• The North Of Nigeria After The Protests – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

    The north of nigeria after the protests independent newspaper nigeria - nigeria newspapers online
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    Usman Yusuf, a professor in the medical sciences, is working hard at being a voice of opposition. He cut a controversial image during the administration of former Pres­ident Muhammadu Buhari during which he headed the National Health Insurance Scheme, (NHIS). He was fingered for a bouquet of in­fractions under his watch and was serially upbraided by the minister who superintended over his brief, the Health minister, Professor Isaac Adewoye. Yusuf was subsequently eased out of office after which he became a notable critic. He there­after severally chastised Buhari for his below par performance and the massive looting of state resources under his watch. This was even as the former president postured as being incorruptible. Yusuf refused to be restrained by such parochial considerations as his being from the same state, Katsina, as the for­mer president. Incapacity and in­eptitude for him know no creed or colour.

    If he faced up to his kinsman, Buhari, obviously for the reason of his ouster from the NHIS, despite the sociocultural consanguinity be­tween both men. Yusuf has been un­sparing of Buhari’s successor, Bola Tinubu. He has repeatedly drawn state attention to his palpable fail­ures in delivering on his campaign promises. Yusuf has spoken about the incontrovertible fact of the rap­id impoverishment of the citizenry; the acute food scarcity staring us all in the face, as well as the festering insecurity across the land. He holds that the people are being continu­ously deceived and short-changed by their supposed leaders. Waxing poetic, Yusuf notes that the “re­newed hope” promised Nigerians by Tinubu has indeed metamorphosed into “renewed hopelessness.” That is how scathing Yusuf’s engage­ments can be.

    The social media recently availed us the video clip of one of Usman Yusuf’s fire-spitting interviews. His thesis on this occasion is to the effect that northern leaders and their followers are complicit in the security quandary of their part of the country. Away from the Buhari misadventure, Yusuf believes that the north has neither deployed nor synergised its agglomeration of re­sources to impact on the security and economic situation up north. While the area may not have a sit­ting president, a position in which Buhari failed to impact his region, Yusuf maintains that the north is not short of capacity in the in­cumbent governance pyramid. Professor Usman Yusuf referenc­es the fact that the: Vice President, Kashim Shettima, (Borno); Speaker, House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, (Kaduna) and the National Security Adviser, (NSA), Nuhu Rib­adu, from (Adamawa), are all from the north.

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    The two Ministers of Defence, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, (Jigawa) and Bello Matawalle, (Zamfara), are both from neigh­bouring states in the north-west. Instructively, this is the first time in contemporary Nigerian political history that two sitting Ministers of Defence are from the same geopolit­ical zone. The two ministers man­ning the Ministry of Police Affairs, Ibrahim Geidam, (Yobe) and Imaan Suleiman-Ibrahim, (Nasarawa) are also from the north. Chief of Defence Staff, (CDS), Christopher Gwabin Musa, (Kaduna); the Di­rector-General, State Security Ser­vices, (SSS), Yusuf Magaji Bichi, (Kano) and his counterpart at the National Intelligence Agency, (NIA), Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, (Katsina), are similarly from the north. Let’s hope that this mammoth concen­tration of the leaderships of vir­tually all critical intelligence and security formations and services in the country does not stir murmurs and grumbling from sections of the land. Reading this reality, many parts of the country will feel gen­uinely underrepresented in these critical sectors.

    The previously announced 10- day nationwide protest against hunger and bad governance kicked off on Thursday, August 1, 2024. Compliance with the invitation to protest, however, was not going to be wholly and total. Governors and leaders in many states engaged with their constituents and talked them out of participation in the pro­gramme. Groups and associations in many states also opted out of the exercise preferring to hold govern­ment to account on its promises. In many cities and towns, processions snowballed into uncontrollable chaos, unmanaged violence, de­struction and looting. This was wit­nessed in predominantly northern locations. Hoodlums, vagrants and “almajiris” infiltrated the ranks of otherwise altruistic protesters, visiting lawlessness and utter brig­andage on multibillion naira public and privately-owned facilities and infrastructure.

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    Shopping complexes, govern­ment establishments, warehouses were among investments intention­ally and viciously vandalised by the rampaging mob. The propensity of lowlifers to the holistic ruination of everything in sight was evi­denced in Kano. Protester-vandals mustered implements like diggers and hammers and chiselled con­crete pallets laid across drainages for use by automobiles. The scenes as recorded real-time by television stations, reminds of the same mind­lessness with which metal slippers on railway tracks are stolen and sold. It brings back to the teary mind the metal components of our bridges and roads, and even our traffic lights and street lights are harvested and sold by scrap metal merchants. You want to weep for Nigeria.

    The Nigerian police and its sister agencies attempted the con­tainment of the bedlam in places, even as the mob outstripped their numbers in instances. There have been casualties across the land with the media reporting the felling of at least a dozen mobsters tallied from frontlines of engagement. Borno and Niger states accounted for a sizeable percentage of the casual­ties, while several more sustained gashes and grazes in various de­grees. Kayode Egbetokun, Nigeria’s Inspector-General of Police, (IGP), reported the loss of one of his men on the first day of the brawl. Chris­topher Musa, the CDS, commended the professionalism of the police in managing the uprising, while assur­ing of the readiness of the military to intervene in the event that the po­lice was overwhelmed.

    Governors in some states, nota­bly Borno, Kano, Kaduna, Kebbi, Nasarawa, Jigawa, have had to declare curfews to minimise the wholesale disorder. Not one state in the nation’s south has declared a sit-at-home for its constituents not because there were no pro­tests, but because the exercise was maturely and peacefully prosecut­ed. Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State was launch­ing a “back to land” agricultural programme to boost agricultural production, while the protest was supposed to be in its third day, else­where. Yet, the morning after in many northern capitals and cit­ies, carcasses of multibillion nai­ra structures wilfully incinerated by numskulls; ashes from bonfires made of rubber tyres; wilted tree branches, dot the face of the earth. Smithereens of glass; stones and pebbles; canisters of expended pepper spray; empty plastic bot­tles, drained sachets of water, car­pet the lonesome streets. Not for­getting the cadavers of comrades felled in the preceding delirium, now grisly souvenirs on the for­lorn roads and roundabouts.

    Again a reversal of the clock of development as rebuilds and reha­bilitation of damaged resources begin from scratch, particularly up north. Professor Usman Yusuf invites the northern leadership and political class to begin a process of genuine soul-searching if it aims to crawl out of the multifaceted morass in which it has practical­ly plunged itself. Statistics from the National Bureau for Statistics, (NBS) and similar bodies, local and international, have never been wavered in quoting lower develop­mental indices across board for the north, relative to the south of the country. In the specific sectors of ed­ucation, healthcare, industrialisa­tion, employment, the global north is way behind the south. Protesters in Kano looted every moveable item in the National Library of Nigeria outpost in the city. Yet they didn’t pick one single book! The more forward-looking states in the north which give southern entities a run for their figures would be Kogi, Kwara and Benue.

    Beyond the all-too-well-known convergences under various names and monikers, the northern region will require more than a one-day meeting in Kaduna, the political headquarters of the north, to sur­gically dilate and dissect the issues afflicting the region. It needs to have a global workshop spanning a few days to jaw-jaw. States in the various geopolitical zones must also meet to ensure the uniform implementation of set objectives. There should be quarterly reviews of programmes and initiatives. Errant governors famous for being on permanent excursions in Abuja, the federal capital, loafing about like school boys must sit down in their states to do the jobs for which they were voted into office. The north requires genuine regeneration and holistic makeover, made imperative by the recent mass protest brouhaha.

    *Dr Olusunle is a Fellow of the Associa­tion of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)

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