‘’To save Nigeria, if she is not long lost, she needs a system not appointive makeover.’’
By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
TUE, JUN 02 2020-theG&BJournal– Colonel Dangiwa Umar’s 30th May letter to President Muhammadu Buhari caught one laughing and amused. Laughing because Umar got heroic but at an hour it was plainly too late. The party he gate crashed into was really winding up.
This is Buhari’s fifth year. By this time of his term all the appointments – the gist of Umar’s umbrage – has taken a life of their own. And to worsen matters, most of those appointments are career jobs. That is the beneficiary incumbents and their protégées are guaranteed lives and progressions beyond Buhari. By conservative estimates, Nigeria will be shaped by the Buhari Northernization/Islamic doctrine for the next 49 years, if such as Nigeria existed then.
Perhaps, Umar knowing it is this late would have saved us his uncircumcised worries. It is too late in the day to petition for a balanced Buhari.
One was amused because Umar seemed to suggest, in error, that Buhari is a self-generated, autonomous phenomenon. He is not. Buhari is an evolutionary emergence of all the North and the Southwest, the G2, did or didn’t do on winning the civil war. If you sequenced things it is all inevitable one way or the other, a Buhari was bound to emerge. It just happens to be Muhammadu. But a Buhari emerge? That is in the very construction of Nigeria, post the civil war. And Umar knows or should know.
For instance, when Umar reeled out his history of how balancing came to play in the Nigerian security architecture he feinted some amnesia. He overlooked one pivotal point. He never spoke of how the North disallowed Brigadier Ogundipe to come to honor as the rightful guy to take over power. Why? It was a purely northern revanchist power grab. This is fact. And as my Israeli editor would often say, you may edit prose not fact. Thus, is it would have served Umar best if he recalled this and apologized.
In other words, the north post war, apparently led by the Fulani Religious-Military Complex was only for the politics of hegemony and overlordship. At first they conned the southwest with a presumptive G2 Security Council Membership. Later in the day however the southwest found themselves sacked from that honor. Today, for all practical purposes they are out in the cold with the rest of the others, including those they allegedly helped to defeat.
So, from Gowon till Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime, the north had no other agenda save to ”pacify” the rest of the Nigeria federation into being her tributary. To do this via their Fulani led Religious-Military Complex, they revanched Nigeria as we knew it. Examples abound. Of the constitution Abubakar forged it is on notice that only northerners worked on and delivered it to the nation. More importantly, from Murtala Mohammed to Abacha there has been concocted political reengineering by this Northern-Military Complex to award more than enough local governments, senatorial zones, etc. as to reconstitute the north a sole hegemon in or out of democratic or other powers. To technically or thuggishly enforce this, and from the days of Gowon, just about all military establishments of worth has exclusively been located in the north. What has Umar to say about this military singularity of the north? Given this, it is really funny that any northerner including Umar believes in Nigeria, not to speak of one Nigeria.
The only jigsaw is on how the southwest, which was allegedly part of the winning coalition and G2, allowed itself to be out-generaled in the armed peace that ensued, post the civil war. Many have speculated on this. Some are of the opinion that their chiefs were feinted into believing they are to be legatees of the political suzerainty of the Fulani led Northern Military Complex. So in pursuit of personal power these southwestern elite, including perhaps Chief Awolowo, traded in their people destiny for the chimera of personal power.
So, with northern dominance as the standard, it was indicated that a scion of the north was bound to be emerge who will ask, ”what the hell, our Religious-Military Complex have secured this territory for us, what stops us from ”seizing the day?” That Buhari happens to be such as one should not deceive Umar or anybody. It might as well have been Umar.
Perhaps, it is meet we all recall that Murtala Mohammed, a practiced genocidaire at home and presumptive pan-Africanist abroad, purposed for a unitary Nigerian constitution. It is also meet to recall that that was the constitution he and Gowon led a coup against etc. Anyway, he hired very spineless fellows, the so called 50/49 wise men to do the forgery for him. Those men, including the legendary Williams, are some of the most misguided, if not ignorant, constitution makers in all history. With all due respect, one can say that Williams and company never understood jack what really the American constitution, which they were instructed to copy, is all about. The Williams constitution is the basis constitution of other forgeries.
As Professor Ibelema correctly observed: Once elected, however, Buhari left no doubt via his policies that his primary loyalty lay with his Islamic and ethnic kin. His appointment of personal advisers— for which he was unencumbered by law…. https://punchng.com/will-the-real-buhari-now-step-forward/
In other words, Buhari has not breached one single law thanks to the ignorance of the 50 wise men so called. What those men authored in unforgivable ignorance is an Ottoman style dictatorship supreme law. If they had understood American constitution, the most liberal of the world’s constitutions, a Buhari wouldn’t even have happened. You can set your watch on this.
In other words, the best an Umar can do is to focus on systems change, not bothering a Buhari as evolved by the Nigerian shitstem. In all this there is a greater worry. It is not Buhari, it is not Umar etc. It is whether Nigerians can run a modern state at all. Does the Nigerian as manifested have the brains to think things through? A state is not just a theatre with leaders as actors. A state, most importantly, is a play, a work of the mind. That is why a Buddha is called first and not a Caesar.
Check this out. Senator Ben Bruce is trending with a video clip. He tells how he met Commodore Wey post war. He asked Wey, who was Gowon’s deputy, why they didn’t deploy the Biafra military ingenuity as a nucleus of Nigeria’s military industrial complex. Wey answered that they feared that Biafra could resurrect.
O my god such brain deadness? How could Biafra resurrect by lending her genius to the Nigerian mission? Compare this to what happened post World War 11. Both Russia and America were in an ”arms race” to capture the most German scientists. Germans were the leading brains of the pre-world war age. These German geniuses were all secreted to Washington and Moscow. They were provisioned with all the luxuries that geniuses needed to be kept in good humor. And they willingly taught their Americans and Russians hosts. Today, the Russians and Americans, not the Germans, are leaders in space technology.
So what would have happened if Gowonism was self-generous enough to allow Igbo genius transfer and diffuse scientific ingenuity into Gowonistic heads in Jos, Kaduna, Ogbomosho etc. That is if they were Sapiens enough to be self-generous to themselves not to the Igbo. But Gowon, Wey, Mohammed, Obasanjo and the rest of them so hated the Igbo that they preferred to make Hades than see all Nigeria make paradise.
These are the real problems of Nigeria, not Buhari’s appointment. Those appointments were indicated in the very logic of Nigeria post civil war. To save Nigeria, if she is not long lost, she needs a system not appointive makeover. Ahiazuwa.
To Abba Saheed and Toyin Akinosho.
We have been around and about. We can tell that nature created no greater brains and clubbable homo sapiens than the two we are celebrating.
Akogun Tola Adeniyi and Toyin Akinosho are the two latest birthday big boys in town. They are big in a manner that earns our respects. They are easily two of Nigeria’s finest and most humane minds. Akogun, remains without doubt one of the greatest and most consequential newspaperman and columnists of all time. He has mentored an army of devotees and we are proud to count ourselves amongst. We salute him as he clocks a youthful 75.
Forever not missing in action is the longest living ogbanje spirit in flesh. Toyin Akinosho was created in the mold of no other. Restless, creative, generous, clubbable, he is as brilliant as the gods. Toyin the ogbanje in flesh – or better, odogwu agwu ne du – just turned 60 young. I had purposed to boogey it out with him, but these are covid-19 days. So I am zooming my salutations to this great soul. Amen.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
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