“Elders do not fight battles, but they know which battles can be won or lost”– African proverb.
A noticeable flurry of activities in many parts of the North involving elderly northerners, politicians, and others who wear both caps is engaging a lot of attention. These activities have not been seen for quite a while in the North. They demand scrutiny and a healthy dose of scepticism regarding their impact.
To be sure, it is also vital that these developments are noted and registered as key elements that speak to the state of the North and its place in the calculations of politicians. More specifically, they speak of the contexts that give character to the terrible state of security of communities in most parts of the North and the grievances of a region that is no longer shy to demand some redress to its damaging decline as the political powerhouse of the nation.
Let’s randomly pick from several engagements involving some northern elites, elders, and politicians currently steering the affairs of the States and the Federal Government. Take the widely-publicised visit by a carefully selected group of elderly and distinguished people from Katsina State to President Tinubu. The visit was significant for several reasons. First, Katsina State has become a favourite hunting ground of sorts for President Tinubu. He had visited when the late President Buhari was out of the country to avoid even a brief uncomfortable cohabitation or for a genuine reason that he needed medical attention, which, as was the tradition, was only available in the UK.
Opinion was divided between the thinking that Tinubu was either paying Buhari back for his support to succeed him, and another, which saw it as an attempt to rub in the fabled failed resistance of the late Buhari to Tinubu’s ambitions right in his backyard. Either way, that visit was substantially a Governor to President affair, and it cemented Governor Radda in the front row of Tinubu’s cheerleaders. The failure to include even a symbolic visit to a beleaguered community or engage simple folk, either running from bandits or looking to conclude arrangements to submit to the outlaw, was registered as a most insensitive outcome of that visit.
Then the Tinubu administration laid the red carpet and went full blast to milk all existing goodwill that was available following the death of a President the North sold to Nigeria and had since been getting enormous pain for its efforts. Tinubu buried Buhari as a hero, and must have heaved a sigh of relief that he was now free of the nagging presence of the key northern shadow on his tilted administration. He now has the God-sent opportunity to re-make the North after his own image. The spoiler was the tragic failure of the Tinubu administration to bring some relief and decisive governance to Buhari’s State. The bandit made more inroads into Katsina communities. You could feel the intense anger at an incompetent or indifferent Nigerian state and pitiable helplessness of communities over the decision to submit to the criminal or abandon lives, livelihoods, and kidnapped relations and take to the road to destitution.
Governor Radda made spirited efforts at damage control on a number of occasions, walking on both sides of the street. It is tough praising an administration that has failed woefully to protect citizens, leaving you with the brunt of anger and desperation. So, a position that says the State government will not make deals with criminals, while bits and pieces of your mandate and territory are being surrendered by communities to the same criminals right under your nose is sustained. The validity of both options are beyond doubt, so distinguished elders from Katsina State were marshaled to meet a President and speak for a desperate community.
There really was nothing spectacular or new at the best and respected of Katsina, meeting and having a photo op with President Tinubu. But it was an attempt at getting some political capital that left all three parties clutching at straws. Tinubu acknowledged the terrible state of insecurity in most of the country, and ordered more of the same currently engaging sundry killers. Perhaps he had not heard of the famous statement by Alex Steffen: “more is not better; better is better”. The governor reminded elders and opinion makers in Katsina that he and President Tinubu care deeply about Katsina State citizens, even when more and more communities are buying peace by submitting to criminal gangs as the only condition of some sort of peace. The Elders and elites got to meet the President and had a statement praising President Tinubu’s administration to the high heavens in their names. It would be interesting to find out how many of them live in Katsina. More to the point, what do they intend to do if the promises of President Tinubu and the Governor merely amount to sustaining the status quo.
The President had issued countless marching orders and deployment of more security personnel in Benue, Plateau, Katsina, Zamfara and Niger states. Commanders, when they do act, move assets from threatened parts to other threatened parts as demanded by politics. In many instances, moving large numbers of human and technical assets takes time and resources. No Commander takes on the President or the NSA publicly in making a case for improvements in numbers, logistics and funding if politically motivated directives are to be respected. So Katsina elders left with an earful of orders at security agencies and another promise to look into the value of creating subnational policing structures. No deadlines. No specific commitments beyond pandering to a clamour that will give the Governors control over their own outfits which would in all probability mirror the failure of the Nigeria federal police.
As the Katsina leaders and Elders met under the stately ambiences of the Villa, another set of elites and elders were being physically attacked by a mob for asking precisely what the favoured Elders under leadership of the Governor were asking.The irony of it was that the attacked group and the celebrated elders meeting President Tinubu were asking for the same thing: the honouring of President Tinubu’s oath to protect the people of Katsina as well as other Nigerians.
Governors of North-East states followed the Katsina elders, this time without a retinue of elderly distinguished citizens from the zone. Perhaps the North- East Governors thought Elders have a tendency to operate outside the script, and it was best to merge partisan assets and demand greater security and economic investment in the region and a people from a zone which had suffered longer than any in Nigeria. Governor of Zamfara State then stepped into the limelight, swearing that the biggest obstacle to ending banditry in his State was the monopoly of security assets by the Federal Government and the politicization of security. Northern Elders Forum, NEF, released a statement demanding greater efforts at curbing the access of criminals into lives of northern communities.
There are many shades of elders in the North who are too far removed from the people they occasionally speak for. Simple folk in towns and villages living literally at the mercy of armed groups are resorting to deals that give them a little respite.The problem is that the criminal has no boundaries or enough honour to respect deals. He can take advantage of a deal to boost his powers, which he then uses against communities he has no deal with. The Nigerian state is stretched beyond what can be ordinarily appreciated. The evidence is in the failure to eliminate or curb armed threats against our communities. There are disturbing concerns among elites and ordinary citizens that most solutions to organized criminal activities are weaponized by partisanship, corruption and incredible wealth in solid minerals which organized criminal activity gives cover to. The response of the administration in doing the same thing over and over again is totally ineffective.
Elders in the North have value, but they are tainted by the tendency to pander to crippling partisanship. There is enough quality in Northern elites to influence the current state of the North. To do this, they have to lower irrelevant boundaries and assume some political weight that will impress politicians. If the North has to be retrieved, it will have to involve massive inputs from Northerners who have experience of running a peaceful and stable North and Nigeria, and they must find ways to influence the politician. They can earn respect of the politician only if he thinks they can make a difference on his stranglehold on citizens. This tight stranglehold on Nigerian politics and lives of all citizens by the politician can and must be broken by an elite that is not already thoroughly compromised by partisanship, greed and fear.
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