“It explains a lot Bint, it explains a whole lot that’s happening out there, wallahi. I hope you’ve watched it to the end.’ Maryam declared, the moment we finished our normal greetings on the phone.
‘Which video do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The one I sent to you last night. This morning when I checked my WhatsApp messenger, it showed that you had seen it. So how come you don’t remember?’ She queried.
‘Oh, you mean the one you sent very late last night, the one that shows the late Danmasanin Kano, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule saying something.’ I replied.
‘Saying something? You mean you didn’t even listen to what he said?’ Maryam demanded.
‘No I didn’t, I was very sleepy then. So the moment I opened it and saw that it was the late erudite statesman, seemingly granting an interview, I assured myself that it was no emergency since he had been dead almost two years now. I therefore decided to leave it and watch today.,’ I explained.
Well you have no idea what you missed. As you must have heard late Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule had been influential since the First Republic. He was a Northern regional minister in his twenties and has held many other positions after the First Republic, including a federal minister and our country’s permanent representative at the United Nations. In this video he went down memory lane to talk about the role they played, through shuttle diplomacy during the civil war. Apparently there was a need to make the international community understand what was happening in Nigeria at the time. Do he, along with others, were assigned to go round and explain the Federal government’s position on the matter. In one of those trips, it’s not clear from the video which country it is, but he ran into a gentleman who told him more than he hoped to hear. And like I said, it explains a lot about what’s happening in Nigeria today. Just open the video and watch Bint. We’ll discuss later, in Sha Allah.’ Maryam advised.
‘Ok, I’ll do that immediately, in Sha Allah.’ I replied and quickly switched to my WhatsApp messenger and played it.
“I met this gentleman, a professor” late Maitama Sule began to say. “This gentleman told us that he knew why we were out, we wanted to get support and sympathy for Nigeria and to explain the Federal cause to the international community. And he explained that the international community was not particularly interested in Nigeria as such. All that they were interested in were our resources. And he even went further to say that ‘if we can get robots to exploit your resources for us to develop our economies, we wouldn’t mind the whole lot of you being eliminated. But in the case of Nigeria, there is a difference. And the difference is that Nigerians are very hard-working and intelligent and they have got resources they know next to nothing about.
If this country Nigeria, with all these resources both human and material, will have an uninterrupted period of twenty years of peace and stability, it will be another Japan. Because these intelligent, hardworking Nigerians will come to know about their resources, and they will use their intelligence and work hard to exploit their resources and develop their economy.’
A developing economy needs a market, he said, ‘but in your own case you have no problem with a market because your population is large enough to provide the market you need. And even without that the Nigerian market is the entire West African region and beyond. So you will have no problem with a market.
Therefore if you are given an uninterrupted period of twenty years of peace and stability you’ll become another Japan. You’ll threaten our economy, you’ll be a thorn in our flesh.’ That was the view of this Professor in 1967. And he therefore ended by saying ‘Even after the civil war, we will not allow you to rest, we’ll create one problem after another for you.’
Knowing this therefore, I feel that in spite of our shortcomings, which I must admit we have, there is a kind of orchestrated campaign against Nigeria, so that it may not emerge the economic giant it is destined to be.”
And the video ended here. I now know why Maryam was so excited about this disclosure. Going by what this late sage quoted from the Professor he encountered over fifty years ago, there is a reason to believe that our endless problems maybe the handiwork of these people, who are teleguiding some unpatriotic elements amongst us. I certainly hope this serves as a wake up call for us all to look closely at our various crises and resolve to solve them.
