By Reno Omokri
Any follower of Nigeria’s federal budget since May 29, 2015, may be forgiven if they thought that Nigeria, under President Buhari, had performed a Hitler-style Anschluss, and had annexed Niger Republic as part of Nigeria, because of Buhari’s huge spending (of Nigeria’s money), to improve infrastructure in Niger Republic.
While Seme Border-Badagry express road, the only road currently linking Nigeria to other West African coastal nations, remains in ruins and looks as if it has been bombed, Buhari had spent huge resources developing road networks between Nigeria and Niger Republic.
On February 26, 2020, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced that the government had awarded a contract for the construction of two roads from Sokoto and Jigawa States up to Niger Republic, at the cost of $81 million dollars.
Ironically, Mr Fashola is the former
Governor of Lagos state, who once publicly stated that he was ashamed of the
Seme Border-Badagry. That road is of immense economic importance to Nigeria. In
terms of revenue, more than 55% of Nigeria’s intra West African trade passes
through that border, compared with less than 5% for the border with Niger
Republic. So, it is curious, very curious, that Buhari is so focused on the
Niger Republic.
Let us examine some more facts.
In 2015, while he was campaigning, Buhari promised not only to get Nigeria’s
refineries working again but to build new ones.
Today, after five years, none of Nigeria’s refineries are working. Even worse,
fuel importation into Nigeria has worsened under this administration. They have
not built any of the modular refineries they promised to build.
Yet, this same government that has abandoned the downstream sector of Nigeria’s
oil and gas industry to rot, very curiously announced on April 24, 2018, that
it was collaborating with Niger Republic, and providing most of the funding,
for a new $2 billion refinery, to be built in, wait for it, Niger Republic!
What is going on here? This beggars belief!
Nigeria is the largest oil and gas exporter in Africa, with a comparative
advantage over any West African nation to build a refinery. Yet, she chooses to
build a refinery in a country with less comparative advantage than her in the
refinery business?
I could not make this up if I were a writer or fiction!
And then the icing on the cake is the recent announcement by the Buhari
administration that they have awarded a contract to build a $1.9 billion
railway from Nigeria to Niger Republic.
I am saying what I am about to say with all
seriousness. President Buhari should please tell Nigerians what is so special
to him about Niger Republic, that in this time of dwindling resources, when our
foreign debt has risen from $7 billion in 2015, to $31 billion in 2020 (because
of his knack for borrowing), that he must award a $1.9 billion contract to
build a railway from Katsina to Niger Republic.
What is the economic necessity and urgency? Nigerians remember how, as military head of state, General Buhari in 1985, voted against Peter Onu, an Igbo man, who was Nigeria’s candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Unity, in favour of Ide Oumarou, a Fulani from Niger Republic. Is Buhari from Niger Republic as has been rumoured?
For those who do not know or have forgotten about this incident, I urge you to
read up about it in the book titled ‘The OAU: Reality or Fiction’ by Ibrahim
Dagash.
Mr Dagash wrote about how his fellow African leaders were stunned by the bizarre action of General Muhammadu Buhari, who could not hide his glee and began publicly celebrating the victory of Oumarou, over his own nation’s candidate, a victory that he engineered.
The late Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, was so outraged that he approached
Buhari and upbraided him. It was a show of shame. This was more so as Dr. Onu
was much more qualified and competent than Ide Oumarou. He had been Nigeria’s
ambassador to Germany and had worked as a diplomat in Moscow, and had advised
Nigeria’s previous governments.
Nyerere was so offended by General Buhari’s
behaviour that he vowed to make sure that Oumarou’s tenure was short-lived, and
this he achieved in 1989, when he sponsored Dr. Salim Salim to run against Ide
Oumarou, and eventually defeated him to emerge the longest-serving Secretary-General
of the Organisation of African Unity, which he led for twelve years, from 1989
to 2001.
My counsel to whoever will succeed President Buhari is that, that person must
order a forensic audit of the appointments and contracts of Buhari.
I say this because, on July 1, 2020, Buhari appointed Mr Ali Mohammed Magashi as an ambassadorial candidate for consideration by the Senate. It was later alleged that this individual is actually a citizen of Niger Republic, and that his own brother, from the same mother and father, Ahamadou Harouna, is an elected Parliamentarian in Niger Republic’s Parliament.
If an audit of Buhari’s appointments and contracts is not done by a patriotic
leader after Buhari’s tenure, we would never know how much and how far our
government has been infiltrated by foreigners.
President Buhari claims to be from Daura, in
Katsina state. Daura is a town very close to the border with Niger Republic and
many people from Daura have dual citizenship and residency with Niger Republic.
This is a notorious fact.
In fact, looking back to some of our most
brutal military dictators and their physical features and the strong
similarities of their names with names from Niger Republic especially, and also
Chad, and to a lesser extent Northern Cameroon, you cannot really swear that a
foreigner has not ruled Nigeria in the past, and is not ruling her now!
I will give you an example. Between 1996 and 1999, the President of Niger
Republic was a man called Ibrahim Mainassara. That name is almost
indistinguishable from a name many Nigerians bear. I have a friend from my
youth named Mainassara.
Now it does not stop there. Ibrahim
Mainasara, the late President of Niger, was from Dogondoutchi. That word
Dogondoutchi is the francophone version of the Hausa word Dogon dutse, meaning
high hill (dogon means tall, big, long, or high) (dutse means rock, stone,
hill).
You can imagine how easy it is for a Nigerien to pass for a Nigerian and vice
versa. In fact, there was a very strong belief in Niger Republic during Mainasara’s
regime that he was a Nigerian from Argungu in Kebbi state.
Some of us may remember the Maitatsine disturbances that led to tens of thousands of deaths in Northern Nigeria from the late seventies to the mid-eighties. These disturbances also led to the destruction of much of the ancient city of Yola in present day Adamawa state.
It may surprise many Nigerians that Mohammed Marwa, the founder of that sect
which wreaked untold hardship and brought cataclysmic killings and destruction
to Nigeria was not even from Nigeria. He was from Marwa, a town in Northern
Cameroon. As you read this, there are persons named Marwa in almost all sectors
of Nigeria’s government infrastructure.
Let me stop here before I ruffle too many feathers!
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