Kaduna’s troubled waters

    He who wants to plant corn must make peace with the monkeys. African proverb.

The pathetic drama around the comments of Dr Obadiah Mailafiya, and subsequent developments represent another page in a script being written by many authors with the blood and tears of largely helpless  villagers in parts of Kaduna State. The public domain has been clustered by hate and noise and outlandish tales manufactured by people too far removed from vulnerable communities. Neutral grounds are virtually non-existent. Elite ensconced far away in Kaduna, Abuja, some other northern cities and parts of the south of the country stoke dangerous fires while local villagers stay awake at night waiting to be attacked, or planning attacks. God is invoked to raise passions that seek to do what God condemns. Whole generations grow on injustices and atrocities that must be righted and redressed. Hate and fear have become the largest growth industry in an area that will qualify as one of the poorest in Nigeria.

How do you create peace without peacemakers? Every potential peacemaker is an active combatant. Geography and history have combined to create a cocktail of a community that can neither distance itself from a past basically shaped by violence, nor create a new basis of existence. It is not that the region has been frozen in time and space. In the last four decades, Southern Kaduna had undergone extensive geo-political transformation largely targeted at redressing perceived historical and cultural injustices. These have made the region neither richer nor more peaceful. Every solution appeared to have been built on a problem. There have been efforts to build institutions and create employment opportunities within the region by many governments. Yet this same period has witnessed some of the worst atrocities by communities against each other. Without peace, this region can only retrogress.

Now this region faces its worst possible nightmare: a conflict that will not just take a few hundred lives and then rest until the next fight. This time, the enemy can neither be defeated nor persuaded to go away because its grievance is embedded in the foundations of every town, village and individual. Villagers see danger in every stranger or neighbour, and they hear of grand schemes to exterminate them, appropriate their lands or convert them into another religion. Hundreds of military personnel are being deployed to the region, but every native knows that they cannot stop an enemy who lives in hearts, in remote villages and owns his weapon and grievance. The one who attacks is the enemy. When you attack, you are defending yourself. The nature of this vicious circle is lost in the generic term, ‘Southern Kaduna Killings’. Mainstream media makes huge capital from this tragedy. Politicians, including those who do theirs in the name of God, make capital out of the fear and helplessness of a million villagers mourning relations or waiting for worse. There are many groups here who are versed in stoking fires, and none that knows how to put them out.

It is not impossible to stop the current killings in the short term and lay the foundations of sustainable peace in this region even if some steps  have become intensely unpopular with some champions of the conflict. First, it is impossible to isolate the trigger to the current conflict from the killings that have made many Hausa-Fulani communities in Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and many other parts of the North West helpless victims of the evil on two wheels with an AK47 strapped on his shoulders. Not all Fulani are bandits, but, as many communities have found out earlier, you play into the hands of Fulani bandits when you fight back. Many Fulani are also victims, but the bandit feeds on the myth that he protects his own. A few months ago, communities in this region joined the long list of communities who were victimised twice: initially as victims, then again as victims of revenge for the temerity to stand up. It is important that these communities exercise their rights to be protected by those with responsibility to protect them, the same way millions are doing in the north. It is also vital that they close gaps between them and design local strategies that protect all of them.

Second, so long as the communities sustain their current hostile posture towards each other, they will  continue to play into the hands of those who attack and retreat, leaving them to search for enemies among neighbours. No community will sit idly to be exterminated, but this region is in danger of turning every villager into an armed fighter or a victim. Before long, the large number of boots on the ground, the State and federal governments will join the long list of enemies involved in genocide against particular groups because they have been unable to stop the killings. How much isolation and hostility targeted inwards can the communities of southern Kaduna stand?

Three, the economic poverty of the region is surpassed only by poverty in its leadership. Today, Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) has supplanted powerful ethnic associations, political and other elites and traditional rulers among the non-Muslim communities. It has subsumed the awesome powers of the Church in leading communities on matters of politics and co-existence. The non-Hausa/Fulani Christian elite of the region is deeply divided, and much of it is cowed by aggressive insistence that only militant narratives should be heard. External champions are sniffing around to make capital from people they will not help with jobs or investments. SOKAPU smells only enemies and collaborators. An influential organization that should be deeply involved in the search for peace is laboured by short-sightedness that creates the impression that southern Kaduna belongs to particular groups and faith, or can be made into one; conflating faith and partisanship into damaging political isolation; and a false consciousness that gives it the assurance that it alone represents the interests of Christian communities.

The Hausa-Fulani Muslim community’s local leadership is virtually non-existent, and its cause has not been taken up by leadership of its faith and kins in the North or Nigeria. It has found it difficult to adjust to the status of a political minority and  a statistical majority. It cannot move beyond the horrors of past mass killings in Zangon Kataf, Zonkwa, Unguwar Rimi, Kafanchan and other places that were homes to their ancestors, yet it cannot seem to get the justice it feels it deserves. Tragically it now has a solid victim mentality, the type that ties a community with a past and creates a mentality that seeks only restitution. It seeks to match SOKAPU in style and substance, but it lacks the latter‘s extensive, if opportunistic armour and network. It now has to answer for every killing that neighbours cannot pin on elusive killers, and it is being made to fight someone else's battles.

The combative character of Governor Nasir el-Rufai has its uses, but on this issue, it merely  fits the bill for groups that want to perpetuate the narrative of a people under attack without sympathy or protection from their government. It is difficult to fault the steps the government of Kaduna State has taken in Chikun and Kajuru LGAs, particularly the efforts to get communities to own and drive the processes that create and sustain peace. A governor who never leaves the trenches should know that adversaries will open up new fronts, and stretch him too thin and two wide to win the war. Long before other northern governors knew what ravaged villages looked like and the limited value of the deployment of policemen and the military in mitigating threats, el-Rufai had become a veteran from just one LGA, Birnin Gwari. In this instance, he needs to out-flank those who benefit from these killings by exploring other options to build peace.

 

    With all his bravado, el-Rufai cannot be indifferent to efforts that seek to show him as incompetent in managing crises, and indifferent to the plight of a whole section of the population under his trust. This governor who is passionate about demolition pasts and creating his own versions of the future will be judged badly by history if he does not explore all avenues to help communities build bridges; learn to distinguish between false prophets and genuine saviours; and recognize the reality that  hostility alone merely breeds more hostility. He must rise above the fray, and resist the temptation to exchange blows with minions who will write his story with more blood long after he leaves. Kaduna State is too important to be left to opportunists and adventurers to continue to exploit.

Since last week’s provocation

Politics offers yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems. Marshall McLuhan

  Most of the response  to my column last week agreed that it was kite- flying on the part of Malam Mamman Daura to nudge the nation away from a fairly known (if thoroughly abused) routine of zoning and rotating elective offices (actually we are talking the office of the President here).I thought the word provocation would be impolite if applied to an elder like Malam Mamman, although the political terrain tends to make elders a little less recognizable in this country these days. I had laboured under the impression that I had followed the political firmament fairly closely from the type of distance that allows you to be wrong and still sleep well, but the last few days have revealed a lot that makes up the fascinating and often worrisome phenomenon that is Nigerian politics. I thought I should share some of the most important issues that arose from reactions and discussions. 

1.   Motive

 

        There was  broad agreement  that he offered a personal opinion to redress a drift towards the institutionalization and universalization of a political arrangement created to address a historically-specific problem. Its continuation would harm the nation by short-changing its search for competent leaders to steer it through the next challenges stages in its development. Worse, it threatens to perpetuate a problem that ought to have been solved at this stage. It freezes a political process that should develop from engaging and resolving problems related to pluralism and inclusiveness and the creation of consensus among the elite.

 

Another  possible motive could be the realization that a southern presidency for quite possibly the next eight years will damage the north irretrievably, after his uncle’s two terms would have left it a lot more insecure, poorer and more divided. The only real asset the north could be certain of in a democratic setting is its voting power and its questionable ability to think and act politically as a region. To be forced, threatened, intimidated or cajoled into giving this up is to strip it of its loincloth. No one says the northern voter must vote only a northern candidate, but no one should insist that he votes for a southern president because politicians looking at their fortunes say so either. There is a popular view that a northerner who is both competent and popular can be freely elected.

A substantial number of people also thought that a possible motive could be to distance President Buhari from possible fallouts and consequences of having to live under the questioning attention of a PDP president, in the event that  APC fields  a southern candidate and  loses. Without a doubt, even the most forgiving President elected on APC platform will have many questions to ask President Buhari, ministers and officials regarding the management of the economy, among other issues related to governance. There could be  a few people who squirm at Tinubu’s recent political outings  as party leader. They look at his soiled hands in the party, Lagos and Edo States, and they worry whether President Buhari and his small circle will sleep with both eyes closed under his Presidency.

2.    South Vs North

 Two issues were particularly revealing regarding the North/South divide. The first is the dominant of the insistence that the northern voter has no obligation to vote for a candidate decided by leaders of his political party. If he has to be persuaded, it will have to be done by politicians he trusts and feels comfortable with. Right now, these are very thin on the ground. The caliber of current northern political leadership is pitiable, and it does not help the case for rotation that some leaders will appear to be jockeying for positions under a southern President at the expense of the north.

The second issue is the damage which the zoning/rotation idea has done to the expectations that leaders will be just and fair to all sections and all Nigerians. The primacy attached to identity politics creates for it the impression of a zero-sum game. With the spread requirement,  the constitution has taken adequate care of concerns that leaders could emerge only on the basis of sectional support. The more you tell the  northern peasant or petty trader running away from bullets, robbers and rapists that a president must be elected from the south because politicians say it must be done to unite the country, and other Nigerians want to enjoy power he has not enjoyed, the more he thinks he is being abandoned for another eight years. Southern politicians who hurl abuses and insults at northerners for every  ill in the country provide ample motivation to many northerners to stay closer to theirs. You could pry away a substantial portion of votes of minority north, but it will be at a huge price that could compound the region’s and nation’s fragile security and unity.

The strongest argument against the rotation/zoning principle has been that it serves the fiction of the existence of a south and north, two regions that each share broad interests and commonness which make them counterpoints to each other. Even a stranger to Nigerian politics knows that the north is so heterogeneous that rotation merely benefits the largest religion and the biggest of its many ethnic groups. Far from improving access to power by smaller groups, rotation merely recycles the instruments of dominance. Similarly, the idea of a political south comes to life only when there is something to share or wrest from northerners. The rest of the time, major groups maintain as much distance and hostility as they can from, and towards each other, and smaller groups only get their share when they cause trouble. As we speak, the tussle between Yoruba and Igbo over who should field a presidential candidate in either party is assuming fearsome proportions. There is a theoretical possibility that an Igbo PDP or a Yoruba APC candidate could ignite enough anti-north sentiment to create a pan-south support to counter the numbers of the north, but there are no politicians working to build bridges across huge, historical political chasms in the south.

 3.   Will there be trouble without rotation?

There are many Nigerians from the north who think it is the right thing to do to support the emergence of a President from the south in 2023.There are also many from the south who think without rotation, the country will be handed over to forces looking for good reasons why they should question their stay in Nigeria. Majority of Nigerians just want credible elections and good leaders who will heal the nation. If politicians from the south and north engage productively,

it will be possible to field a southern candidate, but no one will guarantee that they will win. The same applies to politicians from the north who believe they can win in spite of their primary identities. Rotation is about winning tickets, not winning elections (although this position will be vigorously disputed by some northern PDP politicians who believe rotation does not occur unless power is actually won and exercised).  If parties allow fair processes to work in the manner their candidates emerge and the electoral process works with an improved level of transparency, fears over rotation will not translate into serious problems. If there will be trouble over rotation, it will be an intra-party problem which the parties will sort out or pay a price for.

4. Is there a solution to the rotation problem?

 

        In a way, Malam Mamman Daura had offered one solution: just find the most competent person(s) and trust them with power. This solution, however has many problems, not the least of which is that competence dressed by politics wears many looks. President Buhari gained from perception of competence and was not a product of zoning/rotation in his party. Alas, he is not a shining example of the primacy of competence over all else. A third party which is not trapped by the rotation problem and other anachronistic baggage of the two big parties could field a competent Nigerian who could win against the PDP and APC. This option, if it works, could signal the rebuilding of the nation’s political process, and put behind us all the nightmare of recycling problems in the name of the search for solutions.

Let’s speculate

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch. Wilma Brown.

   It is most improbable that Malam Mamman Daura expressed a personal opinion when he provoked a predictable furore last week around zoning of elective offices. More than anyone else, Malam Mamman knows that he had long forfeited the right to express a personal opinion in public, and on a public matter. Improbable, I said, not impossible.It is no one’s fault that Malam Mamman has left ample space for being second-guessed since he assumed a pivotal role in the political fortunes of his uncle, President Muhammadu Buhari, and in the affairs of the north for longer than that.

    It will be legitimate to indulge in some speculation behind the rare comments of the most important private citizen today. Could it be the case that Malam Mamman hopes to deflect national outrage at the spectacular failure of the Buhari administration to get some handle on widening insecurity and embarrassing setbacks in the fight against corruption by lighting a fire around a combustible issue such as zoning of elective offices? If that was the game plan, it was a good choice of combustible material. The snag is that Boko Haram insurgents, bandits and a dozen  other armed groups making a living out of weaknesses of the Nigerian state and  making President Buhari look inept, weak and indecisive do not appear to have been  part of the script. Voices for and against Malam Mamman’s rare outing competed with the public  interrogation of Nigerian soldiers by Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum after he escaped what looked like an ambush on his way to Baga, and the Shehu of Borno’s plaintive cry that Borno people are no longer safe.

    Another speculation: President Buhari does not want to get his hands dirtied (and his life after presidency discomfited) in the maneuvers over who should get his nod, or with quarrels over where the ticket should go for 2023.He has a moral obligation to support Tinubu’s ambition to run in 2023, but his moral obligations do not have much of a leverage. His last-minute intervention a few weeks ago restored some semblance of order because it was in everyone’s interest to seem to be loyal and respectful to a party leader. There could be a few people like Malam Mamman who would remind a lame duck President Buhari that he will not be able to pull out  any more chestnuts out of fires. The rest of the trip to 2023 will be rough and bruising. Staying out of the fray will be very difficult  and an expensive gamble, but choices have to be made. Tinubu’s people will be chalking  up Malam Mamman’s comment as a major assault and a setback .Most of them will not hear any argument over differences between the uncle and the nephew. They will insist that a worst-case scenario would be that President Buhari offers no opinion at all over zoning in APC. Saying that an unwritten, but powerful rule should  be jettisoned is akin to doubling up on Tinubu and other southern APC politicians’ burdens.

  Or, consider this: Malam Mamman acts on his own and attempts to bail out a President who needs a firm hand to keep him out of even more serious trouble. He washes the President’s hands clean on all issues to do with who succeeds him. He  prepares the President to assume a moral high ground. First, no one will fault the argument for elevating competence over all other considerations. Second, zoning principle is not in APC constitution and it may win the party a few points when it campaigns for competence. Third, there is a suggestion of a level playing ground for all interested parties: no one needs feel  aggrieved because the primacy attached to competence does not negate the idea that concessions could be made to zones or regions by the political process. In other words, there are competent people all over Nigeria, and whoever emerges candidate would not have fought other  good  opponents with both hands tied behind their backs.

      And finally: the President does want APC to win the election, but does  not want some particular people to fly the flag and possibly succeed him. This thinking will be more contingent on what the opposition does or does not do. Zoning will bestow some advantages on some politicians, and after his eight years, no one gets prizes for guessing that these are likely presidential material from the southern part of the country, or, more specifically, from the south west. With the patterns and spread of votes established in the last three or four elections, a popular PDP candidate from the north could beat a southern APC candidate. President Buhari is unlikely to boost the chances of any candidate he hugs too tightly given  current  disposition towards him, particularly in the North. If PDP fields  a northern candidate and APC  fields a southern candidate, a strong endorsement from Buhari will be a death knell to that candidate. If both parties field northern candidates, northern voters will scrutinize the APC candidate very closely for evidence that he has  no traces of Buhari.
 
     It is difficult to see how Malam Mamman’ provocation is  innocent. The idea that northern voters will do the bidding of politicians and vote candidates that are products of zoning  had suffered major damage in the PDP under Jonathan. The sentiment is strong among northern voters that they are free to vote for another northern candidate, and they will exercise that choice in 2023.Malam Mamman’s position distances President Buhari from blame in the event of that possibility. It offends southern politicians who feel that an endorsement of the idea of north-south rotation will, for what it is worth, improve their capacity to work with northern power brokers to mobilize northern voters for them. On the other hand, it gives encouragement to northern politicians who are gearing to fight it out with southern politicians.

      Nigerians from the South are offended by the mere thought that northerners could contemplate ‘keeping’ the presidency for another eight years after Buhari. Last minute defections over grievances by powerful politicians has now become one of the hallowed traditions of the Nigerian political system, and it will be a mistake to assume that the issue of zoning will not be a major influence on the fortunes of the two major parties. Significantly, influence of parties on powerful members, and  control of politicians  on voters from both parties is waning. Politicians from the South are guilty of hardening the stubbornness of the northern voter by the manner they cling to a sense of entitlement, complete with dire threats, if any northern candidate dares aspire for the presidency. The image of 12 northerners battling  it out for the PDP ticket in Port Harcourt before the 2019 elections are fresh in the minds of Nigerians. This will haunt both parties.

    Zoning was a scheme to accommodate political ambitions, and had very little to do with the interests of Nigerians. The  fallacy that zoning improves the fortunes of citizens from particular regions has been laid to rest by the spectacularly dismal impact of Buhari’s leadership on the lives of northerners, empirical evidence that there are more than one North and South, corruption and  incompetence. Now it threatens the foundations of a nation. There is virtually no attempt to cobble together a solid front involving the three geo-political zones in the south to improve negotiation capacities. Northern politicians sit smugly on the assumption that millions of northern voters will only vote for them.

      Northern politicians are haunted by the dismal record of President Buhari, and PDP politicians from the north can smell the carcass that will be left by Buhari, but few of them can be believed when they say they will breath new life into it, with politicians from the south playing second fiddle. Southern politicians suffer from endemic weakness in numbers, and they realize they have to have a hefty push from many northern politicians and voters. They will need more than insults and threats to make major inroads into the north. There is some space for an option to the two major parties, but it could be taken up by aggrieved politicians from the two parties. Perhaps there is a profound lesson in Malam Mamman Daura’s provocation, whether it was intended or not. It is this: the challenges facing  post-Buhari Nigeria will be so serious, Nigerians must realize that they cannot resolve them using old, worn-out tools.