Jokolo to Jonathan: Don’t commit political on Oct 26, 2014· Last week, in the first part of this interview, former Emir of Gwandu, Major Al-Mustapha Jokolo (rtd), a former aide-de-camp to former head of State, General Muhammad Buhari x-rayed the pitiable situation of the Nigerian Armed Forces and expressed strong reservation about the way the finances of the armed services had been handled resulting in the rot that caused extensive demoralization of the troops, poor discipline and deep decline in welfare. In the second and concluding apart of the interview, he offers insights into the politics of 2015, and makes some categorical declarations. Excerpts… As one of the strong voices in the North, it would not be out of place to ask you some political questions, even though your area of specialization is security. The Igbo have been crying of marginalization. The South-west hasheld the number one office at the centre for eight years and so there is no clamour from that axis. The South-south now has it. The North was there for many years. Is there now any justification for not talking of Igbo Presidency? Don’t you then see the clamour for a northern Presidency as overheating the polity? You are again trying to put me in a fix. I have told you before that the South- south should be given that chance because of the reasons I enumerated; that they never had it before; that they our allies or friends and fought the war on our side. They suffered too as we did. If Jonathan emerged as the man from the South-south, goodluck to him. I do not care whoever takes it from the South-south. All I am saying is that the South-south should be given that chance because we now have six geo-political zones. Each one of them has tasted it. I am concerned about this more than Boko Haram because this is the biggest dilemma we have in Nigeria now. Really? Yeah. Because if we don’t address it properly, we may end up with what happened to other countries. Soviet Union disintegrated. Yugoslavia disintegrated. Other countries are disintegrating now and not coming back. If Nigeria should disintegrate as a result of one office like that of the President, is it fair for anybody? Look at the implication for all of us; whether Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, majority, minority, we are all going to pay for it. If this position forces us to disintegrate, nobody in the North will find it easy going without seaport or oil. We cannot find it easy. Let’s not pretend because even if we have farms, even agriculture, generally, we have passed the stage of using hoes to farm. We need tractors and how do we oil those tractors? We don’t have oil here in the North and we have no spare parts. Who are the traders in spare parts? Who are the electricians? The Igbo. So if there are none within our midst, on and on, we don’t have that knowledge. Even where few of us do, how are we going to survive without these things? On the other hand, look at the Igbo themselves. Can they survive without the North? They need space. They are a highly intelligent race. That was what happened in Germany. They discovered they were in an enclosure. That was why they started waging wars. The Igbo with their active nature cannot be contained in the South-eastern states. So they need to expand to get space. And they have no space there. So how are they going to survive without space? Never mind food. You can import food from anywhere. Saudi Arabia has no food. So they can buy from anywhere. That’s no problem. But they cannot get space. So what are they going to do? If they have no space, they are going to move over like they did before and try to capture South-south. They are not going to allow the South-south to remain on their own. They had one region before. They had ACB. They used the money from that bank and acquired choice areas in Rivers State and then there was war. The Rivers people fought against the Igbo and after the war, they said the property the Igbo acquired were abandoned property even though the Igbo owned the land. They bought the land with loans they got from their bank. Interestingly, David Mark as a Major was the one who was the Chairman of the abandoned property thing. So you find that we all need each other. How many towns or villages can you go to in the North where you do not have Igbo? And in spite of all that has happened from before the war – there were crises where you had people killing each other. And then after the war you still have these crises where you have people killing each other here and there. So the Igbo need space. We have space but we have no oil and seaport. We have no technology, but they have. So, we need each other. For the Yoruba, they too have the same problem. We are so intermingled that we do not even know who is a northerner and who is a Yoruba man. Go to Ibadan, you have a whole area that is northern. Go to Lagos and anywhere else, likewise here in the North.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 10:54:00 +0000
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