Mallam Ahmad is a regular preacher at the local mosque of his neighbourhood. In the wake of the violence that broke out in most states of the north in protest against alleged irregularities in the presidential election that saw the candidate most favoured by the North, Gen Muhammadu Buhari of the CPC losing to his rival, Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP, he had stood up in the mosque and admonished the mostly northern worshippers that morning that Islam forbids violence as a means of registering grievances and advised the worshippers to register their grievances peacefully in line with the teachings of Islam, and even if despite this they fail to get redress, they should submit everything to the will of Allah who knows best how to compensate his servants.
This is a familiar admonition which most northern Muslims have embraced over the years even in the face of the most disappointing setbacks. And this tendency to submit to the admonition of religious and traditional authorities, who the northerner sees as the custodians of the Islamic religion, defines the deference and respect the northerner has for those described as his leaders.
But few minutes after Mallam Ahmed left the mosque on his way to his house some angry youths came and accosted him asking how dare he say something like that? “The youths were angry,” says Mallam Ahmad. “Some of them were cursing those they felt contributed to the rigging they believe was perpetrated against their preferred candidate. My admonition that Islam forbids making allegations of wrongdoing against people without evidence that they were culpable fell on deaf ears.”
While Mallam Ahmad is not a recipient of their physical angst, up north revered traditional rulers who in the past were relied upon by the government to calm angry followers and reign in their discontent over issues were themselves the target of attack. Three of the north’s leading traditional rulers, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, the emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero and the Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris probably experienced the worst revolt of their reign when angry youths marched to their respective palaces in the heat of the protests that greeted the outcome of the presidential election calling them traitors who worked against the interest of the north and attempted to burn down their palaces. The whole mayhem is reminiscent of what the poet says: things fall apart, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
As the violence in the north raged on, the houses of politicians who were perceived to have worked with the ruling party PDP to defeat the northern candidate from the opposition CPC were razed to the ground. The politicians who before now ride in convoys in the company of blaring sirens to announce their arrival to followers who send salutations of support to them in the street took cover in the safety of Government Houses while others fled out of town. All of a sudden, this is no longer the familiar north where leaders (traditional, religious and political) were not just only revered but listened to and trusted to take decisions that will work for the collective good of all, especially people of the region.
The question being asked now is what has happened to break the harmonious relationship between the northerner and his leaders? Why are the leaders and those they are leading no longer on the same page, as it seems obvious now, on this issue? The responses of traditional rulers, academics and common folks spoken to on this question by Weekly Trust are varied but point nevertheless to a new era that will change the equation of the relationship that has existed between the leaders of the north and their people. It is a change that paints the picture of a challenging future, some of which as the dead bodies are gathered from the streets where the revolt had degenerated into sectarian crisis, paint a not so happy future.
This new phenomenon whereby leaders that were held in reverence are being targeted has been explained within the context of politics, dashed hopes and the general lack of human development in the north. Malam Hussain Umar Idris, a lecturer in the Kaduna Polytechnic Department of Social Development says: “The followership that both the political and traditional leaders enjoyed from the people is rooted in Islam. The Islamic religion enjoins Muslims to respect their leaders irrespective of how they arrived the threshold of leadership and irrespective of how they are governed. This injunction has been abused by both traditional and political leaders as they conspire to under develop the people. As a result, the north has the highest number of economically poor people, according to a World Bank survey. What we are witnessing today is that the poor are beginning to rise up against their masters. In addition, the domino effect of the peoples’ revolution in parts of north Africa and the Arab world has emboldened the people to fight oppression.”
It is easy to see the rising discontentment in the north at every campaign stop made by General Buhari of the CPC, the candidate and the party that majority of northerners pinned their hope of salvation from the painful grind of poverty, corruption and bad governance. Within the span of only seven months since its formation, the CPC has become popular in the north as a symbol of change and has fired the imagination of the northerner that finally at last a new order of leadership was going to be entrenched. Buhari became a folk hero and the whirlwind of acceptance he and his party enjoy among the northerners especially was described as a tsunami. The young, the old and even children chant CPC! Sai Buhari! at every opportune moment to signify that hope has arrived.
But with this hope came a sneaking fear that the old northern establishment, the old traditional and political leadership that has held sway all these years, might scuttle the dream of the poor northerner by ensuring that the leaders who will work to change his situation are never elected at all. This conspiracy theory gained a firm hold on the mind of the poor northerner when he reflects that in two previous elections in the past (the 2003 and 2007 presidential elections) both of which Buhari was a contender the elections were widely accepted to have been rigged. And on each occasion, northern traditional and political leaders were usually the first to call for the acceptance of the result, going further to Abuja to pay homage to the declared winner of the election, congratulating him while the heart of their people is seething with anger.
Like most of such theories, there are hardly any truths backing them but as the economic situation of the poor northerner becomes ever more dismal and desperate he is ready to believe any explanation indicting his leaders for his situation.
The traditional rulers themselves did not help matters by becoming partisan, identifying secretly or openly with a particular party or its candidate. In this case, they were accused of working for the PDP to frustrate the CPC’s ambition. And since the CPC is seen today as the last hope of the northerner, it is obvious where the aggression against the party’s failure at the polls would be transferred to.
Malam Bala Brigade Mohammed, the Dean of School of Management studies, Kaduna Polytechnic, says: “The involvement of traditional rulers in partisan politics has desecrated their sacred positions which they attained not by merit or achievement. They are supposed to be custodians of values, beliefs and cultural heritage but rather, they veered off into politics. Their involvement is seen as a means to amass wealth and to protect their thrones, to the collective detriment of their people. Before then, they were held in very high esteem because they advanced the interest of their subjects.”
The traditional rulers’ position was made more tenuous when in the aftermath of the elections news began to make the rounds of how politicians in connivance with some powerful people used monetary inducements to get the voters to vote in a particular direction, especially in the rural areas of the north where poverty is worst and the people there easily susceptible to being influenced by money. Ever since the parliamentary elections was held first, anger and hopelessness intensified when news began to make the rounds that people were influenced with money as low as N200 or with packets of noodles to vote particular candidates or their party. In addition to this, were also the news making the rounds of heavy ballot box stuffing by known political leaders with ties to the ruling party. While the rumour mills went into overdrive, little or nothing was done by those accused to clarify the air until the bubble burst when results coming from the north granted appreciable votes to the PDP in consternation to the expectations of the people. From there it was difficult containing the violence that followed this shocking discovery.
In sympathy to the traditional rulers, they have seen their influence within the Nigerian State reduced to such a level that they could be easily removed from office by the stroke of the pen of the governor of their state. Their position is not helped by the fact that one of the most powerful bloc to have emerged from the current democratic dispensation is the governors’ bloc. Even the president relies on this bloc to deliver the votes. As events during the presidential campaign period had shown, some of the traditional rulers were afraid of incurring the wraths of the governors from the ruling PDP and made a point of boycotting their palaces whenever General Buhari the main candidate from the opposition tries to pay them homage.
The traditional rulers were left at a precarious position. If they sided with their people they risk the wrath of the politicians. And if they sided with the politicians, as the recent revolt has shown, they risk the wrath of their people.
Obviously, the politicians are the biggest factor in the discontentment and revolt that has swept the north. Not surprisingly, they were more hunted for by irate rioters and suffered huge losses as scores of them got their houses and businesses burnt. But this too is a huge setback for them because like the traditional rulers they were also revered as those who will fight for the interest of the north within the Nigerian federation where ethnic, religious and regional sentiments have often coloured important national decisions.
Even within this sphere the northerner has his conspiracies, especially now that a candidate from the south, Goodluck Jonathan is making desperate bids for the presidency for which he has now been declared winner. The conspiracy goes that a southerner on the seat of the presidency is going to work to ensure that the northerner is further pauperized and disenfranchised from the Nigerian State and the northern politicians working with Jonathan are only concerned about the appointments they will get from his government more than the welfare and better good of their own people.
Also in sympathy to the politicians, they are in a game where party and self interest comes first. It would be a tough call to expect northern PDP politicians to work against their party and work for the success of the CPC when they would be left out in the cold during the sharing of offices.
Clearly, what is fuelling the conspiracies is mistrust and frustrations with the way governance has not been benefitting the people. On one level there is mistrust between the northerner and the leaders of the region and on another level a mistrust in the heart of the northerner about his future within the Nigerian State. The first mistrust is fuelled by the repeated disappointments the northerner has suffered in the hands of his political and traditional leaders who over the years have not done much to improve his lot, while the second mistrust is fuelled by the hot rhetoric that has been issuing out of the mouths of southern politicians at the heights of the power tussle that has divided the two regions, blaming the northerner for the ills of the country. Inuwa Abdullahi, a trader, accused some northern leaders of placing their personal interest over and above the north, by conniving with some people from other part of the country to mortgage the future of the region. He says while violence was never a solution to the problems that the north got itself entangled in, the northern political class should see the mayhem as a pointer for the need to deliver the north as aspired by the Northerners.
Adamu Hassan, another trader says violent protest is not the answer to whatever misgivings the people from the northern region have, for him it would have been a peaceful demonstration to protest against injustice. Commenting, Habu Abdu, a lawyer says there is no way that injustice could be address by injustice, noting that the protesting youths could have conducted a peaceful demonstration within the confine of what the law provided to air their grievances. But by taking the law into their hands, definitely the long arms of the law would catch up with them.
Another big questions in the air is now that the north seem to be revolting against authorities that used to be looked upon as the last resort in managing conflicts and disagreements and in deciding the destiny of the region, who will the North look up to?
Mu’azu Shehu Usman, a sociology lecturer at the Gombe State University says: “The far-reaching implication of such crisis emanating from the northern youth is the region would lose its influential political relevance in the country. Because in a crisis of this magnitude where leaders became a target for slaughter and their properties handpicked for destruction, discord, distrust and disunity would set in and the region as an entity would be at the receiving end. In the past, northern region was a single indivisible entity, where ethnicity and religion had little or no influence regarding any decision for the region.”
District Head of Bodor in Funakaye Local Government Area of Gombe state, Alhaji Sale Tinka, argues that the crisis was not a revolt against the traditional institution but rather it was a violence perpetrated by the youth to register their anger against the political class from the northern region for their failure to live up to the yearning and aspiration of the northerners. He believes the love and reverence the people have for the traditional rulers has not changed. He has a warning for the religious leaders, even though they were not targeted in the recent crisis. He says: “Clergy men are most often than not busy dining with the political class. They should be careful so they do not suffer a similar fate with the political class.” It seems the trigger for losing respect in the north is to align oneself with the politicians. Will the traditional and religious institutions keep out of the fray and reclaim their past mediatory roles, or will the dangerous romance with the politicians continue?
