Who can tame Northern Governors’
hubris?
By
Dan Amor
Pardon their petulant perversities. But a
deep ambiguity lingers in the official character of Nigerian politicians. Yet,
this equivocalness is perhaps inherent in the very notion of chauvinist
political culture. And it may just be after all that we have reached the climax
or critical junction of our national history. Or else, isn’t it
disheartening to note that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we have as
leaders a tiny but articulate minority of disillusioned professionals,
nostalgic agrarians, insensitive intellectuals and gentlemen of inherited or
stolen wealth who still hang on grimly and defiantly to the values of a
departed era? This obscure motive in our polity has proved to be a most elusive
element for commentators and analysts to pin down. Why is it that some people
should actually take a kind of grim pleasure in the idea that it may be
impossible for things to change in our country? In any society there is always
a tendency on the part of those who are already in privileged positions to pretend that they have been there
forever and that their road to success cannot be duplicated by others. This
leisured class has always resisted change.
Several societies waged strident and devastating wars
before they could effect this
change. In France, it took the form of an outright revolution. Even the Americans
had to fight a war of liberation before they could advance to their present
position in the world. In fact, the Nigerian Civil War, the first war in
history in which African soldiers led by African commanders fought each other
with modern weapons, was fought as a result of this natural craving for change
and freedom. And yet, a war in which an estimated one million people were
killed (the highest casualty in world history, except perhaps the Spanish Civil
War) was unable to effect this change. Even the controversial annulment, in
June 1993, of the freest and fairest Presidential election believed to have
been won by Chief M.K.O Abiola, by the military under General Ibrahim Badamosi
Babangida, was part of the agenda of the North to permanently hold on to power
in Nigeria. For a section which has ruled the country for more than 30 years in
our 44-year chequered history as an independent state, the North is not
comfortable that someone from another section of the country is currently
calling the shot at the Presidency.
What is even more intriguing is the recent gang-up by
Northern Governors that the Abolition of the Onshore / Offshore oil Dichotomy
Bill passed into law by the National Assembly, which has accorded a semblance
of recognition to the nine littoral States in the sharing of proceeds from the
oil deposited under their land, be abrogated. Coming at a time the
oil-producing States are even demanding an upward review of the Derivation
formula from 13 per cent to 50 per cent in order to adequately address the
multi-faceted problems of environmental pollution, ecological degradation and
the pervasive poverty in the Niger Delta region, the Governors’ action
amounts to a calculated insult on the intelligence and aspirations of the
people. It would be recalled that
when oil was not discovered in commercial quantity, when cocoa and groundnuts
were the major export earnings of the Nigerian economy sustained by the
Northern and Western Regions, the Derivation formula was 50 per cent. But when
oil became the cornerstone of the nation’s export earnings, the story
changed. And despite the fact that they used the oil money to build Lagos and
Abuja into mega-cities comparable to the best cities in the world, and the fact
that the region that produces the oil wealth is uninhabitable, these
blue-blooded parasites of passion in whose veins human blood does not flow are
still not satisfied.
Consider: since the advent of our much-violated
“federal system” there has always been an interplay of three
converging social forces, namely, the thrust of political nationalism, the
persistence of cultural particularism, and the crystallization of emergent
tribal or hegemonic interests. The Governors’ current prattle falls under
the latter. It confirms the age-long thesis that the intractable crisis in the
Niger Delta is more or less factitious - a kind of unsuitable joke
created by exploiters of our God - given resource in order to divert our
attention from the real issue which is the shameless and blatant looting of our
natural wealth. It shows that divide-and-rule is a pitiless and evil
trick. It is the ancient imperative of oppression. Wherever there is a group of
usurpers subjecting other groups within a given society to exploitation, there
you will find this rule in operation. Without it no tyranny would survive. The
Roman Emperors made a policy of it. The British Empire perfected it, fanning
every conceivable religious, ethnic or other distinction among its subject
peoples into hatred to make easy its mastery over all. Every one of the modern
imperialisms has practised this
shameless political process. Lord Fredrick D. Lugard, a British
imperialist military agent laid the foundation for divide- and - rule in Nigeria. In 1914, after the
illegal fusion of all the more
than 250 ethic nationalities in
part of the interior coast of West Africa, as “one indivisible”
(sic) country , he employed this backward-looking policy to penetrate the
various independent nations that existed before his concoction of the
geographical expression called Nigeria. Now, how many Nigerians can understand
the Northern governors’ hyperbole and ghoulish arrogance? How many know
that their action is a sheer expression of a hubristic agony, a mere strain of
a grand anti-logic against the goose that lays the golden egg? Except one or
two of them who have shuddered at the sheer hypocrisy of their action,
according to later media reports, how many of the governors have the conscience
to regret that banal display of their fanatical devotion to ethnicity at a time
the President is preaching that there is nothing like indigeneship in Nigeria?
And who will blame them when there are even cracks in Southern Governors’
Forum? It is a tragi-comedy.
Yet, this comi-tragic mix-up is nothing but a stark
and astonishing tribute to the culture of Northern domination which Lugard
foisted on Nigeria when the British made it look as though the North was bigger
than the East and West combined. How many Nigerians can therefore appreciate
the dimension divide - and - rule has assumed in the country today?
But it is an old game.
The Northern Governors’ recent action against
the oil producing states should therefore be seen as a hegemonic reaction to
the current demand by the Niger Delta people for a fair share of their
God-given resource after several years of outright cheating and intimidation by
successive federal governments. It demonstrates the fact that State antagonism
against the ethnic minorities especially those advocating a fair deal, is a
permanent and deliberate policy of the hegemonic Northern ruling class and
their surrogates in the South. The
pity is that even under a supposedly democratic system, politicians from the
oil producing States are maintaining a studied silence in the face of such an
expensive political joke by Northern governors. But the presumed veto power of
an oligarchy must be made inoperable in order to stop the continuing slide
towards the disintegration of Nigeria. The slide will be well-nigh irreversible
if the veto of the oligarchy triumphs. What Nigerians need is a nation at
equipoise, meaning a fair, just and stable balance of internal forces. If we
allow the hubris of these vainglorious schemers to continue unabated, the
outcome might just be too hot for our comfort. No nation in history has survived
civil war twice.
