With love still in the air, it perhaps won’t hurt to begin with a small allegory centred around the fine art of loving… and it’s attendant benefits.
Back in the days, the story went, there lived a woman who was generally known, called and addressed as Nwanyiafoma (loosely translated: a good natured woman).
Although not the prettiest female in the community, Nwanyiafoma was the go-to person when mischievous male folks experienced lewd feelings and needed to discharge themselves of the obligation.
Owing to circumstances no one could readily explain, she lived alone and went about her business, without ever sidestepping into anybody else’s lane.
As the story further indicated, Nwanyiafoma’s ordeal in the hands of men began one night, when one middle-aged fellow visited, and begged to eat of her human morsel. After considering the seemingly weird request, she had consented. But not before she had handed him a stern warning: ‘don’t ever come back for another.’
He agreed. Had his way, and left.
Two days later he was back, but upon sighting him, Nwanyiafoma flew into a rage. “Didn’t I warn you not to come back?”
“You did,” he quipped, lamely. “But please, just one more and I won’t come back,” he added.
“Oya, come quickly and take. But remember, don’t ever contemplate coming back,” Nwanyiafoma told him.
Not to lengthen an otherwise short story, not only did Nwanyiafoma’s male partner return, seeking her honey pot upon each visit, he had unwittingly let out snippets of the dalliance one day at the village square, making the male folks – youngsters, the middle-aged and some elderly ones – to turn her residence into a mecca of sorts.
Nwanyiafoma’s story, or is it dilemma, in more ways than one bears huge resemblance with the ordeal(s) Nigeria has had to endure as a country.
Naturally endowed by the creator of the universe with virtually all kinds of mineral deposits, especially crude and hydrocarbons, there appears to be an unceasing rats race, by the various people who inhabit Nigeria to take, and take, from her.
Now, not only do they take, they invite others to do the same, most often using threat as springboard to getting an undue slice of what ordinarily ought to be a common patrimony.
Anyone who appears not to catch my drift need not worry too much, as the country’s recent history, from 1999 to date, would readily bear me out.
Perhaps, a little jab to reawaken our memories. In the run-up to the 1999 elections and the commencement of the country’s 4th Republic, the South west, smarting from the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, and aided by a regional militia, the Oodua People’s Congress(OPC), had left the country with a hobbesian choice: picking a President from among two Yoruba candidates. Either way, head you lose, tail you also lose. And vice versa.
Since we had to pick, we choose Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler. But hardly had he settled into the business of running the country, than youths from the South south, popular as the Niger Delta region, began a fierce agitation for an increased share – for themselves and their region – of the national cake, ironically baked with resources largely gotten from their land.
Acting straight out of the South west rule book, wherein the region’s intelligentsia, through Afenifere, provided political leadership while the OPC stoked fear through combat, governors of the Niger Delta region ignited a Resource Control clamour, while their foot soldiers masquerading as Egbesu warriors, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, and sundry others, began an orchestrated campaign, using kidnapping of expatriates working in the oil industry and pipeline blowouts as linchpin.
The outcomes? Creation of a Niger Delta Ministry, establishment of a Niger Delta Development Commission(NDDC), creation of an Amnesty Office, a full-fledged agency under the Presidency, and of course, an increase in derivation accruals to 13 percent, up from the previous figure of three percent. And as an icing on the cake – which they had long complained of baking almost single-handedly – the region was gifted the country’s Vice Presidency; which fate eventually elevated to the Presidency!
Fast forward to the current administration. After making many parts of the country’s North east ungovernable, with occasional forays into Abuja during the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration, Boko Haram, the insurgent muslim group, was to become such a huge electioneering issue, with claims to decimate and wipe out the group within one year, forming a central part of the manifesto of the incoming All Progressives Congress government.
Although incumbent President Jonathan’s loss of the 2015 presidential election could be located in the feeling of many that the festering insurgence would be better handled by a President of northern extraction – and to boot, an ex-General – time was to reveal that, that alone wasn’t the only item on the shopping list of the North.
With a president from the North west, it wasn’t long before a North East Development Commission(NEDC) was created. Before it, they had been a Presidential Initiative on the North East.
Politically, both regions continue to lap it up. While the North East held the position of Speaker, 2015-2019, and Senate President, 2019-date, the North west continues to dominate appointment into critical segments of the government, including having one of it’s own as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Now, if anyone thinks those who currently call the shots are doing anything out of the ordinary, you better think again. Especially as more ‘goodies’ are said to be in the pipeline.
This is, essentially, where Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi’s recent peace shuttles is clearly headed: an Amnesty Initiative for Boko Haram fighters and bandits terrorising every part of Nigeria.
Already worked out, according to usually impeachable sources, an x-ray of Sheikh Gumi and the road to amnesty for Nigeria’s band of insurgents would form the kernel of the sequel to this piece.
In the meantime, where does the North central and the South east stand in the current game of getting-power-by-threat?
The answers, I dare say, is still blowing in the winds.
Thought provoking write-up. Well articulated. Well done bro.