Buhari, Nigeria’s Breakup Is Possible

By Sina Adedipe

This comes in reaction to the statements credited to President Muhammadu Buhari in the Nigerian Tribune of last week Friday in a story on Page 8 with the headline: Nigeria’s Break-Up Not Possible, Unthinkable. It was the report of the meeting he had the previous day with members of the Council of South-East Traditional Rulers at the State House, Abuja. But, sad to say, the President never said anything that could stop Igbo people from wanting to break away to establish their own country.

*Buhari 

Earlier in the year, political leaders from the South-East were at Aso Villa to discuss the problems of their people and zone with the President. Like the Yoruba of the South-West and the ethnic groups in the South-South such as the Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Itsekiri, Urhobo and others, what the Igbo of the South-East want is the restructuring of the country. To this end, they are demanding for the number of states in the country to be reduced into six or eight regions or a return to the 12-state structure of 1967-1976 and changing from the presidential to the parliamentary system of the First Republic, so that, instead of a strong and overbearing central government, the regions or states would be largely autonomous and in charge of their economic resources, and only paying agreed taxes to the Federal Government, which will take care of matters like currency, postal services, security and foreign affairs.

For their part, the Igbo also want another state created in the South-East to make them have six as has been the case since 1996 with the South-West, South-South, North-Central and North-East. The North-West, to which Buhari belongs, has seven states. From the report in the Tribune, the President did not address any of these issues as all he told the Igbo monarchs was that he would extend the new railway system his government is planning to construct to their zone and that he had shown interest in the Igbo by appointing four of their people as ministers of five of the most important ministries, but which he did not identify.

For me, it is wrong for President Buhari to believe that God brought the ethnic groups in Nigeria together in 1914 for a purpose and that because of that the country cannot break up. Nigeria was not created by the Lord, but by the British government of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, the 24th in office who served from 1908 to 1916. The people brought together by God and who cannot break away are those in each tribe in the country, the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, etc., who have the same ancestors, were placed in the same area, speak the same language and have the same culture.

Nigeria: Federal Republic Of Inequality?

By Magnus Onyibe

The Federal Republic of Nigeria, FGN is the country we all call our own. Our country comprises of about 250 tribes or ethnic nationalities with the main ones being Hausa/Fulani,Yoruba, lgbo, Kanuri, ljaw, Nupe, Calabari, Tiv, Ijebu, lgara, Urhobo, Jukun, ldoma, fufulde, Ika Ibibio, Edo etc. In the inaugural speech of President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2015, he was famously quoted as saying  ”l belong to everyone , l belong to no one”.

*Buhari with former Vice President Ekwueme 

That very welcoming and reassuring remark, which resonated very well with most Nigerians, became a quotable quote that featured in myriads of comments in the mainstream and online media, just as it also became a talking head in torrents of radio and television shows. The reason the quote was significant is quite simple. In the run up to the 2015 general elections, campaign rhetorics vaunting ethnic and regional sentiments were so rife that Nigeria became too polarised in such manner that the Hausa/Fulani in the northern parts of Nigeria were stacked behind, ex-military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, who is from the Hausa/Fulani  stock, while the lgbos, ljaws and other minority tribes in the South east and South south part of Nigeria, queued up behind the then incumbent president, GoodLuck Jonathan, who is ljaw, and one of their own.

The Yorubas in the South west, who having had a shot at the presidency from 1999 to 2007,when ex-army General, Olusegun Obasanjo transited from prison to presidency, became the bride to be wooed by both the political forces from the north and south south parts of Nigeria. In the end, the Yorubas aligned with the north through acceptance of the Vice President slot which the acclaimed leader of the Yorubas, Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos state, conceded to a man of impeccable character, an evangelical pastor,his long time ally and former attorney general of Lagos state, Yemi Osinbajo.

Prior to his success at the 2015 polls, President Buhari had tried and failed to successfully clinch the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011 but on each of those occasions that he lost, Buhari swept the votes in the core northern states like, Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara , Sokoto, etc, sometimes garnering about 12 million votes. Even with Yoruba’s vote in the kitty, Buhari still needed the votes from the South east and South south to fulfill the constitutional requirements that votes must be garnered from all parts of Nigeria for a candidate to be deemed to have won. This is to ensure that a situation whereby a particular candidate from an ethnic group with superior numerical strength, does not ride into the presidency relying only on votes from his Kith and kin.

That’s how Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers state, the heart  of South south, now minister of transport and Rochas Okorocha, incumbent governor of Imo state, the ground zero of lgbo land, became the game changers. With their support, substantial votes  in Rivers and lmo states were brought into Buhari’s kitty that already had the Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba votes and the rest, as they say is history. Politics is a game of strategy and democracy is also about numbers of people that politicians are able to swing to their side, which justifies the political dictum,majority carries the vote.

In 2015, Buhari reached out and built bridges across many deserts and rainforests into Yoruba land as well as crossed many bridges and rivers into lgbo and lkwere/Calabari mangroves and creeks and he reaped the  reward of the hard work by becoming Nigeria’s number one citizen. Now, it’s pay back time. In politics, as in business, settling lOUs is usually a very testy experience. In what many thought was a Freudian slip like the one famously made by British prime minister, David Cameroon about Nigeria being a fantastical corrupt country, in the wake of the anti corruption summit in London recently, president Buhari during an interactive session with some Nigerians and Americans, on the sideline of his visit to the USA, stated that he cannot be expected to treat the 95% who voted for him in the north equally with the less than 5% who voted in the south.

As expected in a multicultural multiethnic and multi-religious society, the comment got twisted and dissected with all manners of bias on online media platforms. Unsurprisingly, many members of the elite commentariat also took Mr. President up on the remark from the optics of the numerous ethnic and other primordial sentiments, and l thought the high level of condemnation would challenge Mr. president to offer some clarifications but that was not the case. With the public hue and cry about appointments so far made into executive positions, it would appear that Mr. President is sticking to his guns-literarily-to reward mainly voters from his home base by skewing appointments in their favour.