Fortuitously, we now have some discordant voices coming from northern political elite, once united only by their opposition to our independence article of faith – “that each federating unit develops at its own pace without interference from others”. This is however coming after over 50 years of our nation’s nightmare, 15 years of Boko Haram’s mindless killings and devastation, nine years of terrorism by immigrant herdsmen and 10 years of banditry by subsistence farmers and cattle herders. 

For other federating nationalities held down by the conspiracy of the dominant, this was nothing but a betrayal of the ideals of visionary Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and the first Premier of Northern Nigeria who was assassinated in 1966 by misguided young soldiers.

First was the hypocrisy of Ango Abdulahi’s Northern Elders Forum who, after serially betraying the aspirations of the northern masses that look up to them for direction, like the proverbial Ostrich that hides its head in the sand, now turns around to find whipping dog in President Tinubu and his less than one year old administration. Speaking on the abduction and release of the Kuriga school children, it declared: “The Northern Elders Forum firmly declares that enough is enough… Unfortunately, just months into the Tinubu administration, there have already been clear signs of failure in providing the vital aspects of security of life and property to citizens.”

Of course no one should hold brief for President Tinubu. The buck stops at his table. But it is sad that the northern leaders continue to live in denial. Except northern leaders, every discerning person cannot but see the linkage between the self-inflicted crisis in the north and their feudal system which is ideologically opposed to any form of egalitarianism including sending children of the poor that are today on rampage to school.

 But it was just as well that there was the dissenting voice of Dr Shehu Mahdi, President Buhari’s former controversial executive Secretary of NHIS, who chose not to be economical with the truth. For him, northern leaders are the scourge of the north and they alone can find peace for their people. For him, “With northern vice president, northern Speaker, northern head of the military, northern NSC, Northern Secretary etc, it is time for northern leaders to lock themselves up in a room, look at themselves in the mirror and admit they have failed their people and resolve on how to bring peace to our lives”.

But sadly, it has not always been like this. Ahmadu Bello, the great grandson of Sultan Muhammad Bello, the second Sultan of Sokoto after Usmanu Dan Fodio, was proud of his ancestry. Some even described him as arrogant for referring to the Bantus of Benue trough as his great grandfather’s slaves. But he was a decent and selfless leader. His controversial northernisation policy was designed to protect his people. And it “reflects the cotemporary desires for modernization, struggle over who would direct and benefit from such changes and concern over the cultural and moral scaffolding of independence Nigeria”. (Douglas Anthony, Decolonization, Race and Region in Nigeria, Northernisation revisited (International Journal of African historical studies Vop.51, No.1 (2018)

Ahmadu Bello’s policies were never designed to impede the development of Nigeria but to make the north more competitive in an emerging Nigerian state where most of the ethnic nationalities wanted their own nation within the greater Nigerian nation state. If Ahmadu Bello and his northern pathfinders had insisted on 50% of membership of the national assembly in 1950, it was a survival strategy in an emerging Nigeria where the less educated north unlike other nationalities did not have their first doctors and lawyers until mid-fifties. 

He and his group copied what was good from other regions and strived to build a formidable northern bureaucracy and academic institution. We have no evidence that ABU that produced a world-acclaimed intellectual such as the late Professor Ayodele Awojobi, alias ‘the Akoka Giant’, whose PhD thesis from UK University was said to be responsible for off-shore oil mining on the high seas, and the famous architect, Fola Alade, the designer of abandoned Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi could not be said to be inferior to the nation’s other institutions.

 Ahmadu Bello, a man of great vision,  will today be probably troubled in his grave  to discover that beneficiaries of his visionary leadership have become ethnic irredentists collaborating with less endowed military soldiers of fortune who joined the military in order to climb the social ladder (many initial recruits were picked from motor parks in Kaduna while Buhari attested to the magnanimity of Ahmadu Bello who picked him up from his Daura village saving him from remaining a herdsman) to foist disruptive and self-serving policies such as quota system that kills meritocracy and creation of  more LGAs for the north without objective criteria beyond cornering resources of more productive members of the union.

 That the north at the beginning was not as economically endowed as the south, the major incentive for the 1914 British amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates was a settled issue. But there is no evidence that Ahmadu Bello and his northern political elite opposed revenue allocation based on derivation all through the constitutional debate leading to independence. Instead, he went on to supervise the groundnut pyramids, the sources of revenue for building the biggest business conglomerate in Africa as well as other infrastructures including roads, Ahmadu Bello Stadium and Ahmadu Bello University and was still able to provide security for the whole of the north.

The rain started to beat us after the civil war with the emergence of northern soldiers of fortune and self-serving northern politicians who found Bello’s shoe too big. Murtala Muhammed destroyed the academia and bureaucracy without which a nation decays; Shehu Shagari smoked while his NPN wrecked the economic ship of state despite Awo’s warning it was heading for the rocks. Babangida destroyed our budding industries by opening our nation to importation of goods from Europe and its satellite nations. He manipulated the religion sensibilities of the north by illegally taking the country into OIC. Abacha who according to Alli Mazrui was too unintelligent to know fears, stole the country blind while he waged a five-year war against Nigeria’s pro-democracy groups. Abdulsalami Abubakar authored the 1999 constitution derisively referred re to as ‘Decree 24’ by Nigerians. Finally, Buhari, caged by Fulani ethnic irredentists left the country more divided than he met it.

But it is not getting better with only 33% of Boko Haram infested Bornu in school, 70% of Nigerian out-of-school children from the north and with a large expanse of ungoverned territories spanning over 200 kilometres from Kaduna to Zamfara.

The question those who care about our country are asking is whether the northern leaders including NEF, Gowon, Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, herders’ patron such as Lamido Sanusi Lamido, are aware of these ungoverned territories. And if they are, why did they not rein in Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders’ Association before they carried out their threat to make Nigeria ungovernable unless they were given license for open grazing in places like Rivers, Ekiti, Ondo and Oyo?

Why would they not persuade those who killed and confiscated their victims’ land to relocate to Kano following ex-governor, Abdullahi Ganduje’s undertaking to rehabilitate all herdsmen in Kano?  There was similarly not a whimper from northern elders as the battle line over attempt to export armed killer herdsmen from north’s ungoverned territories to Ondo’s reserved forest over which daggers were drawn between President Buhari’s ‘loyal gate keepers’ and the late Governor Akeredolu of Ondo.

Northern leaders not only betrayed Ahmadu Bello, their illustrious forbearer, they remain the nation’s cancer.