By Ahmed Yahaya Joe
“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem invincible.” – George Orwell (1903-1950)
In the recent past the President Bola Tinubu administration has had to embark on an intense public relations and media blitz to fend off virulent criticisms particularly from the political North over a widely perceived lopsided spread of federal government projects with Lagos as main focus of the attrition.
This kind of political viciousness has become a constantly recurring development obviously not unconnected with a discernible pattern that each time power shifts in our nation rival regional dust is alternatively kicked up validating Laswell’s definition of politics as a zero-sum game of, “Who gets what, when, how.”
Recall that during the Obasanjo-era under the camouflage of “full blown Sharia” there was “a populist response by a traumatized hegemonic bloc in Nigerian politics—which had hitherto taken for granted its right to dominate the social and political space—to regain its political and discursive high ground against an emergent, competing power bloc.” - Kperogi
Then came catcalls of perceivably “Ijawnization” under former President Goodluck Jonathan which was soon replaced by palpable “Fulanization” of the immediate past Buhari dispensation that has apparently been succeeded by the perceptible “Lagosnization” currently - a discernible phenomenon even under General Yakubu Gowon courtesy of then vice chairman of the federal executive council doubling as minister for finance & economic development, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987) and minister for works, a bona fide Lagosian, Alhaji Femi Okunnu (b. 1933) at a relatively halcyon period in Nigeria when;
“The New Nigerian wrote an editorial in 1971 criticizing the decision of the Federal Government to build the 4th Mainland Bridge in Lagos. It argued that while these bridges were going up in the South there was no (new) bridge linking up the South with the North or even the North with itself.
The editor, Alhaji Mamman Daura was arrested and detained. Alhaji Ciroma, the MD was piqued by this decision. He said: “I went to Lagos to find out why my editor had been arrested without reference to me. I looked for him, but no one was able to say where he was. When I decided to go back to Kaduna, I was told that the Head of State wished to see me. I said I did not wish to see the Head of State, but was later on persuaded to see him. I did, and after a vigorous argument, my editor was released to me.”
A few months after the incident, the Federal Government awarded a contract for the first post-colonial bridge across the Benue River (at Makurdi) thus establishing a major link between the North and South.” – Kukah
What has all the foregoing got to do with the attached photograph dated 3rd July 1979 taken at the Local Wing of Murtala Mohammed International Airport Ikeja?
First, it is a reminder that there was once a political North when a Fulani Muslim candidate got the highest percentage of votes cast in the 1979 presidential election from Benue State (76.38%) compared to the score from his home state (now Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara) at 66.58%.
Aftermath of the scathing New Nigerian editorial before the commencement of the Second Republic eight years later, Shagari had replaced Okunnu as works minister under whose watch the new bridge was commenced in the former Benue-Plateau state.
Lagos’ loss, Makurdi’s gain. Little wonder George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) puts it so poignantly, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
Second, the aging photograph is a metaphor of former President Buhari’s “Northernization without agenda” of 2015-2023. The late Daura warrior’s nearly a decade in office was not an empire of the mind for his vote-rich regional constituency compared to the South West under President Tinubu.
In our 46-year-old picture is (L) Alhaji Shehu Shagari GCFR (1925-2018) who interestingly as the minister of works during the First Republic deftly delivered the River Niger Bridge linking Asaba and Onitsha in December 1965. Subsequently, he was in charge of General Gowons’s “3Rs” (Redevelopment, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction) after the Nigerian Civil War.
Shagari is seen with a stick of his usual “Rosuman” (Rothmans) soon after clinching the presidential banner of the behemoth National Party of Nigeria (NPN) beside his rival in the race (R) Alhaji Adamu Ciroma (1934-2018), a 1961 graduate of University of Ibadan and later Governor of CBN 1975-1977. Both were reportedly waiting to catch a Nigeria Airways flight back to Kaduna - Nigeria’s onetime “deputy capital.”
Unknown to many Nigerians even to date, Shagari and Ciroma represented polar opposites of the once upon a time monolithic North. A cascade of differences that would culminate into the December 31, 1983 coup despite the former apex banker serving as a minister in the Shagari administration.
Northern generals with their civilian cohorts plotting to remove a Northern president from office?
Quite unprecedented. Surprisingly so!
The Ikeja airport duo were irrespective part of the North’s “First Eleven” elites in their own individual rights and “by elite, we mean a small number of individuals who, in each sphere of activity, have succeeded and arrived at a higher echelon.”
In spite of the North’s relative education backwardness by national independence it was well ahead of the South in forecasting on how one day the military would play a decisive role in Nigerian politics;
“The Western Region, for example, still looked down on a career in the military. By 1966, out of 10,500 soldiers, they numbered about 700 instead of a projected 2205 based on quota.” – Omoigui
Post-independence the Arewa’s political forward thinking was chiefly because “The leaders in the North paid close attention to shifting trends abroad and in particular to the situation in Iraq where an ancient monarchy had been displaced by young officers in July 1958.”
In that regards former President Muhammadu Buhari specifically adds in his own words in an interview conducted on 20th March, 2002;
“The emir of Kano (Sir Muhammadu Sanusi I) told one us that if soldiers could overthrow a line of kings descended directly from the Prophet it could happen anywhere. So, we should go and join the army.”
Buhari was specifically referring to Rtd. Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’adua (1943-1997) whose authorized biographers for posterity further put it that;
“Joining the army (for Yar’adua who enlisted the same day with Buhari in 1962) was a statement of political faith. An enlightened Northern elite had come to recognize the neglected significance of the military in an independent Nigeria and the inestimable value of able young men from well-established families progressing within an institution dominated by the Eastern Region.” – Farris & Bomoi
Did the Kaduna Mafia really exist?
The question is pertinent because several of the eminent personalities so attached have vehemently denied the very existence of any such shadowy ensemble but sage observation opines differently;
“When the names associated with the Kaduna Mafia transformed themselves from a think tank for regional interests in the 1966-1979 period, they were very effective strategic players. Then a split appeared to have occurred within them.
One group became silent, apparently disgusted with politics and become inward looking. They disappeared from the national scene and went into oblivion. The second group became politically active and negotiated deals about political opportunities with various parties and associations in the post 1992 period.” – Ibrahim
In addition, “the 1987 book The Kaduna Mafia: A study of the Rise, Development and Consolidation of a Nigerian Power Elite (by Dr. Bala Takaya and Prof. Sonni Tyoden) is not a fictional work. The term "Mafia" applied to the Kaduna-centric jingoists is not a mere metaphor either.” - Takaya
Osuntokun goes on, “The Kaduna mafia is a name given to a loose group of young northern Nigerian intellectuals, civil servants, business tycoons and military officers residing or conducting business in the former northern capital city of Kaduna during the end of the first republic (….) The group thrived on an elaborate network of power alliances among northern aristocrats and government sympathizers who favored the group’s pro-northern and Islamic bent.”
Reminiscent of Buhari’s tribute at the passing of his acolyte a Cambridge-trained lawyer, Abba Kyari (1952-2020) as eulogised about his erstwhile chief of staff, “He was the best among us,” Daura, an unapologetic anglophile and alumnus of Trinity College Dublin - “Oxford of Ireland” was reportedly, “In his heyday as editor, some members of the southern intelligentsia used to spread the rumours that the editorials of New Nigerian were written and faxed in by the British because they were so well written. Mallam Daura never responded in any way even when he had the opportunity to do so, and left many of them to continue to make a fool of themselves.” – Nda-Isaiah
If so, how did the North so badly metastasize under some its “finest” stalwarts?
All hegemonic blocs have a political life span, Kaduna mafia being no different carried within the very seeds of incipient decay and eventual fall fast tracked during eight years of the Buhari -era.
It now remains to be seen how a similar fate might befall the seemingly invincible South West currently holding sway under President Bola Tinubu.
Continued in Part II
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