By BASHIR ADEFAKA
Any sane person reading me will know unequivocally that what I have tried to do here is to help those in positions of authority, who have capacity to effect change know the true problem that we have but which we cover at all times in pretense and which are the major reasons politicians who steal our commonwealth to red and use remnants of the stolen resources to sponsor us in killer-squad against ourselves.
As a core Yoruba son, precisely from a Palace in Akure, the capital city of Ondo State, I will not be tagged anti-South to say that the attitude of people of Southern Nigeria is more responsible for why hardship is more pronounced in the part of the country than in the North.
I have always told people this fact but many of the people who either read or heard me write or say it, because of their tribalistic nature or religious sentimentalism would not agree with me. Does it matter if they do not agree? Since I have been saying it and they have been disagreeing, what value addition have they derived? But to those Southerners who have listened to me talk, read my write up and have checked themselves, they have given personal confessions how their lives have been positively influenced by my contributions in this regard and I say Alhamdulillahi.
And I will take religious, ethnic tolerance and economy. To my greatest surprise the tribe that is of my father and mother, Yoruba, pride itself as the most accommodating in terms of allowing people from other tribes to live and do business with them. At surface one would not venture into disputing this claim. But right to the basis it is pure deceit. Go to an average Yoruba person and ask why they call Hausa/Fulani Gambari and why do think low of people from that part of the country at all times as uneducated (are Northerners really illiterate?) and poor (are Northerners really poor?). Say they do to Igbo to mention but few.
Igbo people of Nigeria too have their own shortcoming in the way they have their resentment about Yoruba people while they make it loud and more open against Northerners. Since 2002 that I have been mixing and intermingling with Hausa/Fulani people not in the South but amidst their communities of the North, I have never had a chance of hearing them express the level of hate for any part of the South the say the Southerners would so express for them.
Ours is so bad that right in front of my Sokoto Road, Nasarawa GRA in Kano sometimes in the past, a Yoruba man who wanted to show me that he had seen his Yoruba brother (?) warned me in Yoruba Language: “Mind how you do with these Gambari people”. The Hausa man, who is Ashaba (Okada) operator sitting with us on the mat we were sitting on, gave that my Yoruba brother the shock of his life: “Yes. We are Gambari but you Yoruba are the grass that we eat.” It was on that day I knew that the mean of Gambari is animal. But the polite mallam told him that “Yes, we are animal but you Yoruba are the grass that we eat.” Please who was at fault? Let that be home work for individuals.
I have been romancing with Igbo Land since 2009 and I have come to realize that no other person from other tribe can buy a piece of land, no matter how small, talk less that a non-Igbo can lay claim to anything right of ownership anywhere in that part of the country. Yet, in Lagos State Igbo people have won elections to the National Assembly and have even been in the cabinet of Lagos State as Commissioner for 16 years so much that, today, I am told that there is a particular ministry in Alausa which is dominated by Igbo. It can never be possible in the East that a Yoruba will even be given ticket to contest as councilor talkless that he will become National Assembly member or governor.
There is no tribe in Nigeria, therefore, that is most accommodating than the Hausa/Fulani of Northern Nigeria and I say this without fear of contradiction. Yes, we have issues brewing up in Berom tribe of Pleateau and perhaps the Angas of the Taraba or is it Nasarawa or Benue’s Idoma and Tiv. Those are issues influenced by “irresponsible” politicians among them and use them on senseless claim of settlership ad indigeneship. They also have another issue of herders and farmers, which is more pronounced in the North Central and the reason is not far-fetched. The soil texture in the North Central is the best in the country that is largely enriched in nutrients. It is therefore the reason farm produce are the best and the sweetest and their cattle same.
Whereas the cow owners are struggling for their cows to access the naturally nutritional benefits of the greener zone, farmers too want to have the same benefits. It therefore becomes issue of economic struggle that is the central point of the crisis in the North Central area. But some mischievous politicians working in collaboration with some religious bigots tried to make the issues in that part of the North look like religious crieis or that some ethnic people want to take over the land of some other tribe and lord themselves over them with the support of their member who is President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Nothing can be more a mischief!
If anyone would fault me on this, he should endeavour to do so with another fact that can be conventionally agreed upon to be more correct than mine or else, it will be of no use. Apart from Boko Haram which many of my Southern people have used to gauge the accommodative attitude of the North but which in real sense is not the way of the North but of combined local and cross border extremists which also happen in other tribes in the country, statistics prove that of every 10 Southerners living in the North, if asked if they want to leave the “problematic” North and return to their birth tribe of Southern Nigeria, their response is just the very affirmation of my claims. Out of the 10, hardly could one indicate interest to want to return to the South.
For instance, during one of the controversies caused by some of our “irresponsible” politicians, religious bigots and ethnic jingoists in the past which led to Arewa Youths of Northern Nigeria giving October 1, 2017 ultimatum to Igbo in the North to live since they knew that North is their problem and reason they wanted Biafra Republic, it would be recalled that all the agitations died down because, many Igbo in the North did not want to leave and return to their base in the South. However, many of our public commentators and shakers of policies in the society would not look at the core of that development and publicise it to the vulnerable masses but could only leave the fire and continue to harmer on the smoke. Of fire and smoke, which one burns? Whereas smoke could be unbearable and hazardous to the health but can be tamed if nose covered, fire can be extremely, devastatingly destructive.
The core is, many Nigerians of South see the North as largely hospitable, cheaper in term of cost of living, easy for growth of individual economy and, above, all people are highly religious are humility personified. But, would my tribe and others of the South see the North that way? He that has not witnessed the farm of another person’s father would always claim his father’s farm is the biggest.
Two, religion, in the North particularly core North that is now called the North West of Nigeria, against what we are told in the media, is far wonderfully practiced based on personal conviction without force. This is not so in Southern Nigeria. I will take South West where I live and is my tribe of birth for example. As a journalist I have had course to relate with many great Nigerians of global status who are today Muslims or no longer Muslims but have told the stories of how they were forced to be Christians because those in domination of schools were Christians trained by colonial missionaries and later, after they had acquired education, they chose to revert to their Islamic faith. My father, though not a man of global status but mere former banker, is a nearest example. Prince Bola Ajibola, son of a sitting Ogun State paramount ruler, is another example. I do not necessarily need to ask anybody to go confront Chief Richard Akinjide how he came a Christian. That is religious intolerance!
Is there any school in the North, a region indisputably Islamic society in Nigeria, that stops Christians who are largely from South from gaining admission into their schools? And when Christians decided to build churches and schools at least to be sure that they properly monitor religious based education of their wards, is there any state policy in that part of the country which frustrates doing so?
That is not so in the South. Muslims have had to fight took and nail at all times to access opportunity of exercising their fundamental rights. Currently a parent has just written a letter – and that will be a topic of another time – crying out that some Ogun State teachers nearly killed his daughter for wearing hijab as student.
More on religion, Christians do not place premium on covering of heads for females although Christianity is averse to that. In no school, particularly public (primary and secondary), in the North does any Christian female student require or is forced to cover her head because her rights as a Christian who does not believe in hijab is sacrosanct to the Islamic society of Northern Nigeria. Yet, schools in the North are those in which all female Muslim students cover their heads with hijabs, like in Kaduna, some female Muslim students even use noqob, face cover and they do well in their academics such that today, in one of the Federal Fire Service I sighted one niqob user who partook actively in the recent fire that gutted the Forte Oil Filling Station in the Local Airport area of Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
Is it the case in the South particularly in the South West? No. A public school principal, because he or she is a Christian, would even go out of his or her way to stop upon sighting a student of the school in the street wearing hijab on her uniform after school hours, make sure he or she identifies her perhaps take her class and the following morning expose her, like in the case of a 12 years old in a Lagos school, to public disgrace and flogging her 43 strokes of cane on assembly ground. PERSECUTION!
On what ground is our claim of accommodation of others and religious tolerance therefore in the South of Nigeria going by all of these? That is not to talk of how some known privately owned business organizations where religious coloration is not the basis but because members of the Board of Directors are mainly Christians and they would give percentage of number of Christian would-be employees who must come from their own respective churches, percentage of Christian would-be employees from churches alien to theirs before they now give like 10 percent to non-Christians and these must better be largely pagans.
I have evidence of a certain publishing, I won’t mention, company in Ibadan which, upon discovering one staff using his break time to go to pray zuhr, went ahead to compile names of all Muslims in the company and sack them, for no other reason except that they are Muslims. One of them got employed by a former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, who has been Judge of the World Court and is even sought by the same company for business patronage unknowingly that he is aware of their religious atrocities against some Muslim staff in the company and the global figure in question is Muslim. Where is the conscience of people who know that all of these mischief is going on by their own hands and yet claim that their tribe is the most accommodating?
You would not see this in the North of Nigeria. It is so bad that Afenifere that claims to be Yoruba socio-cultural organization has collaboration with Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and strictly ensures no Muslim person must be a member of the group that claims to be the umbrella body of Yoruba people of Nigeria. Now ask them, of the Bola Ajimbolas, the Jamiu Ekungbas, the Abdul-Rahman Ahmads, the Sarafa Tunji Isolas, the Lateef Owoyemis, the Ibikunle Amosuns, the Bola Ahmed Tinubus, the Musa Adebayo Ayenis, the S. O. Babalolas, so there is no Muslim quality enough to be member of Afenifere that that only pagan and Christian people are seen to be member and they go ahead and take decisions which affect even largely the Muslims. If this is not ethno-religious insensitiveness, then what else is it called?
Let nobody be in delusion that I am being a religious bigot or that I like to talk about what divides us, all the times. Whoever sees me that way is only the very promoter of what divides us. Any sane person reading me will know unequivocally that what I have tried to do here is to help those in positions of authority, who have capacity to effect change know the true problem that we have but which we cover at all times in pretense and which are the major reasons politicians who steal our commonwealth to red and use remnants of the stolen resources to sponsor us in killer-squad against ourselves.
Finally, economy and commerce. Zara Gift Onyinye’s post on Facebook this Friday December 21, 2018 about cost of travel at yuletide between North and South prompted me to go this deeper into the problem of attitude as regards our lifestyle in the South compared to the lifestyle of people in the North.
She said: “Abuja to Gombe which is about 9 hours is N2,500, while Abuja to Nsukka that is 6 hours is N11,500. Igbos why are we wicked?”
I then picked up this topic to address the attitude beyond Onyinye’s expressed concern to covering all other areas that are embedded in the attitude or our people of Southern Nigeria in terms of everything including accommodative nature, religion and economy and commerce, which is far below standard of humanity consciousness compared to the North.
Gift has only talked about Igbo travelling home and I want to believe she is talking about yuletide. But within Lagos, Yoruba race of Nigeria, Oshodi bus stop to Sango-Ijoko, 30 minutes (at worst due to traffic one and a half hours) that used to be N150 and is not more than four kilometers, even outside yuletide period, has been N1,000 that is 40 percent of what a Northern transporter take for a nine hours travel between Abuja and Gombe. Are we not finished here?
In Lagos today, you cannot predict what those agbero in charge of transport system in the nation’s “centre of excellence(?)” will charge you in a move-around that is not more than 10 minutes.
*Bashir Adefaka, Osolo Prince of Akure, Ondo State capital, is a media practitioner.
