One way or the other, the North appears to be up in arms against the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is hardly surprising given the fact that the region has a way of being thrown into spasm whenever power slips off its hands. The region had got accustomed to power, having held sway in the power arena for a disproportionate number of years against the South. Only a few months ago, power shifted southwards. But the North, from all indications, is not getting what it expected from the new order. What could have gone wrong?
It is important to recall that, in the build-up to the 2023 presidential election, the northern cabal which was massed up in the All Progressives Congress (APC) and led by the likes of Nasir el-Rufai and Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, had captured the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari, in the dying days of his presidency, had, for reasons that were not obvious to many, become a lame-duck President. Someone, or some people, needed to chart the finishing course for the regime. The cabal whom the President’s wife, Aisha, had cause to complain about, came handy here. They dictated the tone and timbre of how Buhari would wind up.
One of the agenda they propagated was their much-touted resolve to have power shift to the South. Even though they made a singsong of this, their intention was anything but patriotic. Its objective was to further lubricate the political wheel of the North so much so that the region would always run ahead of the South in matters of power grab and utilization. For the cabal, therefore, power shift to the South meant so much more. It was to be on the terms of the powerbrokers. They knew what they wanted and they encouraged Buhari to play along. As sitting President, Buhari had a major role to play in who succeeded him. He had all the instruments of coercion, suppression, manipulation and oppression. The cabal was to rely on these to ensure that its agenda was realised.
As the face of the cabal, El-Rufai had perfected a devious agenda of Muslim-Muslim ticket in his Kaduna State. His aim was to give the boisterous Christian community in his state a bloody nose. They must be made to submit to their Muslim brothers in the state. El-Rufai wanted this divisive agenda exported to the centre. Buhari would shift power to a southerner on the condition that the ticket had to be a Muslim-Muslim one.
Having perfected the Kaduna agenda, El-Rufai and his gang were poised to try out the obnoxious idea at the federal level. How would that work? Tinubu, the Muslim candidate from the South, who also belonged to their political party, the APC, would be a fitting instrument for the job. He would be supported and backed by state power to clinch the presidency, if he accepted to have a Muslim as his running mate. Tinubu, they knew, wanted power at all cost and would, therefore, jump at the offer.
That was how the putrid agenda of Muslim-Muslim ticket came about. The North would relinquish power to the South but it (the North) would ensure that it got a good deal. Provoking the Christian segment of Nigeria and getting them to submit ultimately to the superior hold of Islam over Christianity in the country would be a major achievement. It would, they reasoned, permanently consign Christianity to a second order position in Nigeria.
This noxious agenda by the cabal was being pursued regardless of the phenomenal impact that the Peter Obi campaign was having across the country. Obi was popular. He had a mass appeal. He was clearly superior to the other presidential candidates both in the depth and richness of his ideas and their delivery. He was the new kid on the block who was set to topple the apple cart. How would the cabal contain this political hurricane? To deal with the situation, the cabal had to wake the then slumbering Buhari from his crippling sleepiness. The overriding strategy was to stay with Tinubu, the holder of their Muslim-Muslim ticket, and ensure that he grabbed power with the support and backing of the presidency headed by one of them.
How the northern cabal ensured Tinubu’s emergence as President is no longer the story. That is already too well known to all of us. What is at issue now is how those who ceded power to Tinubu are finding his presidency. From what we have seen so far, Tinubu must have fooled the North. He accepted their same-faith imposition and thereby left them with the impression that he would do their bidding at all times. But that was as far as it went. Tinubu had an agenda which the cabal that installed him neither imagined nor anticipated. This sudden realisation has put the North on edge. Having taken over power, Tinubu has thrown overboard all that he promised the North. He has shoved the region aside in favour of his South West geopolitical bloc. Contrary to the milk and honey that it expected, Tinubu is feeding the region with vinegar. The North is feeling disappointed.
What then is or will be the northern response to the betrayal visited on the region by Tinubu? Not much has been seen. Maybe it is too early in the day to decode the northern game plan. But what is playing out now can be said to be the region’s most immediate and handy response. The agenda we have in our hands is one of terror. Whereas insecurity was already a major source of concern to the government, the North has escalated the scourge to an all-time high. Mass abductions and killings are taking place everywhere in the North. In recent weeks, the region has become a haven for terrorists. They operate at will without let or hindrance. The near effortless ease with which the terrorists carry out their operations seems to suggest that there is no government in the land. The North, at present, is being held hostage by bandits, kidnappers and terrorists. Life in the region has taken the Hobbesian dimension. It is nasty, brutish and short. Everyone is running for cover, and this is a sad commentary on the Tinubu presidency.
This northern response to the Tinubu betrayal is a familiar one. We have seen it before. It came into play during the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency. Whereas Tinubu’s sin against the North is too well known, the same could not be said of Jonathan. His (Jonathan’s) only crime then was that he wanted to remain as President beyond 2015. The North did not want that. Consequently, it unleashed a spiral of violence, death and destruction on his presidency. Jonathan eventually lost power through a combination of negative factors, including the sponsored terrorism that virtually crippled his government.
Now, the North is unleashing the same pattern and measure of terror on the Tinubu presidency. What will they achieve in the long run? Time, as they say, will tell.