El-Rufai’s ‘two-country’ lie – TheNigerialawyer

Abimbola Adelakun [email protected]^[1]

On Saturday, Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, spoke at the
Northern Youth Summit organised to deliberate on developing
northern Nigeria. He painted a picture of Nigeria’s defective
growth and development. El-Rufai said two countries presently
inhabit the womb of Nigeria and while northern Nigeria ranks the
same as war-torn Afghanistan, southern Nigeria is “developing.” His
speech was full of other ethnic-tinged howlers, and curiously, that
was where he stopped. He did not get to the part where he reflected
on the role the elite like him played in the fate of the North.

Truly, the worst-hit states in almost all the measurements of
growth and development are in northern Nigeria, and that is not
surprising. Years of militant convictions, of religious doctrines
and abysmal leadership have birthed a concatenation of poverty,
diseases, terror, violence, banditry, drug abuse, and other indices
of social breakdown. El-Rufai is right that Nigeria’s weight of
poverty, illiteracy and other indices of underdevelopment sag in
the North. Whatever hope one has that Nigeria can overcome its
challenges is usually dashed by taking just a cursory look at the
northern situation. The region has been a quasi-war zone with the
North-East a theatre of war since Boko Haram’s 2009 uprising. The
North, however, is not monolithic neither is Nigeria’s
underdevelopment limited to that region; almost every Nigerian is a
victim of Nigeria!

El-Rufai said other things, some of them factual enough. At the
same time, we should be careful about a complacent narrative that
pits a “backward North” with “developing South.” This dichotomous
rhetoric should give us pause. Notice that “developing” is in the
present tense? That gives the impression that the South is
undergoing some economic rejuvenation and social refurbishment that
is being denied the North. Words are powerful, and in a tribalised
polity such as ours, they also have policy implications. When those
words are uttered by someone like el-Rufai, we need to be
circumspect and even paranoid. In 2016, Borno State governor,
Kashim Shettima, also contrasted the “two countries” inhabiting
Nigeria saying, “poverty wears a northern cap,” while the South is
“more stable and prosperous.” These look like a chain of spin
narratives by political actors to eventually dispossess other
longsuffering Nigerians what they have achieved in their region in
spite of atrocious Nigerian leadership.

Why is the lamentation about the northern condition coming up at
the time general sensibility has it that Nigeria is being Islamised
and “Fulanised”? The managers of Nigeria’s affairs have not tackled
the perception that undergirds the reality of Fulani hegemony. They
have instead doubled down on their clannish proclivities. Now,
el-Rufai wants us to believe that southern Nigeria has a
comparative advantage over the North? No, there is no “developing
South” anywhere; all of us are jointly diminished by the leadership
class. Southern Nigeria too suffers from the problem of poverty,
ill-literacy, and poor infrastructure.

Nigeria has failed to grow and develop like any other country
where the elite are more concerned with state capture for their
friends; where rentier mentality informs revenue generation, and
the politics of religion subtends policies and projects. From the
South to the North, the Nigerian tale is that of poverty,
dilapidation, and abject waste of human resources. If el-Rufai had
looked well enough, he would have seen that even the South suffers
from a chronic lack of infrastructure and resources. Southern
Nigeria is at the lowest ebb in the history of modern Nigeria. The
only thing that has grown is the population, and at an exponential
rate that cannot be sustained by available infrastructure. From
schools to hospitals, public infrastructure, and social welfare,
southern Nigeria lives on past glory. The federal roads that pass
by my childhood home in Ibadan, constructed over 40 years ago, have
not received a single tar in more than 20 years. The manufacturing
industries that we grew up with are long moribund, and most
families today do not have enough to survive let alone boast
disposable income. In terms of revenue, Lagos State is the outlier
and even what they generate disappears into the sinkhole of
corruption and incompetence. The state of their infrastructure does
not reflect the level of resources they generate.

So, where did el-Rufai see “developing South”?

We should not get carried away with the misery of the “backward
North” benchmarked against the “developing South” and allow
el-Rufai to get away with tales that lack introspection. If the
North is sinking because of its social troubles, it is because its
leaders – including el-Rufai – prefer it that way. There is a
reason the northern states fund religious pilgrimages and mass
weddings (to boost reproduction) ahead of education and health.
Recently, the Buhari administration reversed itself on the
purported almajiri ban and none of them was struck by the urgency
of the almajiri situation to protest. One even wonders why an
administration known for not keeping promises bothered to
contradict itself when it could just not back its announcement with
action. By merely announcing a ban, the administration must have
rattled the elite so much it had to reassure them by publicly
backtracking. One can only imagine what the proposed ban did to the
political and religious establishments whose privileges are built
with the blood and flesh of almajiri children.

After President Goodluck Jonathan lost the election in 2015,
former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, boasted that it was
their almajiri children they mobilised to win the election. As far
as Kwankwaso and co are concerned, their wretched of the earth are
bred so their thumbs could be harvested. It means nothing to them
that those children are one of the reasons Nigeria is the poverty
capital of the world. They have no plan for neither their present
nor their future. They keep their almajiri class unhealthy in both
body and mind so they perpetually serve the feudal elite. That is
why, despite all the lamentations of el-Rufai, he did not ascribe
blame where it belongs.

Finally, let me emphasise that in this season of post-truths, we
should be wary of seemingly obvious truths, especially those that
proceed from the mouths of politicians. El-Rufai is an influential
politician, and he only needs to repeat the myth of a northern
region that is disadvantaged compared to its southern counterpart
before it becomes a refrain. Before you know it, the propaganda of
“developing South” vs. “backward North” will gain so much ground
they will launch a policy that will cannibalise the South to divert
resources to the northern region.

El-Rufai rightly recognised that the North has a “demographic
superiority” over the South. That means they have the political
leverage to successfully wangle an agenda that will favour a
section of the country against the other. Northern politicians
dominate power at the federal level. The southern politicians are
bought over, and their most radical response to issues is to nod in
acquiescence to “orders from above” like hand-operated toys. It was
before our very eyes that President Muhammadu Buhari told the World
Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, to put the North first in its
developmental programmes. That can happen again if they keep up
with the rhetoric of “North vs. South.” While we can argue that
indeed, the North-East particularly needs some welfare package to
level up with the rest of the country after its debilitating wars,
we should also not forget that many of the resources that have been
sent there in the past ended up in private pockets. Nothing has
changed anywhere. El-Rufai and his cohort of politicians need to be
informed that there is no “developing South” anywhere. There is
only one country – Nigeria – and we have all been jointly
disadvantaged by the visionless leadership.

Subscribe ToNairalaw News!