PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Politics of Nigeria’s Head Count II

Last Friday, Vanguard published an interview with Mr. John Dara, the national organising secretary of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF) and presently a delegate to the National Political Reform Conference. As a chieftain of the MBF, what Dara had to say should interest any observer of Nigeria’s politics. Some of the things he said were surprising, some not. Among his surprising remarks was what he said about Northern unity. “We cannot believe in the unity of Nigeria”, he said, “and not believe in the unity of the North, but we are saying that the new North of our dreams is a place where Muslims, Christians will coexist in Jos, in Kano, in Kaduna and anywhere else without molestation, without violence”.

Coming from a chieftain of MBF whose article of faith has been complete separation from the old North, this was somewhat of a surprise, albeit a pleasant surprise. The question is were these the words of a spokesman of an organization seeking genuine reconciliation or were they merely prompted by the confidence of someone who believed that, six years into Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency, there was no longer any such thing as what Mr. Emman Usman Shehu once referred to as “the dilemma of northern Christians”?

Shehu, for those not familiar with the name, was a well regarded columnist with The Post Express before it rested not too long ago. Writing in the newspaper’s edition of December 21, 2000, he said Northern Christians had felt betrayed by Obasanjo barely one year into his presidency. “In the transition programme that led to emergence of a civilian administration in May 1999”, said Shehu, “Northern Christians in the Middle Belt and the Upper North voted largely for a president they thought would provide a climate of fairness, equity and freedom. Unfortunately, Obasanjo has not lived up to their expectations. Instead he has behaved like the oligarchs who have reduced them to second-class citizens.”

The world, said Shehu, has been so repeatedly subjected to the phrase “predominantly Muslim North”, that most people including Obasanjo, and even His Eminence Sunday Mbang, the prelate of the Nigerian Methodist Church and one of the most outspoken religious leaders in the country as president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, as well as the reporters of BBC, VOA and other global media, have come to believe it is true. Obasanjo, for example, believed it so much, said Shehu, that he refused to out rightly outlaw so-called political Sharia in the North for fear of offending the region’s Muslims. “This incorrect phrase”, he said, “has been used so often, that it has become accepted as the ‘truth’. . . It is a ‘truth’ that has been deliberately created to give the impression that Northern Christians are non-existent”.

Anyone who was a regular reader of Shehu in the defunct Post Express and other newspapers and magazines would acknowledge that he has a way with the English word. Obviously he knew very well that the word predominance is not the antonym of nil. He certainly knew better than to say that the phrase “predominantly Muslim North” meant that Christians were non-existent in the region. Probably the only reason he chose to use the tactics of bait and switch in his article was that he lacked the courage to claim that Christians were the majority in the North.

If Shehu lacked the courage of his conviction about the size of Christians in the North, there are several of his compatriots who seem to possess such courage in abundance. Probably the most prominent of them is Chief Solomon Lar, former governor of Plateau state and pioneer elected chairman of the ruling PDP.

Lar, as we all know, is the official No 1 champion of the Middle Belt. Nearly two years ago, he told a MBF reception for Lt. General T.Y. Danjuma who had resigned as Obasanjo’s minister of defense, that the political Middle Belt was now “the new majority” in the North and Nigeria. He defined this Middle Belt by its perceived Christian identity. Its people, he said, were “all the marginalized minority groups in Northern Nigeria” who had resisted “feudalism, political oppression, injustice, religious discrimination and economic emasculation.”

Last Friday, Dara joined the growing league of those who claim Northern Christians are now the “new majority” in Nigeria. Dara made this claim in his interview of last Friday’s Vanguard which I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. There are, he said, more Christian Northerners in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. “There are”, he also said, “more Christian Governors than Moslem Governors. Go and count it. The new reality is that there is a Christian majority in Nigeria. Those who don’t want to face it, the reality will confront the outcome”.

If, as I said at the beginning of this piece, Dara’s seeming about-turn on the issue of Northern unity looked surprising, he seemed to have made it from a belief that Northern Christians are, for the fist time since colonial Nigeria, now in a position to call most of, if not all, the shots in the country’s politics. “If”, he told Vanguard, “they (i.e. the Arewa Consultative Forum) want to talk, let them come and talk to us. Didn’t you hear what I said, they are the minority in Northern Nigeria and that is why I want a proper census. We want to know how many Christians we have in Nigeria, we want to know how many Moslems we have in Northern Nigeria, we want to know people, to know those of the so-called majority tribes. We need it so that those who are living a lie will wake up”.

For Dara it is, or should be, obvious to the reader who those living a lie are. However, if the controversial 2003 national identity card exercise is anything to go by, Dara and those who think like him may be the ones who would need to wake up. Last week I showed on these pages how the exercise confirmed the edge that the North has had over the South population wise. What I did not mention was that, if any thing, the I.D. card exercise suggested that the margin between the two was even wider than has been thought.

During its voter registration exercise for the 2003 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission recorded 32,374,762 voters for the North against 28,448,260 for the South, a difference of 3,926,502. In comparison, the Department of National Civil Registration recorded 28,279,129 adult Nigerians (i.e. 18 and above) in the North as against 23,724,645 in the South, a difference of 4,554,482. If you consider the fact that the exercise was smoother and more thorough in the more compact and more urbanised South, it is easy to see why the North/South gap could even be wider that has been thought.

Dara may chose to believe otherwise but it is difficult, if not impossible, to dispute the fact that out of all the 19 Northern states, Christians are an undisputed majority only in Benue and Plateau and possibly Taraba. In the whole of the geographical Middle Belt which comprises Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nassarawa, Niger, Plateau and the FCT, Kwara and Niger are overwhelmingly Muslim, while the odds favour Muslims in Kogi and Nassarawa. Overall Muslims are probably the majority in the geographical Middle Belt, which probably explains why Middle Belt champions like Lar prefer to talk about a political Middle-Belt instead of a geographical Middle-Belt.

But then no mater how you slice it there is simply no denying the fact that the North is predominantly Muslim, especially given the fact that by the last census the North West, comprising the overwhelmingly Muslim states of Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara, and the North-East, comprising the overwhelmingly Muslim states of Bauchi, Borno, Gombe and Yobe, make up 26 percent and 13 percent of Nigeria’s population. At 26 percent the North-West is nearly twice the population of North-Central a.k.a Middle-Belt which is 14 per cent.

Next to the North-West, nationwide, is the South-West with 20 percent. In this sub- region, the 1953 census recorded Muslims as the majority in Abeokuta, Ibadan, and Ijebu provinces and in the Lagos Colony. It also recorded Muslims as a huge minority in Oyo Province and a significant minority in Ondo province. Overall the census recorded Muslims as 32.4 percent of the old West as against 36.2 percent Christians and 31.4 percent for other religions.

In the 1963 census both the Muslim and Christian population gained at the expense of the other religions, but Muslims gained even more. In that census Muslims were 43.4 percent as against 48.7 percent Christians and 7.9 percent “Other”.

In the North the 1953 census recorded Muslims as 73 percent against 2.7 Christians and 24.3 percent “Other”. The Muslim population dropped marginally to 71.7 percent in the 1963 census as against a marginal increase of Christians to 9.7 percent.

In the East the Christian population, according to the 1953 Census was 50.1 percent against 0.30 percent Muslim and 49.6 percent “Other”. Ten years later, Christians constituted 77.2 percent of the population, Muslims remained at 0.30 percent while other religions dwindled to 22.5 percent.

The Mid-West was unique in having more polytheists than Muslims and Christian combined in 1953. In that year’s census there were 4.2 percent Muslims, 22.8 percent Christians and 73.1 percent “other”. Ten years later Christianity gained tremendously at the expense of the polytheists. Christians made up 54.9 percent of the population as against 4.2 percent Muslims and 40.9 percent “Other”.

I.I. Ekanem, the census expert whose book The 1963 Nigeria Census: A critical Appraisal I cited last week on these pages was highly critical of all these and other figures in his assessment. “The total population”, he said, “was unduly inflated especially in the West, the reported ages were grossly distorted especially in the North (the female ages in particular); the total population for the urban areas derived from different tabulations in the same census do not agree; there is evidence of considerable inflation of the population by religion especially in the North.”

Even taking into consideration Ekanem’s criticisms of the 1963 census which seemed valid, it is very unlikely that Muslims have become a minority in this country, especially given their fertility rate as a polygamous lot. In any case Muslims were a majority in the 1953 census, which remained the official basis for population projections until the 1991 census. Besides, independent estimates by the American CIA glossed from its website put Muslims at 50 percent against 40 percent Christians and 10 percent “indigenous beliefs”. The CIA and Muslims, as we all know, have hardly been the best of friends.

When the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Maccido led Muslim leaders in the country to President Obasanjo to protest the marginalization of Muslims in the composition of the National Political Reform Conference, he claimed Muslims were 65 percent of Nigerians. The president rejected the figure and claimed it was 50:50. Since the National Population Commission has once again ruled out religion and ethnicity as part of its census questionnaire, we will never know, at least for the next ten years, who is right between Maccido and Obasanjo.

However, even if religion and ethnicity were to be included there is no guarantee that we will ever know the truth, since the matter has become a political hot potato, raising the probability that each side will try to outdo the other in rigging their numbers, as we experienced in the 1963 census. In this case President Obasanjo was wise to have supported, if not initiated, the removal of religion and ethnicity from the census questionnaire. This may sound like postponing the evil day, but timing can be critical when tensions are high, as they now are.

Fortunately whoever is in the majority it is still possible to create, in the words of Shehu, “an atmosphere of fairness, equity and freedom” in the country.

Until Obasanjo came along as the first elected Southern Christian president, the cry was that the predominantly Muslim North had emasculated the rest of the country. Its chief weapon was supposed to have been the military. But a close look at the leadership of institution shows that the perception was more apparent than real.

Take the army for example. From 1953 to date it has had 20 chiefs between Major-General C.B. Welbey, a British, and Lt. General Martin-Luther Agwai. Out of these only seven are from the Muslim North. Eight, including the current chief, were Northern Christians. As for the Navy and the Air Force, out of 16 and 14 chiefs respectively since 1956 and 1963, the Muslim North has produced only two for the Navy and one for the Airforce.

The picture, especially in the last six years, is no less dismal from the Muslim North point of view when it comes to the General Officers Commanding the army divisions and the their equivalents in the Air Force and the Navy.

When you add to this picture another one about the composition of the cabinets of our central governments since 1960, you find it hard to escape the conclusion that the impression that the Muslim North has emasculated the rest of Nigeria since independence must be one of the most successful use of propaganda as a weapon anywhere in the world, especially considering the economic and educational backwardness of the sub-region. For, from 1960 to date there has always been more Christian ministers than Muslims except for the regimes of Shagari, Buhari and Babangida. Tafawa Balewa had ten Christians to nine Muslims. Yakubu Gowon had 13 to eight; Murtala Mohammed, seven to four; General Obasanjo, 14 to seven; Shehu Shagari, seven to ten; Muhammadu Buhari, six to seven; Ibrahim Babangida, eleven to twelve; Ernest Shonekan, nine to six; Sani Abacha, 17 to 15; Abdulsalami Abubakar, 19 to 13; and President Obasanjo, 41 to 17!

This alone suggests that what Obasanjo has done in the last six years is to replace what has been perceived as an atmosphere of inequity and unfairness by one section of Nigerians with another atmosphere of inequity and unfairness which is far worse.

If the National Reform Conference succeeds in the end in helping to sort out the facts of this inequity and unfairness from the propaganda, it would have been well worth the candle. But if it is used as a weapon for even more retribution against the Muslim North for crimes that are clearly more imagined than real, then it will have laid the foundation for breaking up Nigeria. The ball is in President Obasanjo’s court.