Still On ‘El-Rufai And Southern Kaduna: Between Shadows And Reality’

BY FRANCIS DAMINA
My attention has just been drawn to an article I recently authored on the title: “El-Rufai and Southern Kaduna: Between Shadows and Reality”, which attracted a lot of attention from various quarters and from people, high and low. My intention was simply to, among other things, one, dissociate religion which has, for some time now, earned a bad name as an enemy of nationhood from happenings, especially in the southern part of the state, which stands to be manipulated for purely political gains by some politicians running short of fuel in the journey of their career.
Two, argue that what we rather need is economic emancipation via an economic submit and not the conventional call and agitations for political offices or the blame game that we are called upon to participate by kicking a ball as a mark of patriotism. Hence, I challenged the youth to move from wailing to thinking out of the box, rather than the usual dependence on retrogressive narratives of our elite whose stock-in-trade is greed. This is because, our future is not in any way tied to any single mortal as we are currently made to believe.
Today, what is the price of a bag of ginger? I have been told that there is a conspiracy to make nonsense of the price of this commodity commonly referred to as ATM in southern Kaduna. And I had expected this because only our people could depend on strangers to determine the prices of their produce. And this is an area that has produced a minister of finance, a former GMD of the NNPC, and a renowned deputy Governor of the Central Bank, among many others, but seemingly clueless about economic patterns and trends to improve the fortunes of their kinsmen.
Unfortunately, in spite of the expected reactions to the piece, I still stand by my position not necessarily because it is the correct position, but because no one has availed me with any alternative position apart from the vituperations of the ignorant majority.
And it is a disaster that only a few are able to make the distinction between being in politics and being in power. I reason that there are inherited structural and institutional imbalances in the architecture of our society that have landed us to where we are today and not necessarily because of a Malam El-Rufai. Will Southern Kaduna become a haven after he leaves office? Though these imbalances will hardly permit us to be in high political offices, it is the responsibility of our intelligentsia to draw the map that will aid us in our journey of becoming an economic hub.
The Jews, for instance, are not concerned about political offices but in developing their human resources to control the powers of the world. Can we today talk about world politics and particularly, the entire American project without mentioning them? With a mere population of 14,000,000 people, they have to their credit, 129 Nobel Prizes.
While some are quick to point at 2019 to say they will change driver, it is important to remind them of what two prominent scholars of southern Kaduna stock have to say. While Professor Yusufu Turaki in his book ” The British Colonial Legacy in Northern Nigeria” is of the view that: ” It is impossible for us to have a proper grasp of the nature of political events, trends and patterns… without understanding their colonial legacies, Bishop Joseph Bagobiri corroborated by saying: ” Unjust delineation of electoral wards and constituencies has put the southern part of Kaduna State in a politically disadvantaged position. This policy that is often described as rigging election from the source has effectively made it impossible for anyone from southern Kaduna to ever emerge as the governorship flag bearer of any major political party. Neither can SK ever decide any issue in the State House of Assembly because of the great preponderance of representation from the other divide.”
I am particularly pained each time I remember that the entire Ikulu nation constitutes only an electoral ward when the almost invisible population of the Hausa community in Zango Kataf is a Ward. But where were our own elite when all this was happening? What will my generation or even posterity remember them for? At a time the Okpobos and the Itsekiris are passionate to define their struggles for emancipation around Jaja and Nana respectively, and other minorities like the Ogonis around Ken Saro Wiwa, who in southern Kaduna can we look up to as the symbol of our struggle? Perhaps, Gen. Zamani Lekwot?
Now that we are where we are, and I have made the point severally that it is the result of years and years of the manipulation of the Islamic religion and the sarauta system by a tiny minority of Northern elite; and it’s in the very nature of feudalism not to do Justice. What do we do next? Who leads us? Facebook columnists, politicians, or our intellectuals? What is even the proper role of intellectuals in a post-feudal society?
I personally believe that it is the responsibility of the intellectuals to, as I have said, produce the roadmap that would lead us into the next world order and not politicians. Is it not a shame that southern Kaduna, an area that is in the hierarchy of civilizations only next to Egypt, which has also produced intellectuals like Bishops Peter Jatau, Joseph Bagobiri, Matthew Kukah, Christopher Abba, Dr. Chris Abashiya, Dr. Habu Mari, Prof. Andrew Nok, Professors Joseph Mamman, Peter Tanko, Abdullahi Ashafa, Kabir Mato, Yusufu Turaki, Steve Nkom, etc, depends on charlatans on its future?
Today, with all the talks about the closure of schools, our son, the enviable Professor Andrew Nok, a leading scientist in the whole world, is the education commissioner. Nok, himself a victim of injustice, was twice denied the vice Chancellorship of ABU even when it was apparent that he won. But who has invited him, being our son, to know why tertiary institutions in southern Kaduna remain closed? We tend not to see things as they are; we see them as we are.
While I advocate for an economic submit that will help form cooperatives, determine the prices of our commodities, as well as directly link us up with international businessmen and bodies, I strongly believe that there is need for change of strategy and methodology in our engagement in politics. We must move from confrontation to dialogue, contract, compromise and the capacity to lobby for. This is what minorities in the political landscape do knowing that they are numerically disadvantaged.
Today, while a large chunk of our people feel Bishop Kukah has not spoken enough about happenings in Kaduna state; many a northerner believes the Bishop is a quiet but effective campaigner for southern Kaduna’s political interests. For instance, northern intellectuals have continued to blame the Bishop for the political coup d’etat that produced the late sir Patrick Yakowa as Governor of Kaduna state. Malam Adamu Adamu and Mohammed Haruna, among others, believe the Bishop gave a clue to how it happened when in his homily at Yakowa’s funeral said: “President Jonathan did for us what the great President Dr Klerk did to end apartheid in south Africa.”
And if only it is true that the Bishop, TY Danjuma, David Mark, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jerry Gana, and Tony Anenih, conspired to move Namadi Sambo to Abuja to create the room for Yakowa’s emergence, which Mohammed Haruna said ” …was obviously more informed by self-service than by goodwill towards all”, only tells us that; one, the struggle for emancipation is not about confrontation or the noise we hear today. And two, the need to depend on the wise ones for direction and not just every Tom, Dick and Harry.
When in January, I saw the enviable members of the National Peace Committee in Kaduna, I knew this unpredictable Bishop was up to something that only him knows how to do. But hardly had the committee settled down, when a university teacher, Dr. John Danfulani, snappily and almost in a rickety- split, insulted the honorable commissioners, made up of Cardinal John Onaiyekan- a great intellectual and candidate for the position of the Pope, Mai Martaba, Sa’ad Abubakar, the Muslim pope of the most powerful black nation in the world, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, a former Head of state, the famous Ebitu Ukiwe, and our dear Bishop Kukah. The university teacher called them “mere attention seekers whose interest is not to see to the end of the genocide in southern Kaduna but instead to gain national prominence.
In spite of the sacrifice they made by breaching and boycotting their mostly international schedules, the teacher said their consultation with traditional rulers, religious leaders, etc, is “…a time-wasting and energy consuming scheme of elites that are malnourished of the capacity to call a spade by its name; people who hardly look at the powers that be in the eye and tell them some quinine taste truth” What? Silly Sally swiftly shooed seven silly sheep- a joke!
Is Danfulani in anyway insinuating that he is more knowledgeable, patriotic, or even understands how to make peace more than the Cardinal, Mai Martaba, Gen. Abubakar, Ukiwe or Dr. Matthew Kukah whose moderate voice, according to a Kansas University teacher of sociology – Ebenezer Obadare, “has been a calming influence in the vortex of religious tensions in Nigeria”?
And I waited to see if any group, person or persons from southern Kaduna will condemn the freakish anomalous, but to no avail. But I knew the usually not-in-a-hurry, levelheaded and calm Bishop will unusually remain taciturn and tightlipped wondering the kind of training my generation has received.
But this is no surprise in a time when society places premium and tends to worship individuals who criticize and hate others because of either where they come from, the God they worship, or the individuals’ unbridled greed themselves.
But Bishop Kukah as a refined gentleman who has traveled around the globe will never pick a jersey as a player in this game of insularity. As a compassionate scholar of intelligence, he is well aware that no religion is higher than humanity. He is also mindful that as a trusted and personable bridge-builder, “there are many thousands out there on the other side who feel he is their own in a special way”.
In my tribute on the occasion of his anniversary in ThisDay Newspaper, I said: “As he celebrates the 40th anniversary of his ordination as a priest, a lot of admirers, well wishers and friends will join him to dance at the market square, not because of his rhetoric or his wit or controversies, but because of the uncommon courage he exhibited by whistling in the dark in those sad and treacherous days when soldiers were up in arms to violate and defile all that was sacred to man. And this is what endears him to so many Nigerians some of whom are Muslims, others Christians, and still others, “atheists”. He stood for them not as brethren-in-faith but as brethren-in-creation. This may explain why Nigerians see him not as a Catholic priest but as a priest for all. A priest who could speak for the “atheists”, the Muslims, the Christians, Catholics, Igbo, Biafran agitators, and even Boko Haram adherents whenever they have a just cause or what defines their humanity is at stake.”
What all this means is that: a) we must define the concept of our struggle and how we intend to achieve it. b) we must move from the usual methodology of confrontation to dialogue, lobby, etc. And then, 3) see ourselves first as human beings and not as members of a particular ancestry or exclusive group founded on certain parochial unionism whose only symbol is the inherited paraphernalia from the ancestor for the cure of cholera.
The world is moving and might not wait for people who rather than develop ideas, alternatives, options on how to move forward, have rather resulted to wailing, bashing, and useless shenanigans and nitpick. May God help us!.
Damina, a student of Religion and Society, can be reached via francisdamina@gmail.com (0807682709)