Dear Dr Baba-Ahmed
In March 2021, I published a letter written to you in response to your essay titled: “We, On The Edge” by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, when you retired as a columnist in the Vanguard Newspaper of Nigeria.
Unfortunately, in this new letter I have to quote from that letter in some detail because of your Coming-Out Performance at the recent Maitama Sule Lecture Series organized by the students’ wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
In the previous letter, I wrote:
“Personally, I will like to wish you well in your new aspiration that desires “to devote more time to those efforts that try to pull the country from the edge.” But I will sincerely advise that you should devote your energy to the building of the political and economic structures of whatever ethnic group you belong to. The intelligentsia class need to help the masses to face the future of a restructured or disbanded Nigeria as each ethnic group strives towards economic independence and political self-determination.
We must all work hard to put a stop to the uncanny deception of One United Indivisible Nigeria. This age-long political deceit, if viewed objectively with a nonpartisan stance, has not done any of the ethnic groups any good. But instead of ushering in blessings and progressive development to the country, it has brought untold misfortune and avoidable hardships. Without a pragmatic effort on all sides of the divide, the ill-advised deception born of stupidity is about to sink Nigeria into a deeper and unfathomable existential destruction.
Nigeria can still avoid the fast impending disaster if the elites are prepared to approach the Restructuring/Dissolution Round-Table Discussions amicably; to dialogue together objectively; and to set aside all parochial loyalties as they make rational arrangements to secure practicable political and economic outcomes for all.
Without doubt, if the mission is handled with sincerity of purpose based solely on a common respect for the human rights of the people regardless of the ethnic status, beliefs, sex, language, etc., Nigeria can still secure a safe landing for all concerned.
In my humble opinion, I think, the current national chaos, anarchy, insecurity, the rule of banditry instead of the rule of law in and around the country, have forced on us a deadly political circumstances which are now totally beyond our control. This momentous sad and politically delicate period demands that we put on our thinking caps and find a workable resolution to the present national predicament.
The individual and collective welfare of our people as human beings and as indigenous ethnic groups are at stake. We can not afford to sacrifice the lives of the generality of the innocent people of the country in order to satisfy the egoistic pursuits of the few political gangster among us….” (End)
The Bombastic Keynote Address
In my naivety, I thought I have been able to convince you beyond reasonable doubt to see the true state of affairs of Nigeria and therefore I expected you to appreciate the need to focus attention on the mobilisation of your ethnic group “towards economic independence and political self-determination”.
It was therefore a shock to read the report of your off-the-cuff bombastic keynote address, which you delivered to the Student’s’ Wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups on Saturday, 19th September, 2021, in your capacity as the Director of Publicity and Advocacy of the Northern Elders Forum.
I don’t know what happened to you or what dictated the need to make such an unrestrained and provocative speech. Maybe, the favourable ambience of the occasion and the passionate desire to sensitise the upcoming youth and the future generation of Arewaland to the Arewa’s Way of doing politics, did the magic of relaxing your mood and to the extent of sending you off from your usual guarded public persona.
Also, maybe the euphoria of the occasion might have sent you down the slope to the bottomless pit where emotive outburst can be easily prompted. Fortunately, for observers like me, the speech revealed your jealously guarded unreasoned partisanship and irrational irredentist beliefs, hitherto hidden from the public.
I have never met you in person but your pictures seen on the television shows a person who has the semblance of a cultivated cosmopolitan-outlook, with an urbane, taciturn, standoffish, and scholarly demeanour. It is often said, “to whom much is given, much is expected”. I am sure your audience and admirers expected much more from you.
Dear Dr Baba-Ahmed, Why then did you think you should so casually throw caution to the wind against the vitally important need for the self-preservation of the ‘North’ in the face of the political uncertainties and the ongoing multi-sectoral calamities facing Nigeria?
Why did you think that the occasion was the right time to open up and to bare all the deep secrets in your uncharitable bosom to the public glare without any regard for those whose horses are being gorged?
And going by your pedigree, you should be the last person to be reminded about the need to be cautious and sensitive. Because, as you must rightly have known, there are many tethered suffering horses in Nigeria, who are desperately eager to bolt out of the Nigeria-paddock. And indeed, they are more than ready to unlock the ugly and uncomfortable chains of their political bondage.
If I may ask, What holy Mullah gave you the impression that the 2023 ‘Democratic’ Election is on the probable list of Must-Do-Things on the political agenda of Nigeria, before the much more important resolutions of the Referendum or the Restructuring or the Dissolution of Nigeria is finalised?
In the speech, you asked, “Why does anybody need to threaten us and intimidate us?” I don’t think there is any indigenous people in Nigeria who is threatening the ‘North’ (meaning the Fulani Caliphate). Rather, to the best of my observation and understanding, it is the ‘North’ that has gone beyond and above threatening other nonFulani ethnic peoples. From the chaos and anarchy going on all over the country, at the instance of members of the Fulani ethnic nation, it is the Fulani that has actually and unilaterally declared war on the whole indigenous people of Nigeria.
The common impression in the country that holds the view that the Fulani Elites have declared War against other ethnic nations, came out more strongly and more clearly in your hubristic outburst in the Keynote Address. Didn’t you ask that those who disagree with the Fulani covert and malevolent programmes should go ahead and leave Nigeria? From the quoted statement that was put under your name, you said,“If the majority of Nigeria voters vote for a candidate from the North and he becomes the President and somebody doesn’t want to live under the Nigeria President, the person can leave.”
Haba! Dr Baba-Ahmed, the indigenous people of Nigeria are right to wonder and to ask, What manner of petulant arrogance is this? They are also asking, out of sheer surprise, Is this not Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the son and a second generation of the immigrant Baba-Ahmed of Mauritania?
You see, people have very long memories. It is only when a foreigner in a community has gone beyond the pale of expected normal behaviour, it is then the hospitable hosts will be forced to ask pertinent questions like, “Who the hell does this arrogant person think he is?
Now, hearing from you the pronouncement of something that sounds like a ‘fatwa’, threatening to send into exile any indigenous persons that disagree with the Fulani hegemonic lies, nepotism and deceptions, Isn’t that an over-the-top threat to the sons and daughters of the soil — the actual inheritors and owners of the landmass of Nigeria?
Leadership Practice by Deception
Dr Baba-Ahmed, the central premise of your thesis and political ideology are rested principally on the already well known deception of the North’s popular claim to massive population size. The possession of ‘massive’ population figures over and above every other region in the country has remained unprovable because it is false. But anyone with a bit of common sense knows that this ‘massive population theory’ is a fallacy, a figment of the imagination and a concocted illusion formulated by the magical abracadabra of the British Colonial administrators before they ‘departed’ from Nigeria.
Moreover, local and international political historians and analysts have severally unveiled, ad nauseam, that the British Colonial government created the population-bomb shell in Nigeria for a very selfish economic purpose and for a very wicked political end.
Historians have shown that the divide-and-rule political machinations of the occupier and coloniser of a country is an ancient imperial political design. It is aimed at sowing the seeds of enmity and hostility among the colonised people for easy social control, political manipulation and economic exploitation by the colonial overlords.
In the case of Nigeria, Britain intentionally sowed the seeds of ethnic division in Nigeria. This calculated political game by a defunct imperial power has ensured, ever since, the continuation of the British imperial rule over Nigeria. As a result and by a covert use of the installed local vassals and a clandestine remote control of the economic policies of Nigeria, Britain that pulled off the sham political independence of 1960, has never totally took her greedy fingers out of the cookie jar of Nigeria.
It is therefore most unfortunate that the only magic weapon that a celebrated egghead like you is relying upon, as a winning joker in any ‘democratic’ election in Nigeria, is the deceitful and ambiguous population census figures that Britain surreptitiously gifted to her vassal and partner in crime— the Fulani Caliphate.
Consequently, it can be declared in all honesty that it is a big Shame on any one or any people in Nigeria who thinks and speaks the way you just did in this Keynote Address. It is a double Shame on all those that continue to use DECEPTION to curry political favours, advantages, positions of honour, riches, wealth and power in Nigeria. And it is a triple Shame on all those that based their ‘successful’ political existence on DUPLICITY, doublespeak, double-dealing and two-facedness in Nigeria.
The Cry for Justice
This is why the cry for Justice is ringing out loudly across the length and breadth of Nigeria. Now, everyone, even the most liberal of spirit, can see clearly why the established structures of Nigeria built on fraud, maintained by fraud and sustained by fraud are no longer reliable or feasible to create and to uphold a justifiable political arrangement for Peace, Progress, Prosperity and the much elusive Unity of the multiethnic and multicultural groups in the country.
In this respect, for you and others like you to boast about the continuation of the status quo of leadership practices as usual in Nigeria under the suzerainty of the ‘North’ (Fulani), and regardless of the debilitating result of the North’s past and present records in leadership, is absolutely contemptuous of those under the tragedy of political subjugation. And it is, as well, grievously insulting to the intelligence of the suffering indigenous people of Nigeria.
Also in the speech and as a way to justify the Fulani elites’ kind of ‘democratic justice’, you were quoted to have said, “This is democracy. If they don’t like what Nigeria is, they will say they want to break up from this country, we don’t pay attention to those people, we are focused on the fact that we are running a democratic system.”
And this chest beating about “running a democratic system” is coming from the Arewaland where we regularly found the ugly practices of under age children voting in political party elections and an outright industrial-scale outfit for the thumb-printing of ballot papers outside the polling boots.
From this statement, Dr Baba-Ahmad, you have brazenly come out to show the world that you have a vehement distaste for the fundamental rights of the people to choose alternative political preference when they are dissatisfied with and are being ‘judicially’ injured by the current paralysing social situations.
Finally, you said, “If they don’t like what Nigeria is, they will say they want to break up from this country,”. And for speaking out loud, What is wrong about the legitimate desire of the oppressed free born indigenous people of Nigeria to “break up from this country”?
Breaking up of the country is the expected consequence of nepotism, injustices and inequalities. When those who are running down the lives of the people into the ground are intransigent, are blind and dumb to Reason and are deaf to the painful and agonising cry of the suffering people, break up must be expected.
In addition, when the born-to-ruin ethnic bigots, who are occupying the leadership positions in the country, are forever insisting that it is either the indigenous people come along and follow their ruinous political ways or there is no other way at all, the country must expect to break up.
For twenty-two godless years and without ceasing, the indigenous people of Nigeria have pointed the attention of the feudal lords of the Nigeria Manor/Estate to the fraud of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria and to the illegalities of all the institutions that grew out of this fraudulent Constitution, to no avail.
Also, the awakened people in the country have persistently pointed the attention of the Fulani feudal lords to the linkages between the Fraudulent Constitution of Nigeria and the inability of the country to have workable structural and effective institutional arrangements that could have adequately enhanced the promotion and the protection of welfare, safety, security, peace, unity, progress and prosperity of the country.
Yet, Dr Baba-Ahmed along with other Fulani Elites, who are in control of the political and economic affairs of the country, are fond of making fun of the legitimate demands of the people. Rather than show humane consideration, mercy and benevolence, the Collegiate MisLeaders across the board are laughing the people to scorn. And that’s why you, Dr Baba-Ahmed, have the temerity to declare: “We will lead Nigeria the way we have led Nigeria before whether we are President or Vice President, we will lead Nigeria.”
The Imperative of Separation and Divorce in a Toxic Relationship
Dear Dr Baba-Ahmed, if you and the other Fulani Elites that think along the way your speech portrays, still desire an amicable resolution and a peaceful settlement to the Nigerian Questions, then there is a need for a public apology to the ever-forgiven and over-tolerant indigenous people of Nigeria.
Obviously, the Fulani Elites have taken the rest of the country for granted and for a ride for far too long. The indigenous people have reached the tether’s end of a very long rope of accommodating the Fulani unbridled nepotism and of tolerating the Fulani political administration of inequality, injustice and an outright political enslavement of the other ethnic nations in Nigeria.
However, if the Fulani Elites are claiming to be ignorant about their political excesses in Nigeria, it is necessary to let them know that these are the unpalatable discoveries that the indigenous people of Nigeria have made. And that the documented egregious and inconsiderate behaviours of the Fulani elites are the unmissable, incompatible, immoral values and unethical beliefs that are currently fuelling the spiritual needs of the indigenous people of Nigeria for a political dissociation and economic freedom from the Fulani tyranny.
Viewing the whole charade of Nigeria from the incompatibility perspective, Wouldn’t the desire of the indigenous people of Nigeria for a political separation away from an alien ethnic people that carry toxic baggages in their political attitude to power, be valid? Is it possible for any civilised people to have a mutually beneficial relationship with an alien people whose faith and cultural orientation for political conquest and hegemony are based on the use of beastly violence, vile, unspeakable atrocities and open deception?
The differences in attitude between the Fulani ethnic nation and other indigenous ethnic people of Nigeria to political life are too significant and the rigid cultural gap are unfortunately unbridgeable. The attitudinal differences have become a hindrance and impediment to a peaceful communal life in Nigeria.
Whereas, instead of the use of force and brigandage of the Fulani as a strategy of acquiring right to governance, the indigenous people of Nigeria have, for generations, strongly believed in peace and in the mutual understanding of people’s rights as the essential ingredients for commodious community life. Hence, the cultivated moral principle of the indigenous people have long accepted, acknowledged and understood, most keenly, the laudable imperatives of accommodating the fundamental human rights of all persons as the only moral foundation on which any institution of government can be built.
These are some of the fundamental issues in the Nigerian Questions. Without finding the right answers to the unparalleled injustices in the country, those who are thinking and planning for 2023 ‘democratic party elections’ are merely building castles in the air.
Thank You Dr Baba-Ahmed for Coming Out.
On this note, we need to say a big thank you to Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed for coming out at this moment of political distress in Nigeria. His coming out has buttressed the misgivings and the suspicions of the indigenous people of Nigeria about some of the salient factors and assumptions that were adduced to be motivating the truculent attitudes and the diabolical behaviours of the Fulani elites in Nigeria.
Superficially, it is very convenient for most observers to put the blame of the woes of Nigeria on only the criminal Fulani Herdsmen, Fulani Terrorists (Bandits), Fulani Militiamen, and the Boko Haram insurgents while totally forgetting that there must be some kinds of diabolical beliefs and insane ideologies propelling the sordid and macabre activities of the Fulani foot soldiers.
It is to people like Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed and the Fulani Elite that we must go to find the answers to the political conundrums bedevilling Nigeria. This is why at anytime when a member of the Fulani Elites opened up to speak in public, the awakened indigenous people of Nigeria must listen carefully and must take the time to analyse, as intelligently as possible, the meaning of their political art and innate cultural proficiency in the use of the doublespeak language.
It is a disheartening experience for the awakened indigenous peoples of Nigeria, who have lately come into the disquieting realisation, that the Fulani elites have not got the moral inclination to respect and to uphold the sanctity of the Nigeria Pledge.
Putting together the present state of political, social and economic affairs in the country, it is painful to accept the sad reality that, since 1960, the Fulani elites have been unfaithful, disloyal and dishonest. That they have deliberately sabotaged the national interest and progress of Nigeria with all their strength. And that they have wilfully refused to do what is necessary and justifiable to defend the unity and to uphold the honour and glory of Nigeria.
How I wish that Dr Baba-Ahmed could, for the sake of an objective, nonpartisan moment, put himself in the shoes of the suffering indigenous people of Nigeria.
Having come into the understanding that the Fulani Elites in our midst have been working at cross purposes to the noble interest of Nigeria, what could he have done? What should the people of the world advise the demoralised and pauperised indigenous people of Nigeria to do under this heartbreaking circumstances?
The indigenous people of Nigeria have lost everything because they wholeheartedly believed in the Nigeria Dream. As a result, they invested and committed everything they had to Project Nigeria, which unfortunately has failed spectacularly.
The truth about the political symbolism of Nigeria as a wedlock between the North and the South of Nigeria has to come to the fore in the final analysis of the debacle of Nigeria. When a marriage agreement between two people is no longer working as smoothly as they both envisaged it should be; and when they discovered that there are too many incompatible and unresolvable issues on values, morality, ethics, beliefs, lifestyle choices and aspirations, the most sensible step to take for such unfortunate couple is to file for a separation and a divorce.
This is where Nigeria is, as at today. We must therefore appeal to Dr Baba-Ahmed to take the following messages back to his Fulani compatriots. The Fulani Elites must
- Stop raising a fictional and unrealistic expectations among the demoralised youth of the Arewa North.
- Stop dispensing lies and propagating falsehood that there is another fraudulent electoral landslide victory in 2023.
- Stop propagandising the debunked fraudulent population census figures as an incontrovertible truth.
- Accept the reality that Project Nigeria has failed because of the Fulani ethnic moral deficit, innate dishonesty, habitual disloyalty and unfaithfulness to uphold and to defend the unity of Nigeria above ethnic bigotry and extreme exclusive ethnic solidarity.
- And for once in the long history of the Fulani duplicity and deception in Nigeria, please in the spirit of the common humanity in all of us, cooperate with other ethnic nations and put a stop to the ongoing Fulani bloody encounters with the unarmed indigenous people of Nigeria.
In conclusion, it is necessary to reiterate the appeal contained in the essay mentioned above, that:
“Nigeria can still avoid the fast impending disaster if the elites are prepared to approach the Restructuring/Dissolution Round-Table Discussions amicably; to dialogue together objectively; and to set aside all parochial loyalties as they make rational arrangements to secure practicable political and economic outcomes for all.
Without doubt, if the mission is handled with sincerity of purpose based solely on a common respect for the human rights of the people regardless of the ethnic status, beliefs, sex, language, etc., Nigeria can still secure a safe landing for all concerned.”
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
samabbdisrael@msn.com
ITSOT 