Let somebody tell the king of the North, that he is not the king in the north, and that he is sowing winds, and shall soon be harvesting whirlwinds…
I have always loved my definitions, and I intend to employ them pretty early in this exercise. The title is derived from the addictive TV series; Game Of Thrones, and its aficionados wouldn’t be requiring further explanations. But for the uninitiated into the GOT cult and the Divided Kingdoms, suffice to say that the “North” as used in this essay, speaks to a divided kingdom, one that has been willfully and deliberately divided by an evil myopic king.
Nigeria is not a modern state in the true sense of the word, and whenever we are prepared to examine ourselves and the country that we call ours truthfully, we shall have no choice, but to accept the reality of our existence. States are creations of men, not God, and Nigeria is not unique in its colonial experience. What is unique about Nigeria, is the inability of the state, to be subjected to law, and the consequential failure of the law, to rule in a state governed by impunity and the rule of men. Nigeria is ruled by kings.
Buhari is not the first of the Nigerian kings. This is his second coming as the king. This is the first time he is ruling as a civilian king. But Buhari has never desired to be the king of Nigeria, all the man has ever desired, is to be the king of the “North”. The self diminution to the kingdom of the North, after gaining the Nigerian throne is a subject for another day.
Nigerian kings have always ruled conscious of the need to pretend to rule for all, even though the preponderance of ethnic attires, worn by the denizens at the Transcorp-Hilton in Abuja would be an excellent pointer to the ethnicity of the king. Past kings were always careful to camouflage their nepotism, but Buhari’s sickening and flagrant nepotism did not begin today, embedded in Babangida’s demonization of the first Buharist regime, are truthful accounts of the man’s inability to see anything without the aid of his ethnoreligious blinkers. You might want to familiarize yourself with his show of shame at the Government House in Agodi, Ibadan. Buhari’s reputation as an ethnic irredentist is well established, and well earned.
By his public pronouncements in the very first days of his return as king in 2015, he was brutally honest in declaring that his focus would be on his northern constituency, the people who voted overwhelmingly for him, and have always supported him, the hordes that have stood by him through the years of interregnum, and had refused to side with the ruling elite, when it had sided, first with Babangida against him, and then with the wily fox Obasanjo, and then with the effete Yar’Adua. Allah be praised for the systemic error called Jonathan, a product of Obasanjo’s 3rd term hubris and failure of succession planning. He was being truthful.
The king of the North has talked the talk, and no Nigerian king has been more unabashedly nepotistic in his actions and reflexes. Buhari wears his nepotism as a badge of honor. The Nigerian state has been effectively northernized in the reign of King Buhari, the entire security council is essentially a conclave of northerners barring few exceptions. The most sensitive public offices in Nigeria have become the exclusive preserve of the North, which has shrank steadily in meaning to exclude a lot of people that were once from the North.
But the North has suffered under the king of the North. The northern hordes, the very ones that have stood with Buhari in the days when the men he has rewarded with offices and privileges were his mortal foes, are faring worse today, than when Buhari was out of power. They are rewarded for their years of support and forbearance with excruciating poverty, the rule of the very men that Buhari had promised them would end, a degradation of their lives by constant and unrelenting insecurity. Banditry, terrorism, the total and complete breakdown of national security infrastructure, and the reign of terror never before witnessed in the North.
But Nnamdi Kanu is in a DSS cell today, and the Attorney-General of Nigeria has announced his capture in the language that those who matters to the king of the North would understand. We might even have Lie Mohammed announce the capture of Igangan, sorry, Igboho. The entire problems of the North are being resolved expeditiously.
The king of the North is leading the North into ruination and isolation, and the continuing silence of all but a few critical voices in the North, renders the North complicit in Buhari’s hubristic power grab and criminal overreach. It is in the overall strategic interests of the North, to urgently come to the realization that, justice is the first demand of the human spirit, that nothing gained unjustly is sustainable, and that the king of the North merely postpones the evil day by clamping down on forces of reactions to systemic injustice.
I have no truck with separatists and secessionists, and I deem them to be system induced, easily predicted, and the system desired reactions, to the systemic evil of the Nigerian state. Nnamdi Kanu is fighting a just cause. The Nigerian state has been vile, evil, and most pernicious in its dealings with the Igbo peoples, and all the instruments of systemic oppression against which all Nigerians outside of the ruining crass wails today, were designed for, and perfected against the Igbo, before they were democratized and extended to other parts. My sole argument against MNK, remains about methodologies. The hunt for, and the likely capture of Sunday Igboho is not about to instill a readiness to accept internal colonization in the Yoruba peoples, and all that the king of the North has succeeded in doing, is to help awaken the separatist forces in Yorubaland, at a time when the king of the North should be worried about his northern kingdom.
The likes of Dan Keremi rules in the north, and ISWAP has gained a foothold in the North-East. Unlike Boko haram, it is not killing the locals, and is instead offering security to the people trapped in IDP camps to return to their long abandoned homes in this planting season. All it is asking of the vast hordes, Buhari’s long suffering hordes, is an oath of allegiance. Take a pledge of allegiance and return home, or stay in the IDP camps to have your foods looted, and have your grass cut with gold plated cutlasses by Babachir Lawal? Easy enough choice, if you ask me.
Let somebody tell the king of the North, that he is not the king in the north, and that he is sowing winds, and he shall soon be harvesting whirlwinds.
DF
