By Olakunle Oladapo
“….we will use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as conquered territory and we will not allow them to determine their future.”
– Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello (Oct.1960)
The above statement was reportedly made at the threshold of Nigeria’s independence by the Head of Fulani caliphate and the grandson of Othman Dan Fodio, to revalidate 1804 Othman Dan Fodio jihad and to express a passionate intent to complete the unfinished business of bringing the entire country under their hegemonic heels through the instrumentality of state coercion – entrusted in their hands by the departing British – Islamic religion and ethnicity.
It is evident that it is not an agenda to develop and modernize any part of the country as exemplified in the systematic intellectual and economic impoverishment of the North but a retrogressive agenda of feudal exploitation and oppression.
The unjust imprisonment and the retrogressive struggle against the foremost modernization icon in the person of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in collaboration with retrogressive forces in the South particularly in Yoruba land, can be conveniently posited within the above hegemonic agenda.
The control of the army and the entire military was central to the realization of this agenda attested to by the progrom of 1966 carried out against the Ibos in a desperate effort to reassert total control over the army and the entire state architecture.
The near 30-year military interregnum led by the same North significantly furthered the ends of this agenda by weakening the federal structure, deepening over-reliance on oil, intensified its reckless exploitation without redress to the oil-bearing Niger Delta enviroment with its attendant state corruption inexorably leading to the present day agitation.
With the North firmly in control of the development (or is it underdevelopment) agenda of Nigeria, it is not by coincidence that Nigeria has failed to diversify the productive base of the economy by investing the heavy inflow of petrodollars in agriculture and infrastructure, thereby preempting the present day economic crisis.
It is instructive that an attempt by Lagos State government under Lateef Jakande to construct a rail system in the state through the Chinese was frustrated by the then Gen. Mohammadu Buhari as the Head of the intervening military junta by ordering its cancellation and the unfair imprisonment of Jakande and other transparent politicians from the South like Adekunle Ajasin, even though nothing was found against them.
It is an open secret that no past government directly led by the North has promoted this retrogressive agenda as the present Buhari-led federal government. It is not by accident that his first preoccupation was the northernization of key government posts, inspite of the overwhelming popular support he received accross religious and ethnic divides of the country. More importantly, is the complete northernization of the entire security architecture of the state. Under the present federal government, Nigeria has never been so divided along our fault lines since the end of the civil war.
This northernization agenda has further emboldened the Fulani herdsmen to embark on a fresh systematic genocide, leaving behind a trail of bloodshed, sorrow and destruction of farmlands, making the prospect of famine a not too distant possibility. It is a deliberate strategy to spread terror across the country in furtherance and entrenchment of the domination agenda.
The recent bloodletting by the Hausa Fulani and the Yoruba in Ile Ife can be conveniently located within the above hegemonic narrative. The lopsided security apparatus was unjustly deployed in favour of the Hausa by making arrests of only suspected Yoruba men. Does it not take two to tango? And by the way, why has it taken Ife crisis in which the North suffered heavier casualties for the security agencies to wake up to their statutory responsibility after the unchecked genocidal campaign by the Fulani herdsmen all over the country? The claim that it was not an ethnic conflict by the northern elite was a subtle ploy to conceal their ethnic bias and a strategy to weaken future Yoruba resistance to these acts of provocative onslaught.
In all these, it is instructive to note that President Buhari has kept mute but deemed it fit to send a letter of commiseration to the government of Saudi Arabia over the recent terror attack that left only ten people dead.
Before ending this piece, we all owe a ton of gratitude to notable individuals like Femi Fani Kayode, Yinka Odumakin , Gani Adams and numerous other Yorubas who have dutifully stood up to this act of injustice in defiance of this primitive, retrogressive and violent northern agenda consistent with a thinker’s memorable words that the history of liberty is a history of resistance.
We all owe it to the present and future generations of Yoruba race to stand together and present a formidable front to this monumental threat to our civilization and its enviable values. The alternative is collective suicide .
We must all bear in mind that we are dealing with the most primitive, barbaric, retrogressive and hegemonic elites ever known to man. They are disdainful of modern development, liberty and the fundamental rights of men. It is their underlying ideological assumption that all these values are a threat to their hegemonic survival and they would do anything humanly possible to resist their entrenchment.
Oladapo writes from Brooklyn, United States.