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Absurdity is supposed to be an ignoble quality. But it by all means; of course appears not to be so in Nigeria. Rather, absurdity, mediocrity and idiocy have come to be national hallmarks and symbols of dissimilarity for some so-called Nigerian elites and leaders. And nowhere have Nigerian leaders of the northern discharge displayed this capability great than in their response, or the lack of it, to the ongoing Boko Haram carnage. Instead of witnessing constructive discussions of how to citation a cancerous rupture, Boko Haram, which was threatening the very existence of the nation, we have had leaders talking about rapprochement and appeasement. General Abdusalam Abubakar (rtd.), one of Nigeria's eminent old leaders, was among the first northern leaders of note to air his views on the Boko Haram malaise. His erudite hint to President Jonathan was to call the Boko Haram (Bh) boys, and "settle" them the same way the federal government located the Niger Delta militants. One assumes with a pat on the back and plane tickets to Saudi Arabia or some other exotic places where they would learn new skills in the same manner as Niger Delta boys were sent to Ghana, South Africa and a integrate of other places. In result General Abubakar was advocating the principle of quota, or federal character, which has been in place in the funds of the national cake. After all Boko Haram were just unleashing their own quota of terrorism on the Nigerian state, just in the same way as the Niger delta militants. Sanusi Lamido, the governor of the Central Bank, re-echoed the same idea in the infamous interview he granted a London newspaper on the Boko Haram matter. He opined that the likes of Boko Haram came to be because of the lopsided sharing of the national cake, where thinly populated states like Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa were getting more money than the 'more densely populated states of the north'. His solution, the Bh boys should be located alongside the poverty-stricken almajiris who daily roam the streets of the north. More explicitly put, poverty in Nigeria should also be by quota to reflect federal character. Following on Lamidos's heels, old president Ibrahim Babangida, came out clearly to say that the Boko Haram imbroglio could not be located by force of arm - only a negotiated village can resolve the matter. He thus called on President Jonathan to call the boys to the negotiating table. I guess the same kind of negotiation he invited the late Dele Giwa (only Dele was too strong-headed and took the wrong path to perdition). It has seemingly come to be positive that President Jonathan is whether strong-headed or hard at hearing. To remedy the situation, the Borno state government over-night became a champion of how state governments should obey court rulings by at once doling out a 100 million Naira to the house of a slain Boko Haram member. Unfortunately, the Boko Haram boys obviously put the money to the wrong use by apparently using it to finance their coordinated bombing of Kano, which collaterally resulted in the unintended deaths of Kano Muslims. Probably, in an endeavor to ameliorate the apparent wrong use of the funds by Boko Haram, the Central Bank Governor dished out someone else 100 million Naira to the victims of the Kano carnage and in so doing usurped the functions of the National emergency management group While the pattern is becoming clearer, and we are starting to know the identities of the sympathizers and supporters of Boko Haram, it would be good to delve briefly into the history and antecedents of the issues raised by the actions, inactions and statements of our northern leaders. We can discuss the major grains in their positions under the following pockets of reasoning, hoping it is still potential to apply presuppose to Nigerian issues.
Terrorism by quota naturally defined, terrorism is any act that can cause horror, panic, intense fear, death or destruction in a society. The history of Nigeria does not lack in these acts, as defined above. In fact if the civil war dead were added to the count, Nigeria must have lost over two million habitancy through acts of terror, which Nigerians have visited on each other. But as quotas go - the even distribution of anyone is the subject of distribution, the rest of the country pales miserably in comparison to the north in the perpetration of these acts of terror in the nation. The first modern Nigerian orgy of violence was in 1945 when Hausa Fulani Muslims pounced on Igbo residents of Jos. Ever since, no decade of our public national history has gone by without a repeat of such senseless massacres. A cursory look at the major fatal political and ethno-religious public upheavals in Nigeria's six political zones since 1945, would give the following picture:
Northwest: The 1953 mini pogrom of easterners in Kano was the introduction to over twelve major subsequent ethno-religious clashes that would ravage the Northwest. These comprise the pogrom of 1966, the Matitatsine riots of the 80's, the Sharia riots of 2000 and the new Boko Haram serial bombing of January 2012. The fatality shape in these skirmishes is well over 70,000. Northeast: Records show that the Northeast has experienced a minimum of 8 major ethnic and religious riots or killings since the 1966 pogrom of easterners. These include, the Bulumkutu and Jimeta Matatitsine riots of the early 80's, as well as the Boko Haram induced killings of 2009 till date. North Central: After the first 1945 strike on easterners in Jos, the next wave of such killings in this zone was to come while the pogrom of 1966. Thereafter there was a marvelous period of peace until the bubble burst again in 2001 with the Tiv - Junkun war, and then the current Jos ethno religious killings, which have refused to abate since they started in 2002. South East: also the civil war years of 1967-70, the Southeast has been remarkably spared of any major inter-ethnic or religious upheavals, except for the 2000 reprisal attacks against northerners in the wake of the Kaduna Sharia riots and killings. South South: Apart from localized skirmishes in the middle of rival ethnic groups that make up this zone, the only supreme major skirmishes had been the Urhobo, Itsekiri and Ijaw conflicts of 1997-1999, as well as the Odi massacre of 2000, which gave rise to the subsisting militancy being championed by Mend and other groups in this zone. South West: Since the 1965 post-election riots in the West and the concomitant "Operation Wetie," the only other major upheavals in the southwest were the Ife/Modakeke conflicts of 1997, the Sagamu ethnic riots of 1999, and the Mile 12 and Idi Araba, Lagos conflicts in the middle of Hausas and Yorubas, also in 1999. Thus if the principles of quota or federal character should be applied to inter-ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria as General Abdulsalam and other Boko Haram apologetics would want us to believe, then it is quite positive that the North has far exceeded its terrorism quota.
Revenue derivation, funds and the impoverishment of the North The Cbn governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido, the northern states' governors and other northern leaders have lately fingered the current 13% derivation recipe as the single most leading thing militating against wealth creation in the North. Mallam Lamido easily attributes it to the rise of Boko Haram and other religious and ethnic riots in the North. However, when you look back at the history of revenue derivation and funds in Nigeria, these arguments fail woefully when paired against logical mental and the realities. For those who are short on memory, the revenue derivation recipe was 50% in 1958, when Nigeria had three regions as the federating political units. This recipe held sway till 1968, when the then military government changed it to 10% for the federating states, and 80% to the federal government. The recipe was only reversed upwards to 13% in 1995. It is also worthy to note that the old regions recorded their most sufficient potentials and public developmental achievements in the 1958 -1968 period when 40% of their locally derived revenue went to the federal government while the regions retained 60%. It was at this time that the North boasted of the supreme groundnut pyramids, the East commanded the world palm oil trade, and the West equally commanded the world trade in cocoa. The regions competed surrounded by themselves in exploiting their respective revenue generation potentials, natural resources, and in delivering public benefits to their subjects. Free education, hospitals, universities, industrial parks, new towns and bank start-ups were some of the many laudable projects implemented by the regions under this revenue sharing regime. Fast send to 2012, all the federating states have been reduced to beggar status; the groundnut pyramids have disappeared, we now import groundnuts from Cameroun; the palm oil has stopped flowing, Malaysia has taken over as the world biggest producer - earning more money from palm oil export than we are development from crude oil export; Cote d'Ivoire has since taken over the world leadership in cocoa output and export. The current Nigerian revenue reality is that every member of the pretender Nigerian ruling class has come to be an oil baron - exporting, importing and expropriating the national oil wealth. Though the federal government has scaled down its share of revenue from 80% in 1968 to 48.5% since 1995, the federating states and local governments, with a combined share of 44%, are bereft of any ideas of how to come to be revenue generators instead of revenue sharers and looters. This mentality of revenue sharing and looting, instead of creation is more acute in the North, where a majority of the habitancy and their leaders see the Nigerian state as a benevolent seller of wealth. The northern states, especially the northwestern and northeastern states, have refused to own up to their inability to deliver services to their citizens, or encourage them to come to be creators of wealth. This is in spite of the disproportionately huge federal allocations going to these zones on account of their purported large populations and amount of states and local government areas. Now there are even calls advent from some quarters, that a semblance of the 'Marshal Plan" used by the Us to heal post World War Japan, be initiated in northern Nigeria. One wonders the rational behind these calls. Maybe it is to re-develop the north from the ravages of a war it has been waging against itself for decades. Irrespective of the rational behind these calls, it may be instructive at this point to recall the only such "Marshal Plan" ever implemented in Nigeria. It was at the end of the civil war, when the federal government initiated its 3R schedule of reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation, but went on to sequester and redistribute all Igbo owned properties in other parts of the country. The same government led by Gowon, with Awolowo and the British as its financial advisers, went even further to confiscate the millions of pounds southeasterners had trapped in Nigerian banks at the starting of the civil war, three years earlier, only to give each Igbo house twenty pounds in return. At that time no one heard any call for a 'Marshal Plan' or for preferential revenue funds recipe to bring the war survivors out of the abject poverty they sank into at the end of the war. Rather, the habitancy of the affected eastern states took their fates in their hands and struck out into the deep ocean of studying how to earn a livelihood, afresh. Forty-two years later this year, their expand thus far speaks for itself. Probably, the North may desire a similar tested recipe of the Nigerian variant of the "Marshal Plan". Nevertheless, those champions of the North, who are today calling for a more preferential revenue formula, should first show us what their region is adding to the national harvest basket, from which this revenue is to be shared. They should show us the amount of engineers or technicians they have toiling in the oil fields, or the percentage of their habitancy suffering directly from the ravaging effects of oil output and exploration. Or can these contributions be calculated solely on the basis of the plethora of murderous ethno-religious riots that have come to define the North; their oft-claimed large population; or the large amount of local governments and land mass, which they had clandestinely smuggled into the revenue sharing formula?
The habitancy game - Where the North got it wrong Often the North cites habitancy size and landmass as the reasons for the region to claim more revenue than other parts of the country. Lamido Sanusi used these same citations to argue for more revenue for the North. This trust on habitancy figure, as a revenue-grabbing weapon, is largely behind the long fought battles of habitancy shape manipulation in Nigeria. For instance, the current national habitancy figures indicate that the semi-arid Northwest, with 37 million people, supports a higher habitancy than the combined habitancy of the rain forest and coastal regions of the Southeast and South South, 31 million people. This illogical demographic pattern runs quite contrary to scientifically established patterns in other parts of the world. The Northwest even posts more habitancy figures than the North central, the established food basket of the nation, and also more than the very urbanized and advanced Southwest, with Kano claiming a higher habitancy than Lagos. What the northern architects of habitancy figures have failed to perceive is that habitancy size alone does not translate to the expand of a polity. Rather what matters more is the capability of the habitancy - the human resource amelioration index. This is because despite having successfully allocated the largest habitancy in the nation to their zones, and in tandem the largest amount of states, local governments and percentage of federal allocations, the Northwest and Northeast zones still lag far behind all other zones in the country in all indices of human development. This is despite their positive favored position in the federation, which came via their operate of the national political power for 39 of Nigeria's 51 years existence as an independent nation. For instance the Millennium amelioration Goals attainment comparative reports of Nigeria's geopolitical zones show these glaring disparities:
1. Relative poverty - Northwest, 71.2%; Northeast, 72.2%; North central, 67%; Southwest, 42%; South South, 35.1%; Southeast, 26.7%. 2. Secondary school net attendance ratio, 2007 - Northwest, 30.1%; Northeast, 8.1%; North central, 58.7%; Southwest, 78%; South South, 72.3; Southeast, 70%. 3. Childbirth in a health factory - Northwest 9%; Southeast - 75%.
The human index developmental data above clearly indicate whether of two possibilities: 1. Both the Northwest and Northeast have not posted any appreciable positive developmental dividend since independence in 1960, or 2. The habitancy figures against which their achievements are being measured are whether grossly faulty or over bloated. This is because the North central, which is the least favored part of the North, has posted considerably great results than the Northwest and Northeast.
Knowledge and technology - the current drivers of expand The fact that schooling is a driver of human and societal amelioration has never been contestable; rather it is the rate at which it does so today that has come to be very breadth taking. In this wise, most countries and human societies that have failed to jump on the knowledge express train are increasingly being left in the dust. This explains the current developmental disparity in the middle of East Asia and African, despite the fact that they were practically at par in the 60's. Population, which used to hold sway in rudimentary agrarian economies of the old do not matter any longer, as the large advances of such thinly populated countries as Singapore and Botswana have shown. Singapore, a city-state of practically 5 million habitancy was a petite more than a fishing port and a British naval base at independence in 1965. Today, Singapore has the highest percentage of millionaire households in the world. It is the world's 14th largest exporter and 15th largest importer. It did not need a man-made habitancy of 37 or 140 million habitancy to accomplish these feats despite gaining independence five years behind Nigeria. Botswana is someone else thinly populated nation - African, a old British colony and agrarian. At independence in 1966, Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world. Very much like the northwest of Nigeria, it has no way to the sea and three quarters of its territory is covered by the Kalahari Desert. But, today Botswana has the fourth largest gross national revenue and the highest sovereign prestige rating in Africa. With 83% literacy level, Bostwana boasts of more cattle than her human habitancy of 2 million. How one wishes northern Nigeria could one day boast of more heads of cattle than Boko Haram adherents and their supporters. Both Singapore and Botswana show that habitancy size is not what matters in national development; rather it is the capability of the habitancy that makes all the difference. China today is not rated very for its large population, but rather for the capability and output capacity of its population. Religion does not matter either, as the example of Indonesia will show. The most populous Islamic country in the world, with a habitancy of 238 million, Indonesia is today the largest economy in East Asia, a member of the G20 group of major economies with a nominal Gdp of 6.73 billion (2010 estimates). With a majority Muslim population, Indonesia recognizes religious freedom, does not custom Sharia, and is focused on the economic amelioration of its people. It also has 300 different ethnic groups and 742 different languages and dialects. So it does appear that Boko Haram and their supporters in the North got it quite wrong. Education, western or otherwise, is no evil, as they purport, but rather the harbinger of national and human development, by far.
Northern elites - the catalysts of the region's jaundiced amelioration The leaders and elites of the North should, without any equivocation, be blamed for the backwardness and problems plaguing that region. This is because right from the pre-independence era, the northern leadership had always sought to inoculate itself from any external contentious threat than face such situations squarely, and have in so doing ended up elevating mediocrity to an art. For example, when the North was faced with the prospect of an early independence from the British in 1953, Anthony Enaharo raised the request for retrial in the legislature; the North led by Sir Ahmadu Bello shot it down. Their reasons - the North was not ready and would rather prefer to make at its own 'slow' pace. Again, when the North was faced with the influx of educated easterners into its civil service, its leaders chose the northernisation course instead of contentious squarely with the easterners, and studying in the process. They were later to use the benefit of the civil war, which ended in favor of the federal government, to deal a deathblow on educational expand in the East by banishing the missionary schools. But when this course failed to stop the East, and still faced with lagging educational achievements in the region in the 70's, compared to other parts of the country, the northern elites got the region the special status of 'educationally disadvantaged', and went further to make the course of 'federal character' as a means of warding off the contentious environments they found themselves in. Each of these retrogressive options chosen by the northern elites have over the years brought the North to the unenviable position they find themselves in today. But once more, true to type, instead of finding inwards to tackle the present specter of underdevelopment facing their region, they are agitating for more federal revenue allocation. If we go back into the history of the development of the Nigerian nation, we would observe that other parts of the country had faced similar challenges of disadvantaged amelioration in the past. For instance, in the sphere of education, the western and coastal parts of the country came in contact with educational opportunities well ahead of other Nigerians in the hinterland of the east and north. Western formal schooling as we know it today, started in the Lagos-Abeokuta axis in the 1840's through the work of British missionaries. It was not until fifty years later in the 1890's that the same opening reached the eastern hinterland of the Igbo nation. But it will be instructive for the North to learn what the East did or did not do to bridge the 50 years head start the West gave them in formal education. First, what they did not do was ask the British for a preferential status or a lessened pace of educational amelioration in the West to enable the East do a catch-up. Rather eastern communities, leaders and families came together to retain their promising young men and women, and push them up the educational ladder. The success of this proactive coming paid off so much for the East that by 1947, the Eastern Region had 320,000 pupils in original schools compared to the Western Region's 240,000 students and the North's 66,000. Ten years later in 1957, the original school enrolment shape was to expand further in favor of the Eastern Region as they recorded 1,209,000 in original schools compared to the West's 983,000 and the North's 206,000. Even when we bring a comparative study of educational amelioration in the middle of the geopolitical zones to our most new history, we can still see how the North is strangulating itself with wrong-headed policies. For instance, from the 70's up to the late 90's, the South south zone was grouped alongside the North as educationally disadvantaged, but current comparative figures on secondary net attendance for 2007 show that the South-south has far bested the Northwest and Northeast - 72.3% for the South south compared to 30.1% for the Northwest and 8.1% for the Northeast. The marvelous expand recorded by the South south in schooling has equally reduced the relative poverty in the zone to 35.1% compared to 71.2% in the Northwest and 72.2% in the Northeast. The backwardness of the North is evidently the culmination of an evil plot by northern elites to hold the masses of northerners down with the suffocating power of illiteracy and ignorance, whereas they send their own children to the best Catholic schools and first class educational institutions at home and abroad. What they have failed to perceive is that they and their children cannot forever be cocooned in islands of splendor amidst the seas of abject poverty and ignorance surrounding them. It is a time bomb that is destined to explode sometime, somewhere. And explode it did.
The rise of Boko Haram - the consequence of a disdain for schooling For anyone who has lived in the north of Nigeria, as I have, the emergence of the Boko Haram, with the clarion call that western schooling is evil, is no surprise. As a resident of Kano in the early 80's, whilst working with the Federal Ministry of Information, what struck me most about the North was the unhidden disdain for formal schooling by the people. "Ba turenchi" was the proudest response you got from the midpoint someone on the road to any inquire posed in English, our national lawful language. Though one may not be the greatest fan of Britain, one of the most indebted countries in the world today, the colonialists bestowed us with a language, English that has come to be the greatest communication tool for most global transactions and interactions. What I even found most perplexing in my wide tours of Kano state was the tacit retain the elites of the region gave to the status quo. Whereas this cabal of self conceited hypocrites enrolled their own children in the best schools of the land, even Christian missionary schools, the children of the lesser, almajaris, were left to roam the streets with Islamic school tablets and beggar plates. It is therefore not surprising that Boko Haram, like Maitatsine and other such extremist schools before it, rose from the oft trot dusty streets of northern cities. To these brainwashed urchins, western schooling is evil, because that is what the elites of their region have led them to believe. Elites, who are promoting, selfish wrong-headed schedule that aim to hold the majority of the habitancy in enduring subjugation, while denying them the tools to see a clearer photo of where the world nearby them was headed. It is positive that the elites of the region are out to protect and perpetuate its kind in power with a contemptuous disregard for the marginalized majority. Ordinarily, one would have been expected, that in order to move their habitancy out of poverty through education, the leaders of an educationally challenged and poverty ravaged regions like the Northwest and Northeast should have used the opening of the rise of the Boko Haram to rally the retain of their habitancy to extol the virtues of education. No they would not do that. Rather, what the so called northern leaders are doing is falling over each in their show of moral and financial retain for Boko Haram, with the flawed logic that they are fighting against the wresting of power from them by President Jonathan. That is why the new call from the North is that of economic marginalization and the need to accord them a more convenient share of the national wealth - a wealth they have proven themselves incapable of contributing to its creation, or using to get their habitancy out of poverty. Who easily is being economically marginalized in the North - the poor hapless individuals that daily throng the streets of northern cities, or the cabal that has stolen and stashed away over 60% of the national oil in the past four decades?
Moving send The north of Nigeria, especially the northwest and the northeast, has easily come to be the Igbo proverbial tsetse fly that has perched on the scrotum - swat it with the needed force and you risk damaging your vital members, allow it to stay undisturbed and you risk having the blood sucked out of you. The far north of Nigeria has easily been sucking not only the blood out of Nigeria, it is also sucking the air out of Nigeria's attempts to elevate itself to its rightful position in the world as an emerging economic power. The country has paid dearly in the blood of the over 2 million Nigerians, who have died in the course of construction a nation where some sub-units are hell bent on sabotaging such efforts. Sir Ahmadu Bello was right when he said in 1953 that the north was not ready for independence and would rather be left to make at its own pace. All efforts contrary to the wishes of the Sarduana have proven over all these years to be akin to forcing an unwilling horse to drink. Thus one can understand the exasperation behind Chief Nduka Eya's new call on the Northern leaders to show the rest of the nation their true intentions. However, what the Ohaneze scribe and many others have failed to understand is that the Northern elites showed us their true intentions long ago - under the rule of the Sarduana of Sokoto and his colonial masters. It is the same very script of those foundation days that is still being played out by the current leaders of the North. The only thing that has changed is the dramatis personae and a integrate of leading variables; the goal remains the same for the North - it is whether they rule or it is Araba! Perhaps, the most leading changeable that has changed, and which is still retention the nation together, is Big Oil. And until the day oil runs dry, we shall continue to vocalize with the intrigues of the northern elites. So the best choice for the rest of Nigeria is to go back to the drawing boards to strategize the best ways to propel themselves and their regions forward, while being dragged backwards by the weight of the North. The guidance here is for those progressive zones of Nigeria like the Southwest, South south, Southeast and North central to readjust their developmental strategies and run their geopolitical zones as single and unified economic blocs, irrespective of the artificial state boundaries; much like the confederal principles proposed at Aburi. This is the best way they can move their peoples into prosperity with the right skills, which can only be supplied by sound schooling and sound political decisions. The Southwest is already headed in this direction. Boko Haram and their creators should be ignored and contained within the enclaves of their creators, supporters, sympathizers and justifiers. It is time the real Nigerians moved forward.
By Ike Nnebe, Canada
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