By Abdul-Azeez Suleiman
The ongoing moves to relocate key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos are not isolated incidents but part of a mega, clandestine plot to destabilize the country, with the Northern region as the scapegoat.
This plot has historical roots and has been executed through various means, including the Boko Haram insurgency, fabricated cattle rustling, and herdsmen attacks.
The destabilizization agenda of the North can be traced back to the failed coup attempts of the First Republic. Lieutenant Colonel Bukar Suka Dimka, a northerner from Plateau state, initiated the northern chapter of the plot by assassinating the then Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed. Another northern military officer, Gideon Okar from Benue, further revealed the agenda by announcing the purported excision of Northern Nigeria from the rest of the country.
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The agenda continued during President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, with the emergence of the mysterious Boko Haram insurgency. It is worth noting that the majority of Boko Haram’s casualties were northern Muslims. Yet, non-Muslims from both the North and South Eastern Nigeria were arrested for bombing Christian worship locations, suggesting an attempt to inflame religious crises in the North.
The Boko Haram insurgency was accompanied by a fabricated cattle rustling agenda, which primarily targeted the North West states but spread to other regions. Following the ouster of the Jonathan administration, the anti-North agenda resurfaced with carefully crafted stories of herdsmen attacks, leading to the mass killings of northerners and their subsequent expulsion from some states.
The defeat of the Jonathan administration also witnessed the resurgence of the fifty-year-old agitation for an independent Biafra by the Igbo of the South East. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) carried out violent actions that insulted and assaulted the North. In response, some northern groups made the Kaduna Declaration, which contributed to the collapse of IPOB. However, this led to the intensification of the herdsmen/farmers conflicts, further fueling the ongoing unrest.
The strategies employed in this plot aim to diminish the economic viability of the North and render it politically and economically incapacitated. The clamor for “restructuring” is part of this agenda, as it seeks to demand a new national constitution that would reflect a “restructured” Nigeria, ultimately achieving “true federalism” with “fiscal federalism.”
Willy-nilly, the North has become the target of accusations and abuse for everything that is wrong with Nigeria today. In the process, history is being shamefully and blatantly reviewed, rewritten and falsified to suit certain agendas that tend to portray the North, the Hausa/ Fulani and Muslims in bad light and render them as the culprit and the guilty entity.
Yet the North has remained the bulwark of respect, integrity, dignity, decorum, tradition, decency, morality, civilization, etiquette, good behaviour, politeness, accommodation, and all other positive traits.
In spite of this studied and dignified reserve of the North and refusal by its people to engage in altercations with its self-appointed enemies and antagonists, no stone is being left unturned by these people to see that the North is goaded into reacting, thereby justifying branding it as a volatile and even violent part of the country.
They have accused the North for committing every sin under the Sun excepting perhaps natural disasters or Force Majeure. They have vilified the North, killed its leaders, scandalized its institutions and ridiculed its traditions and customs.
They have under various administrations tried to bring down the North by destroying its institutions, expelling its people from positions of responsibility in government, undermining its economic and social fabrics, and encouraging rampant poverty, and social problems like armed robbery, kidnapping, prostitution, drug and substance abuse.
All this while, the North bore these difficulties with equanimity, stoical calm and resignation. The North continued to bear the brunt of the agitations for secession and the recent clamours for restructuring as the obvious target of all the complaints about virtually everything that is seen as wrong in the system.
The time is now the cultured North to rise and declare enough is enough. The North must no longer remain passive under such deliberate and sustained attacks on its unity, integrity and dignity, and should henceforth react to every provocation and unwarranted interference in its affairs.
The detractors coming from outside the North to foment trouble and escalate tension among our people should be warned that their actions will not go unnoticed and in the fullness of time, they will be held accountable for their instigation to violence and killings of innocent people on both sides involved in the herders and farmers conflicts.
All those who have no other useful vocation other than attacking northerners under the slightest of pretexts, must be made to know that our patience has reached its nadir.
The North’s reticence in speaking out or taking action is not born of fear or ignorance of how to respond in kind. It is simply because of our respect for others and deep commitment to national integration.
If these noble dispositions of ours are not appreciated and are seen as weaknesses, then those who tempt us should know that the North is no longer going to turn the other cheek.
Therefore if the mutual respect and peace which have evaded us throughout this country’s independent existence cannot be achieved at this point, we would all be left with no choice than to support the suggestion for the conduct of referendum so that each component can peacefully decide its fate.
Rather than remaining bound in an inconvenient partnership punctuated by mutual distrust at every point; and if all of us would be happier living in smaller independent units, then government and all concerned Nigerians and our international friends should consider this peaceful process that may involve allowing every tribal group from the South or North to exercise their right to self-determination whether or not they meet the United Nations criteria for such.
