Driving along Nigerian highways, particularly the northern highways, on your own gives you a lot of ideas as your eyes roam the endless vistas that stretches as far as the eye can see. The undulating land covered with lush green grass and shrubs gives the eye a sight only imagined in other climes. Settlements dot the landscape with livestock here and there and farmlands scattered evenly around each settlement where one drives past. The scenery continues kilometre after kilometre with the same patterns as far as the horizon. But what catch your attention are the vast empty spaces, which by far are more than the ones under cultivation or grazing. The emptiness is so eerie and leaves one with disbelieve as to the level of the lack of focus and vision by the leadership of the north. That such vast arable land should be left empty and fallow is in itself criminal.
Driving along the Jalingo – Zing road in Taraba State during the week Goodluck Jonathan announced the setting up of an Advisory Committee for the convocation of a conference (national, sovereign?) had me thinking about these empty unutilised natural resource. The criminal neglect of this much sought after resource – land – is an act of ingratitude to Allah (SWT) who blessed the region abundantly with it. The few people I saw along the highway were selling yams, firewood and kayan miya and constitute a negligible percentage of the population who utilise an inconsequential acreage of what God has endowed us with. These farmers are at the very bottom of the survival ladder and are only doing what they are doing for lack of options. Whatever they get for their labour goes into keeping body and soul together. Other perks of life are not part of their daily thoughts. Interestingly, these people seem more contented than me on that day. The pity I felt for them appear lost to them and misguided to me. Looking at them and interacting with them, made me realise that my life is pitiable. That was when my thought turned to Goodluck Jonathan and his “national conversation” – is he or his advisory committee really aware of the existence of such people across the country? If they are aware, who is going to represent them at Jonathan’s cure-all “conversation”?
The realisation such people exist all across the country hit me like nothing did in the recent past. When we pontificate in front of the cameras, do we ever give a thought to these hapless Nigerians who may be in the majority? Do we have them in mind when we talk about 13% derivation, FACC, IGR and so son? Do we truly think of them while calling for a conference, sovereign or otherwise? Are we even aware they exist when we formulate policies that ultimately affect their lives? Has Dr. Adeshina, the Agric Minister, ever seen one of such people or interacted with before introducing his fertiliser by phone policy?
These are people whose collective efforts feed the nation and contributes the largest percentage of our GDP yet doesn’t have a voice in anything government. The other group on this road is the itinerant Fulani cattle herder. They are consigned to the bush by the love of their animals where the government couldn’t provide even veterinary services to their animals. Yet they are the most maligned group in the country today. Every skirmish in the country is attributed to them. Their only contact with the authorities is when the government comes to collect taxes. They have no single benefit to show for their being Nigerians because as far as they are concerned they are stateless. Though they satisfy our insatiable appetite for beef, none of us can point to a single government presence in their lives – they rather bear the brunt of an uncaring country.
The small scale farmers who provide us with our foodstuff and the peripatetic cattle herder who supply the bulk of our proteins intake doesn’t have a voice in the call for a conference, whatever its nomenclature, so who represents them? Who among us, the fat cats and the city slickers, will represent their views and aspirations? Who will put across their case – their grievances, expectations and fears? The Fulani herder may trek from the Mambilla plateau in Taraba state to Aba in Abia state just to take “nama” to the second hand cloth dealer in Aba market. Yet we have never fully considered him a ‘Nigerian’. Or take the case of the tomato farmer in Kadawa, Kano state, who travels down to Port Harcourt in order to make his product available to the fisherman in Nembe. Have we thought of the orange farmer from Benue state, whose wife is exposed to the vagaries of the weather as she travels in an open truck from Benue to Kaduna, Kano or Maiduguri to sell her products?
The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) led by Pastor Jerry Gana in its presentation before the Advisory Committee in Jos called for ethnicity as the basis for representation in the “conversation”. That is fine with me. I hope Pastor Gana has done his homework very well before taking this position. I am comforted by the fact that my state, Adamawa state, will have the highest number of delegates as we have on record 106 ethnic groups in the state. I hope the good Pastor will ensure the representation of the Yofos, States, Holmas, Konas, Gonglas, Yandangs, Chukkols, Dangsas, etc. These are the few ethnic groups I can remember in Mayo Belwa district of Mayo Belwa local government alone. What I find disagreeable in the MBF’s submission is their rejection for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. For the “conversation” to be effective and bring an end to our endless troubles, it must be sovereign. Otherwise we will not be fair to those calling for a sovereign conference for the past twenty years.
I was flummoxed with Pastor’s Gana definition of the middle belt – is it religious or geographic? Last time I checked, Taraba, Gombe, Southern Borno and Southern Yobe are all in the northeast zone. Incidentally all these areas are listed in Pastor Gana’s middle belt. When are we going to grow up please??? Another thing the Gana group advocated for is the creation of more states to address what they called “lingering minority complaint”. What is the guarantee that if today the Nupes are given their state that Gana will not complain about being marginalised because he is a Christian?
For Jonathan’s “conversation” to serve the interests of all Nigerians, it must be made sovereign and the basis of representation should be ethnicity or language as Jerry Gana submitted. For any meaningful and genuine political, and even physical development to take place, it must be based the action of men who see themselves as Nigerians, not men who retreat into their ethnic/ religious cocoons whenever they believe it serves their narrow agenda. A conscious effort must be made to weed out such characters from the “conversation” venue. We must endeavour to ensure men who will develop hypothesis and models with relevance to our political development.
Some people believe the amalgamation of 1914 was a mistake and I say wherever you see a mistake correct it. I hope Jonathan’s “conversation” will prove to be the catalyst for correcting the “mistake” of the English man – ‘de-amalgamate’. Let’s not waste time on nomenclature and concentrate on the substance. Let’s have a Sovereign National Conference based on ethnic representation. At least the Mumuye woman selling yam tubers by the roadside, the Bachama woman selling fish by the Numan bridge, the Fulani woman hawking yoghurt will all be adequately represented and we may finally have the opportunity of correcting the mistake of 1914.
