Bafarawa As a Soothsayer
By
Abubkar Jika
As Nigeria hurtles along the bumpy road to the decisive year 2003, the political scene is becoming increasingly cloudy and hazy. Nigerian politics, except the short-lived Third Republic has always been exciting and robust. Nigerians are generally free, merry, loud and disorderly people. On several occasions, it may look to those outsides as if the country will collapsed any moment. But to those inside, the crisis were parts of the fun of being a nation.
Indeed, incidences that Nigerians casually go through could have led to endless blood bath, and in fact divisions if replayed in other lands. This is one country where nothing is certain or even predictable.
Nothing is organized. A peaceful community where different ethnic groups have existed for centuries could suddenly erupt in ethnic violence, killings and destruction. This may run for a couple of days or at most a week. As suddenly as it erupted it would subside.
Initially there would be mass exodus of people from affected areas to their ethnic enclaves. A few weeks after they will return. Neighbors that hacked each other would as warmly hug returnee neighbors. To a first time visitors it may look like a macabre scene. That is Nigeria. A land were you cannot predict when electricity would be on or off.
A land where you can moment see water from your taps and the next nothing. A land that seats on petroleum amongst several other huge natural resources but where you find the largest queues in filling stations than any in Africa. A land of paradox where there are individuals that can out bet Bill Gates in a public auction, and yet their neighbors pick food from empty dustbins. A land that produced globally knowledge whiz kids, whose citizens cannot undertake civil, acts as simple as queue. A land where you have a former Head of State and his Deputy convicted and jailed for treason only for the latter to die and former released, pardoned and crowned king to replace his jailer and tormentor. A land where even elementary political consideration of rewarding your voters are replaced with hounding them and placating those who did not vote for you though they are your kinsmen.
Nigeria, where Vichy of France, Musolini of Italy would flinch because of treachery and double, even tripled standard. Such is Nigeria that even a former President at the height of his power expressed surprised that his kingdom has not collapsed long after it was written off by Book Makers.
Recently Governors of Northern Nigeria at the Second Anniversary of Arewa Consultative Forum mandated Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto State to disassociate them and the North from President Olusegun Obasanjo touted dream of a second term. The Governors under PDP and APP expressly catalogue the woes that befell the North after it crowns Obasanjo in 1999.
The litany of betrayals and treachy were long and unforgiving. He retired Northerners in the Army and Civil Service. He marginilised the North. He propped up his kinsmen. He systematically under mined the advantages the North hitherto enjoyed. The Bafarawa Treatise were clear, detailed and unimpeachable. He disclosed that the North has jettison "Power Shift" and is searching for alternative to Obasanjo. I could not have written a more griping account of the disaster that the Obasanjo regime has turned out to be for the North.
There was no doubt that like his counterpart Abdullahi Adamu did during the ill-fated Reception 2000 on November 18 2000, Bafarawa has captured the feelings of the North. He was commended throughout the North.
Bafarawa spoke our mind: The mind of Northern elite's and commoners. This regime does not respect our views or us. Its cronies from the North, who are propped up in government offices at Abuja, are on their own.
Sule Lamido tried to reply Bafarawa, who dismissed him as ranting of a drowning politician. All those running errands for this regime in the North, hoping to divide us and continue to politically sell us to Yoruba hegemony would become politically irrelevant in the North in future. The people know their true leaders.
This is as much applicable to the Yorubas as it is to us in the North. Any serving minister who is booed in the Mosque or other public functions should read the signals correctly - political oblivion.
Perhaps to cushion the disaster of the Bafarawa Declaration 21 PDP and APP Governors came to Otta with a letter drafting Obasanjo to contest. They claim, along with some PDP top shorts to have the mandate of their citizens to do so. Well the truth is they did not crown Obasanjo king, the people did. The people at the right time would express their views, after Obasanjo takes his stand.
Obasanjo knew he could not have contested elections but for the pardoned granted him which was hastily gazzatted to enable him contest. Who made that pardon possible? Who got it gazette? He knows the forces that pardoned him and got it gazette. What are the views of these forces? I am not referring to public shows, but the real views of these forces? The Chief from Owu knows these more than I, a humble University teacher and member of ASUU.
I had previously analyzed the three feet upon which Obasanjo's support rested. I called it the tripod of the Obasanjo support pillars. I need not repeat myself. Only one, the PDM that he can lay real claims to and even those ones in my view is wobbly. It was not as united as it was in 1998 - 99.
Most Nigerians I discussed with did not take the 21 Governors reputed to have begged Obasanjo to re-contest seriously. They cited three reasons that appear reasonable to me. First precedence. Abacha when he was in government and in power, many of the same Governors who were not Governors then but were members of the five leprous parties adopted his as a consensus candidate. Obasanjo was then a prisoner in Yola's steamy prisons.
Secondly, since APP Governors betrayed their party and joined PDP, the popularity of Obasanjo was not the barometer. I believe many serving Obasanjo is aware of the discontent in the land. However for their own interest they prefer to pretend there are no discontent. In any case nobody is surprised by the turn of events as Nigerian politicians have gained notoriety as "turn coats".
Finally, Bafarawa claimed to have spoken on behalf of all Northern Governors. None of them deny this. None contradicted Bafarawa. So what some of them did at Otta, if it was true can pass for perfidy. They did not betray Bafarawa. They betrayed the northern cause.
Bafarawa was simply a soothsayer and his political prediction shall, God willing, come to pass. Let them make their announcement, the voters would make theirs less than a year.
Jika teaches at the Dept. of Mass Communications, Bayero University, Kano.