One of the conveners of the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance (NINAS), Prof Yusuf Turaki, has insisted that Nigeria has yet to become a democratic country 25 years into an unbroken civil rule.
In this interview with Saturday Sun, Turaki insisted that the Middle Belt and the Central Nigeria should be freed from Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri domination, stressing that it was time Nigerians sat to fashion out a new Nigerian project.
He also adduced reasons for the escalating insecurity, especially in the north, and how to end it. He spoke with VINCENT KALU.
How has Nigeria fared after 25 years of unbroken democracy?
Democracy is a political philosophy of the state and government, with the ultimate mandate by the citizens of the state to carry out constitutionally, the state responsibilities of both leadership and governance, based upon these moral human principles of: the rule of law and social order, human equality, justice, basic human rights and freedoms, and equity.
Under the Nigerian democratic dispensation, Nigerian political philosophy, culture and practice is anything but democracy. The primary instrument of instituting and installing the democratic norms, maxims and virtues that can guide and moderate political leadership and governance practices, and socio-political and economic life of Nigerians, is elections. Both the electoral institutions and structures, and their Nigerian managers are highly compromised and corrupt.
There are visible and weird electoral practices, such as structural rigging, mathematical rigging, power rigging, party rigging, religious rigging, nepotistic rigging, and above all, judicial and legal riggings. These are some of the corrupt electoral practices and manipulations that characterise Nigerian electioneering. What Nigerians mean by “democracy,” is their blatant endorsement and acceptance of corrupt electoral processes that declare whomsoever the system selects as election winner(s).
The evidence of the gross and colossal financial and resource looting by the operators of the state and government, public and private institutions, as exemplified by the immediate past eight years of misrule, with its obnoxious nepotistic masters-servants politics of clientalism and monumental and endemic corruption, and gross social and institutional corruption and decay, are the clear evidences of the corrupt electoral proceeds, dividends and benefits of elections, which Nigerians glory in and are proud of.
Nigeria is still not yet a democracy. Let us not fool ourselves that we are a democracy. We talk hypocritically and democratically, but we do not walk democracy and the rule of law.
What is your view on the state of the nation?
As a young boy on October 1, 1960, I had a great dream for my country, Nigeria and for myself. This historic dream had been shattered to my great disappointment. My country, Nigeria did not turn out to be what we had dreamt. We had political independence from the colonial masters, but we did not have a good vision for a Nigeria of tomorrow. We have all it takes, abundant human and natural resources to build a conducive, viral and viable nation, but lacked the basic pre-requisites of nation building and national integration.
Nigeria as a country and Nigerians as a people, lack national values, standards, ideals and a code of conduct, as social prerequisites for nation building, national integration and national development. We lack a national ethic that can moderate human attitudes, behaviours and social practices of all Nigerians, regardless of their ethnicity, tribe, region, religion and culture.
Nigeria’s constitutions, laws and statues exist, but only on paper, and which have not been internalised and appropriated to become our moral maxims, virtues, ethics and morality. We lack national values, standards, ideals and code of conduct that transcend and moderate all sub-national values and interests. Our chaotic and conflictual morality and ethics are governed by our deep-seated ethnicity, tribalism, regionalism, religions and cultures, and primordialism. It should have been out of these given diverse primordial social factors that we could use to develop a national ethic.
Nigeria needs a new national philosophy or an ideology that can transcend our besetting obnoxious colonial political pillars: ethnicity, religion and regionalism. We must drop our current besetting political philosophy, culture and practice to find Nigerian politicians that are the best drivers of Nigeria’s nationalism, patriotism and unity in diversity. We must break the besetting jinx of the politics of ethnicity, religion and regionalism that have hindered our national unity, growth and development.
In spite of efforts by the government to stem insecurity, it is still escalating especially in the North. What is the solution to this scourge?
The driving force of insecurity in Northern Nigeria is none other than militant Islam and the politics of clientalism of masters and servants.
If Nigerians want to stem insecurity in the North, the primary solution lies with the radical and militant Muslim Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri. The political and ruling elites of the far North, by their political and religious actions have created the current insecurity in the general North.
They abandoned the traditional Islam, which we all know and respected, lived peacefully with the non-Muslims, until the early 1980s. They opted for and adopted wholesale, the Middle Eastern radical, militant and jihadic Islam, which has no respect for Nigerians or anyone who does not subscribe to their radical Islamic ideology.
Death and violence have become the redemptive gospel of militant Islam; the belief that salvation is found in death and violence. This gospel of hate, death and violence is the missionary message that the far North has for the rest of Nigeria. The political elites, rulers, clerics and the jahiliyyas, have borrowed, nursed, planted, incubated and radicalised Islam by turning Islam as a religion of faith in Allah into an ideology of a violent man, whose moral attributes are the very opposite of the Creator God.
A radicalised Islamic ideology, which propagates and promotes violence, insurgency, terrorism, banditry and jihadism, is what the far north is preaching and exporting to the rest of Nigeria.
The Nigerian security agencies and government are trying their best, but right in their midst are the saboteurs, the compromisers and the funders of violence in the North.
Can you suggest some workable solutions?
Firstly, the political, traditional and religious rulers of the Muslim Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri are the primary means of solving Northern Nigeria’s insecurity. They are more than capable of calling to order, their children, whom they have radicalised into militancy, jihadism, insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and the destruction of human lives and property.
The Muslim Umma in the far North is capable of taming this horrific and evil tide in Nigeria. I passionately call on all Muslim political and religious rulers of the far North to meet and resolve this double-headed dragon that has menaced and destroyed the Muslim communities in the far North.
Instead of doing what will save the further destruction of the far North, they focus more of their attention to what Southern, Middle Belt and North Central Nigerian politics means to them. Their overall goal is the inordinate desire and the drive to dominate the rest of Nigeria. Nigerians ought to call the far north political ruling elites to solve their religious problem, and export to the rest of Nigeria.
Secondly, in order to stem the tide of the far Northern Muslim insecurity that has been exported to the Middle Belt and North Central of Nigeria, the proposed states that were created by the 2014 National Conference should be ratified and implemented. The proposed states are meant to grant political, religious and social freedom to the ethnic nationalities that have been appended to the dominance of the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri in Northern Nigeria.
Thirdly, the Muslims, Christians and Traditionalists of the Middle Belt and North Central should in a united front, demand the creation of their proposed states by the 2014 National Conference in order to fulfil the yearnings of their older politicians, before and after independence. The Middle Belt and North Central, as a newly created region, will be free from the historic political and religious domination by the far North.
They can create for themselves a conducive and viable socio-political order, where Muslims, Christians and Traditionalists can live harmoniously and peacefully based upon their ancestry, customs, and traditions, different from that of Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri. They need regional political and governmental institutions that can stem the tide of external exportation and invasion of violence and insecurity, which originate from the far North into the region.
Fourthly, the Nigerian security agencies must be rationalised by fishing out the bad eggs that fan the embers of violence, militancy, terrorism, jihadism and banditry within their ranks and formations – the so called repentant Boko Haram terrorists and other jihadic organisations that have been absorbed into the Nigerian Army.
This is a serious policy compromise that neutralises and sabotages the security architecture. It is a reflection of policy laxity, cynicism and hypocrisy. Not that the Nigerian Army, Air Force, Navy, the Police and other security outfits are not capable of stemming the tide of insecurity, but blatant sabotage and compromise within, driven by the subterranean spirit of Fulanisation and Islamisation.
The Senate is proposing an Animal Husbandry and Ranches Commission, but senators from the far North and MACBAN stoutly oppose it. What’s your take on this?
The false spirit of revisionism has seriously outdated anyone in Nigeria that is still talking about farmers-herders clashes. Historically, the Fulani herders would move their cattle to the Middle Belt and Northern Central areas from the far North, but only in the dry season. They usually moved their cattle back to the far North during the raining season.
It was an excellent economic and agricultural policy between the Fulani and the indigenous people. This old practice has been abandoned today. The practice today is that the Fulani herders have abandoned the old tradition of seasonal grazing and have opted for permanency, to live with the farmers, thus creating conflict with farmers. This practice was short-lived. But today’s practice is that of invasion, killing, genocide and occupation.
The Fulani have changed their normal seasonal policy to permanent occupation by force of arms. They graduated from pastoral sticks to AK-47. The new Fulani policy is that of Fulanisation and Islamisation of the ancestral lands of the autochthonous and indigenous peoples of the Middle Belt and North Central areas. It is nothing but land grabbing and genocide. This is armed immigration, which had been tactfully used in ages past. Ask the people in the IDPs camps, and they will tell you what the truth is.
Propagandists, the politically correct narrative creators and pseudo-historians and sociologists will only tell you the crafted lies to suit both national and international media, all in favour of the Fulani invaders and killers who have of recent turned to violent killers.
Nigerians need to see beyond animal husbandry and ranches, as only agriculture. But what inflames far northern opposition is hidden to the generality of Nigerians. The far Northern society is in a state of chaos; farmers and herders have been uprooted by failed Northern River Basin Development Projects of the yester-years. Farmers and the restive youths, who have been uprooted by poor agricultural policies and the frenzy of Islamic state ideology have created chaos, instability and insecurity in the far North, which is being exported to the rest of Nigeria.
The heavy far Northern migrations into the Middle Belt, North Central and Southern Nigeria are alarming and frightening. The rest of Nigerian regions so badly affected must address migration and exportation of far northern mode and culture of violence, militancy and banditry.
Nigeria recently reverted to its old national anthem after independence. What is your position on this?
At the conclusion and the last closing item of the 2014 National Conference, was the unison and hilarious and joyous singing of the approved Old National Anthem. As a member, representing Kaduna State, I felt the aura of unity and oneness of the members of the conference. What people are saying and commenting about it today is nothing, but anti-climax and self-serving parochial interest. If in the first place, a change was effected, precedence has been set for another subsequent change.
Inflation has hit an all-time high. There is acute hunger in the land. What should the government do to address this?
The economic and social philosophy of Nigerians is by and large consumerism and not production. Our lack of production produces poverty, unproductivity and unhealthy environment. Our lack of basic necessities of life, such as sufficient food, as good economic life; adequate and good shelter as good political life, and good sufficient clothing as good social life; the lack of these good things for good life is our deliberate undoing.
Our inability to create wealth and economy, a healthy environment and a happy people is also our deliberate undoing. Sadly, we are also clothed with heavy darkness of major ignorance of a lack of a good religious and theological knowledge of the true God, creation and humanity. We seem not to know the moral character of God and His attributes, as the basis of human morality and ethics and relations. We are a very religious people, but lack morality and ethics. Religion without morality and ethics is a dead religion.
There is a lack of good science and technology of creation and humanity. That is why we are still underdeveloped and lagging behind in advance science and technology.
Further, there is a lack of human labour skills, educational, intellectual and mental skills, and a lack of spiritual, moral and ethical skills. That is why the Nigerian social environment is lawless, chaotic, crises ridden and numerous social, ethnic, religious and regional problems and challenges. These principles are the foundations of realising good economic, political and social life. In the absence of these, external economic forces would toss about our national life.
High inflation is as a result of a lack good and effective fiscal planning and economic policies, but more so, unproductivity and our inability to create wealth and economy.
Hunger and economic woes in Nigeria are not caused by a one-year-old government. You have seen and experienced insecurity, insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, jihadism and terrorism. Farmers are no longer safe in their farms. Fulani cattle and herders graze in farms, cut down and destroy crops and kill farmers, and displace the indigenes. Governments, both federal and states, have no policy of returning the displaced people to their ancestral lands and villages. They are abandoned to the fate of government neglect.
The unleashed greed and lust of market men and women, the uncontrolled market forces and prizes and foreign exchange rates and indices, all drive the spiral cost of goods beyond the economic reach of the majority poor.
What’s your position on the proposed procurement of two jets for the presidency?
I would rather we criticise the unleashed corruption of people who hold political, social and religious positions in both public and private sectors. There are individual Nigerians that are more corrupt than some public and private institutions. Imagine the amount of looting by corrupt individuals.
The National Assembly has embarked on a fresh constitutional amendment, even as some are calling for the implementation of the 2014 Confab report. Others are clamouring for restructuring. Where do you stand on these issues?
The Report of the 2014 National Conference is the best starting point for any renewed drive for restructuring. Some months after the submission of the report to President Goodluck Jonathan, a meeting of Northern delegates to the conference held in Abuja to debunk the report. Some of us objected to the after-thought rejection of what we had agreed to. The bone of contention was the proposed creation of the following states from the North: Apa State from the present Benue State; Edu State from Niger State; Kainji State from the present Kebbi State and Niger State, Katagun State from the present Bauchi State; Savannah State from the present Borno State; Amana State from the present Adamawa State; Gurara State from the present Kaduna State and Ghari State from the present Kano State.
It was very clear to us that the Fulani, Kanuri and Hausa ruling elites were in staunch opposition to the creation of states because they did not want the Middle Belt and Central Nigeria to have the seven states recommended for the region, which would have removed the people in those states from the control of the Fulani, Hausa and Kanuri ruling elites.
During pre-and-after independence, the Nigerian minority groups in the Northern Region, Western Region and Eastern Region, fought for the creation of their own regions, from the Northern Region, Western Region and Eastern Region, respectively.
Mid-West Region was created in 1963, post-independence; General Gowon in 1967 excised Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR) from Eastern Region just before the start of Biafra secession. Only the Middle Belt was not created to the disappointment of the Middle Belters. General Abacha created six geo-political Zones: North East, North West, North Central, South West, South East and South-South. The Middle Belt was divided and appended to North East, North West and renamed the remaining part, North Central.
This balkanisation of the Middle Belt was aimed at killing the quest for Middle Belt Region(s). The British did it, and the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri ruling elites did it also in 1996 under General Abacha. Are the members of the National Assembly (NASS) aware of these historical facts?
In the Nigerian new dispensation, Middle Belt and North Central peoples cannot and should not be merged as a region with the far North (Hausaland and Kanuriland). They cannot go back to the jahiliyya masters-servants politics of clientalism. The political task for new Nigeria is to grant the peoples of the Middle Belt and Central Nigeria their own regional, ethnic, political, religious and social independence, from the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri domination.
The people want the proposed states of the 2014 National Conference to be created under the new Middle Belt and North Central Areas. Anything short of that is a continuation of archaic and defunct slavery in a modern era.
The killers and invaders of the lands of the Middle Belt and North Central people are not the Yoruba, or the Igbo, or any Southerner, but the peoples of the far north, under the cover of insecurity.
Furthermore, the historical preferential and differential treatment, domination, discrimination and subordination by the then Northern Region and presently by some states are the social facts that only haters of the people of the Middle Belts and North Central would even imagine placing them under this unpalatable historical yoke.
We must throw away the yoke of colonialism, domination and slavery in the new Nigeria. The kairos has come, stand up and liberate yourself from political and religious taqqiya. We should be mindful of the dissenting infiltrated voices of the settlers among us.
Many are calling for the return to parliamentary system of government. Do you share in their sentiments?
What I have said so far, neither parliamentary system, nor presidential system is the issue, but the political, ethnic, religious and regional indiscipline of the political class. Bring any system to Nigeria, Nigerians are going to bastardise it and baptise into their system of moral, spiritual, social and ethical decadence and indiscipline. We do not have a culture of the rule of law. The naive approach is like, choose “Head or Tail.” And you simply toss a coin.
Recently, some Yoruba group stormed the Oyo House Assembly to declare Oduduwa Republic. There is an Ijaw group that said they want to opt out of Nigeria. IPOB is still there. What is the solution to these separatist agitations in the country?
Why are Nigerian ethnic, religious and regional groups afraid of multilateral dialogue and discussion about what they all want Nigeria to become? Why are they afraid of opening up to each other? Why are they afraid of what to gain or lose? The missed step of Nigeria at independence was the fact that after independence, Nigerian nationalists, parliamentarians, politicians and the elites failed to sit at the round table and fashion out what type of the Nigerian project and system that can embrace all Nigerians and for each Nigerian to feel at home and be satisfied with Nigeria.
We cry out against each other. Then the struggle was filling the vacuum left by the colonial masters, and that created mistrust, fear and suspicion of each other. This is the right time and moment for Nigerians to do now, embrace multilateralism and fashion out a new Nigerian project, or else we are doomed trying to build what is unworkable.
Another major pitfall of Nigerians is the adoption of two incompatible and irreconcilable ideologies for the Nigerian state. Liberal democracy and theocracy cannot co-exist in one geo-political entity.
The 1999 constitution mistakenly assumed that could be done to please a sub-religious section and interest. Political religion would always tend towards an ideology, which buries the religion of faith. The far North played the ostrich with Islamic ideology and that has destroyed the entire North. There is a great difference between a religion of faith and a religion of ideology. Religious and ethnic bigotry is on the rise in Nigeria. By and large, Nigerians patronise them and in the end, have their societies destroyed.