By Abdu Rafiu
Creation is being driven by motion and motion itself is in life. It is, indeed, as we learn in higher knowledge, the after-effects of Life, of Power. And who is Life and who is Power? It is the Almighty, the only Power from His Throne, through the Divine Realm to the Summit of Creation, through all the realms down to the World of Matter! Were we not told by the Lord Jesus Christ that in His Father’s House, there are many Mansions? The mansions refer to Realms and Realms so vast they are inconceivable to human thinking, survey or imagination. Within the Realms, there are planes and planes. The Father’s House refers to Creation in which there are Realms (Mansions).
Creation can be divided into Paradise and the World “i.e. into spiritual and the temporal. Here also the spiritual is not excluded from the temporal, but the temporal is excluded from the spiritual! We must call the World the World of Matter, which is also penetrated by the spirit! The spiritual is the Spiritual Realm of Creation. Paradise, from which everything that is material is excluded. Thus, we have Paradise and the World., the spiritual and the material…” (“In the Light of Truth”, the Grail Message). The Realms as well as planes are condensation of His Radiations after the well-known Fiat, “Let there Light.” (Genesis 1:3.) Thus, there can be no standstill anywhere in the whole of Creation down to this earth. Where there is no motion, there is no life, and where there is no life there is what is universally called death.
Who can then dare quarrel with the proclamation: “I am the Lord thy God,” the First of the Ten Commandments of God which Moses, returning from Mount Sinai, proclaimed to the chosen people. We must bow our spirits in worshipful adoration of His Holy Name.
What I am getting at is that there can be no standstill in the world. We either make progress or retrogress. We go up or come down. That Motion is given expression in the Laws of Nature. Again, during the week, a piece by Mohammed Bello Doka written early this month was forwarded to me. It is captioned alarmingly: “If the North is not divided, we will never have any sense in the North.” The first question one can ask is whether he speaks tongue in cheek or he truly means what Cassius said to Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings”.
First, his thoughts, he writes: “There is a rumour crawling through the political underbelly of Nigeria that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, after his second term in office, is seriously considering the unthinkable: the formal division of the country. Could it be that the man from the South-West who never believed in one Nigeria has grown tired of endless drain on our collective sanity? Could it be that the Northern experiment, which began with such promise in 1960, has finally revealed itself as a failed enterprise of monumental proportions? And here is the question that should keep every Northerner awake at night: If the sword of division never falls, will the North ever produce a single ounce of sense? The answer, as bitter as it is, is no.”
Bello Doka adds, “Let us begin with the Northern elite. Their obsession with the federal purse is not just an obsession; it is a pathology. For decades, the so-called leaders of the North have clutched onto federal revenue allocation like a drowning man clutching a log of rotten wood. They have been paid and paid and paid again. And what have they given in return? A region where children beg for bread while their governors fly private jets to London. A region where life expectancy hovers below fifty while politicians build mansions in Abuja and Dubai. The Northern elite have turned the federal purse into a feeding bottle, and they have sucked it dry. They have neglected the welfare of their subjects, abandoned the protection of lives and property, and turned banditry and kidnapping into booming local industries. When villages are razed and mothers weep, where are these elites? They are in the Villa, begging for more money from the federal purse, more money always translates to more wives, more mansions, and private jets.
“Then we have the educated class of the North. What a tragedy they are. Armed with degrees from Ahmadu Bello University, from University of Maiduguri, from Bayero University, Kano; and even from foreign institutions, they have done absolutely nothing with their knowledge except decorate their own mediocrity and pampered over bloated pride. They sit in air-conditioned offices, write beautiful policy papers that no one implements, and keep quiet when their own communities are burning. They understand the economics. They see the collapse happening in slow motion. Yet, they refuse to speak, refuse to act, and refuse to lead. They have traded their conscience for a monthly salary and their sense of duty for a government car and periodic allowances, foreign trips, plague of well-furnished woods as awards of life-long achievements. The educated Northern elite is the most disappointing, self-serving, and delusional class of people in all Nigeria.’
Bello Doka is not done: “And what of the business elite? Their philosophy is simple: profit above all else. They have watched their region descend into chaos and turned it into an opportunity. Bandits need supplies. Kidnappers need middlemen. Displaced communities need overpriced food. The business elite of the North have mastered the art of making money from misery. They do not invest in agriculture or solid minerals or renewable energy because they require long-term thinking and genuine development. No, they prefer the quick returns of crisis commerce. They are not builders. They are vultures. They are fat and satisfied precisely because the region remains broken.
“Then we have the so-called Yan Bako, the educated youth who should have been the vanguard of change. Instead, they have become the willing tools of destruction. They carry out the dirty work of politicians. They spread religious bigotry disguised as piety. They have learned nothing from their education except how to hate more efficiently. The Yan Boko are the foot soldiers of ignorance, and they march proudly to the drumbeat of their own ruin armed with proficient and well-polished English fluent enough to rival a Brit.
“Let me be categorically clear. I do not blame the traditional rulers in this regard. Their powers were stolen long ago by military decrees and civilian constitutions. Today, an emir cannot raise an army. He cannot levy a tax. He cannot even discipline a district head without state government approval. The traditional rulers are glorified cultural dancers with big turbans and zero real authority. So, I will not waste words on them. But I do blame the Islamic scholars. You have failed spectacularly. You divide your followers into warring camps: Qadiriyya versus Tijaniyya, Izala versus Darika. You demand cultlike obedience to your particular school of thought while ignoring the core message of Islam itself; Unity and survival of Ummah. Where is the teaching of justice? Where is the teaching of knowledge-seeking? Where is the teaching that Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves? Instead, you have turned the mosque into a theatre of warfare. Your followers are ignorant because you want them ignorant. An ignorant follower is an obedient follower. A knowledgeable follower asks questions. And questions are dangerous to petty power.”
Mohammed Bello Doka has been very severe and unsparing in his censure of the Northern Establishment. There are pronouncements that I can’t but edit out. What has led to the unsparing umbrage? Is it anger? Disappointment? Embarrassment? And I seek to interrogate these. Is his position to give us, not just the Northern elite food for thought but to awaken all of us to the grave situation starring us in the face so that what may be called upbuilding may begin by all of us. Is the trenchant position to trigger holding our destinies in our own hands, a wake-up call? But of course, there are valid observations in some of his remarks. He mentions immense endowment with which the region is blessed, embedded in the soil and many which are there in the open for all to see. He comes down heavily on the traditional rulers saying any one in such an office who cannot stop a single kidnapping has no moral authority to speak. He doubts if they earn respect through service! His criticism of the ordinary Northern man: “He has failed himself. He refused to seek knowledge. He refused to send his children to school, due to poor government policies. He preferred the shortcut of sentiment over the long road of learning. He became the perfect tool for every political manipulator. He is now being used to destabilize and ultimately destroy himself. He carries the weapon that kills his own son. He cheers the politician who steals his future.”
Bello Dako lifts the cover on the immense resources that abound in the region. And the elite “curses the system that he himself refuses to fix. And yet the North sits on resources that could transform the world. Agriculture: the finest grazing lands, the richest soil for groundnuts, cotton, sorghum, maize and rice. The North alone could feed West Africa if it wanted. Solid minerals: gold in Zamfara, tin in Plateau, lead and zinc in all parts of the North, in Benue, Zamfara, Bauchi, Taraba, limestone everywhere, barite for oil drilling, and countless other minerals untouched and unmapped. Rare earth elements: the hidden treasures that power every smartphone and every electric vehicle on the planet.”
Bello goes on: Energy sources: Coal in Nasarawa and Kogi, hydro potential along the Niger and Kaduna rivers, solar radiation so intense that a single square kilometre could power a city. Human resources: a young, energetic population that, if properly educated, could become the engine of African innovation.
“But what do we see? We see a lazy, docile, gullible region that cannot even harvest what grows naturally in its soil. Farmers are chased off their land by bandits while the government does nothing. Solid minerals are dug by illegal miners who sell to foreigners for pennies while the environment is destroyed. Rare earths remain in the ground because no one has the vision to map them. Energy projects are abandoned mid-construction while the people live in darkness. And human resources? They are either fleeing South, fleeing to Europe or Arabia, or picking up AK-47s to become terrorists. Compare us to others. Botswana found diamonds and built one of Africa’s most stable and prosperous nations. Chile found copper and transformed itself into a South American tiger. Niger Republic is beginning to exploit its uranium and gold with more seriousness than they have ever shown. The North has more resources than all these places combined. Yet we are poorer, more violent, and more ignorant than almost any comparable region on earth.”
His suggested solution: Shock therapy…unrelenting shock, baptism of fire, and hold it, a drastic step: division of the country so that the North would be forced to “finally stand on its own feet. No more federal purse to blame. No more southern revenue to fight over. No more excuse that Lagos and Port Harcourt took our money.”
Ha! The question is: Are there no other ways to achieve national objectives, develop and make progress? There certainly are. It is the foundational error Nigerians have to identify and grapple with. It could not have been for nothing that the Sultan, Sir Ahmadu Bello spoke in lamentation: “The mistake of 1914!”
We will need to dig deeper. For, our conduct, the horizon, vision is a consequence of spiritual maturity. It has been repeatedly stated in these pages that we are spirits. Spiritual maturity undergirds our conduct, determines our placement whether as individuals or as a people. What has been lacking is the true knowledge of life and existence, knowledge of how nations could be put together. If they have been put together in error, what remedial structures should be put in place so that the peoples can live in harmony, stand by side but none disturbing the other in their development according to their own pace and in their own light. Their place is determined by circumstances by way of friction, grappling with challenges to force contemplation and a breaking from within to engender inner development and growth, where called for, atonement, and liberation!
This and Chief Awolowo’s deep thoughts will be taken together and treated fairly exhaustively in a subsequent conversation.
GETTING THERE, IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.
Again, we are getting there. It is elating no end that the National Assembly has finally voted for the establishment of State Police in the states. The bill was first passed by the House of Representatives two weeks ago and now by the Senate. There has long been a national consensus on this. What crossing of the t’s and dotting of the i’s that may still have to be done should be quickly cleared and the establishment takes off urgently, wasting no time any longer. as possible. Fortunately, the Speakers, Houses of Assembly in the states have collectively endorsed this second tier of policing. The National Governors Forum from the era of Abdullaziz Yari then of Zamfara State as chairman endorsed and called for the setting up of state police. Regional Establishments, prominent voices such as former President, General Ibrahim Babangida, have all approved of it. Indeed, in the case of Babangida he went on giving Nigerians confidence, saying the fear of misuse of state police by the governors is unfounded and that the world was leaving Nigeria behind.
What’s even more, it is an Executive Bill, that is originating from and was forwarded in the President’s own hand. Policing is local, and it is an imperative in all Federal countries of the world, the United States, Germany, India, Australia stand out, taking account of diversities. What has made it more pressing in Nigeria is the seemingly intractable, indeed, exasperating currents and flow of insecurity in the land. We can now begin to see our way to effectively combating the insecurity in the land. Our brave and capable security forces have spread too thin.
Kudos to the National Assembly. The foot-dragging is over.
The Guardian
