By Lasisi Olagunju
Zamfara State governor, Bello Matawalle is in the news. He issued a very long statement on Thursday attacking the south in defence of his north. He also attacked anti-Buhari London protesters for their hatred for the president and the north. This governor belongs to the PDP, a political party that claims to be in opposition to the ruling party. But he sees nothing wrong washing Buhari’s APC feet and scenting him in groveling shame. I do not know who told him that President Muhammadu Buhari needed the ‘ineffectual buffoonery’ of the PDP to defend himself from haters. My people say the warrior’s kumo (club) is enough to kill, it does not need further fortifications from charms and amulets of busybodies.
What is the business of an opposition governor in buying drugs for a sick president? The PDP and some of its jobless leaders do not know how to mind their business. They don’t. The party has many of such ‘leaders’ in the south west who dingily campaign for Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his undeclared 2023 presidential ambition. They lick the arse of APC with their party clapping and hailing them: “you are doing well.” What kind of man is in PDP and at the same time a shit-packer for Buhari and the other APC power-bags? All over the world, no man of value hyphenates contradictory values; no good man grafts good on bad and bad on good. PDP has such ghastly people who misbehave without wearing masks. The Yoruba use bewildering eyes to look at anyone who expands his Oshokolo to start bearing Oshakala-Oshokolo. There are other savage names for such characters; we call them alagabagebe. You do not need a translator to grasp the meaning of that zigzag word; all you need is listen to its macabre sound and you get how disgusting whoever is so described is.
Matawalle is my focus here, the loathsome Oshaka-Oshoko of the South West are just an abhorrent detour, so I leave them. Matawalle informed us in his statement that the protest against Buhari in London was an attack on the north. He said “as a northerner,” he condemned “in strongest terms” the protests which “demonstrated the growing hatred against anything north.”
Now, is it a northern policy that a president luxuriates abroad while hospitals are closed at home? Who told Matawalle that the London assembly of protesters was one hundred percent southern? When did we start ethnicising protests against bad governmental acts and behaviours? The January 2012 fuel price protests that burst the balls of President Goodluck Jonathan was actively financed by elements who populate the APC today, north and south. Buhari was involved; Nasir el-Rufai was involved; the Zamfara kingmakers who enthroned Matawalle were involved. Now, using the illogic of this governor from Zamfara, would we be right to say that the 2012 protest was a manifestation of those people’s hatred for Jonathan’s Ijaw and ‘anything’ south south?
What our president says with his grisly silence is what desperate Matawalle has said in gruesome words. This is a season of sickening politics. Because of the pushback against retail and wholesale smuggling of banditry into the south, Matawalle also threatened that the north had the capacity to ‘reciprocate.’ His dogoturenchi (gigantic English) clung like salamander on what he called south’s attacks and hostilities to northerners in the south.
His words: “If Northerners and their means of livelihood will not be protected, accommodated and be dignified anywhere they choose to stay in any part of the South, southerners should NOT expect such reciprocal protection from the North as the North has more than what it takes to respond to any kind of aggression and hatred.”
We regularly hear such threats from bandits and other criminals from the north since 2015. But a governor is not an ordinary official of state, he is a miniature president. So, when Matawalle spoke the language of bandits, it could only mean that Nigeria has truly metastasized from a country of hope to a monstrous forest of the heartless.
Zamfara, where Matawalle is governor, is the banditry capital of Nigeria. You would think that this governor already had enough in his plate and would mind his business. But no. He is a politician, there is no commitment to anything edifying. There is no shame; what there is, is the end which must always justify the vile means. Just eleven days ago, Matawalle cried out that six northern states, including his own, had 30,000 bandits in 100 camps. Specifically, he said in his state, there were 4,825 bandits who had 232 commanders with 24 routes and networks across 14 local government areas of the state. He disclosed further that in Zamfara State between 2011 when the banditry crisis began and 2019, 2,619 people were killed; 1,190 kidnapped and the sum of N900 million paid as ransom while 14,378 animals were rustled.
He added: “One hundred thousand people were displaced from their ancestral homes. This is in addition to the hundreds of houses that were burned to ashes with foodstuffs and other valuables worth billions of naira destroyed by the bandits.”
He did not give details of the bad things that have been the lot of his state since he happened to Zamfara in 2019. But we cannot forget that the situation has terribly deteriorated to the point that a slumbering Buhari had to recently wake up to pronounce that state a no-fly zone.
But did you notice that all that concerned Matawalle was Southern Nigeria? This governor had no warning for his brothers, the bandits who have wrecked his region, his state and his people. Instead, what he has for them are bread and butter and bullion vans as thank-you packages. He is the originator of the pro-bandit amnesty policy popularized by Sheik Ahmad Gumi.
So what does Matawalle want? The involution in his politics is deliberate. He wants a second term. Full stop. Because he wants a second bite at the cherry, he has therefore decided to befriend the two unfailing factors for political success in the shit-hole of the north. He knew he needed the protection of Buhari and the support of the uncritical, fanatical street. These two he would get if he assumed the role of their champion and becomes the north’s own Sunday Igboho. That is what he has done by launching a blitzkrieg at the south. But with that statement of poorly assembled phrases, did he not cut the pitiable picture of a repulsive desperado? Let us see how far he can go.
Well, it turned out that this governor was just the appetizer; the main course came the following day. Leaders of the Hausa-Fulani north don’t take prisoners when they go to war. So, on Friday came from them a Fatwah on the south. They would restructure Nigeria (in their own image) and won’t mind keeping the presidency of the country till death do them part. The ultra conservative, pro-Buhari Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the nimble pro-Atiku Northern Elders Forum (NEF) led 15 other groups to make it very clear in a communique they issued in Kaduna that Friday that, in this patriarchy nicknamed Nigeria, they are the husband and their word is law. Did you read them?
They said: “The North believes that restructuring the country is now a vital necessity for survival as one entity…(But) the north will not be stampeded or blackmailed into taking major decisions around rotating the presidency.”
Very short, clear, unambiguous and audacious. That is how masters talk to slaves. They are ready to restructure Nigeria but that restructuring must not include allowing other parts, especially minority groups, to produce the president.
They also significantly borrowed warning shots for the south from Matawalle. They said: “The north warns against the continuation of demonization, attacks and killings of northerners in the southern parts of the country.” They asked the government to “take firmer steps to protect members of northern communities who live in the south…” But what about the atrocities of northern bandits in the south? The 12-paragraph, graceless, provocative communique had not one word of sympathy or pity for victims of northern violence in the south. It was all arrogance served in haughty, masterful plates. A helpless commentator, who read them, lamented online that the Hausa-Fulani north ‘always ensure that whatever they say happen.’
They decide and choose how Nigeria is run and dare the conquered south to contradict them. Well, my people say if you are sure of the potency of your Ogun or your oogun (charm), you swear with it. That is the meaning of that Kaduna Declaration. But it is ‘morning yet on creation day;’ we wait to see how far they will go.
(First published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 12 April, 2021).
