My dear brother, Ogaga Ifowodo, who enjoys my unreserved endorsement and 100% support for his bid for the Federal House of Reps in 2015, has just published an op-ed in Sahara Reporters grumbling about the northern elite and their defeat of the Niger Delta derivationists at the National Conference. I agree with Ogaga but must enter a lot of caveats and conditionalities. First, this is why I agree with him. I have written a lot lately about my contempt for the northern political elite in the old guard because of the consequences of their greed and wickedness for the north in particular and Nigeria in general. I have complained about the unwillingness of the new guard in the northern political elite - El Rufai, SLS, Ribadu, Shehu Sani, etc - to forge a paradigm shift from the otiose strategies and ideologies of their elders with regard to the Nigerian question. There is nothing in what these new guys are saying that shows that they have moved beyond the prebendal philosophy of oil, derivation, federal allocation, and all that jazz. They are not providing a robust intellectual basis for a paradigm shift in the thinking of their region. Therefore, the struggle to wean the greedy and selfish northern elite off the feeding bottle of oil must be sustained. And the struggle to wean their lackeys and quislings from other geo-political regions off the same feeding bottle must equally be sustained. Let the new intellectual and political brooms in the north come up with a grand blueprint for bringing back the groundnut pyramids and for developing tomato, onion, and cotton pyramids. I dont think they understand that the yeye refinery they put in Kaduna will never refine a single drop of oil again in Nigeria. Nobody in the Niger Delta is in the mood to let them ferry crude to Kaduna for refining even if they somehow get that refinery working again. If the northern elite does not get this message jejely, they will get it by force and tipa tikuku. It never made sense to go and put a refinery in Kaduna and pipeline crude all the way from Dokubo Asaris living room to feed it. Form a northern consortium to buy that refinery from the Federal Government, dismantle it, sell it off, and plunge the proceeds into northern agriculture. That said, what Ogaga has not addressed is the fact that the Niger Delta has a bakery for mass-baking some of the most execrable leaders in Nigeria. Ogaga and other derivationists from the Niger Delta must pay serious attention to this problem. You cannot just be screaming derivation in the light of the leadership tragedy we are seeing in the Niger Delta. When they dont give you Goodluck Jonathan, they give you Godswill Akpabio or Seriake Dickson or Rotimi Amaechi who go on pension and retirement jamborees with the so-called derivation when they are not amassing private jets. Akpabios pension wouldnt be a problem for me if we werent practicing the sort of faux federalism we are currently practicing. Let us have genuine federalism so that each region can determine her own priorities, manufacture the sort of leaders they want, and pay for those priorities with their own funds. Let the north be free to break beer bottles and build mosques as her 21st century development goals funded by money she generates from agriculture; let the southwest be free to generate her own funds and put all five state treasuries at the personal disposal of Emperor Tinubu; let the Niger Delta be free to use her resources to fund the private jets and lavish retirement bonuses of the sort of leaders she is producing! Lets have genuine Federalism and I wont have to worry about who is doing what with derivation in Uyo and Yenagoa.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 14:00:22 +0000
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