When in 1976 the then military junta led by the late General Murtala Muhammed decided to move the country’s federal capital from Lagos, the reason given was the need for a more central location with potential for expansion. So, the Justice Akinola Aguda Panel recommended the creation of a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Abuja, which was adjudged to be at the centre of the country. Thus, General Muhammed issued a proclamation to that effect on February 3, 1976.
The construction of Abuja started at the beginning of the 1980s, and on December 21, 1991, Nigeria’s capital formally moved to Abuja.
Nigeria is a federation of 36 states; Abuja is not a state but a union territory administered by a minister appointed by the President who supervises the administration of the territory. In essence, Abuja was from inception created to be a home for all, a territory belonging to all Nigerians and all of the country’s regions.
Sadly, a scenario is playing out that must be squarely addressed as it seems the North has begun laying claim to Abuja, which is against the intention of its creation.
This came to the fore with the recent decision of the federal government to relocate the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Lagos.
Some elements in the ‘spoilt’ North are opposed to the government decision, not because of any germane reason but because of undesirable ethnocentric hangups.
The North has taken the rest of the country for granted for far too long and it is time these unduly acquired advantages were addressed for good.
The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and some northern groups, particularly the Joint Action Committee of Northern Youth Associations (JACNYA), as well as some northern senators, prominent among whom is Senator Ali Ndume, who even threatened the President and preferred to identify himself as a northerner than Nigerian, have voiced their opposition to the government decision. On the face of it, this should not be a problem but for the repugnant divisive tribal bent.
The national publicity secretary of the ACF, Prof. Muhammad Baba, described the move as a deliberate plot against the northern region and a disturbing pattern of antagonistic actions against the interests of the North.
Ndume, Chief Whip of the Senate, also said the decision to move the headquarters of FAAN and some offices of the CBN to Lagos would have political consequences for the President.
Such nasty sentiments are the reason Nigeria is yet to morph into a nation after over 60 years and never willl, unless those unreasonably feeding fat on the commonwealth are weaned off the bottle for us to breathe.
Nobody knows how they arrived at the conclusion that the relocations were devised to underdevelop the North. The question is, is Abuja a northern entity? Is it their Abuja or our Abuja?
Abuja was conceived as the common patrimony of all Nigerians, and was never bequeathed to the North or particularly Arewa, as Ndume and his co-travellers want us to believe.
The government in its wisdom has every right to site state departments in any part of the country for reasons of administrative convenience. Both FAAN and the CBN are federal agencies that belong to all Nigerians. No particular part of the country has any right to appropriate them.
It seems though that these people have been spoiled so much so that they lost the sense of history, unless they are saying the people of Lokoja, Calabar and Lagos, who had hosted the federal capital at one time or another, were stupid for not resisting the movement of the capital from their areas. It is antithetical to national unity for the North to raise a storm over relocation of mere departments, not the CBN and the capital altogether, moreso, when the government’s reason is understandable.
How many banks and other financial institutions are in Abuja? What is the passenger traffic of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport compared to the Murtala Mihammed Airport in Lagos?
It is either out of pettiness or ignorance to argue that moving the departments would hurt northern Nigeria. Why northern Nigeria? How? This line of thought refuses to admit that Lagos is unarguably the economic livewire of the country; it refuses to admit that the North is already destroying the North by creating transgenerational lazybones because of unduly acquired advantages that had rendered the North redundant, even while those it tends to cheat and dominate are moving on.
Most civilised nations, including the United States, do not have all departments of Federal Government agencies in the federal capital but they are scattered where they have comparative advantage, which is what the CBN and FAAN have done. Unfortunately, the dyed-in-the wool grabbers read funny meanings into the noble decisions.
In fact, the headquarters of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) are in Lagos. That of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) is in Lokoja, while that of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) is in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. Why should all departments and agencies of government be located in Abuja? Why, for instance, would the NPA and NIMASA be located in Abuja where there are no seas?
Unfortunately, there are professional manipulators who pit the North against the South in order to stir up sentiments and sell the dummy of fighting for the people while actually seeking avenues to enslave them and butter their own bread. If these ethnic champions love the North so much, they need to explain why the region is the poverty headquarters of the country, mostly exporting beggars and ‘okada expatriates’ to other parts of the country with their attendant menace. They should explain the army of out-of-school children herded into almajiri camps where they are indoctrinated into banditry. Sadly, the poor folk are brainwashed to always fight the dirty wars of their enslavers.
I do not know what the President Bola Tinubu is up to but I honestly think that he should take advantage of this unwarranted tantrum and relocate more ministries and agencies to where they are best suited across the country and also initiate moves to correct the imbalance in the polity.
Tinubu should remedy what the fiendish gobblers had done that stultified the country. There is no reason the headquarters of NNPC should not be sited in the Niger Delta where it is most suited.
It is heartrending that Nigeria is stuck with entities that find it difficult to toe the part of progress, who insist on dragging the country backward, who take pride in retrogression because of undue advantages snatched at gunpoint such that despite licking the bottom of all indices of advancement, still corner juicy positions but yet end up as the most crushed.
Of course, there are some reasonable northerners, who have successfully shed the obfuscating tribal garb and have risen high in life. That is why Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the former Emir of Kano and Governor of the CBN will continue to be relevant. He refuses to be cast in the mould of primitive idiosyncrasies. That was why they removed him as monarch, stopping him, albeit temporarily, from resetting the mindset of the people.
Sanusi has shut up the noisemakers, kicking against the movement of the CBN departments. Strangely, but not unexpectedly, they have nastily distorted his unambiguous statement, accusing him of supporting relocating the CBN.
Sincerely speaking, the North should pray for the likes of Sanusi. Only his kind of enlightenment can save the area from its self-destruct path that has given them a sense of domineering entitlement to everything in Nigeria.
This madness must stop. Even Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals, is under threat for insisting on a sanitised solid minerals sector. Yet these same people have over the years continued to milk the Niger Delta, impoverish the people and degrade their environment while developing their coarse region. Ironically, they now want to corner the solid mineral deposits in their area for themselves alone. However, Alake must not buckle. He must ensure that the sector is organised for the benefit of all Nigerians.
Rather than input tribal sentiments to sound administrative changes, Nigerians should ventilate and retool their mindwaves so that they can flow with the contemporary times. Dwelling in the same old times of ethnic bigotry and stamping down others to feed our greed and selfishness can never advance the cause and course of this beleaguered monolith.