FOR AN AREWA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE

Maybe an Arewa co-prosperity sphere is what is needed all this time since Nigeria attained its checkered “independence” in 1960. If this is not what is needed then one is at a loss to explain the sense of frustrations that Northerners feel in co-habiting with other tribal groups. It is pure fallacy to conclude that the southern half has advanced appreciably because of their comparatively earlier contacts with the colonial masters and thus the peoples of the northern half must define the precepts with wish they wish to continue in this oft-pilloried flawed nation-building by Lord Lugard. There is no good doing arrested development as a policy to hold a nation back, akin to the metaphor of throwing away a baby with the bath water. Or as the Idomas of Benue State have it couched in an adage, the fictitious “Mr. Oligbo inadvertently killing himself in the false belief that he would punish his belly by not eating a morsel at all.” Just as Nigeria’s democracy and economy were stabilising in 1983 and Nigerians were experiencing an unprecedented second decade of peace and prosperity, a young General Muhammadu Buhari struck and truncated this national tranquil. In hindsight, this general railed at absolute nothingness because the economy was healthy prior to his intervention.

True to form, he and his successors continually ran Nigeria’s economy aground until it was almost comatose at the time of General Abacha’s death. The rusting industrial hulks of Kaduna are a painful testament to this fact. Instead of arresting Nigeria’s development, these generals should have even encouraged a fast-track Arewa economic integration to provide competition for the Southern Nigeria economic sphere.

When Nigeria’s economy kicked off appreciably once again post-1999 and there was hope and enthusiasm everywhere, an Arewa pillar, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi of the Central Bank of Nigeria, threw a very large monkey wrench into the works and began incarcerating bank chiefs and thus dampening investors’ confidence once again: those who witnessed the banking sector crisis of the early 1990s would agree that Governor Sanusi’s action was a perfectly-choreographed witch-hunt; depositors’ saving were not in the least threatened when Sanusi struck. We heard that monguls like Erastus Akingbola and Cecilia Ibru vowed to open at least a branch of Intercontinental Bank and Oceanic Bank in each of the 774 local government councils of Nigeria; instead of encouraging pro-Northern banks like Bank of the North and Habib Bank to enter into competition mode with the Intercontinental Bank, the Oceanic Bank, and suchlike Southern banks, Governor Sanusi preferred the route of stifling progression and the result was hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and the concomitant bitterness that this spread all around. In 2015, when Governor Sanusi had been kicked out of reckoning and the economy was growing once again, General Buhari pushed his way into reckoning once again promising ShangriLalike tidings. Nigerians fell for this sweet talk plus other things that bordered on appeasing those Attilan hordes screaming out of the Sambisa forests that “unbelievers” have deplored a ruse to rule “for 60 years” and Saudi Arabia flying Nigeria’s flag at half-mast because it is haram for a non-Muslim to be the head of a full-fledged country that count itself a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Now, President Buhari is a veritable civilian dictator with the EFCC, the ICPC, the DSS, an inconsistent Attorney-General, etc., playing the roles of dutiful Rottweilers chasing and muzzling opposition elements here and there. President Buhari’s clout should have been used to galvanise Arewa into beating poverty and never again sinking into an economic abyss but, no, Ibrahim Magu et al, would “vow” to fight an “inherited rot with their last blood,” effectively dividing the country along a North-South fault-line. In 2018, Nigeria would have the highest number of people living in poverty of any country in the world and the painful realisation is that a hefty chunk of these wretched folks are Northern Nigerians (the people of Arewa). Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State