By Ahmed Yahaya Joe
“The only thing that could tear down the House of the Dragon was itself.” – Princess Rhaenyra Viserys in prequel of Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
On Sunday, August 16, 2001, Alhaji Muhammadu Dikko Yusufu (1931-2015) onetime Inspector-General of Police audaciously declared to a prestigious audience at Yoruba Tennis Club (YTC) in Onikan as guest speaker, “Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, you have asked me to give a lecture but I have decided to do something different. I have instead decided to turn the lecture into a dialogue on the current political realities of Nigeria.”
As Yusufu the IGP 1975-1979, put aside his lecture notes entitled The Yoruba Elite and Politics in Nigeria: Which Way? to ostensibly unruffle the feathers of his hosts he emphatically asserted that, “There is something I do not understand about the Yoruba elite. I believe I am not alone.”
What the Katsina prince was obliquely drawing political attention to at YTC was the infamous disconnect between Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987) and Aare Samuel Ladoke Akintola (1910-1966) that has constantly reinvented itself in various electoral hues from the First Republic even to date when few Nigerians are even aware of the onetime existence a so-called “Committee of Friends” otherwise known as the Ikenne Mafia;
“Formed in the mid-I960s, it comes under the direct aegis of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (born at Ikenne) and embraces his closest Yoruba followers. It is the cradle of the Yoruba bourgeois establishment, backed by an array of big banks, firms and businesses since the days of the Action Group.
As an offshoot of the Action Group, it remains the organizational core of the Yoruba bourgeoisie and the dominant political force in Yoruba heartland, but with little influence beyond. (The group) operated (throughout the first military era) as a political party in all respects but name. It organized members at ward level, sponsored candidates for nomination to various offices including the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) election into the eight local government councils in Lagos State, and the Constituent Assembly.” – Oyediran
The fact President Tinubu has been the main issue in South West politics since the transformation of the Ikenne Mafia into the mono-ethnic Afenifere since the 2000s is without any iota of doubt. This is exemplified in his vice-like grip on Lagos politics and unequivocal choices of every succeeding governor after leaving Alausa in 2007.
From the streets of Isale-Eko to navigating a taxi cab in the Cook County hometown of the Chicago Bulls in between his studies how did “City Boy” sharpen his battle axe to fight his way through Nigeria’s political jungle to the very top?
“Asibiyyah” in Arabic is derived from the word “Al Asab” – meaning a bond that unites a bloc indeed any group through “social solidarity, group cohesiveness and unity.” The 14th century African scholar and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) popularized the concept in his epic Muqaddimah (Introduction) published in 1337 where he succinctly puts it that all power bases must be established with a sense of shared purpose moving from the periphery to the center of any given society - very evocative of the unprecedented transition of President Tinubu from Government House Lagos to State House Abuja.
There is however an important caveat as Khaldun admonishes it is just a question of time that an “Asibiyyah” eventually becomes, “increasingly lax, less coordinated, disciplined and watchful, and more concerned with maintaining their new power and lifestyle dissolving into factionalism and individualism, diminishing their capacity as a political unit.”
As we have already encountered with the multi-ethnic (but Hausanized) Kaduna Mafia which formidably succeeded in transforming itself into a formidable think tank to not only defend but promote Northern regional interests ditto Tinubu’s “Asibiyyah” for the South West despite its topsy turvy relationship with Afenifere.
“As a direct result of the Civil War, Northern officers dominated the Army and all the military regimes from July 1966 to May 1999, even when on one occasion a Southern General [Obasanjo] was the Head of State. In the 1970s the North also subtly pushed some agenda in the Nigerian federation. The most successful one was to write “federal character principle” into the Constitution. Up until then Southerners occupied most federal public service positions centered in Lagos but this was reversed within two short decades.
Another successful Northern agenda was to relocate the Federal Capital from Lagos, allegedly due to congestion. The far North’s attempt to enshrine a Federal Sharia Court of Appeal in the Constitution however failed due to lack of Middle Belt support. To cite another Northern gain, the Gowon regime actively promoted the annual Muslim hajj until it became a very sprawling affair.” – Jega
While there is no public record that President Tinubu had attended the YTC event 24 year ago he has apparently imbibed the moral behind Yusufu’s main question more than two dozen years ago of, “Why did important sections of the Yoruba elite set up the Afenifere and think they could use it as an instrument of achieving political power in Nigeria?”
The same could be asked of the now rested Kaduna mafia’s inability to get General Buhari elected despite that august bloc's facilitating President Olusegun Obasanjo’s own ascendancy in 1999.
It is therefore beyond political wishful (presumptuousness even) that President Tinubu’s “Asibiyyah” (like Kaduna mafia before it) would eventually dissolve into “factionalism and individualism” despite the feigned smiles in the attached picture, “All empires fall, brother, and so too will yours.” – Sophie Keetch in Le Fay (2024)
Recall that the same prolific New Nigerian newspaper wordsmith whose 1971 editorial culminated in the Makurdi Bridge would become a frontline kitchen cabinet member during the Buhari-era of the paradoxical “Northernization without agenda.”
If however truth be told;
“The Kaduna Mafia purportedly stands as a group that defends the interest and culture of the North. But shorn bare of their cloaks of pretences, the Kaduna Mafia, like any other, is an association of narrow-minded, self-centred and acutely greedy elite that operates as a political interest group.” – Takaya
Mr. President’s political special purpose vehicle is therefore no fundamentally different from the bygone Kaduna cartel whose membership had even presumed themselves as legatees of what ideologically remains the Sokoto caliphal pedigree.
While Tinubu’s “Asibiyyah” has deftly elevated the Lagos area-boy political brand to national state capture, Pareto’s “circulation of elites” between political lions and foxes remains a common denominator across board in Nigeria, inherent self-destructive tendencies regardless.
Ahead of 2027, how politically relevant is the “Hausa Tennis Club” under the present dispensation?
“President Tinubu is no slouch. He will not like President Goodluck Jonathan who trembled at the first political skirmish (in 2011) and dropped the ball in 2015. I do not sense or see the north in its present circumstances mounting any realistic and successful challenge against President Tinubu in 2007.
The north handed over him the mandate in 2023 on a platter of gold based largely on sentiments and without critical assessment. And now the north has lost the plot lock, stock and barrel, it must learn to live with the consequences of what it wrought by its own hands.” – Gadu
Concluded.
REFERENCES
Sharia or Death: The Mass Mediated Hegemonic Rhetoric of Theocratic Populism in Nigeria’s Muslim North (2020) by Kperogi, F.A.
Religion, Power and Politics in Northern Nigeria (1993) by Matthew Hassan Kukah p.70
Preventing Coups in Nigeria: After Independence – The Early Years by Dr. Nowa Omoigui
Yar’adua: A Life of Service (2004) edited by Jacqueline Farris and Mohammed Bomoi
Musings on the North and the Kaduna Mafia that Existed by Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim, Daily Trust newspaper edition of May 28, 2012
The Kaduna Mafia and the Church in Nigeria (1989) by Dr. Bala J. Takaya
Ode to the Kaduna Mafia by Akin Osuntokun published in Premium Times on May 20, 2012
Mamman Daura @ 80 by Sam Nda-Isaiah in Leadership Nigeria newspaper edition of November 9, 2019
Democracy and Corruption in Nigeria: Selected Speeches, Papers and Campaign Documents of M.D. Yusufu 1997-2010 (2018) edited by Alkasum Abba and Abdullahi Mohammed
The Nigerian I979 Elections (Macmillan Nigeria, I98I) edited by O. Oyediran p.46
From Kaduna Mafia to Caliphate by Mahmud Jega, Daily Trust newspaper edition of October 22, 2016
The Road to 2027: Can the North stop President Tinubu? (II) by Iliyasu Gadu, Daily Trust newspaper edition of April 2, 2024
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