Special Assistant or as a Special Adviser, the grade level always given to a Special Assistant and a Special Adviser is Level 16, Step 4, which is that of a Deputy Director. And perhaps more disturbingly, there is nothing like salary increment or promotion. For about eight years that I served as Special Assistant, my salary and status was static. There is nothing like promotion

In the wrong belief that that I had absconded, for almost one year, no salary was paid to me at the NIIA, even though I was always in the office. In this same period of almost one year, I was shuttling between Lagos and Abuja to sort out the allegation of abscondment. This was a case of manifest injustice. I went to the Office of the then new SGF, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe to complain. He could not believe my story that I was a legitimate research staff of the NIIA and was asked to come and serve as a Special Assistant to the Foreign Minister and the NIIA Director General could have the effrontery not to comply with a governmental request, more so that the NIIA was, and still is, under the supervisory authority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Babagana Kingibe directed his Special Assistant to investigate the matter and to report his finding. The inquiry took time, but the ultimate outcome was that nothing incriminating was recorded against me. No record of any previous query or act of gross or serious misconduct, but that of patriotism and hard work. Put differently, my offence was being a patriotic research fellow. My offence was that I was always engaging in dint of hard work and was fighting all forms of anti-Nigeria sentiments. And true enough, I was being sanctioned for my belief that NIIA should not be funded by foreign organisations to undermine Nigeria’s national interests. My persecution for these offences made me to believe that it is wrong to be patriotic, to be honest, to be faithful, and to be hardworking in Nigeria. Nigeria is a terra cognita for anything anti-progress, anti-unity, anti-democracy, fraud, chicanery and ungodliness in all ramifications. Nigeria is noted for religious devotion, but God does not appear to have shown any readiness to look at Nigeria and Nigerians with compassion.

But thanks to Alhaji Babagana Kingibe who read the findings of the panel of inquiry and discovered that there was no justification for the allegation of my having absconded and non-payment of my salaries, I was able to see that it is not every Nigerian leader that is mentally deficient and subjective. Babagana looked at the matter very dispassionately and concluded that my case was that of mistreatment, unfairness and injustice. He directed that ‘Dr. Bola Akinterinwa should be reinstated’ and that both the NIIA and the Foreign Ministry ‘should report immediate compliance.’ It was on the strength of this directive that the NIIA began to run helter-skelter, that everybody was trying to exonerate himself/herself from any involvement in the decision of my alleged abscondment.

But note, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe is not a Yoruba man which I am. He acted to defend anyone, though not a Hausa or a Fulani like him. His intervention, like that of Ufot Ekaette, was a manifestation of exemplary leadership and objectivity of purpose and in national interest. I have always suffered from deliberate persecution for insisting on the truth, for defending Nigeria, for patriotism. It is against this background that whatever Babagana Kingibe might have said or might have reviewed in the context of the debate on negotiability of Nigeria’s unity should always be explained and understood. His position cannot but be in his belief in the truth, the need for patriotism and the need to truly have a system of institutional justice and fairness. His character, his personality cannot but be a major factor in understanding of whatever position he takes. This brings us to the issue of his dramatic change in position regarding the negotiability of Nigeria’s national unity.

Kingibe’s Arguments of Non-negotiability

Arguments of non-negotiability are interesting. PMB always declare that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable, and that Nigeria is not dissoluble, but without offering any explanation as to why. His Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, explained in January 2021, at the National Christian Centre in Abuja, on the occasion of the 2021-Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebration why Nigeria’s unity is a desideratum. In his words, ‘the struggle to ensure a more perfect federation is a lifelong enterprise to which each generation must resolutely commit? In this regard, why should the quest for a perfect federation be a lifelong struggle? If it will take an entire life to struggle, what benefit is the life struggle to the struggler? Why should commitment of the people to the struggle be resolute and for a lifetime?

Professor Osinbajo also noted that ‘Nigerians must, at every opportunity, insist that every great multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation has, through thick and thin, fought to realize the great dividends of diversity and pluralism’ (vide Adejumo Kabir, ‘’Why Nigeria’s Unity is Non-negotiable,’ (Premium Times, January 11, 2021).

In the same vein, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), noted in an interview with the Arise Television, that there were settled principles and policies in Nigeria. The principles include Nigerian unity. He explained that Nigerians agreed to live together as one indivisible entity before independence. IBB said he was ‘bound by the agreement.’ This type of argument is very flimsy. Can the modern-day generation of Nigerians prescribe what should be done and what not should be done for the generation of Nigerians that will live in the next century? Will the environmental conditionings that prompt such prescriptions today remain valid in the next 100 years? What did the Nigerians who wanted to live together before independence consider in arriving at their decision? Why should the pre-independence dynamics of the decision be permanently sustained?

In the eyes of Adebayo Abubakar, ‘for the avoidance of doubt, there is nothing in the life of a nation that is not negotiable. Nothing, I repeat, nothing in our national life that is not negotiable… Whoever says Nigerian unity is non-negotiable, must first and foremost let us understand his own definition of the of the word unity, at least, in the context of Nigeria as an heterogenous nation.’ More important, he asked, ‘who says ‘Nigerian unity is non-negotiable, when it appears some Nigerians, a very minute fraction of the population for that matter, are more Nigerian than the rest of us? In the face of acute and chronic lopsidedness of distribution of opportunities that has been elevated to a status of officialdom, why should we not come to a roundtable and renegotiate the deal? Adebayo Abubakar has asked. He strongly believes that ‘we can remain a united and one indivisible nation, but certainly not on the basis of the interest of the socio-economic vampires, who currently parade themselves as political elites, in whose hands socio-economic destinies lie’ (The Cable.ng, August 23, 2021).

One important point from the foregoing is the need to differentiate between negotiability and non-negotiability of Nigeria’s unity as an intellectual debate and the reasons why national unity should be negotiable or not negotiable. Apart from the intellectual deficit in the arguments of non-negotiability, emphasis is generally placed on why national unity should be negotiable. Essentially the visible reasons are lopsidedness in political governance, policies of nepotism and manifestations of political arrogance. In all these, what is the position of Alhaji Babagana Kingibe?

Kingibe likened national unity to that of a family when he received, on Saturday, 1st October 2021 at The Sun Newspaper Awards for 2020 in Lagos, the newspaper’s ‘Lifetime Achievements Award.’ Kingibe said that he was born and groomed in Nigeria, that he and people of his generation believe in Nigeria and that they have no option but Nigeria. However, he noted, a few of his colleagues ‘believe that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable. Of course, it is negotiable. Even the unity of family is negotiable. Even the constitution of husband and wife is negotiable, the moment either parties (sic) feels this union is no longer bearable, that he or she will rather go his/her way.’

Kingibe cannot be more correct, not only on the negotiability of Nigeria’s national unity, but particularly in terms of the family attitudinal approach to the problem. He observed that any party that wants to pull out from the union should consider the implications to be sure of where he or she is going to, to be sure that the grass is greener on the other side. As he put it further, ‘if you do sit with your partner in respect, in mutual respect, in love if possible, but without demonizing your husband or your wife, because you will always remain the ex of the other person, but discuss quietly so that even if you separate in the future, you can inter-relate with love and respect.’

Perhaps more importantly, on the issue of those agitating to leave the country, he posited that ‘when we ever say we want to go away, I do not think they realize the going away. It is not that you carve out the piece of land, take it up and put it in other side of Ghana. The piece of land will be here. You will be here. Everybody will be here. And we all want to prosper.’ He therefore appealed to everyone to ‘let us be respectful of one another. Let us not demonize one another. Let us respect the views of everybody.’

Many issues are raised in the foregoing. First, Kingibe said those seeking to secede do not ‘realize the going away.’ Not realizing the going away can only be explained and understood in the context of the implications. This is why he said ‘it is not that you carve out the piece of land, take it up and put it in other side of Ghana. The piece of land will be here. You will be here. Everybody will be here. And we all want to prosper.’

As much as this postulation is tenable, there is still the need to go beyond the implicative effects. Without whiff of doubt, the factor of ‘going away’ necessarily requires the carving out of a piece of land’ even if the land will not be movable. It is not possible to want to go away without the need to carve out a piece of land without which a State may not be legally constituted in international law and relations. The truth is that when a piece of land is carved out, and there are people inhabiting the land, and there is also a political leadership or government that can enforce international obligations to which the government may be freely consented to, a sovereign state necessarily exists in international law, regardless of whether the government is recognized.

Let us illustrate the implications in the context of either the Yoruba Republic or the Biafran Republic. If they exist, they become international sovereigns. They will have international boundaries carved out on the basis of their existing national boundaries. Their boundaries with non-Yoruba States and non-Ibo States will necessarily become the new international boundaries. Transportation and communications in the new Yoruba and Biafran States will be internationally regulated. The current Nigerian passports will become foreign passports on which entry visas will be required by non-citizens of the new countries.

And perhaps more disturbingly, the establishment of the new States will necessarily make the rest of the Nigerian country landlocked. Trade imports by landlocked Nigeria will require the understanding of the new States before they can import foreign goods through the new coastal States. The would-be new Nigeria will have the option of importing through Cameroon or Benin Republic. And true enough, any Fulani or herdsmen intrusion into the new States will become unwarranted international intrusions and encroachments, which will be irregular, illegal and sanctionable.

In fact, while PMB does not want to consider the bandits in the current Northwest of Nigeria as terrorists, even though the bandits now plant terrorist bombs as revealed in the case of the Abuja-Kaduna railway bomb attacks on Thursday, 21 October 2021, the international community will surely treat them as terrible terrorists. Thus, the problem is not simply movability of a newly carved out piece of land. I am sure Kingibe knows much about this as a former Foreign Minister.

Second, in a relationship between spouses, there is ab initio either intimacy or infatuation, if not love. The type of love and intimacy between couples does not exist at the level of national unity. At best, it is a case of infatuation at the level of nation-states. Why love is difficult to exist is simply because of the lack of what Kingibe is precisely advocating: mutual respect, loving without demonizing, respect for the views of everybody, etc.

It is important to note that a relationship only becomes negotiable when there are manifestations of unfairness and injustice, mutual or unidirectional disrespect. PMB makes negotiability of Nigeria’s unity a critical issue with his nepotistic policies, selective institutional corruption prosecutions, open-grazing policies, silence over allegations of Fulanisation agenda, questionable reactions to the herdsmen-farmer conflicts and his manifest political arrogance. The ground norm of the country is the 1999 Constitution which is faulty, fraudulent, protective of military interests and not the interests of the people. When people seeking national unity ask for a complete review of the Constitution, PMB is against. When the same people ask for the implementation of the Reports of the 2014 National Conference, PMB not only refuses but insultingly told Nigerians that the reports are gathering dust in the drawers and that he does not have time to look at such reports.

In this regard, whose national unity are we talking about? Is it PMB the military, or the people of Nigeria that should define national unity? Even if the 1999 Constitution were not to be faulty and fraudulent, does it ever mean that any provision on compulsory national unity cannot be amended? Intellectually, non-negotiability in any given case or issue is when there is a lull, a brick wall, but this does not mean that efforts at negotiation will stop. Consequently, rather than for Babagana Kingibe appealing to anyone to respect and love one another, his challenge should be engagement in politics of fairness and justice. It was Kingibe’s attitudinal fairness and justice, openly shown in my persecution at the NIIA for being patriotic, that should be preached in the quest for national unity. It is illogical to engage in manifest nepotism against which public opposition is vehement, on the one hand, and then take the Bible or the Koran to be preaching the gospel of national unity or indissolubility and non-negotiability of Nigerian unity.