Tinubu engages the North, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

   “ Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it, chased it”

— African proverb

For two days last week, virtually every political appointee from the North in President Tinubu’s administration was locked up in a hall at Arewa House Kaduna, a place with great symbolism. Powerful northerners, many with direct access to Tinubu’s ears were engaged in convincing representatives of prominent Northern groups among a huge crowd that this administration had kept the promises Tinubu made to the same crowd in 2022 when he was a candidate. The North in this administration said the President had ordered them to attend and sit through the entire event, render account ,listen to grievances and reactions and, although this was a moot point, to gain goodwill and sympathy for the Administration. If numbers and profiles of elite count, this event must be accorded an impressive pass. If, on the other hand, a cynic is doing the scoring, the engagement will fail in its most vital objective: pull back the North from the huge distance it is putting between it and President Tinubu’s gritty attempt to prepare Nigeria for another mandate in 2027.

 For an administration that has lately put on a lot of weight with largess from an opportunistic opposition and is gaining confidence from what appears to be a hesitant take-off of a much anticipated opposition, Tinubu’s response to the North with this engagement suggests either or both of these calculations. The first is that Tinubu genuinely feels the need to account for his stewardship to a part of the country that appears seriously and specially aggrieved, and he is convinced that the North is important enough to reassure it that he cares and is largely misunderstood. The second is that the North itself sought for assurances that rumours of an irrevocable divorce with the APC from its villages, towns , streets and circles of elders can be addressed by Tinubu’s humility to plead his case so that the North can make an informed decision. The communique of the meeting attempted to capture both. It chronicled Tinubu’s record in the North, according to Tinubu,and captured the criticisms of the region against him as captured from the audience.It was a win-win that could say both sides lost.

 The real target of this engagement, that is, the millions of northerners who are going through unprecedented trauma from insecurity and cost of living, were not part of this dialogue. On the first day of the meeting between the two sides, reports filtered in that between 30 to 40 villagers were literally slaughtered by bandits in Zamfara. Other reports said bandits were forcing kidnap victims to shoot other victims. No one mentioned these atrocities from either side, if only to convey sympathy if it came from the government side, or to press home the point that northerners are victims of increasingly audacious violent criminals if it came from northern leaders or the floor. Participants from Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Niger, Kaduna, Plateau and Benue must have been too numb to ask for a mention or recognition of hundreds or thousands of villagers fleeing, being buried or coming to terms with bandits and kidnappers and neighbouring killers. They drove through villages and farmlands abandoned by desperately poor peasants who had survived attacks and will now join thousands more as destitute or burdens on other poor relations. They must have wondered if Tinubu’s men saying we are winning the war on multiple fronts travel out of Abuja.

 Malam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari presented a very detailed report of the successes of the Nigerian State against an assortment of criminals. A particularly striking statistic told the meeting that in the last two years, more than 11,000 kidnap victims were freed. Just reflect for a second: 11,000 kidnap victims! You have to ask a number of questions. Just how many people could there be in the hands of these kidnappers? Just who are these people? What gives them so much power and access to kidnap thousands at will? Is it a fact that kidnappings and organised terror ravaging much of the North is the only growing industry in the region? Can we ever win the war of securing citizens and stopping this spreading fear that armed criminals are determining how more and more northerners live and die? When Chief of Defence Staff General Christopher Musa gave his report, detailing increased successes against insurgents, kidnappers and community warriors and enhanced spending by the government, as well as the role of citizens and communities, a few more hearts must have sunk. We have been fighting Boko Haram unsuccessfully for about 15 years. What more can we do to liberate communities from the hands of these terrorists and new threats like Lakurawa? We are everyone’s target in the Sahel and beyond. Are we doomed to be conquered, slaughtered and enslaved? We know we are not winning this war. What do we need to do to stop losing?

 There were other detailed presentations on managing the economy, agriculture and food security, infrastructure, social development and governance. It was clear President Tinubu’s team was focussed on successfully convincing northerners that his administration was not tilted against the North, and the thirty-odd Ministers and senior officials were made to stand on the stage to impress the audience that this administration has enough representation to repudiate any accusation of bias. Perhaps it is the timing of the engagement; perhaps it is poor strategy, but this parade of rank-and-file Northerners in Tinubu’s administration actually backfired. The audience it was meant to impress was asking why this parade of Northerners could not help stop or slow down the onslaught of killers; reduce the impossibly high cost of existence; assuage the feeling that the North is being targeted for balkanisation in order to make the 2027 elections easier to win, or tamper with the brazen imbalances in critical spending. Significantly, if any eyebrows were raised over the absence of the most senior Northerner in Tinubu’s administration, VP Kashim Shettima being absent from such an important engagement, no one noticed enough to mention them in the context of the North’s vulnerability to President Tinubu’s political calculations.

 The Presidency and those leaders in the North who facilitated the Arewa House engagement will do themselves a lot of good by critically analyzing the two-day event that had three northern governors in attendance, no traditional rulers, no legislators, a sprinkling of northern elites, many unable to speak, and a politically- correct communique. Tinubu should not be content with an engagement dripping with electoral undertones. A video of the President asking Nigerians not to give him a second term if he does not provide them electricity in his first term has been gaining speed and rounds. These are the types of matters the President should be worried about.If clerics who anchored his Muslim-Muslim ticket were in the hall, they did not make their presence particularly noticeable.

 If both sides are open to some uncomfortable advise, it will be this. President Tinubu’s standing in the North will not be changed by this two day event. What will change his fortunes between now and 2027 will be a radical improvement in security and a major reduction in the high cost of living in the North. For the North, it should be reminded that those who have failed it are Northerners who have behaved as if the region’s fortunes and destiny are the responsibility of the Nigerian Presidency to decide and fix. What the North needs is to speak to itself, identify why this blessed land and people is in such terrible state and what it needs to do to re-engineer a new North that can do justice to its huge potential. Nigeria was never designed to fix the North. The next time the North meets, it should be to undertake a very detailed, painful discussion and take decisions regarding its future in Nigeria. It should do this before the 2027 elections.

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