Tools of Uthman Dan Fodio’s Estate (2) -By Remi Oyeyemi

Remi Oyeyemi

Mr. Dogara has done us a great favour. His inadvertent revelations (at least that is what it is for those who did not know hitherto) underscored the fact that the “North”, spearheaded by the Sultanate, has realigned to be able to continue to dominate the rest of Nigeria, which is considered their inheritance bequeathed by Uthman Dan Fodio. The “North” as it were now has the President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senate Leader and House Majority Leader. They also have the Chief Justice, Head of Federal Civil Service, Accountant General of the Federation, Director Department of Petroleum Resources, and very soon the Ministers of Defence, Petroleum, Industries and Finance would follow.

We are back in slavery. This is not just because all the major powerful posts are occupied by the “Northerners,” but because of the genre of governance that would serve as its concomitant in modernised feudalism. For the next 50 years or more, this would be the unfortunate fate of the various nations comprising Nigeria, especially the Yoruba of the South-West, whose suffering within the Nigerian polity has metastasised since the annulment of June 12 in 1993. Unless there is an intervention by providence, the future really looks gloomy for the Yoruba nation.

It is time to realise that the nature and character of Nigeria as engendered by the British colonial lords and fostered by the children of Uthman Dan Fodio is totally arrayed against development and progress for the benefits of the people. The nature and character of the leadership style of the Huasa/Fulani oligarchy is antithetical to the economic, social and political freedom of other Nigerian ethnic nationalities in the true sense of it. Nigeria is a failed state because of it and it would continue to be so. It would never be the nation–state that we all wish for and envisage. Nigeria, courtesy of the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy and their satellites in the South-West, South-South, South-East and other willing tools in the minority nations of the Middlebelt and far North, will remain an outpost of feudalism that glorifies subjugation, enslavement, control and domination of others in all its facets. But this would be dexterously cocooned in modernism and showcased to the outside world as a viable state with all its paraphernalia.

“The Mistake of 1914” was corrected for Ahmadu Bello in 1959 when he was handed the majority of the in-coming 1960 “Federal Parliament” against the run of the population in the country. This was deliberate as posited by The Vanguard as follows:

“…the handing over of the reign of leadership to the Hausa-Fulani by the British was not a mistake; it was deliberate.The British knows that the Hausa-Fulani will be so pre-occupied with the quest for survival and domination of Nigeria that they would not have the time to pull Nigeria from the dreg of under-development.”

Those Buharists hoping for a change would be disappointed. They have been fooled to buy a fake product.

The military coup of December 31, 1983 that removed President Shehu Shagari was spearheaded by General Muhammadu Buhari. That coup has never been properly isolated for its true intentions. To the untutored many, it was because Nigeria needed a break from bad politicians. But for those who could see beyond the curtains, it was a coup that was engineered to save the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy from self-immolation. After the 1983 rigged elections, the country was about to burst. There was a groundswell of discontent. Scents of revolution permeated the air and no one could say for certain how things could and would turn out. The ruling Hausa/Fulani oligarchy knew they had lost control and became panicky. They had to ask their children in the Armed Forces to come to the rescue.

That Buhari coup was not about any justice at all. Nor was it about the fortune of Nigerians. It was to save Uthman Dan Fodio’s estate. It was to save the caliphate or the sultanate, if you prefer. That was why a Shehu Shagari, the Fulani “driver” of the crashed vehicle, could be detained in a government guest house and an Alex Ekwueme, an Igbo “conductor” of the vehicle, could be detained in Kirikiri. It was why an Awwal Ibrahim, a Fulani man who was caught with 14 million British pounds sterling at Heathrow Airport in the UK could be detained in a guest house while an Adekunle Ajasin, a Yoruba who was squeaky clean after three trials had to remain at Agodi Prisons. It was why all the Hausa Fulani governors of the North got a “pat” on their “wrists” why the Yoruba Governors of the South-West, the Igbo governors of South-East and minority governors of South-South were incarcerated in mean conditions that impaired their health, turned some of them blind and shortened the lives of the rest.

In the coming months, to re-consolidate the Uthman Dan Fodio’s estate, the Armed Forces will be revisited by President Buhari. The reins of the command and control of the Armed Forces would be quietly restored to what it used to be before 1999 under the tight control of the Hausa/Fulani and their errand boys, for obvious reasons. The fiscal control would be tightened and the South would continue to lose and suffer. Control of mineral resource would be revamped in favour of the Nigerian unitary government euphemised as a federal government. The Nigerian sultanate police would be reorganised and made more effective to be a more efficient tool of domination and control. We have been sold into slavery once again. But this time with our eyes open and our minds shut.

For those naïve Buharists of other ethnic nationalities, they would learn serious lessons about the Fulani concept of power in the coming months. They would be educated about the Fulani Pulaku philosophy of politics of subtle control, ruthless domination and calculated disbursement of patronage to the willing tools across the country for the protection and preservation of the Fulfude speaking people and friendly exclusion of others. They would see a re-demonstration in a very ethereal, patronising but ruthless way, of how a very small group of Fulani islamic fundamentalists subverted a majority Hausa ethnic nationality, overthrew all their kings and installed themselves as Emirs all over the Habe kingdoms. They would see how this Fulani oligarchy has perfected its modalities in the modern times and how it would apply the same innocuous but noxious methodology to continue to subjugate other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.

There is no Nigeria anywhere. What we have is a sultanate or caliphate that has exuded unparalleled dexterity at adapting to the changing times since it surfaced in 1804 and has recalibrated in 1914, 1950, 1960, 1967, 1990, 1999 and 2015. The crisis in the APC is not ordinary. It is fostered consciously and deliberately through the dexterous ability of the Fulani “to fuel acrimony among their rivals and their capacity to show great courage in the defence of collective interest rather than the defence of individual wisdom.” In a article, I had dubbed the APC as “The New Northern Peoples Congress.”

In the West African Pilot of December 30, 1964, Mallam Bala Garuba gloated, “The conquest to the sea is now in sight. When our god-sent Ahmadu Bello said some years ago that our conquest will reach the sea shores of Nigeria, some idiots in the South were doubting its possibilities. Today have we not reached the sea? Lagos is reached. It remains Port-Harcourt. It must be conquered and taken.” Lagos has been conquered a long time ago. Port Harcourt is the new addition courtesy of former Governor Rotimi Amaechi. President Jonathan had created and engendered the condition for this. The APC finally made it possible.

The South has just entered a new era of slavery and subjugation under the tutelage of the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy. No thanks to the APC and its naïve leadership. Eleanor Roosevelt, it was, who insisted that no one could make you a slave without your consent. But the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy has succeeded in making the rest of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities slaves with the consent, connivance and collaborations of the leaders from those ethnic nationalities, especially the Yoruba South-West.

Our leaders in Yoruba land fought for more than six decades to free us from this clutch of enslavement. They fought in the trenches. They made great sacrifices. They went to prisons. Some of them paid supreme prices with their lives. In a jiffy of political miscalculation and recalcitrance, all the efforts of our heroes past were foreclosed by contemptuous disregard of and for the lessons of history. It is sad. We are now in interesting but very tragic times.

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