“In politics, memories are sometimes very short, and sometimes very long”—Douglas Reed

In my previous articles, “The North and the Burden of Being” and “The Sociology of the Northern Question in Nigeria” both of which were published in this column, I raised the issues surrounding the place of the North in national discourses such as the restructuring debate and discussions about the larger national question. These articles have elicited widespread responses that surprised the author with the sensitivity of perception and intensity of interest shown by the readers.  

As a follow up, the present piece is placed before the reading public mainly to ponder upon the implications of creating discontents and antagonistic sentiments towards one region in the name of political debates and other actions around the construction or deconstruction of the national edifice which in either case, cannot be done without the involvement of the North as an interested party and stakeholder. Herein lies the dilemma or the “Problem” with the North!

The “problem” with the North is that it never needed to prove that it existed. While other parts of the country struggle to be noticed or noted, the North asserts itself inadvertently or unconsciously by just being there. This historical fact and its attendant political and social-cultural realities, have become the dominant forces or factors for and against the North, especially in the determination of the “National Question” in Nigeria. This is never more apparent than in the discussions around the “restructuring” of Nigeria and other governance issues, which are basically euphemisms for how to deal with the North. The “National Question” in reality, therefore, is nothing more than the “Northern Question” reframed from the larger perspectives of the political-economy of the state and government of Nigeria.

Coming to terms with this dilemma or reality will necessarily require a perceptive understanding of the heterogeneous organisation of the Nigerian society and its economic foundation. It is the interplay of forces and the positioning of class interests in the larger national arena that have hitherto determined the direction and content of the discourse on politics and governance in Nigeria that formed the idea of the “National Question” today. The North has never attempted to prove itself and explain its immanence or being. It is a historical reality that was born out of the coalescence of forces and the aggregation of diversity into a community of shared values, history, purpose and direction.( 

This fact, or this assumption, if it can be so preferred, was what formed the idea of the North in the minds of those who perceive its existence as a “problem” to be resolved either by its dissolution or its fracturing into smaller debris. Much as it is seen as a “problem”, the North also holds the key to the resolution of the various contradictions that are afflicting the course of national integration and the march towards maturity and unity of Nigeria. For, without the North in its vastness and diversity coiled around the effortless assertion of its temporal state and existence, there can be no decision regarding the way Nigeria could be conceived as a nation-state and a country consisting of the present mass that it is formed out of.( 

Taking the greater share of the country’s total landmass and its human population, water, agricultural, mineral and animal resources etc, the North straddles both the past and the future of the Nigerian nation and encompasses its present in a practical manner of speaking. Its vastness can be overwhelming to those who are not the natural parts of its ingredients or inheritance, but are brought face to face with its grandeur and immensity, only to be either perplexed by its consistency or to be awed by its natural and unassuming greatness.  

The seeming contradiction and alteration of its perception that forcefully makes itself felt also provide the motive for antagonism towards it varying in degrees depending on the intellectual capacity of discernment and temperamental make-up of the affected victim. For, it is the sense of victimhood that largely drives the sentiments that are formed towards the North by those from other parts, who recollect with some modicum of abnegation or denigrating intangibility their feeling of antagonism towards the region arising from innate biases and experiences of inadequacy to measure up to the exacting standards of morality of those who first founded the North, and those who perpetuated its substance to the present moment.( 

It is this moral consistency first and foremost, that attracts the antagonism and negative sentiment of the habitual opponents of the North, reducing in their minds and souls the contestation with the North in everything to imagination about its source of strength and immutability of its existence. It is this confused sense of bewilderment, this feeling of mixed sensation and alternating visualisation that renders both the critic and the antagonist of the North incapable of forming a just or a moderate estimate of the extent of the conflict with that entity. For, conflict it is and it has been and will continue to be, as long as the North is perceived as the sole factor in the resolution of the “National Question” and the central equation in the construction of government and state in Nigeria.

This, therefore, presents a dilemma of generational proportion to those afflicted by the phobia towards the North, since it was a matter that has been in existence from the time of the struggle for independence to the formation of the post-colonial state in Nigeria. In-between the various conferences towards Nigeria’s independence held alternately in London and in Lagos, and the granting of self-government, the larger and most important aspects of debates, dialogues and disagreements among the contending parties in the country have been about the position of things with regards to the North. This habitual contestation with the North has been carried over to the present day in both politics and other aspects of national aggregation and movement towards a final decision about the fate of the Nigerian nation.

Whether to remain together as one entity, or to break apart is the question of the moment, which mostly is now being voiced with a measure of palpability and imminence by others that are in virtually all the cases, not from the North. There is a one-sided outlook towards the question of the survival of Nigeria with the greatest vociferousness for breaking up of the country coming from other parts of the country but not from the North. The fact that the North in its entirety has innocently and consistently accepted without any reservations the unity and continued existence of Nigeria as a single and unbroken country, vexes and antagonizes those whose wont it is to see the opposite come to fruition. The simple fact of the matter is that the North cannot call for the break up of Nigeria because the North is synonymous with Nigeria and therefore, it cannot conceivably break away from itself!

The stoical steadfastness shown by the North to refuse to be drawn into the controversy about termination of the federal system and disintegration of the Nigerian nation, has both vexed and perplexed the North’s opponents alike, which they have now reduced to the indeterminate sentiment of “arrogance” and other such intangible generalisations. Recent postures around the issues to do with governance, especially on matters related to federal prerogative and some constitutional questions, have, invariably and predictably, reduced the discussion of the “National Question” to a South-North or North-South contest, depending on where one stands.

It has become almost impossible to discuss issues to do with governance or policy in Nigeria for quite sometime now without the infusion of unhealthy doses of regional abstraction and infelicitous inferences to the North as a “problem” to be solved, or a dilemma to be dealt with, in the most drastic and terminal fashion. The settled idea of a “final solution” seems to be the fate now awaiting the North, since matters of mundane and programmatic significance like elections, taxation, allocation of resources and distribution of offices as well as the location of federal projects, have now been reduced to the seizure of advantages by one side and the denial of entitlements to another. This maximalist versus equitable approach to policy and governance must somehow lead to the ultimate determination of the “National Question” if at all any residual purpose or ground for mutual coexistence can be found in this country.

This sense of righteousness and entitled privilege to “deal with the North” by whatever means available, has now become so fashionable and commonplace, that the region’s standing and significance in the greater national equation have been vicariously diminished and invalidated. This, in turn, has made it possible to actually create fastidious narratives about the insubstantiality of the North even to the point of making it appear as having contributed nothing to the progress and development of the Nigerian nation in all its ramifications. To absolve themselves and justify their inveterate propensity to denigrate the North, these habitual critics and antagonists have gone to the extent of declaring the non-existence of the North and creating the narrative about its contestable historical and spatial identities.( 

A valedictory sense of triumph seems to seize some parts of the country in relation to the ongoing travails of the North. The fact that these are momentary and transient difficulties makes no difference to the apostles of disunity and disaffection in Nigeria today. This antagonism towards the North is a predetermined construction and a given constant within certain tendencies in Nigeria that are formed out of ethno-religious perspectives and geopolitical rivalries. In both cases, no rational grounds can be found for such sentiments but only attitudes shaped by people’s inherited biases and convenience of posture in the larger contestation for power and dominance within the Nigerian space.

Even when political power is no longer residing in the North as represented by the current dispensation, the imbibed and internalised antagonism towards the North is exhibited reflexively in national discourses about power and dominance. There is no getting away from this “idea fixe” as the French call it when it comes to the determination of issues in the governance of the country. In this context, the North can somehow be held responsible for being naive and simplistic in its attachment to the vision of indissolvable singularity of the country   which is almost akin to a self-contained confessional belief. It is this foreclosed mentality that has made the North to bear the brunt of unification of the country and its continued existence in its present shape and form, while being regarded at the same time as the bane of the progress of the larger entity, as well as its existential “problem”!