By AMINU JAHUN

THE recent appeal by the Patriots to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to convene a constitutional conference; the move by Dr Umar Ardo and like minds to set up a democratic league to politically and economically reinvent the North; and the reactive moves by the Middle Belt Forum against the league are deft moves in a geopolitical calculation to deflate or inflate the clout of the North in Nigerian politics.

Dr Bitrus Pogu, the president of the Middle Belt Forum, and a member of the Patriots, condemned the idea of one North, and attacked indirect rule as the main problem of Northern minorities, which, according to him, made them objects of manipulation and exploitation by the Sokoto Caliphs and the Mais of Borno. Dr Sunday Jonathan Akuns, a Plateau monarch, and a member of the Patriots also attacked the league as dead on arrival, and a put-off due to its Northern connotation. 

In a communique after a two-day conference, the Coalition of Indigeneous Middle Belt Organisations, CIMBO, echoed the Patriots’ call for a people’s democratic constitution with a political agenda to restructure the nation into three regions: the North, the Middle Belt and the South, with the 2014 Constitutional Conference report as the foundation of the new constitution, which according to them, would facilitate peace and development.

Whilst the communique is reactive to the formation of the League, the sameness of views by the Patriots, and prominent minority leaders from the North, can’t be accidentally coincidental. It could be the outcome of a strategic geopolitical initiative to trounce the North.

Aren’t the attacks of the vulnerable North, by leaders of the Middle Belt Forum, a high-stakes politicking to actualize a preplanned agenda of strangling the region? 

Is the North really monolithic? If being monolithic connotes a big, undivided, and unchanging entity, then the North has never been monolithic. It was its non-monolithic nature which made the pacification of the Northern colonial territories difficult. And it was that non-monolithic character which made Northern minorities to revolt against the unifying tendencies of the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, regarded as feudal and Islamic. It was that non-monolithic tendency which facilitated the emergence of NEPU, and the Borno Youth Movement.  And it was that non-monolithic trait which split the region into 19 states. 

Instead of attacking the stationery bandits, from all Nigerian ethnic and religious groups, who manipulate ethnic and religious  fault lines,  the  Middle Belt leaders never relent in attacking a moribund institution, which was purely a colonial agency to attain colonial ends. Five decades after independence, indirect rule is still an object of attack, which has been turned into a wedge against Northern unity.

Besides the majority Northern ethnic groups singled out for attack by Dr Pogu, which ethnic nationality is free from accusations of ethnic domination? Only the small minority ethnic groups are free from the accusation. Besides the developmental impulse of new states, the unending quest for additional states, is fuelled by unfolding ethnic manipulation and marginalisation. New states produce new majority ethnic groups out of yesterday’s minority groups, who exploit and marginalise new minority ethnic groups. Those who accused others of domination yesterday, today lord it over other minority ethnic groups. Nigeria’s minority ethnic enclaves are defined by a perpetual reproduction of ethnic domination and oppression.

The geopolitical brotherhood of the Patriots and the Middle Belt Forum glossed over the fact that there is no constitution without defects. And since the 1960 and 1963 constitutions couldn’t prevent the tragic events in the First Republic, which culminated in a Civil War, which constitution would be effectively functional if its operators insist on subverting it? The self-corrective measures enshrined in the 1999 Constitution could ameliorate major constitutional defects, for the nation to forge ahead.

It was certainly tragic for the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and the Action Group, for another region to be excised from the Western region. A geopolitical brotherhood across the Niger between the North and the East trounced the West, and created the Mid-West region in 1963. Six decades later, another geopolitical initiative between the Patriots and the Middle Belt, is set to trounce the North, pushing for restructuring the nation into three regions: the North, the Middle Belt, and the South. As it was tragic for the West then, should the diabolical brotherhood get support of the ruling cabals, it would be tragic for the North this time.

Should the geopolitical fraternity push its restructuring agenda, those considered settlers in the Belt, constituting a significant local population, could vote in a referendum against excising the Middle Belt out of the North. And should it be restructured out, they would constitute a sizeable community, who would later seek deliverance from ethnic and religious domination.

If the pioneer political class couldn’t liberate the minority ethnic groups( North and South), the military began that since 1967, when 12 ethnically and religiously compact states replaced the regions. And subsequent state-creation exercises deepened the liberation. 

The Middle Belt Forum has glossed over the fact that the bane of the North, the Middle Belt, and the South are prebendal politicians fairly spread in the nation, who constitute a predatory class, who exploit the nation’s fault lines to advance selfish interests, opposed to those of ordinary Nigerians(of majority and minority ethnic extractions).

The League of Northern Democrats couldn’t have been formed at a better moment than now, when the North is overwhelmed by a high-stakes geopolitical collaboration to punish it for past commissions and omissions.

•  Jahun, a commentator on public affairs, wrote from Dutse, Jigawa State via: @[email protected]