I just read on the USAAfrica Google group Wale Lagunju's "Did Buhari Miss Tinubu in Lagos?" on what he describes as the use and dump strategy of the Northern Nigerian Muslim right wing against their SW allies
I smiled in my throat with the bitter and sardonic recognition of a person who saw from a mile away the carcass around which the inebriated revelers were celebrating, yet we are just being told that it was a carcass after all, not a feast, as they thought.
Careful following of Nigerian politics in the last ten to twenty years in relation to pre and post 1960 independence politics and sensitivity to a broad range of social media commentary from Nigerians enable one to anticipate these outcomes.
Nigeria's dominant SW leadership has been an enduring problem in Nigerian politics, from the revered Obafemi Awolowo to Bola Tinubu.
What is their problem?
Their problem is that they have refused to realize that it is practically impossible for Southern Nigeria to build a progressive, equitable nation in alliance with the Muslim North, in spite of the mountains of evidence pointing this out.
The Muslim North is a conquered region. It was conquered by a man who used claims of religious and social purification as a means of enthroning an ethnic hegemony. Uthman dan Fodio and his Fulani Jihad. The region remains dominated by the mentalities emanating from that seismic political shift. The region is a confused region, its dominant political players entrenched in perpetual struggles to dominate Nigeria at all costs while the region's social landscape is trapped in the contradictions of feudalistic Islam and atavistic ethnic orientations.
The South is also dominated by greedy politicians but they are not as desperate as their right wing Northern Muslim counterparts, the people who fueled Boko Haram Islamic terrorism and are fuelling Fulani herdsmen terrorism.
The Southern politicians are also less dangerous, more amenable to public action bcs they dont enjoy the level of broad based ethnic and religiously inspired support of their fellow citizens.
I am not able to see any significant future for Nigeria outside radical reworking of the nation, with all ethnicities deciding whether or not to remain within the region and the terms of this arrangement.
The most astute political solution in recent times has come from the South East IPOB's demand for a referendum on the exit of the South-East from Nigeria, describing continued stay in Nigeria as inimical to the humane existence and the development of their people.
Realizing the danger of IPOB's momentum to the cash cow that is the restive Niger Delta, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, the Northern Muslim conservatives tried to scare IPOB by giving Igbos a deadline to leave the North where they have very significant investments.
When that failed, the army, controlled by these figures, moved in with tanks and troops into the town of the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, killed and turtured IPOB members and got the SE governors to declare IPOB, a non-violent movement, a terrorist organisation.
Shortly after this, Fulani herdsmen terrorism, centred in massacres directed at wiping out entire populations in the Middle Belt and occupying their land, systematic encroachments across the nation through murderous raids on communities, individual killings, intimidation and rape, with the vocal support of the pressure group Miyetti Allah led by the nation's most elite Fulani, of whom the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano are the most prominent, resumed its bloody mission with a vengeance, yet this movement has never been described as terrorism by Nigeria's Fulani national ruler nor have Miyetti Allah been questioned by the security agencies, the govt's efforts being centred on enabling this terrorist colonization initiative through non-engagement. letting them get on with it, while trying to aid them through policy initiatives.
That is where we are now.
We are all in danger. The power hungry fools who want to burn the house down, those in the house who insist on silence so as not to provoke the fools and those who think the already spreading fire is no business of theirs.
toyin adepoju
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