The division between Nigeria’s South and the North is as old as the country itself, if not much older. If the two do not bicker on the North dominating the South through a much-detested federal arrangement, they would disagree over which is responsible for the many woes of Africa’s largest country.
Besides, the two are known for fierce rivalry over which is more populous, and do not share the same vision about having Nigeria the way of the British colonialists: one nation bound by common destiny.
While most Northern politicians profess an indivisible country, much of their Southern counterparts believe that the country should remain one only if fiscal federalism is observed, where each region manages own resources, remits tax to the Federal Government, and shoulders own responsibilities.
Failure to situate a common ground, alongside a feeling of injustice on one part, often brings the two at loggerheads, sometimes culminating in violent ethnic clashes and exchange of words.
But especially bitter is the distrust between the North and the Niger Delta, the oil-bearing region that is the economic strength of Nigeria, because crude oil export accounts for more than 80 per cent of national revenue, and is about the only visible foreign exchange earner. It is against this background that Nigeria is regarded as a mono-cultural economy, bound to collapse should the tide swim against the black gold.
Apart from the usual wrangling about resource control, another issue that pitted the Delta against Arewa, a name also used to represent the North, was the hotly contested Onshore/Offshore dichotomy bill in the early years of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, when he pledged to address the grudges of the oil-producing communities. The bill was to ensure that the littoral states could lay stronger claim to the resources found on their territory, although Aso Rock drafted it in a way the government knew would not deal much blow to non-oil producing communities.
The National Assembly then amended the bill to include articles the Presidency felt would cause uproar and unhealthy rivalry, with Northern emirs equally protesting the contents of the bill which Kano Elders Forum claimed “will have consequences on the economies of non oil- producing states and seriously undermine the security of the greater part of the nation, and ultimately the country at large.”
The Forum, whose view was shared by all the Northern governors, went on to argue that the bill contradicts the Constitution which, many right-thinking Nigerians in general and Southerners in particular, believe is an imposition of Northern military elite, conceived to ensure the continuation of what critics called “lopsided federal structure that has the North as prime beneficiary”.
Although the bill emerged at a time Executive-Legislature relationship was at a record low, with Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim asserting the independence of the National Assembly, crisis was finally averted with the signing into law of the Onshore/Offshore Dichotomy Bill in February 2004.
That, of course, drew mixed reactions even from the Niger Delta, where some jubilated over the signing while others viewed it with suspicion. Unsatisfied Northern governors went far to challenge the bill in court to register displeasure at what they felt could affect the economy of the region.
The Dokubo Outburst
Even though the onshore/offshore crisis was said to have been resolved, the lamentations and distrust continued in both sides of the divide. Last week, tension heightened between the two regions when Asari Mujahid Dokubo, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), denounced Northerners as “primitive, lazy and parasitic people who contribute nothing to the economy.”
He was also quoted to have threatened an all-out war against the Nigerian state, particularly the North, all of which are driven largely by the crisis in the Niger Delta and President Umaru Yar’Adua’s acceptance of a military deal with Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who pledges to help stop the insurgency in the deep South.
Brown’s intervention had drawn criticisms within the United Kingdom and in Nigeria, with the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) launching several attacks on oil installations, including those of the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, Shell, in what analysts believe are a reaction to the military deal, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) saying it paid a huge sum to militants to help protect facilities.
Brown spoke during his meeting with the visiting President Umaru Yar’Adua. The British Prime Minister also offered to help in checking oil smuggling and corruption in the region. In the meantime, Yar’Adua has confirmed that the United Nations (UN) would retain an advisory role in this process and hinted of plans of a maritime security training centre in the Niger Delta region.
According to Yar’Adua, restoring security in the area could allow Nigeria to provide an additional 1.2 million barrels of oil a day to the global market. Also, militants in the Niger Delta have threatened to start launching attacks on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja and some parts of the North. The planned attacks are a protest by the militants against the pact reportedly signed by Nigeria with Britain on how to contain youth restiveness and militancy in the Niger Delta, according to Dokubo, whose one-time control of the militants has been terribly shaken by years of incarceration under Obasanjo.
Dokubo said the people of Niger Delta would not wait for the Federal Government to declare a full-scale war on them in partnership with Britain, and so would pre-empt it by declaring war on the North.
“If somebody tells you openly that he is bringing war to your doorstep, you don’t wait for him to do so; you rather act quickly by taking war to his own doorstep.
“If that is what Yar’Adua and the people in Abuja had resolved to do, then, it is better for the militants to start attacking Abuja and other parts of the North. Dokubo asked Nigeria to query Yar’Adua on the reason behind the government’s decision to seek the assistance of the G8 in addressing the Niger Delta question, “when, indeed, such interventionist approach in other countries had only succeeded in prompting full scale wars.”
Dokubo berated Yar’Adua, saying that the Niger Delta people had come to the conclusion that his tenure had failed, having lost credibility. According to him, “when (Yar’Adua) first came on board, we accorded him tremendous respect because of the background he was coming from. We gave him our total support.
“We just assumed that he is a gentleman who is a progressive, we respected him more because of the influence of his brother, Shehu, who was a great politician and a progressive, and because he made our brother, Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President.”
North Returns Fire
In what was a tacit rebuke of Dokubo, governors of the 19 Northern states rose from a meeting penultimate Monday, to say the region is not a parasite on any of the regions in Nigeria, adding that the collapse of industries in the North was part of the international conspiracy against the region.
Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Niger State Governor, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, spoke for the group at the first Northern Agricultural Summit, which held at the Arewa House Conference Hall in Kaduna.
Aliyu said the accusation of the North being a parasite is baseless and that the North is capable of solving its problems through agriculture and education, although the forum failed to say how it hopes to turn the dream into reality.
His words: “The future of the North lies in our hands, and we should today begin to shape her destiny. As a Nigerian of northern extraction, I feel very unhappy when someone describes me as a parasite because of oil, when I know I have the capacity to solve my problems, and probably do even better through agriculture and education.”
Of the alleged international conspiracy, the governor said: “Most of the plants have been probably sold to Asians who in turn shut them down as a part of international conspiracy to turn the North into dumping grounds for their goods and products while our farmers fold their arms in hapless confusion.
“We need to examine the issues that led to de-industrialisation of the North, whereby many of the Northern industries have been closed down with attendant consequences for the social security of our people. For instance, we need to be very clear on why the two tractor assembly plants located at Kano (tractors) and Bauchi (Steyr tractors) are today shut down, or why most of our textile factories are out of business. Our fertiliser plants are producing below installed capacity or have been shut down, thus making the commodity expensive and inaccessible. We must continue to find answers to the question: what went wrong?”
Aliyu spoke minutes before his Adamawa counterpart, Murtala Nyako, called on the people of the region to “wake up and correct the erroneous impression that we are economic parasites,” and pointed out that it is shameful for the North not to be able to feed the nation despite its vast arable land.
Obviously alluding to what observers called feudalistic culture in the country, especially up North, Nyako said no nation has ever enjoyed lasting peace and stability, or could ever survive when only a few of its citizens live in wealth and affluence at par with the rich of other nations, while the rest of its citizens are entrapped in poverty.
“The simple truth is that the above reality obtains more in the North than other parts of the country,” he said.
Nyako regretted that, available infrastructure is decaying by the day while the scope and quality of education in the North, including acquisition of basic skills, is declining with amazing rapidity, adding: “Resulting from the above, the levels of poverty in the Northern states are reaching legendary dimensions. The plain reality is that poverty in Nigeria today is almost exclusively a Northern preserve…”
But unconvinced, Dokubo raised the stake the following day, arguing that the North was only bluffing and have nothing to offer the country. Asked what he made of Aliyu’s riposte to his verbal attacks, Dokubo retorted: “He is bluffing. The North is always bluffing. They are reactionaries. What do they have when they are living in a barren land? They are boasting of agriculture, but it is our money they are using to buy fertiliser every year. They are the poorest people on the face of the earth. The worst disease is found in their land. If we starve them for one week, they will all die. What have they got to offer? In fact, they are a disgrace not only to Nigeria but to the entire black race.”
A shocking Co-incidence
In what media watchers have interpreted to mean a backlash of his unrelenting vituperations, about 50 security operatives raided the Wuse 2, Abuja residence of Dokubo. The raid came days after he made the onslaught on the Northern establishment, with analysts calculating it to mean an ‘intimidation exercise’.
But Dokubo has yet to link the two events, although the search occurred when he was away giving a lecture at an event celebrating Isaac Adaka Boro, another Niger Delta rebel who first launched attack on the government some decades ago.
Dokubo, however, confirmed the raid, saying he did not know why the operatives stormed his residence. But he said the search might not be unconnected with the presence at his residence of some expatriates he hired to establish an automobile academy in Warri, Delta State.
“I think the problem may be because of the presence of expatriates who I hired to teach in my proposed King Amachree Automobile Academy in Warri. I hired six Lebanese and one Russian married to a Nigerian, to teach there,” he said.
He said the expatriates had been taken away, stating, “They are here and they have been taken away.”
Dokubo said the men had not violated any law in the country. But the co-incidence has continued to raise dusts.
Who errs, and which way out?
Outbursts from both sides of the Niger River have elicited reactions from different parts of the country, some made in a way that pointed partly to fiscal federalism as the only way to avoid a repeat of it in the future, while others appealed to the North on the need to go back to the farm so as to avoid further tongue-lashing.
Reuben Abati, Chairman of The Guardian’s Editorial Board, believes that Aliyu’s statement marked a volte face in the history of North’s response to allegations of being parasitic in the federal arrangement.
To Abati, the response of the NGF is more of face-saving than an attempt to make the region stand neck and neck in contribution to national pulse, although he acknowledges that the region, if sincere and focused, could become awash with agro-dollar the same way Aso Rock rakes in billions from crude oil.
In an article entitled Northern Governors and Politics of Oil, he stated: “This is, perhaps, the most radical response coming from the north so far on the question of oil and its control since 1958. Before now, the Northern intelligentsia had tried to argue that the crude oil in the Niger Delta belongs to all Nigerians and not to the owners of the land from which it is extracted. The late Dr Bala Usman on many occasions even pushed a curious argument based on geology to wit: ‘the oil deposits in the Delta flowed, over the years from the Northern parts of the country, and so the real owners of the oil in the Delta are the people of the North’. A second notable response was the attempt by the then North-dominated Federal Military Government to find oil by all means in the North. So much money was spent on a search for oil in the Chad Basin, until the explorers got tired of searching.
“And now in 2008, the Northern Governors, for the first time have declared that ‘the Niger Delta can go to hell” with its oil and that without oil, the North can and will survive. One of the earliest reactions to this came from the Arewa Consultative Forum, the social and political forum for Northern leaders, with the ACF saying that Northerners are indeed ‘lazy and parasites’ who rely on other regions for survival. There is no reason to run away from the truth.’
“But in is strange balancing act in the same statement, the ACF blames the Niger Delta for the economic woes of the North because according to it, people of the Niger Delta raided the Middle Belt for slaves during the slave trade era. All of these seemingly entangled issues can be taken apart.
“The intervention of the ACF is at best a form of damage control, for if prompt effect were to be given to the wishes of the Northern governors, the development process in the north which is essentially dependent on oil revenue will grind to a complete and final halt. But Aliyu and his colleagues could not have been calling for a sudden stoppage of the sweet and free funds coming from the Federation Account. Their statement was clearly politically inspired and aspirational, in terms of their development projections for the North. But talk is cheap. However, it is not only the North that is dependent on oil, it is not only the Northern states that are parasitic, nor is it only the people of the north that have become lazy. The curse of oil affects every part of Nigeria and all the people. Nigeria’s national productivity index is one of the lowest in the developing world.
“The black gold is at the root of most of the ills in the Nigerian society: the laziness of the leadership elite, the bowl in hand, beggarly conduct of the states and the imposition of unitarist modes on the governance process, in spite of the federalist principles in the Constitution. It is the entire country that is lazy and parasitic therefore; and it is one of the reasons why the people and the militants of the Niger Delta have had to continue to remind the rest of the country to become productive and make a contribution to the national pool instead of stealing Niger Delta resources in a greedy and unfair manner which leaves nearly nothing for the real owners of the resources. This wake-up call had been long in coming, but it is now more strident with the insistence of the people of the Delta on federalism, the militancy in the creeks and calls for resource control.”
Chairman of South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA), Matthew Mbu, declined to comment on the raging arguments, saying: “I think Dokubo is entitled to his views, but I am not going to say anything regarding the merits or otherwise of his statements, because I am too busy and engaged with the Niger Delta projects.”
Victor Umeh, factional chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), believes that NGF’s posturing amount to arrogance, even though their economy faces collapse, if oil flow from the Delta stops.
His words: “To me, the Northerners cannot pretend not to know that oil from the Niger Delta is the only major asset sustaining Nigeria today. It would be strategic and unwise for them to call the bluff on the aspiration of the Niger Delta people. The Niger Delta problem is not one to be solved by deploying troops to the region, and the insurgency there calls for serious re-examination of the issues involved.
“Dokubo’s statement was made out of provocation and the unserious approach of the Federal Government towards solving the Niger Delta debacle. The region is laying the golden egg, so the issues affecting it must be taken seriously. We need to approach the issues very carefully and cautiously. If they want to use military option, it would not succeed because the terrain would make it impossible.
“So, the issue calls for sincere dialoguing and it has been very imperative that Nigerians must come together to reappraise our federalism, because this country cannot continue this way. A situation where 57 per cent of oil revenue goes to the Federal Government which uses same to develop places other than the much-neglected region cannot endure for too long a time. Revenue formula must be seriously reappraised.”
Former Information Minister, Alex Akinyele, offers a diverse view, stopping short of condemning what he termed Dokubo’s inflammatory statements. To him, “this is a very troubled time for Nigeria, and people should stop making inflammatory statements. When we are fighting, we must give allowance for when we would reconcile. It is not going to do anybody any good (if we continue to make statements that further tear us apart as a people). Who is Asari Dokubo? Who is he? A rebel! I think we have well-meaning and distinguished Nigerians that can fix this country, so people must mind what they say.”
Campaign for Democracy (CD) President, Joe Okei-Odumakin, said there is no stopping the verbal exchanges unless the Nigerian establishment learns to respect the principle of social justice. “Once one allows social justice to prevail, all this will not arise. So, we are still insisting on injustice, fairness and equity. So, it is going to make all and sundry comfortable in the Nigerian project,” she says.
Former Head of State and All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) Presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, believes that the problem of the Delta is blamable on the Nigerian state much as it is on the region’s leaders who he argued have squandered billions of naira going to the region.
Buhari, however, argues strongly against the military option and backs dialogue with genuine stakeholders in the region.
Said he: “I know as a governor, as a Minister of Petroleum, as a Head of State, no central government I was part of that was not giving that area its money, according to the respective constitutions. Can you ask your local leadership where that money was going, when they developed plots in Lagos, in Port Harcourt or bought some shares overseas and sent their children to schools there, instead of developing the area and then blaming the rest of Nigerians? (Finger pointing) is a very dishonest way of resolving the Niger Delta problem. What the Niger Delta was getting would have been enough, if they had a responsible leadership to build good schools, to have good healthcare delivery system to have good infrastructure in terms of roads and canals, to clear the place and, therefore, the Niger Delta people and children would have got sound education and participated fully in Nigerian development without taking to the guns.
“And what damage had subsequent Niger Delta commissions done to the youth and to the people of Niger Delta by arming them, giving them guns and sending them to kill their own people? Don’t blame the rest for all this; but the leaders of the area that have squandered the resources of those people, instead of putting the money there and developing it and making the place habitable for Niger Deltans. Look at the allegation now. Look at the call to probe persons going on. It is not limited to Niger Delta. We have rogues up country, in spite of the small resources in relative terms. Again, we come back to the Nigerian elite. In fact, this is my allegation.”
Again, Abati disagrees. He argues: “North-South relations in Nigeria are often constructed in form of rivalry and competition, and this is discernible in the tone of the statements by the Northern Governors and also the ACF. But it is an unhealthy competition that promotes further divisions. Rather than dismiss the Niger Delta and its oil, the Northern governors should show humility and gratitude. If they are serious, they should be more interested in raising constitutional questions and seeking reviews which would free the North and other parts of Nigeria from the tag of ‘parasitism’, and which in the long run will ensure a return to federalism under which every state in Nigeria will be required to become productive. Under that new arrangement, the Niger Delta people will be glad to go to ‘hell’ as advised.”