PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Arewa Media Forum’s Inaugural Annual Lecture

ndajika@yahoo.com

 

After at least two false starts since 2006, the first Arewa Media Forum (AMF) annual lecture finally held last Sunday March 15, at the historic Arewa House, Kaduna, the former residence of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sokoto, and the first and only Premier of the North. Arewa House is the history research centre of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, one of Nigeria’s oldest and arguably Africa’s largest.

           

The AMF is a voluntary and informal association of Northern journalists and laymen concerned about the political and socio-economic implications of the gap between the North and the rest of Nigeria in the country’s information order. It was first initiated by non-journalists about 15 years ago, went comatose in less than two years but resurrected nearly 10 years ago.

           

It has met fairly regularly to discuss media and other issues and has organised seminars, workshops and media interactive on a variety of topics ranging from the problematic polio eradication campaign, through the death of the textile industry in the North to almajirci (an Islamic education system) in the region which has bred the now infamous child begging phenomenon that has so much blighted the face of the North.

           

On journalism itself, the AMF has published a book, Reporting the North, which is a handy collection of speeches on journalism and the media industry in the region delivered at a seminar organised many years ago by Alhaji Idi Farouk, long before he became the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency.

           

The AMF chose March 15 for the first of its annual lecture because it was the day in 1959 the North became self-governing as a prelude to the Independence of Nigeria on October 1, 1960. Last Sunday was exactly 50 year to the day of the region’s self-government.

           

On that day, as former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, the Special Guest of Honour on the occasion pointed out in his speech at the lecture, the Sardauna outlined the region’s development agenda whose central pillar was education. The Sardauna’s last budget, as the Guest Speaker, the Chief Servant and Executive Governor of Niger State, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, pointed out, was 44 million pounds, an amount much smaller than what some local governments get today, even adjusted for inflation. Yet, see how the Sardauna transformed the region in less than 10 years as premier.

           

Sardauna’s secret of success was, of course, his commitment, integrity, hard work and fairness, virtues which allowed him to talk credibly about his region as One North, One People, One Destiny in spite of its being the most ethnically and religiously diverse of the country’s original three regions. These virtues, as the chairman of the occasion, Lt General Jeremiah Useni, said, have become glaringly lacking in today’s political leadership.

           

As you’ll expect of a politician, the Vice-President used the opportunity of his remarks to talk about the initiatives he took to help the North regain some of its glorious days under the Sardauna. However, as if to anticipate the Doubting Thomas’s in the audience, he admitted that his efforts were blunted, first, by the politics of Second Term campaign, and subsequently buried by those of Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda which consumed virtually everything in its path. This, if nothing else, he said, is the reason why it is necessary to reform the electoral laws of the country so that for once Nigerians can freely choose their rulers.

           

The Guest Speaker, Governor Aliyu, lived up to his billing as a blunt and outspoken – some would say too outspoken for a governor – person. Northerners, he said, generally bred too much and planned too little. Naturally that made them the poorest lot among Nigerians. The nineteen Northern governors, of whom he is the chairman, have, he said, collectively agreed to a four-point agenda of development for the region namely agriculture, education, health and road infrastructure.

           

However, of the many controversial things he said in his written speech from which he digressed half the time, the one that struck me most was his contention that building state universities should not be a priority in the North. Instead, the region should, he said, concentrate on expanding and raising the quality of primary and secondary schools.

           

Personally, I couldn’t agree more. The sorry state of our primary and secondary schools is such that they cannot produce enough materials and of the right quality for our universities. Therefore building state universities in the region is like putting the cart before the horse..

           

The two discussants of the Niger State Governor’s speech, Dr. Ibrahim Tahir, Talban Bauchi and Dr. Enyantu Ifenne, a medical doctor and a women’s right activist, all spoke forcefully about the centrality of education for the region’s development. Tahir, however, wanted the region’s governors to add power generation and water supply to their four-point agenda.

           

On her part, Ifenne, who occasionally drew loud ovations, said there should be emphasis on educating women because they constituted half the country’s population and it was simple logic that if you kept half of your population down you could not hope to develop.

           

Her most interesting remark for me, however, was not on girl education. Rather, it was her contention that what we have had since May 2007 is not power shift to the North but “patronage shift.” Nearly two years after a Northerner took charge of the country, she said, there are no signs that the federal authorities are interested to deal with the region’s poverty as a threat to the unity, harmony and progress of the country as a whole. Instead, they seem to be interested in only distributing patronage among members of a narrow clique.

           

Every one who spoke on the occasion – the chairman, General Useni, former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, Senator George Akume, former governor of Benue State, the Guest Speaker, Dr. Aliyu, the two discussants, Drs. Tahir and Ifenne - all talked about the importance of leadership for the development of the North and Nigeria. I suspect former Head of State and presidential candidate of the ANPP who declined to say anything during the occasion couldn’t agree more.

           

Of all the remarks, owever, none resonated as much with the audience as the contribution from the floor by Mr. Labaran Maku, the youthful former deputy governor of Nassarawa State and himself an accomplished journalist. Wasn’t it such a big shame, he asked, that 43 years after the Sardauna died, the region hasn’t been able to replicate anything close to him?

           

If the North is violently divided and has remained poor in spite of its domination of the country’s politics, he said, it is simply because since Sardauna it has not produce leaders who believe in the premier’s virtues. “You cannot,” he said, “have unity and peace if you do not have leaders who believe in unity and peace. You cannot have development if you do not have leaders who believe in development.”

           

The consensus among participants was that only way to throw up such leadership is to have elections that are credible, free and fair.

           

This refrain about the importance of a credible electoral system was repeated by former Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, who said he brought “fraternal greetings from the East.” Now that a Northerner was in charge of the country, the region must bequeath a legacy of a credible electoral system to the country, if that is the only thing it does.

           

All told, I thought it was a great outing for the Arewa Media Forum, even if I say so myself as its chairman. Of all the things that were said, however, the one that I thought was the food for the deepest thought was an anecdote the chairman told the audience at the beginning and the end of the lecture about his encounter with traditional rulers of the North-East when he led a delegation of the Arewa Consultative Forum on a tour of the sub-region a few years ago

           

During the meeting, he said, speaker after speaker lamented the poverty of the North. After every one had spoken, the general said, one emir got up and begged to differ. “What we have in the North”, the emir reportedly said in Hausa, “is not poverty but laziness”.

           

I think next to the loss by the generality of the Northern leadership of the honesty and innocent it was once famous for, the laziness in thought and action that seems to have gripped the region since the death of Sardauna is its greatest obstacle to its peace and progress.