NIGERIA NEWS
Current
Challenges for Northern Nigerians
Hadiza Wada, DBA
...
June 26, 2010
The
return to democratic dispensation in Nigeria should be a blessing for a
nation long held hostage by rule of the military, whose very own
training is not to use diplomacy and soft measures for addressing
problems. It should have been so for everyone, but alas the whole
nation continues to face various challenges based on how for these
eleven years since the inception of the current round of democratic
rule, things have gone out of control several times. The promise of
peace after attaining democracy continues to elude the nation. A lot of
casualties have emerged from that exercise, beyond regional borders. The
country as a whole now suffers many ailments as a result of such
narrow-minded ideology. Party leaders including self serving northern
elites continue to engage in a political gamble, battering their
property, future and survival of the nation on a political table. As a
result people have been loosing their lives in large numbers for
a decade.
The
majority, being a positive attribute in any democratic system, has
suddenly become a curse for residents of Northern Nigerian today. It
used to be an admitted salient truth that residents of the east have the
gift of economic aptitude and dominance. Every one accepts that and as
a result they live all over the country in every city and village
conducting their businesses. The North specialty was Political, because
they have also perfected that from centuries old experience well before
any foreign powers arrived its shores. Today, the Northern population
have been made victims largely with the assistance of Nigerian
subjective Press and are gradually loosing grips on what is happening
around them. The resulting effect has also forced the ship of state to
steer off course. I may not have to convince any reader, aware of the
Nigerian general situation today, that a dire need exists to set things
right, in order to diffuse the tension, insecurity, political puzzle and
mistrust that resulted from a decade of such misdirection.
Another very crucial attitude that needs to be reversed as soon as
possible in Nigeria’s current democratic governance structure is the
introduction into the psyche of the nation that political leadership and
success can only be attained and maintained through cruel and tyrannical
cultish practices. People who profess Islam and Christianity openly in
public do not personally believe in their God’s ability to assist them.
They therefore buy into the belief that one has to lean towards the
darker forces, to ensure his participation and maintenance of power.
Others with vested interest in spreading mischief have used that
weakness in faith to their advantage. The result today is the
insensitivity to loss of human lives in heinous manners and ways that we
witness daily. The sacredness of human life is increasingly becoming
irrelevant, a precedent that will not augur well for anyone
consequently, including those who today are thinking they maintain the
upper hand. History has taught us that, once you let the genie out of
the bottle, or as they say when you light a fire and allow it to burn
out of control in the same surrounding with you, your loved ones, and
the so called “my people” ( which in most cases is actually for
political expediency), you may not possess the ultimate power to control
who it affects, and who it will ultimately consume.
The
irony is, more than eighty percent of Nigerians who profess following
the two major religions practiced in the country know better, but that
is no reason to abandon their chosen destructive path. While we clearly
learn in unambiguous terms that Prophet Isa (Jesus) on him be peace,
fought such evil and even casted such forces out of his followers. And
also that the teacher for the Muslims, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, in no unambiguous terms warned his followers against the devil, his
practices, and his evils, people still somehow believe that it is their
one and only means to success in politics and leadership seeking
ambition. They therefore abandon their Mosques and Churches, to head to
the shrines and cultic centers. With the result that ordinary Nigerians
dread times of political activism around elections, for these are times
that kidnapping, ritual killings and such practices become rampant.
We
have many such challenges that needs to be addressed, and we intend not
to rest until we begin to turn the tide. Every nation has the ability
to move forward as long as it is willing to find out its major
challenges, publicize them, discuss them and finally set out with the
dedication needed to finding lasting solutions. In general therefore
this publication becomes a must read for every dedicated Nigerian,
politician, students across the nation and others who just want a good
understanding of Nigerian issues today. It will also be useful to non
Nigerians, and such groups will include, for example, diplomatic
officials, students of African History, foreign relations agents, and
scholars. It may also clarify for donors with genuine intentions in
helping the country, find legitimate causes and decide where to direct
their funds etc
Before we delve into this work, we would like to recognize some
underlying causes responsible for some negative consequences we observe
in Northern Nigeria. They are a people who understandably are making
the most adjustment to a system of government (Western style democracy)
that in contemporary terms have been developed in nations that have a
wide cultural variance with its inhabitants values. As if that is not
enough a challenge, these are the people whose opinions you hardly hear
because they own just a unitary percentage of the nation’s press (less
than ten percent) while they are by far the majority in head count.
They read less in terms of Western style press and print, and conduct a
lesser percentage of serious researches on their daunting problems far
less than any other group.
In
the present Nigerian psyche, the nation, its leadership (politicians and
otherwise) as well as the press, inhabitants of Northern Nigeria are
stereotyped as “Muslim North.” The second specialized categorization
“Hausa Fulani,” though glaringly inaccurate owing to the fact that there
are many more ethnic groups and languages living in that general area,
is another term of reference adopted. Whether viewing the area as one
inhabited by a Muslim majority made others see it in ethnic terms as
well (Hausa Fulani); or the reverse of that i.e. the majority of its
inhabitants are Hausa Fulani made others see it in religious terms as
well is something we could leave for others to fine tune with deeper
research. For the information of our casual reader, the Hausa and
Fulani are about ninety nine percent Muslims, the exception being very
rare. They shared common history in the past and intermingled so much
so that they have a common reference as a group today.
Having defined the typical Northern Nigerian in contextual terms, we
will say this; Without sincerely addressing the challenges of that
majority, we can only go down a road towards perdition, similar to other
nations we observe today from afar. Failure to come to terms with the
challenges of the majority population has led to anarchy in many nations
of the world.
Identifying Some Major Areas to Address
One key area is the growing dissatisfaction of Nigerian
youths, who continue to see no light at
the end of the tunnel, in terms of where their future lies. While they
command a great percentage of Nigerian population ( ), people are too
engrossed in their schemes to give them a thought and the required
attention needed to address their ever rising problems. Their parents
are increasingly moving towards self defeating goals, where the primary
goal is not community based but personal aggrandizement and greed in
piling ill gotten wealth. They spend a great number of years schooling,
but since the educational system is also problem prone, they graduate
without adequate education to make them productive members of the
society. They end up becoming a burden to themselves, and the community
at large.
The
non involvement of youths in anything tangible translates into a great
waste of talent and manpower, for the youth are the most energetic and
daring; with abilities to inject energy into the industrial,
agricultural, and all other facets of development in any country. Any
nation that does not find a way to harness that energy will run at a
great loss. Because Nigerian youths could not channel such energy and
enthusiasm positively, they have become easy to incite to cause mayhem.
The reality you may get from people who have studied the human
developmental stages will inform you that, that energy the youths have
will have to be used up in one way or another. You have a choice as
their leaders to draw up a plan to harness and direct that latent energy
for developmental purposes, or else you leave them wandering without
work and adequate guidance and they use that energy destructively.
The
generation above the youths i.e. their parent’s generation, who would
have been more involved in leadership and governance, those in their mid
forties to about sixty years of age (Nigerian retirement age is
sixty-five?), have not been given adequate chances to get involved with
their contributions at the epic of power. Mostly the same people since
independence, have been recycled at federal level leadership and
positions such as Presidents, Ministers, heads of major governmental
companies and parastatals. Nigeria being half a century old this year,
means the people who have refused to give way, who may have been in
their thirties and above at independence are now in their eighties and
above, and still seeking to remain in power. Even governorship at state
level has not return to people of mid age until recently. The result is
what appears to keep dragging the nation into the same old age dogmas of
ethnic differences, regional differences, political hooliganism and the
rest which are old age political gimmicks.
One
of the most serious threats to the present round of democratic
government is probably connected with the global propaganda aimed
particularly at people of the Islamic faith. It provides the avenue for
some misdirected appointed and elected leaders to justify some
tyrannical and irresponsible agenda of ethnic cleansing. The Hausa
speaking Muslim today is a target of constant campaign of killing and
elimination. Today Nigerians of Islamic faith have seen massacres you
may term living hell. The 2004 massacre especially, where Muslims at
Yelwan-Shendam and several remote villages and towns of Plateau State
were massacred in front of their families, while others within single
families were separated forever. This has unfortunately become part of
the history of the Nigerian nation. And since then several other
incidents have occurred, some glaringly incited by the leadership of
Plateau state. That was something you may have thought is impossible to
find occurring in the twenty first century anywhere in the world.
These menace though fanned by local ethnic hatred, has some foreign
support that encourages it unfortunately. Nigeria is now experimenting
with U S style democratic system, and has therefore on many occasions
taken cues and lessons from historical and contemporary U S issues and
policies. The last decade when Nigeria began its democratic
experimentation, coincides with the previous George Bush Jr.,
republican administration, which even internally soon became quite
unpopular. Reasons for the administrations failures are as diverse as
there are writers to etch their opinions in several New York Times best
sellers. Some Nigerian politicians have thus been justifying their
religious intolerance of Northern residents who have been sometimes
synonymously been addressed as Muslim North, taking cue unfortunately
from such foreign unpopular propaganda.
An abridged excerpt from our book, coming out
summer this year
