By Franklin Otorofani

I have just finished reading the thought provoking post March 26, 2015, by Sat Guru Maharaji in the AfricanHeraldExpress.com web portal, titled: “Open Letter To Southern Muslims”. His piece shares plenteous areas of commonality and intersections—a meeting of minds of sorts—with my earlier piece two days earlier on March 24, 2015, titled “Presidential Election Projection (PEP) – by Franklin …”published at the same site. These areas of commonality pertain to the political designs of colonial Britain on Nigeria as manifested in the Northern oligarchic stranglehold on political power in Nigeria.

I’m extremely gratified that a major spiritual transcendental voice has been raised at a most critical time in the nation’s history when it matters most when those that matter appear to have been administered the chill pill, cautioning Yoruba Muslims and, by extension, Yorubas at large, about the potential perils of being used by the Northern oligarchy to retake power and keep it as its colonial patrimony. I must confess, however, that Maharaji’s beautiful piece, just as lengthy as mine, was a delight to read and could only have come from one with deep insights and knowledge of British colonial imperial machinations on colonized nations in general and Nigeria in particular. By the way, India, also a former British colony, is dealing with similar debilitating colonial political legacies of the sort that are still plaguing Nigeria to this very day, 55 years after independence.

I’m of the opinion, however, as I had opined in a previous write up a few years ago, that the ultimate aim of Britain was, and still is, for Nigeria to implode knowing that the North and the South would forever remain strange bedfellows that could never co-exist for long after its departure. The evidence of this design is manifested in the very power structure left behind, which was deliberately designed with that purpose in mind. It was calculated to hasten the demise of the young and vulnerable nation. It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, that barely six years after the British left, the wished for existential trouble started and the fissures left unsealed began to crater, culminating in a civil war in 1970 that almost destroyed the nation and fulfill British dead wish for the nation. However, providence intervened to thwart the British plot. And here we are today still battling with the poisonous and perilous bequest of colonial Britain threatening the survival of nation even in its adult age at 55.

But be careful what you wish for your fellowman, because it could come right back to hurt you. And so today the UK is threatened with its own implosion and barely escaped splintering by the skin of its teeth last year as Scotland conducted a referendum for separation from the union. Although it failed to pass and I was personally against its passage in good conscience, it is still coming because what goes around comes around. The chickens are coming home to roost! Yes the British colonial arrow sent abroad to destroy colonized nations having failed to achieve its mission has turned back to strike it at home. Scotland wants to leave the union and if and when that happens there will be no more United Kingdom and the imperial Britain, having lost its overseas territories, including Hong Kong and empire, will be a shrunken to an old, derelict nation living on past glories.

The long and the short of these two posts, therefore, is the unravelling of the Northern oligarchic agenda for Nigeria hinged on British imperialist designs for the nation. Both posts drip with references to this ungodly imperial machinations of Britain as indicated in these excerpts from my piece:.

“It is not clear to me, therefore, if the historical link between the British and Northern oligarchies have been severed. It doesn’t appear to in any significant manner. The Sultan of Sokoto is supposed to be the viceroy of sorts to the Queen of England in Nigeria. In other words, the Sultan of Sokoto is supposed to be traditional ruler of Nigeria in the manner of the Queen of England, with all other traditional rulers—Obas, Obis, Iqwes, Ovies, and the rest of the regional monarchs paying him homage in Sokoto.”

“What we are witnessing today in the Nigerian political scene, therefore, is the attempt by the North to regain power and revert the nation to the status quo ante; i.e. back to its colonial power structure with the North again in charge and the South playing its colonially assigned second fiddle.

However, he introduced a religious dimension to the equation which caught my attention and would like to explore it a little further. Basically, his theory is that the Sultan of Sokoto wants to use Yoruba Muslims in the South/West to wrest political power back from the south particularly from the South/South. It should be obvious even to the dumbest political mind in the nation that the North has managed to strike a power sharing deal of sorts, not necessarily with the South in general but with the South/West in particular anchored on the Islamic religion. After all that is what political alliance is supposed to mean for the contracting parties concerned. But a power sharing deal anchored on the Islamic religion is a new element of Yoruba political tradition. And if it pans out, it can only be a sign of desperation by the Bola Tinubu’s camp in the APC alliance which would be a betrayal of Awosism.

This is the part that intrigues me because to the best of my historical recollections, religion has never played such a big a role in Yoruba national politics otherwise the region would not have stuck with Chief Obafemi Awolowo (a devout Christian) all through his political life through thick and thin against the Northern Islamic oligarchy. And the attempts by Northern Caliphate to penetrate the Western region in the first Republic by orchestrating a rebellion against Awolowo, led by the Premier Ladoke Akintola was stiffly resisted by the Yorubas and led to the collapse of the First Republic and the resultant civil war. Although Akintola’s NNDP, just like Tinubu’s ACN, had formed an alliance with the Northern Oligarchs in the federal controlling NPC, that led to its victory in the West, that victory was short-lived and the Yorubas quickly retraced their steps back to the AG.

And what’s more, with the exit of Chief Awolowo from the political scene the situation has not changed one bit. The Yorubas, knowing their political history, had been resisting the North’s political overtures preventing it from going into political marriage with it. And it wasn’t just in the First Republic that this happened. It was repeated in the Second Republic during Shagari’s NPN era when the Chief Adisa Akinloye-led ruling party tried to penetrate the South/West by imposing Governors Omoboriowo in Ondo and Dr. Olunloyo on Oyo states respectively, which led to massive riots with burning and looting, setting the entire West on fire. And even in this dispensation, the Yorubas had refused to join either of the two national parties that had emerged, and pulled out at the eleventh hour to form its own regional AC and fielded former economic minister, Chief Olu Falae as its presidential candidate. It is clear, therefore, that the regional strain in the Yoruba political constitution remains strong and has not frayed at all even to this day.

My readings of the Yoruba’s political agenda is to fight for a confederal arrangement in which the regions (zones) would be granted significant political autonomy as was in the time of the First Republic to manage their own affairs. This predisposes the Yorubas, particularly the Awoists, to remain regional in outlook resisting outside political influences especially from the Northern Caliphate. All the Yoruba based political parties from the AG, UPN, and right up to the AC and ACN, have this abiding agenda and always resisted mainstreaming attempts by nationalist elements like Olusegun Obasanjo, who had always wanted and eventually succeeded in steamrolling the Yorubas to the center of national politics.

But no sooner did Obasanjo leave the stage than the Yorubas reverted back to their former entrenched position as it was in the Akintola days as if history was repeating itself. Helped by perfidious judicial interventions the ACN recaptured the South/West from the PDP in all but one state won by the Labor Party. By voting the PDP, however, the Yorubas were not embracing the Northern Islamic hegemons but a party led by their own son, who was no Muslim but a professed born again Christian who was not by any stretch, a puppet of the North but in fact hated by the North as an impostor.

With this solid history in mind, it is not clear to me at what point in time did the Yorubas turn coat to embrace the Northern hegemons? Certainly not in the last 2011 presidential elections where they abandoned their own Northern presidential candidate Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to vote Jonathan in the presidential election only to go back and vote ACN in the gubernatorial and other elections.

It would take a major political earthquake to produce a tectonic political shift in the mainstream of the Yoruba political establishment. And thus far, I have not seen such an event in the nation’s political landscape. We must be careful, in this regard, in mistaking Tinubu’s Lagos crowds as being representative of the Yorubas in general, because Lagos is a sort of an outlier in this instance. While Lagos could go with the Buhari/Tinubu alliance in part due to the popularity of Governor Otedola, such expectation cannot be counted upon in the Yoruba heartland in which the PDP has made significant headway after the post Obasanjo ACN judicial takeover coup. And Jonathan’s pledge to implement the recommendations of the National Conference boycotted by the Tinubu’s APC, should gladden the hearts of the Yorubas and help Jonathan in making significant inroads into the Yoruba heartland with or without the Obasanjo factor. It’s regrettable that Obasanjo, a victim of the North, has seemingly been recruited by the caliphate.

And one other important consideration here to take into account is that the Tinubu political faction in Yoruba is not representative of the mainstream Yoruba political establishment inherited by the Afenifere. Historically, this is the true Awoist political establishment inherited by Afenifere, not the Lagos based renegade Tinubu faction. I’m not so sure the APC could ride the wave in Yoruba hinterlands as in Lagos, which means in practical terms, that Tinubu’s influence is restricted to Lagos state in the main. Moreover, I’m not so sure either, that Edo State would vote Buhari and APC even with Governor Oshomohle’s influence there, because to betray Jonathan their son from Niger Delta proper, is to cut their noses to spite their faces. At the end of the day when the dust settles, the question Niger Deltans will be asking themselves is: What would a Buhari/Tinubu alliance bring to Niger Delta that President Jonathan couldn’t bring to the region? It’s a fair question that would be hard to answer in favor of APC. There can be no doubt whatsoever that Niger Delta is solidly behind Jonathan the antics of renegade governors as in River State notwithstanding, when the chickens will come home to roost.

And as goes Niger Delta so goes the South/East, leaving the North/West and North/East for Buhari, with the North/Central traditionally going with Jonathan even more so now than before due to the Boko Haram menace, which has scared the daylight out of Christians in the North. So basically, Buhari and APC, are only counting on two and one half zones with the South/West being the one half while Jonathan is counting on three solid zones plus another one half from the South/West. Two and a half versus three and a half zones is a no brainer in terms of where the chips may fall. This therefore compels the conclusion that the alleged popularity of the APC nationwide is nothing more than a trial balloon with only hot air to it on the inside and no substance. Yes it could be rapturously popular in Lagos and Kano, which, put together constitute less than 20 million in a nation of 180 million citizens.

Now back the first question: Is there a true political shift in the South/West in relation to the North based on religion? If true, that would be big news of historical proportions. The only thing that could occasion such happenstance is if President Jonathan had been mean and wicked to the Yorubas by marginalizing them to the point of wanting to commit political suicide. A more plausible explanation is that the Tinubu faction of Yoruba elites, hungry for power (because they weren’t enamored of the Obasanjo presidency), is now playing for power using politically ambitious Muhammadu Buhari to attain its goal. And the North should be wary of that.

The North could wind up being used by Tinubu to serve its own political interests and establish itself as the pre-eminent political force in the South and overcome Afenifere. Fielding a Yorubaman from the ranks of the so-called progressives in the Tinubu camp as Buhari’s presidential running mate is the shortest route to the presidency. And I had alluded to this scenario in my earlier piece referred to above. The plot would be to deny the Ibos a chance at the presidency post Buhari’s short-lived tenure. Should, God forbid, Buhari wins and goes for one term on grounds of age or some secret agreement with the Yorubas, his Yoruba VP would, constitutionally speaking, automatically assume power and gun for two terms in office at the end of which the North would be knocking, in fact banging, on the door again, leaving the South/East in political wilderness for God knows how long.

With that said, the Yorubas will be in for rude shock if their plot succeeds to enthrone Buhari. For one thing. It is myopic to think that North and Buhari would honor any such secret pact given what Obasanjo allegedly did to it. And who says Buhari would only go for one term anyway? It is wishful thinking to imagine that he would not go for a second term in office. Which African leader voluntarily relinquishes power with the exception of Obasanjo in 1979 to Shehu Shagari? Not a Buhari, I can tell you that. To think that the North would gladly hand over power to the South/West so soon after OBJ’s two term outings, is to live in dreamland. My political instincts tell me that the North would rather find an excuse to keep it, including a palace military coup of some sort.

In conclusion, I’m not entirely convinced that the North’s desire to recapture political power can be attained by exploiting Islamic religious ties in the South/West, which has never been a basis for political intercourse between both regions in the past. Something tells me that Tinubu and Buhari are playing cat and mouse game so are the traditional forces behind them. In the end, one of them will come out with a broken nose and a black eye and you can take that to the bank. It’s not a sincere union that is built to last but a parasitic political contrivance feeding on each other’s blood until one is sucked dry and discarded. As far as the Northern caliphate is concerned, politics is a zero sum game and Tinubu will soon get his fingers burnt in his newfound flirtation with the Northern oligarchs. This is the real message being conveyed by Sat Guru Maharaji with the warnings in his post.

Franklin Otorofani is an attorney and public affairs analyst resident in the United States.
Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com