One year after the Kano Assembly organized by Northern Elders Forum with other northern groups,Nigerians trooped out to offer a verdict over their future in the 2015 elections. It is no exaggeration to say that the year 2014 represented the high point in activities that laid the foundations of the collapse of that citadel of poor governance, indifference, insensitivity and unprecedented plunder that was the Jonathan presidency. Northern political elites and people,Christians and Muslims closed the ethno-religious divide, awakened by the burden of the shared legacy of the Jonathan administration in the bombs and bullets of Boko Haram, and the deteriorating standards of living as politicians fleeced the poor of resources.From Borno to Ilorin, Sokoto to Yola, the poor, the young and northern women chose to install a leadership that will make them more secure and provide their children with a productive future.
The elections of 2015 were pre-eminently a victory for the people of Nigeria. For the first time northern votes overwhelmingly combined with those from other parts of the nation to comprehensively reject an administration and a party that had run its course. Our jubilations in the North were not just over the victory of popular will over desperate attempts to subvert it. They went beyond the relief that our nation did not go up in flames over disputed elections. They were about the possibility that we could look to a future without Boko Haram; that our young will get good education, acquire skills and get jobs; that corruption will be arrested, contained and eliminated. We celebrated an end to poor governance; to leadership that run away from threats, and to leaders who remembered the people only when they needed voters.
In 2015, majority ofNigerian voters trusted General Buhari who is from the North, but we did not expect that he will run an administration that will give to the North what it does not deserve. When he said he belonged to everyone and to no one, we believed him. Those that did not vote for him were Nigerians too,people who deserve to be treated with respect and fairness.This was perfectly within the highest tradition of northern leadership as our history and culture have taught us. It was also the best position to adopt for a leader who had spent a large part of his life asking all Nigerians to trust him to lead a nation that is threatened by leaders who fail to lead with honesty,fairness and sensitivity to its plural nature,and an awareness of the limitations of our political process.
More than one year since that historic election in which northern elders and voters mobilized a people desperate for credible and accountable leadership, we meet again in this unique place in northern history, whose symbolism in profound. It is impossible not to recall the millions of young people who followed President Buhari on his campaign trails, pledging to him their unquestioning support and loyalty with full faith that his leadership will address their hopes and aspirations. It is impossible to forget the picture of hundreds of thousands who turned up for him in Maiduguri defying the threats of bombs and bullets. It is not possible to forget adolescents and children who defied parents and security agents to catch a glimpse of a man they had been brought up to believe had the solution to Nigeria’s problems. It is impossible to ignore the unprecedented responses of communities in Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Nassarawa to the Buhari appeal,responses which defied decades of entrenched sentiments that had fed the fiction that there are two Norths, the North of the Birom, and the North of the Hausa; the North of Muslims and the North of Christian. It is impossible not to remember the patently transparent and credible election which raised the bar Nigerians will never allow to be lowered. The world now credits Jonathan with the merit of conceding an election he conceded, but they should count among the heroes of 2015 millions of voters who insisted their votes must count; a handful of Nigerians which include many northerners who played heroic roles in heading- off any attempt to set the nation aflame, and a global community that stood by our nation.
This Summit is not intended to whitewash or smear the Buhari administration. We have established a standard of judgment as a Forum which we will not compromise, and its hallmarks are to be respectful to leaders at all levels, and to speak truth to power. We will not lower the bar where the interests of the North, the unity and security of Nigeria, or the welfare of all citizens are involved. We will engage all leaders and fellow Nigerians as we have always done as northerners: with respect and the certainty that leaders who cannot be advised or criticized are a liability, and fellow Nigerians are deserving of respect in the same manner we demand to be respected.
When we held the Kano Assembly in 2014, virtually the entire North was a battlefront, and the nation was a hostage of Boko Haram. Today we meet in Kaduna in a vastly-improved security atmosphere, with Boko Haram pinned to enclaves. Some will reluctantly acknowledge the leadership of President Buhari in this major development. We will say to him, you have delivered on one of your promises, which was to improve our security. Fellow Nigerians living far away from the effects of Boko Haram may be tolerated if they downplay the significance of the successes against this murderous insurgency. We from the North, however, understand what it means, and we daily thank God that we had a change of administration in 2015, because, without a doubt, a Jonathan administration would have been routed completely by an insurgency that understood that weak political will and corruption had weakened our national resolve to fight it.We commend the gallantry of our armed forces,and we join other Nigerians who caution that it will be counter-productive if we lose sight of the possibility that we need to sustain the fight against this insurgency through all strategies that could end it comprehensively.
Now the nation is beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the humanitarian disaster that Boko Haram’s activities have created. About three million of our fellow citizens are internally displaced and hundreds of thousands of orphans, hunger and malnourishment, previously unknown in our land are now becoming alarming features of our existence. Let no one underestimate the magnitude of the challenge the nation is facing in the north east. We recognize that the simultaneous challenges of continuing the fight against Boko Haram, rehabilitating I.D.Ps and rebuilding lives, communities and infrastructure will require the best in leadership capacities and huge amounts of resources. Let us say without any doubt that we believe that President Buhari can meet these challenges, or at least lay solid foundations for their achievement. But we share concerns that the quality of coordination of efforts, management of skills and resources and the capacities and integrity of government agencies do not do justice to the magnitude of the problem.President Buhari needs to overhaul the existing institutional mechanisms involved in dealing with the management of the humanitarian disaster before the problem becomes much worse than it is.
The sense of emergency which is needed to be applied to dealing with the scale and nature of the humanitarian disaster also needs to be applied to the management of the national economy. Most Nigerians understand that a combination of past abuses and mismanagement of the economy and the collapse of crude prices and sabotage of oil and gas facilities have created a most challenging environment for the economy. We will not join those who say President Buhari should stop reminding us of a past that is haunting us today. We will insist that we hear daily what leaders did in the past, so that we can guard against letting people like them back into power. But we will join those who remind him daily that hunger is stalking millions of homes. Inflation is making life difficult by the day. People are losing jobs. Businesses are closing down. Infrastructure is decaying. Young Nigerians are losing hope of being employed. Crimes like abductions and clashes between herders and farmers,and between communities are challenging the image of an administration that promised to make our lives safer.
Moving from where we are to where we need to be will require patience and fortitude. Until we get there, it will be President Buhari's lot to assemble the Nigerians to advise him and take forward his vision. He needs people who will competently convey his concerns and compassion for citizens,people with proven records in management of the economy and critical institutions,and people who will not compromise his image .He should look around him to be sure that he is being served by the best Nigerians available.
Those who insist that President Buhari’s administration can do much better in managing the recession, in the all-important fight against corruption within the laws of the land, and in rebuilding a nation united around the values of justice and honest enterprise are not his enemies. Most of them are people who voted for him because they shared his belief that we can live secure lives; that leaders do not have to steal our resources and that our children can live in, and work in a nation they can be proud of.
When northerners say they bear the brunt of bad or poor governance more than other Nigerians, they speak from a solid experience of living under leaders who were inept and corrupt . When the Nigerian economy deteriorates, we feel the pain more sharply than other Nigerians. With security, we can feed ourselves and feed the rest of Nigeria. But when cost of inputs become prohibitive, threats to lives limit our productive capacities, herds are stolen or limited by hostile and damaging political interests, the economy of the North suffers. We recognize that restructuring the Nigerian economy will involve a tremendous boost in productivity of the assets which the North is blessed with. We look forward to a restructuring process that involves our assets and our interests, but we ask the President and our Governors to pay close attention to relieving the hardships and stresses which critical and strategic transitions will involve. We ask to be involved as genuine partners, not as targets of policies and programmes that are designed in capitals. Our people are hardworking and we have no desire to depend on any section of the country beyond what is made necessary by the law and the logic of an inter-dependent economy.
We expect our Governors to be in the frontline of the search for credible policies. There are excellent blueprints and suggestions on improving the Northern economy which they can utilize. Please reduce your travels around the world. Real investors will come to you. Spend the money you expend on travels in paying salaries and pensions and expanding employment opportunities for young northerners. Out of the adversity that makes it difficult for you to pay salaries, you must discover opportunities. You asked our people in 2015 to trust you. They did. Now you should trust them.You should trust them to elect those they want to lead Local Government Councils,the same way you were elected.Do not force them to live under unelected leaders,and allow Local Government Councils to spend their own funds.If you do not move beyond lamentations, the people will tally up the days you spend outside the country or in Abuja, or how many months they went without salaries and pensions, and how many young people graduated into crimes and drugs under your administration.They will remember what their Permanent Voters Card and the Card Reader did in 2015, and they will turn their backs to you, the same way they did to your predecessors. We will pray for you and support you to find a way out,but if you cannot have the pristine integrity, tenacity, compassion and faith in the people which President Buhari is known for, you would have let down a man whose momentum got you where you are today.
To our fellow citizens outside the North, we say today, as always, that our faith in the prospects for a strong and united Nigeria is still solid. We hear and understand the clamour to re-visit the philosophy, structures and operations of the Nigerian state, and we join in support of any enquiry and change in the manner we live that will improve our security and the quality of our lives. The North has nothing to fear from any restructuring process, provided we are involved not as a problem but as partners who have a stake in a Nigeria that works for all of us. The North has many issues with the operations of the Nigerian state, but it does not routinely insult and blame elites from other regions for them. On the contrary, we will welcome an opportunity to engage all parts of Nigeria in honest and open-ended discussions on constitutional reforms, the operations of our federal structure and national economy, and all issues which represent major sources of grievance.We want to join others who want to ask why we are paying our legislators so much,whether we need all those in power who take home so much of our resources,why corruption finds it so easy to find space in our judiciary and all critical institutions.Like all Nigerians,we have questions over the manner our nation operates.We want to work with others to establish a basis for identifying what is priority,what is essential,what is fair,what is avoidable and what we need to do as a nation to isolate violence from its central position in our lives.
Until that time when we are able to reach across and speak to each other with deserving respect, the North will continue to share its vision of a nation which has room for all of us in the manner we relate with other Nigerians. We will continue to welcome every Nigerian to live and do business in the North, as evidenced by the existence of many parts of northern cities that are entirely owned by Nigerians from the South. We ask that Governors from states that encourage or condone hostility to lawful herdsmen to desist as these actions threaten the very foundations of a peaceful and united country. We ask Governors in the North to continue to give land to Christians to build their churches without any legal hinderence, the same way we will demand that Muslims in Christian-dominated parts of the country be given land to build mosques and own property as they should under the law. We urge our Governors in the North to pool resources together to establish adequate and safe grazing reserves, as well as engage their colleagues in some states in the South to resist the temptation to endanger the lives of herders or the economy around cattle in which all communities in Nigeria are beneficiaries.
Summit will provide a platform for raising issues that should be raised. We are aware that a few politicians have made an entire career out of demonizing and insulting the North and all it stands for. We will not feed these people with more reasons to be important. What the North will do, as it has always done, is to insist that justice is done to it and to everyone else. When people count political appointees and reach conclusions over marginalization from there,we also count. But we also open up budgets and analyze how much money is allocated to projects in the South and the North; how much is spent on salaries and allowances by the federal government whose employees from southern states are in a vast majority. We will demand our fair share of all positions in government,but we see federal character not just in political appointments,we scrutinize quality;we weigh allocations to agriculture, water resources and solid against other sectors;and we ask questions regarding the current condition of roads like the Abuja – Kano dual carriage way. We see federal character in the absence of a single bank owned by a northerner; in the dangerous de-industrialization of the North and in the allocation of electric power to various parts of the north.
The North does have a voice but we prefer to speak in a manner that makes it heard. So, those who are disposed to listen, please listen. Northern votes were not wasted in electing President Buhari. In 2019, we will also use our votes in a manner consistent with our interests as Northerners. We did not make a mistake in putting up a solid, united front as Northerners in spite of our ethno-religions differences. Those who seek to drive a wedge between us ignore the fact that all Northerners suffered the effects of Boko Haram, poverty and poor governance. All Northerners feel the pains of this recession. We will not walk away from each other into the damaging arms of political and religions merchants who make capital out of our weaknesses. What we did in 2015 we will do again. Any politician interested in Northern votes should work for every Northerner, Muslim or Christian, Kilba or Egbira.
For us in the North, policing lives and livelihoods of communities is now a major problem. We understand that some Nigerians want the nation to look beyond the agitations for Biafra for the possibility that genuine grievances exist. We appreciate the wisdom of discussing with people blowing up our assets in the Delta, and the possibility that the nation could discover a more permanent solution to recurring violence. We support the demands that the fight against corruption must be isolated from partisan influences.We support demands for painstaking respect for the rule of law in the fight against corruption,but this is a fight that should not be compromised.
Your Excellencies, let me say how grateful I am for the opportunity to speak to a gathering of this nature, in a place any Northerner will be proud to even visit. I pray that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ja’ala will bless our nation and our leaders, and bring relief and comfort to all those who suffer under our current circumstances. May Allah have mercy on Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sokoto who was killed along with his wife just a few meters from where we meet today in 1966. May Allah forgive his compatriots who were also killed in the 1966 misadventure. May Allah forgive those who murdered them as well. May Allah give us the opportunities to rebuild our nation, teach its history to our young, and help them to tell their young that they lived and loved a great country. Thank you.
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