“No peace can last or ought to last which does not recognise and accept the principle that governments derive all their powers from the consent of the governed” – US President Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 185.

Kaduna State, until a few months ago, was grouped with Katsina, Niger, Benue and Zamfara as the most dangerous states in Nigeria. But, something happened which has escaped the notice of many observers of the problems posed by bandits and kidnappers. Kaduna State has become relatively peaceful. From 2016 till the change of government in 2023, there was hardly a week when Kaduna was not in the news for the wrong reasons – mass murders, wholesale abduction of people and communities being partially or totally destroyed. In addition to the ethnic cleansing and farmers-herdsmen clashes, which were responsible for the mayhem elsewhere in the North, leadership had a significant role to play in the losses of lives and properties in Kaduna.

And, today, leadership is largely responsible for the restoration of peace in the state. The healing process has begun. The state, the northern region and Nigeria will all benefit from the change. I lived and worked in the state during my 12 years in the North and I had a farm along the Kaduna-Birnin Gwari Express Road, about 19 kilometres from the airport. Even the backyard of my house at Zong Road, in the city, was a mini-farm. Almost the size of ten city plots and situated on the water mains, the place enjoyed water supply 24/7. That was all I needed to start doing business with the Kaduna State Agricultural Supply Company. I bought tomato, maize, pepper, cucumber, lettuce, carrot seeds and also planted yams – in addition to raising chicken and goats. My family spent very little buying food. That was in the old Kaduna.

OLD KADUNA – THE MOST CONGENIAL CITY IN NIGERIA

Ask anybody who ever lived in Kaduna until 2015 and who had lived elsewhere, especially before 2000, and most of them would agree that Kaduna was the most truly Nigerian capital in Nigeria apart from Lagos. I say this as a Lagos State indigene; brought up in the former Federal Capital. Like most Lagosians, I was reluctant to leave my city until my Sales/Marketing jobs forced me to go round the country. My first tour of the North took me to Kaduna in 1975; from where my staff and I were to travel to Jos, Bauchi, Gombe, Numan, Yola/Jimeta, Mubi, Bama, Maiduguri, Damaturu, Potiskum, and Kano from where I flew back to Lagos. By then I had covered most of the southern states. The most amazing thing was the size of the region and how Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only Premier, could have kept such a vast area united despite also having the largest ethnic and religious entities under his region. I later learnt the secret, which sadly has been lost even in most of our states today. Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, was, in my view, the most egalitarian leader who ever ruled at regional and federal level since 1914. Although a Fulani and a Muslim, his closest official was the late Chief Sunday Awoniyi, an Okun/Yoruba man and a Christian from Mopa, now Kogi State, who was his Private Secretary (in today’s government that would have been the Chief of Staff). All the offices of the northern regional government were evenly allocated across all the ethnic groups in a manner that enhanced consensus and solidarity. Granted, as in all political and democratic settings, there were dissidents in the Middle Belt areas; but, by and large, Ahmadu Bello was the fairest ruler Nigeria ever had. Bello demonstrated it in two ways. He was absolutely incorruptible; and he was not a power grabber. Because my last working place was Sokoto, in what was then a modern rice mill, I was able to establish one fact. A week after resuming, I asked one of my senior staff members born in Sokoto to take me to the Sardauna’s house. We got in the car, drove for a few minutes and stopped in front of a modest compound. “This is his house”, he said. “It can’t be,” I replied. It was his house. Before that, the Sardauna was the only one of the three Premiers (the two others being Awolowo and Azikiwe) who could have chosen to be Prime Minister; but who passed the baton of national leadership to somebody else – Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The only other person who passed the baton to someone else was General Theophilus Danjuma after Dimka’s coup when Obasanjo went into hiding. In all these episodes, Kaduna has always played a central role. Every person enrolled in the armed forces, in every service, must pass through Kaduna at least two or three times during their careers on account of the training institutions in the state. It was indeed the greatest melting pot in the North; the place where everybody, not just the over 30 indigenous ethnic groups, felt at home.

SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENED FROM 2015 TO 2023

“A week is a long time in politics” – UK Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, 1916-1995

I was a freshman in the university when the British Prime Minister made that pronouncement which in our world today has turned out to be very profound. When Nigerian voters, including the people of Kaduna State, succumbed to the ‘CHANGE’ slogan of the All Progressives Congress, APC, they were blissfully ignorant of the fact that not all changes are for the better. The government in power in those eight years deliberately set aside the delicate balancing political system which had kept the peace in the state. One ethnic group was elevated above the rest; one religion was openly favoured; one of the two factions of Islam was declared illegal and foreign herdsmen were compensated for their losses after clashes with farmers in which crops were also destroyed.

In December 2021, I published an article titled ‘KADUNA: NIGERIA’S HELL ON EARTH’ after over 70 people in a convoy of commercial vehicles escorted by armed police was abducted and taken to a forest a few kilometres from the armed forces training institution at Jaji. Then passengers in a train coming from Abuja were kidnapped in Kaduna State – and this quickly moved the state to the top of the chart as Nigeria’s most dangerous state to live and work. The body counts mounted as war raged on several fronts – ethnic, religion, community, indigenes versus foreign invaders. The Kaduna-Birnin Gwari-Tegina highway became a slaughter slab.

By May 2023, the people of the state knew the cause of their problem. Fortunately, the Nigerian Constitution had set a two-term limit on the tenure of governors. They could not wait for the change of leadership.

THEN CAME GOVERNOR SANNI

“Leadership is the ability to define issues without aggravating problems” – Warren Bennis, VBQ, p125″

I was afraid when Senator Sanni was imposed on the party as the flag-bearer for the APC. Nothing good could possibly come out of that choice was my thought. What Kaduna needed most was peace; which was absent. The last person they wanted was another combatant. But events since May 29, 2023 have proved that a good leader who reads the mood of his people can bring about a dramatic change in the lives and fortunes of the people. Governor Sanni is restoring peace to Kaduna and, with that, he is making Kaduna State an investment destination once again. Read part of the 2021 article below and you will appreciate the wonderful work the man has done.

 KADUNA: NIGERIA’S HELL ON EARTH

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral [and security] crisis, maintain their neutrality” – Dante, 1265-1321, VBQ, p 89

“Bandits kidnap over 70 Kano-bound traders, others in Kaduna” – News Report, December 23, 2021 

What made the headline more chilling was the information provided by an eyewitness, Malam Umani, who said that “the traders were travelling in a convoy of over 20 vehicles with police escort”. Obviously, the person who said there is safety in numbers has never heard of Kaduna 2021. Here, any number is imperiled if enough bandits gather together. A week before, passengers on the ever busy Kaduna-Zaria Road, along which is the Command and Staff College, Jaji, were abducted and taken into a forest – which could not be too far from Jaji. During the same week, travelers on the Kaduna-Abuja Expressway were seized and herded into another forest – on a road which only those on suicide mission will drive on.

There was hardly any month, during my ten years living and working in the North, when I did not visit Kaduna. It was the most congenial and most cosmopolitan of all northern states. Non-indigenes wanted to invest in real estate there – even when they didn’t live or work there. I lived and worked there; and, for a while had landed property for further development. It was a relatively peaceful state. Suddenly, the situation changed. My friends, still living there, have horrible tales to tell about the hell Kaduna State became in just a matter of six and a half years.

When historians of the future write about the descent of Kaduna State to Armageddon, they must start from 2015.