Sardauna

By Musa Kalim Gambo

January 15 marks 56 years since the gruesome murder of Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria. To borrow a few words from Shakespeare, both were like Colossus under whose giant feet the North strode.

The description of that Saturday’s night events still haunts many of us here in the North. Though we sincerely believe that Allah must have predestined that these servants of His were not going to exceed that day on earth, and they would die from the bullets of Igbo-led soldiers. It is still a tragedy we will never forget.

On Tuesday, January 11, Daily Trust published an opinion piece written by my excellent friend Sa’adatu Aliyu titled “Igbos too deserve Nigeria’s presidency”. When I saw the title, at first, I thought it must have been written by an Igbo ethnic nationalist from South-Eastern Nigeria, for she is expressing an opinion that is utterly alien to Northern Nigeria’s political thought and discourse. One should expect this line of thinking to come from the Igbo because the Igbo elite has popularized this illusory notion of exclusion from Nigeria’s corridors of power, especially Aso Rock, as one of the major precursors for secessionist agitation in today’s Nigeria.

By the way, this is the ethnic group that produced Nigeria’s first civilian president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, in the 1960s. Then, again on the return of democracy in 1979, Chief Alex Ekwueme emerged as Nigeria’s Vice-President.

In 2019, Atiku Abubakar had Peter Obi, a former governor of an Igbo state, as a running-mate. Unfortunately, it was a wrong calculation, and we saw how it ended. One of Obi’s major sins that stained Atiku’s ticket is that as a governor in Anambra state, he reportedly came up with policies that frustrated Northern traders and artisans in his state. This sin is an expression of the general attitude towards the Northerner in the South-East region – where the Northerner is perceived with disdain and attacked in the event of any slight provocation.

Again we cannot forget Sardauna’s warning about the Igbo tendencies and quest for dominance in every little sphere of endeavour. This warning and the pain of Sardauna’s murder is still with many of us.

But it is important to understand that even without this fear of domination, the Igbo vote on its own is inconsequential in the making of a president in a democratic Nigeria. So even without January 15, which now resembles the Roman Ides of March, when power mongers assassinated Julius Caesar, the Igbo will not make it to the president.

However, suppose we have an Igbo man in the line of succession within the political equation. In that case, a natural tragedy as it happened to Umaru Musa Yar’adua may undeservedly promote an Igbo man to occupy the exalted seat of the president. And that will be a pure work of Providence that the North will pray for God to forbid.

Some people suspect that an average Northerner hates the Igbo man; that is a wrong assumption. No, the Northerner is comfortable doing business with the Igbo man, as can be seen by the presence of Igbo businesses in every village, town, and city in the North. However, in the political scene, the average Northerner is apprehensive about the Igbo man at the apex of political power. The Northerner does not want January 15 to repeat itself in terms of the elimination of our most revered political leaders.

In the end, I like to re-emphasize, as has been emphasized by many Northern political elites, we are in a democracy. An Igbo man is free to purchase a ticket on any political party’s platform to run for any political office, including the president. If he can generate the requisite number of votes to win the election, who will stand in his way?

Let it be known very well that the presidency of this country is not a baton in a relay race that would just be handed over to the next athlete standing. No, it is a tug of war with competing parties pulling against each other on opposing sides. So, no one should come here again with that sense of entitlement declaring that the Igbos deserve Nigeria’s presidency too. Instead, they should be advised to jump into the arena and fight for the seat with the full knowledge that the North’s deciding population will not clap for them. We study and honour history, its figures, and defining events in the North.

Now, on January 15, and every other day, let’s not forget to pray for Allah’s mercy and blessing upon the souls of Sirs Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Ahmadu Bello, and all other departed heroes of ours who had the progress and development of our region and people at the centre of their hearts.

Gambo writes from Zaria, Kaduna State, via kalimatics@gmail.com

By Salisu Uba Kofar Wambai

One of the basic tenets of democratic principles is building political parties on sound ideological ground. Ideology is an orientation that characterised the thinking of a group or nation. Thus, the people of the same thoughts on running public affairs come together to establish a party, preaching the gospel of a particular ideology to ascertain its primary objective in government or public sphere if they’re voted through an electoral process.

However, the missteps and embarrassing blunder committed by the Nigerian politicians in the party formation in 1998-1999 democratic process was enormous, and the country is paying the huge price now. The politicians then were overwhelmed with the military government’s commitment to hand over power to the civilians. Unfortunately, they hurriedly built the parties; thereby, the ideological consideration of the politicians was grossly undermined. The parties were just a kind of machine to let the military go.

The people democratic party (PDP) encompassed and encapsulated politicians of different ideologies by looking at their political background, which is the machine that shapes and moulds their thoughts and ideological thinking style. How can one explain forming a party with unrepentant progressives like Abubakar Rimi, Solomon Lar and topnotch conservatives like Lawal Kaita and Alex Ekueme in the same party! They had different ideological backgrounds by all calculations. They were purely strange bedfellows.

The other two most notable parties then were APP and AD. APP were just people who lost grips of power with the death of General Sani Abacha with revivalism agenda, and AD was nothing more than ethnic and regional irredentists. Therefore, the parties were all ideological-free. Their main aim was only to let the military go and let the civilians take over.

The PDP experienced intense intraparty wrangling and turmoil because the party’s bigwigs were not ideologically the same. And this led to much chaos and internal divides among them, which led to a new crop of politicians as governors hijacking the party and get rid of them politically with the backup of the presidency. It was the beginning of governor-turn-emperor as we see it today.

Retrospectively, in the First and Second Republics, the politicians had based-ideology. For example, it was NEPU that produced Malam Aminu Kano, who had been a minister and yet died with only 112 Naira in his bank account because the ideology of his party was to emancipate the masses from the subjugation of elites and traditional oligarchs who formed their NPC as a party with their aim of maintaining the status quo. And in the Second Republic still, the parties were ideological because PRP was an offshoot of NEPU, and NPN was NPC. That’s why the politics then was not much of the money-bags type. The political parties’ members were committed to bringing change according to their ideological bearings.

The politics of ideology produced the likes of former governor Balarabe Musa, who died with only his old tractor as a farmer. It produced people like Abubakar Rimi, who had to secure a bank loan as a governor before he built his house and left the government house with only 50 thousand Naira in his possession. It produced Aminu Kano, who had not even had a paltry freezer in his room, rather a traditional (randa) muddy-pot.

We had equally seen the lifestyle of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the late Northern Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello Sardauna. It was all politics of ideology that made them. They all left this world owning only a local house in their towns when they could accumulate a lot had wished so.

Today’s ideology of our politicians is nothing more than gripping onto power, begin to run the governments like their personal companies, enrich themselves at the expense of the masses, building mansions, accumulating senseless wealth through looting and embezzlement, creating laws that only serve their interest, flaunting their newfound wealth and leaving their subjects dying in poverty and diseases.

Nevertheless, you can hardly find a politician who represents his people in the National Assembly, not a billionaire or close to billionaire status today. You can only see the effects of all these borrowings with them, leaving the electorate with no security and with nothing called social amenities.

It is up to our youth to form or join the ideological political trains, form parties of explicit ideologies, and bring positive changes if they want their names to be written with gold and remembered as heroes like Aminu Kano.

Salisu Uba Kofar Wambai writes from Kano State and can be reached via salisunews@gmail.com.