The North must own its problem, by Rotimi Fasan

The Northern Governors Forum, together with traditional rulers from the North, rose from a meeting convened in Kaduna on Monday this week with a major resolution: that a centralised police system is no longer workable for Nigeria in view of the mounting security challenges facing the country. The meeting followed a similar one held by their Southern counterparts in Ogun State last week. These meetings are the responses from Nigeria’s political elites to the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern by the American Government, the threat of military invasion by President Donald Trump and the series of apparently orchestrated attacks on churches and girls’ schools in the Northern part of the country. 

From the Bola Tinubu administration to the Southern Governors Forum and the Northern Governors Forum, it has taken nothing less than the intervention of the Americans and their threat of violence to awaken our typically phlegmatic, unresponsive and tone-deaf leaders, both political and religious. 

The insult-laced tweet that did the magic was well-timed. It has had an effect that 25 years of post-military governance, that’s a quarter of a century of politicking, horse trading and appeasement, has failed to have. The latest gathering of the Northern political elite was not the first time it would reach the resolution that a decentralised police system is the option Nigeria must embrace if she is not to be left behind by modernity in matters of crime management, prevention and detection. But such resolutions were not meant to be seen as anything beyond lip service, at best a policy statement, to perpetually keep in abeyance any serious action on the restructuring of our freak federation. It was about this time last year that all but one of the 36 state governors agreed to the idea of a decentralised police. 

One of the leaders at the Kaduna meeting admitted that in May this year leaders from the region decided it was time for what has been frequently described as state police. We all knew that was another attempt at doublespeak, something most Northern politicians are adept at, once conversation turns to the question of devolution of powers to the sub-national units of this country. Such discussions are bad news for most of them even as they speak in the name of the North and come to 21st century reflections on Nigeria’s problems with the mindset of the 20th century. They suffer from a hangover that has its roots in the regimented reflexes of the military era. All for their self-interest. There are, of course, political journeymen from other regions, like the current Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, who takes the few years he is to spend in office as IG for eternity and thus opposes the establishment of state police.  

Yet, it is remarkable that the lone voice opposed to the idea of state police from among the Northern power elite is the very one any reasonable person would expect to be the first to support it: Babagana Zulum, the Governor of Borno State. It is a measure of the kind of strange politics that Northern politicians play that it’s this same man that has been frequently applauded for his proactive responses to the disaster brought upon his state by insecurity, an epicentre of Boko Haram insurgency- it is worse than outrageous that Zulum is that lone voice in the wilderness raging against the re-emergence of a decentralised police system, similar to what was in place before the military found its way into politics. 

Babagana Zulum is not simply speaking for himself. His is a regional position that is disguised as personal. All he needs to do is to repeatedly parrot his opposition like a talismanic mantra while diluting discussions around the issue of state police. Others from the North only need such contrary claims to create doubt about the establishment of state police or say there is no consensus about it. It’s the same way that many of them said they had no idea of what their Southern counterparts meant when they talked about the restructuring of the country.

At one point, Babagana Zulum’s rejection of state police seemed like an expression of his displeasure at the perceived marginalisation of his political leader, Vice President Kashim Shettima, in the present administration. Some who appear sympathetic to his cause said he has been reduced to attending low grade events on behalf of President Bola Tinubu. An objective assessment will show that he has been comparatively more visible than Yemi Osinbajo was under President Muhammadu Buhari. My point is that Zulum was being a lackey of the North when he stood against state police. As Sani Yerima was when he came up with the idea of shari’a in the early years of our latest return to elective governance. 

The Northern establishment, an alignment of its political and religious leaders, continues to act as one and speak as one in its stand against any meaningful transformation of the political structure of this country in a manner that can and will, indeed, be beneficial to every section. The voice of those seeking genuine change from that part of the country is that of a minority that is, hopefully, getting more influential. Otherwise, what we see and which has been obvious for decades is the continued misuse of religion and the weaponisation of poverty among a huge population of vastly young people who have been deliberately left untrained and uneducated (except in the Islamic religion), but available to be deployed for political purposes by players within and outside the Nigerian national space. This huge but untrained population that was cultured across decades of post-independence politics has now transformed into the murderous machinery of insurgency and banditry that is troubling all of us today.

And in all of this, the Northern political establishment is still in denial and unwilling to take responsibility for the monster it mostly created. 

It has outsourced its responsibility in that regard as it points its fingers elsewhere. They are nationalising a problem their lack of foresight created. It’s been decades since Chief Obafemi Awolowo warned that the North was creating a problem for the future by its failure to democratise Western-style education.  He made it clear that the children of the talakawa they were refusing to train would make peace impossible for the children of the rich. That was neither a curse nor a prophecy. Just plain common sense that some refused to heed. We are at that point that Awo warned about and those responsible for this or their children are still not ready to own up to their errors. This is why Shehu Sani is the latest one hitting the hammer where the nail is by urging them to face up to their mess 

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