Daily Independent Online.
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Monday,July 19, 2004.
ACF promotes
Northern oligarchy, says Balarabe
By Sukuji Bakoji
Bureau
Chief, Kaduna
An x-ray of the social
and economic stagnation of the North was once again done at the weekend by
someone perhaps more qualified than most to do so - Balarabe Musa.
He was clear-headed in
blaming the Northern oligarchy for all the woes of the talakawas (poor masses) who roam the streets
homeless and scavenge for crumbs on the door steps of the rich - a vast
array of almajiris
(beggars) who always outnumber a tiny elite in a land endowed with all the
resources required to better the lot of everyone, man and woman.
Balarabe was Governor
of old Kaduna State whose radical, populist programmes in the Second Republic
(1979-1983) favoured the ‘the grassroots’ but often drew him at
loggerheads with the political masters at the federal level.
Before and since then,
he has taken every opportunity to fire salvos at the ruling class, particularly
those of his kin from the North. That uncompromising posture cost him his job
as governor with his impeachment in 1980.
Balarabe is in company
of another former (military) Governor of the same state, Abubakar Umar, in the
firmament of radical thought and in taking swipes at the Northern elite for the
collective guilt of ensuring that the region remains the poorest in the
country.
The North is not new
to some form of oligarchy, from the swaggering Sokoto Caliphate which lorded
over the land up to the 18th century, to the ruling military class which drew
its members mostly from that region and dominated national politics in the four
decades to 1999.
Throughout those four
decades of both civil rule and military junta, a faceless, yet powerful and
recurring clique in the ‘Kaduna mafia’ gained currency, again to
cater solely for the Northern cabal.
But Balarabe insisted
in an interview at the weekend that the historical oligarchy has now transformed
into the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), in spite of appearances, to
“protect, project and promote the interests of the Northern oligarchy
rather than being a patriotic front for the North”.
Balarabe is leader of
the resurrected Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) originally formed by his
political mentor Aminu Kano as well as Chairman of the Conference of Nigerian
Political Parties (CNPP). He criticised the elite for being selfish and seeking
personal aggrandisement to the detriment of the poor.
The main tool of
oppression by the ruling class, he explained, is by ensuring that the people
are backward in education and economic standards.
His words: “I
have never been a member of the ACF and I made it quite clear to them when they
invited me to attend their meeting. My position was even made public on a
number of occasions. I cannot join any regional organisation; that’s one.
“Secondly, the
ACF is too conservative for me. I think I see more of Northern oligarchy in the
ACF than a Northern patriotic front for the unity of the North and Nigeria as a
whole. So I am not with the ACF and I will not be with the ACF”.
Balarabe said the once
nearly omnipotent Kaduna mafia has fizzled out, subsumed under the ACF, with
its members now in a bigger force, the national bourgeois.
“They have
disintegrated”, he stressed, “they have quarrelled with one
another. You find some of them in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), some of
them in the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a few of them in other
parties. So they have disintegrated. But they have joined a bigger force that
is the national bourgeois”.
He attributed his
impeachment as governor in 1980 to the plot by the Kaduna mafia that was
antagonistic to his government because he refused to dance to their tune.
“In the past,
you had individuals that could be identified as those who decided things in
Kaduna State. They appeared to be independent individuals but actually they
worked together, ready to determine who became Governor of Kaduna State”.
