NO, NORTHERNERS ARE NOT PARASITES, by Bayo Olupohunda One of the many consequences of Nigeria’s ethnic and religious fault lines is how it has bred a culture of distrust, blame game and hatred among the disparate ethnic nationalities that make up our country since amalgamation in 1914. What is more alarming is how the Nigerian youth-the so-called future generation-have imbibed the divisive and primordial ethnic stereotypes that thrive on intolerance which once pushed our country to the brink. It is indeed worrisome to conclude that with today’s youth as ethnic champions, our country’s future is in a serious jeopardy. But I digress. Our diversity, rather than being a blessing, has become the purveyor of xenophobic ethnic bashing. In the years since our country was brought into a forced union, our differences have pushed us to the brink many times. These differences are threatening to tear us apart as a nation. Though we claim to live together as one people, ours is really a marriage of strange bed-fellows. As a result of our differences, Nigeria’s ethnic groups live in suspicion of one another. This mistrust has led to violence and bloodshed in the years since we became an independent nation. Ambassador John Campbell rightly noted in his seminal work of the same title, that ours is a country that is forever dancing on the brink. He is right. But ordinary Nigerians are essentially good people. What has happened is that they have allowed the greedy and selfish political elite to polarise and dictate the narrative that play up the divisive sentiments for their narrow and self-serving agenda. In their struggle for power, politicians and ethnic irredentists have resorted to ethnic bashing against an entire group or groups. They are ready to drag the whole country along this path of destruction in their quest to gain or retain power. Those politicians drumming war songs must remember that if Nigeria disintegrates, they will have no country to plunder. In the cacophony of hate speeches that has drowned sane reasoning, the North, for example, has variously been blamed for being responsible for Nigeria’s multifarious problems. The entire region has been labelled as parasites that feed on the nation’s resources without giving anything back. Those who hold this view have consistently told gullible Nigerians that the region has dominated power since independence and thus responsible for our under-development. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Unfortunately, entire generations of Nigerian youths are being weaned on this fallacy. It is a disservice and historically wrong to label an entire region as parasites. Indeed, an average northerner is as ambitious and hardworking as their southern counterparts. The disingenuous argument of the parasitic North is hinged on two erroneous and deceitful premises. First, that the Northern space is an acrid space of barren Sahara bereft of resources and which makes them dependent on oil. Second, that having dominated power for that long, the Northern leadership’s failure or refusal to capitalise on the advantage to develop the North makes the entire region responsible for widespread poverty in the region. How gullible can Nigerians be? While it is true that the North has suffered a dearth of leadership, it will amount to living in denial to claim that leadership failure is an exclusive malaise of the North. Leadership failure is a Nigerian crisis. Even Chinua Achebe alluded to this in his work, “The Problem with Nigeria”. The entire country has been a victim of a dearth of leadership since the military incursion into politics. It is the reason why there are so many crises in our country today. Insecurity, poverty, out-of-school children and other factors stalling our progress are results from leadership failure. They only exist in degrees across regions where they soon assume new dimensions and ferocity when left addresses as has been the case over the years. The situation is even worse in the Fourth Republic. The North has never been parasitic. Historically, the region was also developing just as rapidly as other regions. At Independence, the first generation leaders of the region harnessed its agricultural produce of groundnut and cotton. We know how the legendry agricultural pyramids powered the economy of the region and contributed immensely to its development. This was long before oil became the mainstay of our economy. While the other regional governments developed their resources for the benefit of their people, the North also tapped into its own strength. Over the years, the region has come to be known for its vast agricultural lands. It is thus no coincidence that it has continued to produce most of the farm produce we consume in the country today. The North has for long been providing the needs of the entire populace. States like Benue, which lies in the mid-section of Middle Belt and the core north, is famously referred to as the food basket of the nation. All the livestock we consume in the South come from the North. To underscore the importance of the region as the breadwinner of the nation, a misunderstanding between the Lagos State Government and Northern traders who bring goods such pepper, edibles, fruits and cows from the North created panic in the city some years ago. For a few days, the food chain of an entire state was shut down. Drought soon became imminent. Prices of foodstuff also went up astronomically. There was panic everywhere as residents prayed for the northerners to end the strike. Such is the importance of the North. Why do we then still refer to them as parasites when they feed the entire country? The coming of the military truncated the progress of the North just as it did other regions. Our leaders’ failure to harness the resources of the country created an oil-based mono-economy which made the entire country dependent on the product. This is not the North’s problem. It is a Nigerian conundrum. The argument that the region has dominated power since independence can also not be justified. How can we hold the North responsible for military rule that was clearly an aberration? That military rulers were from Northern extraction did not give any advantage to the region. Does it make the region culpable for military misrule? The North may have been dominant in the military but military regimes owed no allegiance to any ethnic group. They existed for their families and cronies alone. Can we possibly say that Sani Abacha governed for the North? Did he not corruptly enrich his family and cronies alone? Were his collaborators not from different parts of the country? The ordinary, poor people of the North have suffered the consequences of bad leadership just as everybody else. I have also always held the view that for every corrupt civilian or military government that has ruled our country, there were collaborators from other parts of the country. For example, the same political elite that have dominated power since independence are still calling the shots today. They have no ethnic coloration but bound together by one obvious common interest. The entire country, not the North, has been parasitic. What we need to develop is not a leader with an ethnic worldview but one who is nationalistic enough to harness our country’s vast resources for the common good. The challenge for us as a country is also the need to co-exist as one in spite of our differences.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 08:10:14 +0000
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