WOLE SOYINKA, EL-RUFAI AND SOUTHERN KADUNA

The imbalance in the economy had on several occasions culminated in violent agitations such as the riots staged between 1946 and 1966 by the Kalaf and other related peoples in southern Zaria over certain injustices suffered under the leadership of the settlers. Earlier in 1942, there had been political protests among the Kaje group of the Zango Katab district over perceived discrimination by the Native Authority administration against the people of Southern Zaria. Such protests marked the beginning of what was to become a continuous agitation over political representation and economic participation by Southern Zaria, in the state. The specific demands made in some of those agitations included increased autonomy and control over local matters, the indigenisation of all district head appointments in southern Zaria, establishment of independent chiefdoms for all the southern Zaria tribes, the cessation of the proliferation of village heads as a strategy of divide-and-rule by the officials among the settlers, cessation of discrimination by Native Authority administration against the southern Zaria people, the establishment of a Customary Court of Appeal for non-Muslim groups to complement the existing Sharia Court of Appeal, the subdivision of Kaduna into one or two new states in order to put an end to the minority status of the southern Zaria people.

Rotimi Suberu has described official responses to these demands and protests as varied, from outright repudiation and denunciation of the claims of the southern Zaria communities in that regard. Suberu adds that despite the dismissal of the Native Authority of the agitations by the southern Zaria population as the work of a “few vocal malcontents and missionaries”, the regional or state governments have attempted to implement some repressive programmes which included “the prohibition of discriminatory acts by Native Authority officials against the southern Zaria population, the promotion of political de-centralisation through the establishment of village and district councils, the establishment of an Outer Court in order to facilitate the participation of southern Zaria groups in official matters, the employment of Native Authority departments and welfare projects in southern Zaria and the transfer of the independent districts of Moroa, Kagoro and Kwoi from the Zaria Province to Jema’a Division.” Suberu is of the opinion although such policies as implemented by the government did not put a total stop to the ethnic agitations in southern Kaduna, two notable goals were achieved through them namely, that the policies prevented a total polarisation of the state and ameliorated the fears and grievances of the southern Zaria people, even though the state thereafter witnessed three crises that were ethno-religious in nature namely, the Kafachan Crisis of March 1987, the Zangon Katab Riots of February 1992, and the Zangon Katab Riots of May 1992. To investigate and address the causes of these and other crises of similar nature, successive administrations in Kaduna State and the country at large had set up different tribunals, committees or commissions such as the one headed by Mrs. Hansine Donli (1987), the one established by the federal government and chaired by Justice A.G. Karibi-Whyte (1987), the one led by Justice Rahida H. Cudjoe (1992), the one chaired by Alhaji Isa Aliyu Shika( 1992). It is not out of place to add to the government’s response to the virtually incessant ethnic clashes in Southern Kaduna, the subdivision of the state into Kaduna and Katsina by the Babangida Administration in 1987. Yet, there has not ceased to be a clamour in some quarters for further subdivision of Kaduna State into Zazzau and Jema’a or Gurar (Southern Zaria) in consonance with the existing ethnic configuration in the state namely, the Hausa/ Fulani-non-Hausa minorities’ divide.

In the face of these facts and figures the insensitivity allegedly demonstrated by the State Governor through what the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) recently described (as published in notable Nigerian dailies on January 21 - 22, 2017 as his “use of hate speech to distort history over endless killings in the area”. Such a condemnable attitude coupled with the governor’s widely publicised claim to have “paid the killers of Southern Kaduna people to stop the carnage,” spurred Nigeria’s revered Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka into commenting publicly on the crisis which he erroneously characterised as “religious” rather than ethnic in nature, as he incorrectly described the ethnic agitators as “religious forces,” like Boko Haram’s Muhammad Yusuf. It may interest the governor to learn that there is no need for witchhunting in the name of prosecution. Rather, there is need to launch a virtually panoramic investigation into the various issues raised in this discourse with a view to getting to the roots of the matter and addressing the issues once and for all. And the federal government must not remain silent and passive in this regard. Dr.Saheed Ahmad Rufai, Acting Dean, Faculty of Education, Sokoto State University