BY SOLA EBISENI

WE promised last week that this page would be dedicated this week to predicting Nigeria in the year 2022. 

Events shortly afterwards merely taught me, as the Yoruba will call Him in the countless names ascribed to God for His Majesty and invincibility, that the power of knowing the end from the beginning belongs only to Eledumare.

He made revelations of the events only a few hours after the publication of the column, through President Muhammadu Buhari in his drab interview with Channels Television.

Most unusually, there was nothing in the interview of our President worthy of the front page of or analysis by newspapers. So uninspiring it was that the vociferous ethnic nationality organisations which have rightly assumed the position of opposition in the face of the mute indifference by political parties preferred this time to ignore the President’s interview.

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The most puzzling of it all, as revealed by Seun Okinbaloye and Maupe Ogun-Yusuf, some of the best hands in that field in this generation, was that the questions were not new but in fact forwarded to the President. Besides, the questions themselves were virtually repetitive of earlier interviews as there’s nothing new or salutary added to Nigeria by this government.

This time around and as usual, the Igbo nation came under the flack of the Commander-in-Chief. This time he did not directly refer to the South East as a dot on the map of Nigeria, but euphemistically meant so when he queried the call for restructuring which he rhetorically reduced to a call for more states.

The president had wondered, referring to the map of Nigeria, what space there was to create the sixth for the South East which is the only region with five states. Obviously, having been the beneficiary of an expo with respect to the leakage of the questions to him, the President appeared to have made up his mind to repeat the sentences his attention was fixed on since the campaigns leading to his maiden electoral victory in 2015.

Without realising the implications of the contents of some of the speeches written for him on restructuring or its true federalism variant, the President emphatically poured out his fixed mind challenging the advocates of restructuring to define the concept. When he denied understanding restructuring, Maupe attempted to tap the President’s knowledge on its simpler and self-explanatory variant of power devolution. Even then, in her usual hard copy style, she broke the concept down to the overload the Federal Government was carrying and whether it could shed some powers to the states and local governments.

Without any correlation, the relationship between states and local governments which have often irritated him without pretence was what the President latched on as if the life of his government depended on it. The idea of the states not being fair to the local governments was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back putting an end to further questions on the subject, particularly as the Channels crew had been forewarned against follow-up engagements for obvious reasons.

All Seun and Maupe could do were to show their viewers the broadcast of the President when he said sometime in 2019 towards his second term elections that it was time the nation considered true federalism. Of course, Buhari is too strict and disciplined to contemplate not to talk of accusing him of deceiving Nigerians for elections purposes.  Several times, right from the first week of his administration when the President and his cohorts feigned ignorance of the meaning and contents of the term restructuring, they had often been asked to take a look at the 2014 National Conference reports.

As time went on, the reports of the El-Rufai Committee on True Federalism, being his party’s making have been recommended for Mr President’s attention and necessary actions. One would have thought that has taken a swipe at restructuring, the interviewers would have let the President be. No. They would have none of it. 

They got more than they bargained for when they asked the President if State Police was an option in the fight against insecurity. The President was obviously watching their mouth for the right words to latch on. Just like he did when he grabbed the word ‘relationship’ while discussing devolution of powers from the federal down the line; this time, he picked the word ‘option’ and flatly retorted that State Police was not an option.

Though expecting no thematic analysis of his answer, I was nevertheless taken aback when the President veered off track, repeating the same answers he gave Arise Television almost a year earlier when he gave the example of an unnamed South-West governor who came complaining about herdsmen problems in his state and his own advice that he should go home and act as the true Chief Security Officer of his state.

This time around, he named Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and spoke exclusively on the need to revive the internal conflict resolution mechanism where traditional rulers were mediating between farmers and herders.

In view of the caveat on follow-up questions, Mr President could not be reminded if he did not know that traditional rulers mean nothing to bandits who have sacked and burnt the palaces of Obas, Obis, Emirs, Obongs and other traditional rulers, including the kidnapping and killing of many of them, so devastating that the Emirs and even governor of the President’s home state, Katsina, have become so utterly distraught to call on citizens to rise up in their own defence.

The President deceptively described the North West as people of the same tribe, language and culture. He was indignantly aghast that they were killing themselves and stealing one another’s cows. The truth is that deliberate official falsehood is no route to solutions to the nation’s intractable security problems.

The truth is that, except in the only two states of Kano and Jigawa, the other five states of the North West, including Katsina, are vastly heterogeneous and constituted by several ethnic nationalities. Contrary to the President’s deliberate misinformation of ethnic cohesion, the inhabitants are of different tribes and tongues and agrarian in occupational culture, except for the migrant Fulani cattle herders.

The war in the region is between the indigenous nationalities, including the Hausa and other minority groups on one hand and the Fulani on the other. The Fulani who are in the minority in terms of number nonetheless constitutes the ruling class calling the shots in traditional rulership, Islamic religion and governance from the local government to governorship.

All presidents of Nigeria of Northern extraction have been produced by the Fulani. Hausa as the lingua franca, meant to give a semblance of oneness in the North is as such a ruse as the English language uniting Nigerians.

In spite of its monumental rejection and utter failure, it is most pathetic that Buhari was still wasting his presidential energy talking about creating grazing routes at the twilight of his most uninspiring administration.

As one of the elders around me asked innocently as this column was being put together, why would Buhari personally practise animal husbandry as a private business through ranching but hell-bent on consigning other Nigerians of his ethnic stock to the hazards of nomadism through the forests, from Sambisa in the North East to Eba Island in Ondo State up to Obudu in Cross River?

It is no gainsaying that the unending troubles of the herders is being encouraged by the Buhari administration. Its grievous import further dawned on me at the Conference of Ethnic nationalities held at Awka Anambra State from January 3 to 5.

Chief Iorbee Ihagh, retired Comptroller of Prisons and President General of the Tiv World Wide, when presenting the case of his people lamented that Benue State had the largest number of camps and population of Internally Displaced Persons.

He disclosed among others that his ward in his local government had been swept off the indigenous populations by Fulani herdsmen.

Watching and listening to President Buhari during the interview was so distressing that Nigeria had never had it so bad in its choice of leadership since Independence. The interview inspired nothing but pity for a nation so blessed but rendered comatose by the inappropriate choice of a leader.

The President’s talks on restructuring are mere braggadocio. It is a big challenge to the National Assembly and the wastage of taxpayers money on constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, neither the President nor the rubber-stamp legislature can stop an idea which time has come.

Vanguard News Nigeria