NOTHING typifies the fault lines in Nigeria today than the boldness with which the governors of the north pursue sectional and sheepishness with which southern governors go about with their tails tucked between their wobbly legs. The confidence,the gusto and temerity with which Arewa governors conduct their separate foreign policy to the exclusion of their southern counterparts is the missing page in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
Let us just take the last three years to interrogate this galling development that shames the joke of “one Nigeria”. Governors of all 19 states in northern Nigeria spent three days in Washington DC at the invitation of the United States Institute of Peace,USIP, as we prepared for 2015 elections participating in the Northern Nigeria Governors’ Symposium from October 18 to 21 with civic leaders from the Senior Working Group of Nigeria and representatives of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Security challenges Organised by the institute with support of U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, it was a follow-up to the first one which held in May 2014 to discuss the security challenges caused by the Boko Haram insurgency and strategies for stabilisation and development in northern Nigeria.
Speaking at the pre-symposium media briefing, USIP Senior Advisors and former ambassadors, Princeton Lyman and Johnnie Carson said the institute’s Northern Governors’ symposium was designed to bolster Nigeria’s commanding stature in Sub-Saharan Africa. We want our power back gang: In essence,half of the country equals the entire republic in the estimation of Washington. The election being prepared for was not a regional election never mind the theme was “we want our power back.”
In February 2016,northern governors headed for Saudi Arabia to seek for loan leaving behind their southern colleagues who preside over the region where nearly 100% of what is shared monthly has been coming from.The dwindling returns from “the southern lady of means” obviously necessitated the migration.It took the condemnation of the trip by Senator Shehu Sani for us to know that it was the Kemi Adeosun-led Ministry of Finance that facilitated the trip.
The Chairman of the Northern States Governors’ Forum, Alhaji Kashim Shettima said the trip of the forum to Islamic Republic of Saudi Arabia to seek a loan from the Islamic Development Bank was facilitated by the Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance. But Shettima, who is the Borno State governor, in a statement by his spokesman, Mallam Isa Gusau, said comments credited to the Vice-Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign and Domestic Debts, Senator Shehu Sani, labelling the action of the northern governors as unlawful “was unfortunate and out of ignorance.” The statement read, “(Comments credited to Sani that) efforts by the Forum to obtain loans from the Islamic Development Bank in Jedda was an illegality. It was purely based on a lack of the slightest knowledge about the issue, because unlike what the very respectable Senator thinks, the IDB trip itself was not just done with the consent and approval of the Federal Ministry of Finance but rather, it was even the Federal Ministry of Finance that facilitated the trip and they had a representative as part of the delegation.” And when US Secretary of State,Mr John Kerry visited Nigeria (?) in August this year,he met with the Sultan of Sokoto,the President and northern governors.
The insensitive approach of the US to the diversity of Nigeria drew not a few flaks. The protestation was not enough to convince America that its divisive foreign policy in Nigeria should change as the northern governors were in Washington again last week. Ten Governors from Northern States in Nigeria were last Wednesday hosted at the White House, America’s seat of power in Washington, during which they held closed door meeting with President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, Ambassador Susan Rice. They also met John Kerry at the State Department.
There is no doubt that there is an Arewa lobby in Washington coordinating all these outings to the exclusion of the other half of the country . The pertinent enquiry however is what are the skimpy hearts who call themselves southern governors doing in the face of all these.They lack the testicular fortitude to even meet as a group within Nigeria not to talk of meeting abroad.If you see a few of them gathered at a spot it must be when they are summoned to Abuja like serfs or at social engagements. I challenge one of them on this worrisome lack of capacity on their part a few months ago and he told me it would be a tall order “I know those who will put their phones on for Abuja to be listening if we hold such a meeting “. As I write it more than half of them are scheming to be Vice -president in 2019. I doubt if it ever crossed the mind of any of them to aspire to be No 1. They have accepted there is a glass ceiling for them in Nigeria which they must not break .
