Let’s Talk About the North

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Huge reactions poured into the Nigeria’s space following the recent appointments made by president Buhari. Two narratives instantly sprung up. One complaining lopsidedness and the other defending it. Among the critics are the genuine PDP members whose task is to act as opposition. For right or wrong, they have the privilege to act even mischievously.

There are also diehard opponents who invest their hope in the failure of any administration that is not headed by their own. The ethnic patriots, which also applies to Buhari, especially that he has recently become a small god among his people,  appeared to distance themselves from being citizens of Nigeria and tried to convince the rest of the ‘non-northerners’ and ‘non-Hausa’ that the lopsidedness thus far is their own problem for voting the ‘evil’ they have warned initially. The spiteful characters are there ready with fire to burn the house and are earnestly putting pressure to drag the discussion into religious perspective. It is disturbing!

For those who believe in this and feel that the country belongs to their ‘enemy’ and stepped 

back in glee to tell the rest of the ethnic nationalities that this is an issue between ‘the North vs you,’ they are only demonstrating reclusive, inferiority and submissive inclination that makes the North look big.

In the height of Hausaphobia, they scream domination when they hear Yakubu Dogara, Babachir Lawal, Bukola Saraki, the wiring in their head has sent signals of a monolithic block of a North, a microcosm of illiteracy, poverty and parasitism, housing Hausa-Fulani Muslim community alone and who, with their domineering ‘born-to-rule’ attitude, overseer the affairs of the country and ‘whose intent is to bring all other ethnic communities under their rule.’

It seems pedestrian. But among those picking this line, there’s a former federal minister who acts like a local Messi who feels accomplished from dribbling little kids and enjoys the yelling encomiums of his local supporters. This, however, raises the question of what defines a “northerner” since the moment the “North” is mentioned there are heavy, loaded and solid attachments and exceptions.

Anyway, Buhari aggravated the matter himself – despite that some of the appointees are neither Muslim nor Hausa, as some people claim, but still are northerners - and Buhari has to pay the price. Recent survey in what media barons call data journalism showed that he has lost so much in reputation and popularity measurement as a result of lopsidedness in his appointments.

I was initially hoping that he would make huge sacrifices when he came to power since the entire ‘North’ is always seen as a region that assumed the status of a ‘Big Brother.’  But what about other minority groups in the North?

The stark hypocrisy is when a southerner defended clannish government in the past and now suddenly found a new temerity to dissent after realizing how dangerous such arrangement is, and a northerner feels comfortable now on the basis that Jonathan did it first.

I am afraid, if you give leaders soft approach, they are gonna amass too much power that ought to be in the hands of the citizens. And someone did bad thing isn’t an excuse for repeating it. There is always difference between the past and the present.

Lookia a northern Buharist, government was run in the past by“my people and I” who descended upon the country’s wealth as spoil for themselves and on behalf of their ethnic folk; desperately like they were hopeless they won’t come to power again. 

Apart from fellow countrymen from other parts of the country, whose main concern is Nigeria at the centre, there are ethnic patriots among Buhari supporters. They would counter the Jonahiddeen who want to burn the house while their man is inside. To many of them, any Buhari critic is an enemy. Those are chest-beating, truly, proudly and fully-born northern men and women in the sense of northern Nigeria, who, although not entirely dropping their support for Yakubu, courtesy of the presence of Buhari, they will suddenly reduce it when they hear he is a Christian and can become angry with Buhari for appointing a Christian Lawal and not entirely sidelining the ‘Others’ in his appointments. This is still happening in the face of new technologies that are obliterating barriers to create new dimensions of what a Nigerian critic likes to call ‘post-ethnic youth demographics.’ We need to put immense pressure on this idea.

Some of the northern Buhari supporters also presented an impeccably biased argument.  That the appointments are on merit and henceforth, Federal Character should be abolished. 

I agree, the Quota System is a snag on its own. I want to see a time when merit will triumph over place of origin as consideration for job employment. It's my believed capital as ‘I’.

But some of our folk don't like to hear the truth about Quota System.

The ‘conventional’ North is a close society and controlled by the wealthy few and aristocrats. Imagine, if not by the modern which is rapidly unraveling the society, that someone could be a federal minister without this that title in their family name.

The little jobs you get in Kaduna or Kano or Katsina or an obscure post in a federal ministry are totally out of rigorous contest. You will be given such jobs under Federal Character Principle simply because they are inconsequential and below the social standing of the members of the big and privileged northern family. Until you want to cross over into no-go area of highly valued, highly esteemed, fortune-maker jobs reserved for those raised in pomp and fanfare - homes with posh residential address - then those who will submit your name under Quota System will ask about your family name and you'll realize that in the North you're come from a family of virtual Nobody.

In as much as you are underprivileged in the North, this oppression uniformly works to keep you out of what you call ‘juicy’ opportunities, no matter the ethnic and religious affiliations. Personal effort is the only capital – which is good to you and the society as well.

Do not depend on any system that discourages critical thinking and promotes low IQ. Your effort in achieving competence will expose the pampered child who can’t use skills to drive exceptional ideas that will engineer social and economic changes and who rather chooses to hide their incompetence safely in doing things free of charge to run government as charity home.

There are people among my generation, aged 20, 25, whom I can beat chest and boast of their competence and capabilities, some of whom are mentor friends. I respect their intellect; they are formidable individuals once having an opportunity.

However, some of our people pretend to be equal to the southern parts of the country in terms of Western education, although beyond Western education alone there are other things that shape the intellectual development of a ‘northern character.’  It is obvious because people don't have a wide network of activities to realize their erroneous thinking.  

My Wiki account got a problem and wanted to be fixed. It was so simple but it required the assistance of an old Wiki member. It has been a hard job to find one; perhaps such individuals are rare in my locality and whom I have no contact with. It is not just like creating a software app or computer program where I would simply take an evening stroll to Farm Centre and have an unschooled IT nerd to do it for me.  

Initially, I decided to have Wiki membership account to correct some data anomalies and misrepresentation of facts on the internet which I found other people uploaded who do not actually know the intricacies of our people's culture and history, and perhaps did this out of mischief. But where are those to do their own job and advertise themselves properly to the world? 

It's unfortunate, however, some of the young men in the North, especially in Kano, do not even know the century in which they live. Besides some commercial activities and trade which I am not satisfied with the way they are run, most attentions are gravitated on love and other superficial things. Of course love is great. But it is disturbing how our people hate reading. I once tried to build a group of young men 17, 18, below my age, considering that majority of my mates are already in business ‘rolling cash’ in the market, so that brilliant and fine minds would be incubated in the future.

But my effort was thwarted. Whenever I gave them a book to read or a 3 to 6 page article that captured what I wanted them to know, they would exclaim ''Kai wannan yayi yawa,'' and preferred to return to their Instagram and Whats’up. Smart guys, they never say Instagram. They say Insta.

They even began to warn me I should not approach them with anything if I knew it was lengthy. Don’t give it to me, they say. Imagine, I did not just recommend it. I wasted my data and wasted my energy to reach them.

Some three years back, I kept listening to the BBC and VOA Africa English Services. Most audience comment and opinion from Nigeria came from south-east of the country. I have been sending opinion before I was overwhelmed by other activities, meanwhile, there was only one person I kept hearing from Kano, and he's from Sabon Gari.

Sadly, even at the local level, comments and opinions from Kano on the national issues are too scarce and embarrassing considering the size of our population. Majority of our people do not care much about issues in government. You will have a man rolling hundreds million of Naira in his shop or an average northern man but couldn’t tell how government works.  That is our North. 

I don’t really see any way how society that intends to progress would be chopping its own feet. Societies can learn from others by comparing their social dynamics instead of pretending nothing is wrong and ignoring everything.

Yet, the one devastating problem that is killing the South is the issue of academic forgery and cover. Recently, Nigerian University Commission (NUC), has released a list of fake and substandard academic institutions. In the ‘North,’ hardly can you find a professor ‘Mai Fitila’ who couldn’t read his own handwriting and or such people bragging Powerful High Degree.

(@abubakarsulai13)