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How southerners destroy their bridges in Abuja
by Martins Oloja
As the Nigerian project has miraculously crept into another dispensation after the first four years of civil rule, we need to share some unreported pieces of information about the way we are in Abuja, where most of the powerful people who run the affairs of Nigeria are located.
The specific objective of this article is to share some of the remarkable experiences we have had with our southern brothers in Abuja. The immediate effect of this gruesome experience is that some of us would like the embattled republic to survive because the experience I am about to share signposts the fact that one will be better off in the federal republic of Nigeria than in any ethnic republic. Please hold your breath!
In other words, some of us in Abuja have a remarkable testimony that has confirmed the scriptural wisdom that some friends stick closer than relations. Abuja, Nigeria's 27-year old "centre of unity" teaches us that in Nigeria, if you want to prosper either in public service or private sector as a southerner, you need a core northerner to assist you because your southern brother will never help.
In Abuja where people in power allocate the best of Nigeria's values, you need core Northerners to get promotion or to get connected to influential people. This is incredible but true. I have witnessed this paradox of development for 15 years in Abuja. I have recorded accounts of people that have tried to get some things fixed for themselves too and friends in Abuja. But it is sad to report that only very few have succeeded through our (southern) brothers who have always been in positions of authority. Ironically, many have often succeeded in getting those things fixed through core northerners.
Similarly, most northerners have always complained about the unwillingness of privileged and influential southern leaders to help lowly people in need. The complainants have always cited the southerners' hypocritical claim to their propensity to adhere strictly to Public Service Rules. A situation they decry as balderdash as no one is innocent today in that realm. In the course of these experiences, I have met some victims of the same circumstances who have also suffered some reverses in their career because of inexplicable insensitivity, aloofness and arrogance of our southern brothers in Abuja. It is quite important to warn people who are dreaming of coming to Abuja to make it through our powerful people of southern origin to forget it or tarry a while until they can get core northerners.
You may be wondering why I talk consistently of "core northerners", rather than "core Nigerians". In the first instance, my search for a core Nigerian in Abuja after the 1993 June 12 political tragedy has been quite difficult and futile. Yes, as difficult as forcing a stream to flow uphill. Either in public service or among the political class, I have not found "core Nigerians" that work for the glory of the country. I also talk of core-this, core-that because I have learnt in Abuja that there is a striking similarity between "middle belters" and the southerners, in this connection.
I have confirmed that there is but one mind in all southerners and "middle belters"' all bent against the prosperity of their kinsmen who seek help. It has, however, been discovered that Niger State is the only exception in the North Central. Some commentators who spoke to me on this score drew my attention to the fact that historically, Niger State is a core northern state. It used to be part of North Western States. And that is why "Nigerlites" enjoy more affinity among themselves in Abuja as typical core northerners. In all modesty, in the past fifteen years that I have covered Politics, Power Game, Bureaucracy and How Abuja Works, there is a moderate sense in which I can make certain claims from my rich diary of events in the capital. Certainly, one of the most striking experiences I can relive is the way I have seen southern politicians, 'militicians', bureaucrats, etc build their bridges in Abuja. I have seen them destroy their tomorrow because of their greed, today. Certainly, this is one of the critical factors that I feel will shape the future of politics in Nigeria.
This is critically so because if we do not line up behind our own kinsmen tomorrow, nobody should raise eyebrows in this nation of many nationalities. This is the reality because it is what you saw that you will reap. After more than fifteen years of interacting with these influential people in Abuja, I am in a position to say that most of our southerners have sown wind and they have nothing else to reap in post retirement life than wild, wild whirlwind.
When I began to keep this diary on the points at issue, I used to believe some pedestrian theory that northerners show more milk of human kindness because of their disposition towards recklessness in public office. Later, when my third eye began to notice how Nigeria works in Abuja, I discovered that recklessness in public office has no ethnic colour. In other words, I discovered that a lot of hypocrisy is prevalent among southerners in Abuja. They are as good and bad as their counterparts in the north when it comes to dealing with public funds. The only difference is that southerners "eat" alone in Abuja, while their colleagues in the north, share their own values among their people.
In Abuja I know northerners work the telephones to assist their own people to get job opportunities. They allow their even lowly people to have unlimited access to them. It is not possible to see southerners in public office in Abuja unless they need your service for their selfish ends. While northerners struggle to shape the future of their people in public service and politics in Abuja, southerners destroy their own. Even for the purpose of answering simple questions about what is going on in Government, southerners are unavailable for their people. But like organic molecules, northerners clutch and plan for the future together.
Even when you seek to assist them, southern leaders in Abuja unleash on you their special and personal assistants I recently called "principalities and powers" in Abuja. The arrogant special assistants of these terrible southerners in Abuja really understand their masters' disposition: that they don't want to see their people. They are congenitally wicked in their hostility towards anybody who wants to see them for anything. Haba! They behave as if tomorrow will never come.
In the public service mainstream, the rank of individualistic southerners is growing to a proportion that clearly shows that the future does not belong to southerners. This is clearly so because in Nigeria today, no one gets anything on merit. In Abuja I know, you need to collect "notes' from some powerful people who have, in this connection, helped others before. But unfortunately for southerners and their "siblings" in the "middle belt", no one is in sight to help. Our influential people are too "decent" to assist their vulnerable people.
So, as the rank of unassisted people grows to an alarming rate, so is the propensity of the unassisted to claim the alibi that after all, no-one-helped me; why should I help others?
The truth about the new Nigeria that is fast emerging in Abuja is that most of the southerners who are in sensitive positions in Abuja have been one way or the other assisted by core northerners. That is the new life in Abuja no one wants to talk about. Now, when the payback time comes, the southerners that have been assisted by northerners to change their profiles will definitely look up to the hills in the north to help people, whence cometh their help in the first instance. I have seen many brilliant people fail public service job interviews just because of the bridges their siblings from the south have used and destroyed.
This remarkable phenomenon has manifested itself in the character of our new breed politicians in Abuja too. In Abuja, even as a political journalist, no matter your status, it is easier to see northern politicians than to see even your own representatives. It is disgusting to note that to a typical southerner in Abuja, anybody, especially his brother who wants to see him is either hungry or looking for contracts.
In 2000, at a public function in Okitipupa in Ondo, I once told one of these big guns in Abuja that it is na•ve to regard anybody who seeks to see them as hungry. But they have not changed. If as a fairly comfortable Nigerian, working and living in Abuja, you cannot easily see your own representative and your senator in Abuja where they are representing you, something is basically wrong with that representation. How can such representatives see their many constituents that are far away? What is more, these big men in Abuja from the south do not accept invitations for social functions that have anything to do with their people. Even if you just need their presence to dignify your occasions, they will never turn up. Nor will they send apologies. It is that bad.
If you do not understand the essentials of what I am lamenting, let me give some concrete examples of the aloofness of southerners in Abuja, and of course, in Lagos area. In 1998, while the then administration of General Abdulsalami Abubakar was rounding off in Aso Villa, one dramatic incident inside the State House confirmed the tragic point at issue. That fateful afternoon, as associate editor of The Source newsmagazine, I was on routine checks of political news leads at the Presidential Villa. Reporters were just waiting for the inauguration of one of the numerous panels then.
And some ministers were expected at the event. Coincidentally, the then FRCN State House correspondent, Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, who later wrote Inside Aso Rock, a book on the Presidential Palace, and I were discussing the arrogant aloofness of our people in Abuja where we stood near the Council Chambers when one of the ministers of southern origin, loomed up for the assignment in the Power House. As we spotted the minister who looked elegant in his Kente shirt over a pair of black trousers, we paused to greet him. We all bent to salute the serious looking minister who Orji said knows him personally. But to or shame, the man walked majestically past us without looking our way. He merely shook his head and muttered something like "h-umm", in the manners of a pig's grunt to acknowledge our salutation.
Just as Orji shook his head, moved some steps back and forth and I just smiled, NTA's Mohammed Labo, a vivacious guy who was oblivious of our immediate experience with a Southerner Minister, jostled us out of our stupor. "What are you guys planning here?" he snarled as he shook us one by one. Just as Labo, ever so humorous, was entertaining us, another minister from the north emerged like a bolt from the blues. As soon as the Minister spotted Mohammed Labo who was then on secondment to "NIGERIA 99' he shouted "Mohamed and he started speaking in Hausa. Surprisingly, he grabbed Mohammed as he acknowledged our greeting. He (the minister) locking Mohammed's hand in his armpit dragged him (Mohammed) away from our presence. Mohammed did not need to say "my friend, just a minute", as he went into the Chambers with the Minister. You see a tale of two ministers and their people just as we were saying. That is a picture of the new Abuja, where we shape the future of interpersonal relationships.
Another relevant experience is a story one of my respected elders in journalism told me recently as he fought tears. It was a nine-year-old story that touched his heart. He told me the story in Abuja because I provoked him to tell me why he has always been insisting on greeting a particular political figure anytime he comes to Abuja. In response, he (the elder) narrated his gruesome experience when Emperor Abacha closed down the newspaper he was then working for as one of the editors.
The conclusion of the whole story the elder told me is that when he was going through that trauma of closure for months, some wicked robbers in Lagos literally aggravated his plight when they vandalised his car in the compound where he had parked it. He said when he noticed the callousness of the burglars the following day, he wept bitterly because of the grave implications of the incident, since there was no office to assist. He said he knew there would be nobody to show milk of human kindness in the Lagos area. Asked why he jumped to such sweeping conclusions, he narrated how a few months after the tragic closure, even his professional colleagues were getting tired of seeing him without a platform, not to talk of circumstantial friends who had really benefited from his practice as editor. He said in Lagos, in this connection, "you are on your own".
Lamenting that the stolen parts of the Mercedes Benz 200 series including head light components and some interior appliances remained so for some time until a northerner from Adamawa State who heard the burglary/vandalization story through a third party later came to his rescue. In the same vein, I have taken some time to ask questions even in the armed forces and the paramilitary services. The impression I got is that today's officers from the south are also victims of the same circumstances.
Most officers confirmed to me that most of the retired officers from the south cannot return to their former formations today to get anything because they never helped anybody either while they were in office or in power. They only helped themselves. But their counterparts from the north always have retired people to look up to for counsel on the way forward.
Similarly, if you beam any searchlight on the Presidency and the Federal Cabinet secretariat today, you may see neither the footprints nor the "offspring" of the Obasanjos, the Shonekans, the Ayidas, the Falaes, etc. But as you step into these areas, you will find the "offspring" of the IBBs, the Abachas, the Abdusalamis, the Aliyu Mohammeds, the Aminu Salehs, the Gidado Idrises, etc. Just as we may not find more than products of the Atikus and the Yayale Ahmeds in the Power House and the public sector after 2007. This is likely to be so because the fact about Abuja today is that Baba Iyabo and his wife, Oga Ekaette and co., do not have the spirit to assist anyone: It is not in their character to help. Yet it is one Nigeria, one public service.
Therefore as we await leaders who will run Nigeria on a truly Nigerian platform, my appeal to our brothers from the south (and the middle belt) is that they should learn how to accommodate people from all walks of life. They definitely cannot help everybody. They should pray for the spirit to give, help or share. They need to note that it is not only money that most people need from them. Some need love and counsel. Some need information. Just as others need even their presence on their events and memorable days. No, not their money, always. Money is not everything, after all.
Without prejudice to a few southerners who have tapped anointing to help and accommodate from the north, I would like our selfish, egoistic and individualistic brothers from the south to note this: that life, yes quality life does not consist in the abundance of what they have acquired alone for their families; rather it consists in the quality of testimony of the people that have risen in life through them.
In other words, as I observed earlier, when you see some southern Nigerians busy in the camps of some "bloody" northerners tomorrow even when their brothers are in need of their expertise, please, do not be surprised. It is what our brothers sow they will reap. They sow sparingly and they will reap sparingly. It is the word of God. It is the voice of the people, which will affect the colour of tomorrow's politics in Nigeria.
Final appeal to the people we are complaining about: Please, help to deplete the rank of the non-assisted people today so that the quantum of ancient grudges against even your own children will be reduced tomorrow. God bless Nigeria.
Oloja is the Abuja Bureau Chief of The Guardian.
the village square
a marketplace of ideas
Vision: To be the best Nigerian intellectual forum on the internet
The Village Square NEWS
Features & Articles VillageMaRT
Culture
Book Reviews
MUSIC
How southerners destroy their bridges in Abuja
by Martins Oloja
As the Nigerian project has miraculously crept into another dispensation after the first four years of civil rule, we need to share some unreported pieces of information about the way we are in Abuja, where most of the powerful people who run the affairs of Nigeria are located.
The specific objective of this article is to share some of the remarkable experiences we have had with our southern brothers in Abuja. The immediate effect of this gruesome experience is that some of us would like the embattled republic to survive because the experience I am about to share signposts the fact that one will be better off in the federal republic of Nigeria than in any ethnic republic. Please hold your breath!
In other words, some of us in Abuja have a remarkable testimony that has confirmed the scriptural wisdom that some friends stick closer than relations. Abuja, Nigeria's 27-year old "centre of unity" teaches us that in Nigeria, if you want to prosper either in public service or private sector as a southerner, you need a core northerner to assist you because your southern brother will never help.
In Abuja where people in power allocate the best of Nigeria's values, you need core Northerners to get promotion or to get connected to influential people. This is incredible but true. I have witnessed this paradox of development for 15 years in Abuja. I have recorded accounts of people that have tried to get some things fixed for themselves too and friends in Abuja. But it is sad to report that only very few have succeeded through our (southern) brothers who have always been in positions of authority. Ironically, many have often succeeded in getting those things fixed through core northerners.
Similarly, most northerners have always complained about the unwillingness of privileged and influential southern leaders to help lowly people in need. The complainants have always cited the southerners' hypocritical claim to their propensity to adhere strictly to Public Service Rules. A situation they decry as balderdash as no one is innocent today in that realm. In the course of these experiences, I have met some victims of the same circumstances who have also suffered some reverses in their career because of inexplicable insensitivity, aloofness and arrogance of our southern brothers in Abuja. It is quite important to warn people who are dreaming of coming to Abuja to make it through our powerful people of southern origin to forget it or tarry a while until they can get core northerners.
You may be wondering why I talk consistently of "core northerners", rather than "core Nigerians". In the first instance, my search for a core Nigerian in Abuja after the 1993 June 12 political tragedy has been quite difficult and futile. Yes, as difficult as forcing a stream to flow uphill. Either in public service or among the political class, I have not found "core Nigerians" that work for the glory of the country. I also talk of core-this, core-that because I have learnt in Abuja that there is a striking similarity between "middle belters" and the southerners, in this connection.
I have confirmed that there is but one mind in all southerners and "middle belters"' all bent against the prosperity of their kinsmen who seek help. It has, however, been discovered that Niger State is the only exception in the North Central. Some commentators who spoke to me on this score drew my attention to the fact that historically, Niger State is a core northern state. It used to be part of North Western States. And that is why "Nigerlites" enjoy more affinity among themselves in Abuja as typical core northerners. In all modesty, in the past fifteen years that I have covered Politics, Power Game, Bureaucracy and How Abuja Works, there is a moderate sense in which I can make certain claims from my rich diary of events in the capital. Certainly, one of the most striking experiences I can relive is the way I have seen southern politicians, 'militicians', bureaucrats, etc build their bridges in Abuja. I have seen them destroy their tomorrow because of their greed, today. Certainly, this is one of the critical factors that I feel will shape the future of politics in Nigeria.
This is critically so because if we do not line up behind our own kinsmen tomorrow, nobody should raise eyebrows in this nation of many nationalities. This is the reality because it is what you saw that you will reap. After more than fifteen years of interacting with these influential people in Abuja, I am in a position to say that most of our southerners have sown wind and they have nothing else to reap in post retirement life than wild, wild whirlwind.
When I began to keep this diary on the points at issue, I used to believe some pedestrian theory that northerners show more milk of human kindness because of their disposition towards recklessness in public office. Later, when my third eye began to notice how Nigeria works in Abuja, I discovered that recklessness in public office has no ethnic colour. In other words, I discovered that a lot of hypocrisy is prevalent among southerners in Abuja. They are as good and bad as their counterparts in the north when it comes to dealing with public funds. The only difference is that southerners "eat" alone in Abuja, while their colleagues in the north, share their own values among their people.
In Abuja I know northerners work the telephones to assist their own people to get job opportunities. They allow their even lowly people to have unlimited access to them. It is not possible to see southerners in public office in Abuja unless they need your service for their selfish ends. While northerners struggle to shape the future of their people in public service and politics in Abuja, southerners destroy their own. Even for the purpose of answering simple questions about what is going on in Government, southerners are unavailable for their people. But like organic molecules, northerners clutch and plan for the future together.
Even when you seek to assist them, southern leaders in Abuja unleash on you their special and personal assistants I recently called "principalities and powers" in Abuja. The arrogant special assistants of these terrible southerners in Abuja really understand their masters' disposition: that they don't want to see their people. They are congenitally wicked in their hostility towards anybody who wants to see them for anything. Haba! They behave as if tomorrow will never come.
In the public service mainstream, the rank of individualistic southerners is growing to a proportion that clearly shows that the future does not belong to southerners. This is clearly so because in Nigeria today, no one gets anything on merit. In Abuja I know, you need to collect "notes' from some powerful people who have, in this connection, helped others before. But unfortunately for southerners and their "siblings" in the "middle belt", no one is in sight to help. Our influential people are too "decent" to assist their vulnerable people.
So, as the rank of unassisted people grows to an alarming rate, so is the propensity of the unassisted to claim the alibi that after all, no-one-helped me; why should I help others?
The truth about the new Nigeria that is fast emerging in Abuja is that most of the southerners who are in sensitive positions in Abuja have been one way or the other assisted by core northerners. That is the new life in Abuja no one wants to talk about. Now, when the payback time comes, the southerners that have been assisted by northerners to change their profiles will definitely look up to the hills in the north to help people, whence cometh their help in the first instance. I have seen many brilliant people fail public service job interviews just because of the bridges their siblings from the south have used and destroyed.
This remarkable phenomenon has manifested itself in the character of our new breed politicians in Abuja too. In Abuja, even as a political journalist, no matter your status, it is easier to see northern politicians than to see even your own representatives. It is disgusting to note that to a typical southerner in Abuja, anybody, especially his brother who wants to see him is either hungry or looking for contracts.
In 2000, at a public function in Okitipupa in Ondo, I once told one of these big guns in Abuja that it is na•ve to regard anybody who seeks to see them as hungry. But they have not changed. If as a fairly comfortable Nigerian, working and living in Abuja, you cannot easily see your own representative and your senator in Abuja where they are representing you, something is basically wrong with that representation. How can such representatives see their many constituents that are far away? What is more, these big men in Abuja from the south do not accept invitations for social functions that have anything to do with their people. Even if you just need their presence to dignify your occasions, they will never turn up. Nor will they send apologies. It is that bad.
If you do not understand the essentials of what I am lamenting, let me give some concrete examples of the aloofness of southerners in Abuja, and of course, in Lagos area. In 1998, while the then administration of General Abdulsalami Abubakar was rounding off in Aso Villa, one dramatic incident inside the State House confirmed the tragic point at issue. That fateful afternoon, as associate editor of The Source newsmagazine, I was on routine checks of political news leads at the Presidential Villa. Reporters were just waiting for the inauguration of one of the numerous panels then.
And some ministers were expected at the event. Coincidentally, the then FRCN State House correspondent, Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, who later wrote Inside Aso Rock, a book on the Presidential Palace, and I were discussing the arrogant aloofness of our people in Abuja where we stood near the Council Chambers when one of the ministers of southern origin, loomed up for the assignment in the Power House. As we spotted the minister who looked elegant in his Kente shirt over a pair of black trousers, we paused to greet him. We all bent to salute the serious looking minister who Orji said knows him personally. But to or shame, the man walked majestically past us without looking our way. He merely shook his head and muttered something like "h-umm", in the manners of a pig's grunt to acknowledge our salutation.
Just as Orji shook his head, moved some steps back and forth and I just smiled, NTA's Mohammed Labo, a vivacious guy who was oblivious of our immediate experience with a Southerner Minister, jostled us out of our stupor. "What are you guys planning here?" he snarled as he shook us one by one. Just as Labo, ever so humorous, was entertaining us, another minister from the north emerged like a bolt from the blues. As soon as the Minister spotted Mohammed Labo who was then on secondment to "NIGERIA 99' he shouted "Mohamed and he started speaking in Hausa. Surprisingly, he grabbed Mohammed as he acknowledged our greeting. He (the minister) locking Mohammed's hand in his armpit dragged him (Mohammed) away from our presence. Mohammed did not need to say "my friend, just a minute", as he went into the Chambers with the Minister. You see a tale of two ministers and their people just as we were saying. That is a picture of the new Abuja, where we shape the future of interpersonal relationships.
Another relevant experience is a story one of my respected elders in journalism told me recently as he fought tears. It was a nine-year-old story that touched his heart. He told me the story in Abuja because I provoked him to tell me why he has always been insisting on greeting a particular political figure anytime he comes to Abuja. In response, he (the elder) narrated his gruesome experience when Emperor Abacha closed down the newspaper he was then working for as one of the editors.
The conclusion of the whole story the elder told me is that when he was going through that trauma of closure for months, some wicked robbers in Lagos literally aggravated his plight when they vandalised his car in the compound where he had parked it. He said when he noticed the callousness of the burglars the following day, he wept bitterly because of the grave implications of the incident, since there was no office to assist. He said he knew there would be nobody to show milk of human kindness in the Lagos area. Asked why he jumped to such sweeping conclusions, he narrated how a few months after the tragic closure, even his professional colleagues were getting tired of seeing him without a platform, not to talk of circumstantial friends who had really benefited from his practice as editor. He said in Lagos, in this connection, "you are on your own".
Lamenting that the stolen parts of the Mercedes Benz 200 series including head light components and some interior appliances remained so for some time until a northerner from Adamawa State who heard the burglary/vandalization story through a third party later came to his rescue. In the same vein, I have taken some time to ask questions even in the armed forces and the paramilitary services. The impression I got is that today's officers from the south are also victims of the same circumstances.
Most officers confirmed to me that most of the retired officers from the south cannot return to their former formations today to get anything because they never helped anybody either while they were in office or in power. They only helped themselves. But their counterparts from the north always have retired people to look up to for counsel on the way forward.
Similarly, if you beam any searchlight on the Presidency and the Federal Cabinet secretariat today, you may see neither the footprints nor the "offspring" of the Obasanjos, the Shonekans, the Ayidas, the Falaes, etc. But as you step into these areas, you will find the "offspring" of the IBBs, the Abachas, the Abdusalamis, the Aliyu Mohammeds, the Aminu Salehs, the Gidado Idrises, etc. Just as we may not find more than products of the Atikus and the Yayale Ahmeds in the Power House and the public sector after 2007. This is likely to be so because the fact about Abuja today is that Baba Iyabo and his wife, Oga Ekaette and co., do not have the spirit to assist anyone: It is not in their character to help. Yet it is one Nigeria, one public service.
Therefore as we await leaders who will run Nigeria on a truly Nigerian platform, my appeal to our brothers from the south (and the middle belt) is that they should learn how to accommodate people from all walks of life. They definitely cannot help everybody. They should pray for the spirit to give, help or share. They need to note that it is not only money that most people need from them. Some need love and counsel. Some need information. Just as others need even their presence on their events and memorable days. No, not their money, always. Money is not everything, after all.
Without prejudice to a few southerners who have tapped anointing to help and accommodate from the north, I would like our selfish, egoistic and individualistic brothers from the south to note this: that life, yes quality life does not consist in the abundance of what they have acquired alone for their families; rather it consists in the quality of testimony of the people that have risen in life through them.
In other words, as I observed earlier, when you see some southern Nigerians busy in the camps of some "bloody" northerners tomorrow even when their brothers are in need of their expertise, please, do not be surprised. It is what our brothers sow they will reap. They sow sparingly and they will reap sparingly. It is the word of God. It is the voice of the people, which will affect the colour of tomorrow's politics in Nigeria.
Final appeal to the people we are complaining about: Please, help to deplete the rank of the non-assisted people today so that the quantum of ancient grudges against even your own children will be reduced tomorrow. God bless Nigeria.
Oloja is the Abuja Bureau Chief of The Guardian.
WE ARE ALL TOGETHER!!