About a week ago, social critic and Second Republic parliamentarian, Dr Junaid Mohammed convened a very popular meeting of Northern academics, thinkers, media gurus, businessmen and politicians in Abuja.

The aim of the meeting was to confront the challenges before the North apparently against the background of the clamour for a Sovereign National Conference(SNC),  among other issues. In this interview, Mohammed exuding both confidence and anger says that the North is ready for not just the conference but even for the break up of Nigeria if that is what the promoters of SNC wants.

 Excerpt…
 You have just convened a conference that assembled the academics, the business guru and a few serving politicians from the Northern Region. What is your own assessment of the conference in terms of the outcome?
 Personally speaking, I am not keen on giving my own personal, objective assessment as it were. Rather, other people should do it; those who attended the conference or observed the outcome. It is up to them and other Nigerians who are fair-minded enough to pass their own value judgment in terms of whether it was good or bad, whether it was attended or not, or whether it has achieved its objective or not.

 Evaluation naturally succeeds an event like this. Would you say the conference has achieved the goals for which it was set to attain? Would you say that it has attained the targeted objective(s)?
Over 90 percent of the people who visited or attended the meeting- it is more modest to call it a meting, and I am a modest person by inclination, over 90 percent are people who have been known to me. Some have been known to me for well over 50 years and some have been known to me for well over 40 years, some over 30 years. 

And we have always been in the habit of sitting down to discuss current affairs, situation in the country, international affairs and what have you. So, when I looked back at the quality discussions with most of the people, I consulted with others and we decided on some of the people good enough to be included. In fact some of us were beginning to wonder how come this initiative had not come earlier.

When we consulted, we decided contacting our friends. We found that there was enough to talk about and there were enough people to do the talking. And we started sending out the invitation and our first task at the meeting was to ask if what we set out to do was worth- while, whether it was worth doing.

Whether we could rub minds and define certain situations and see whether we can give people who feel completely left out of the scheme of things, left out and marginalized by the nature of the Nigerian press, the Nigerian media generally to people who are saying things that are sensible and rational but do not always get the chance to say their mind because they don’t even know the media and they don’t even know the people who run the media and they don’t know the influence of some of these media people. And to make matters worse, quite a number of people are being insulted.

You know you (the Lagos press) insult a whole community; you mention a Northerner and it is as if you mention the North as if it were a colony of lepers and as if some of us are not Nigerians, as if some of us are not even human simply because we are seen as lazy, irresponsible or greedy and all sort of things. And we know that we are not that and we believe that it will be unwise to continue with this kind of charade and farce.

And then the issue of the so- called Sovereign National Conference has also been abused by people who have hidden agenda and who specialize in recruiting some people to do their dirty jobs for them, to do their dirty insulting job for them. And when the situation comes and it did during the civil war, they simply go underground and allow other people to die for nothing. And if you remember that the Nigeria Civil War cost Nigerians over one million people, you can see why some people are not keen to simply take up to insulting people and abusing people and that peace is better than war because after all, life is better than death.

From the names of attendees, it seemed that some of the people holding political appointments in the North in the present dispensation were quietly left out. Was it deliberate or an accident?
Well, I don’t want to categorize people on the basis of their intellectual worth or by their political appointment because there are people there who by any standard in any society and in any culture who are and must be regarded as intellectuals but who have also held political appointments. For example, Dr. Shettima Mustapha from Borno State, he was one of the earliest agricultural extension workers of Northern Nigeria. He has been a Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources and that kind of things. So, can you now say that he is not an intellectual or can you say that he is simply not a politician?

The issue of the Sovereign National Conference echoed quite well in the communiqué of the conference. Let us have your perspective in relation to that call by some Nigerians for a form of dialogue?
Asking me to talk about the calls for the Sovereign National Conference will be a little bit unfair. Those who are asking and agitating for the Sovereign National Conference should now come and tell Nigerians what it is that they want. We agree that if there is going to be a Sovereign National Conference, that we would attend. However, in all the meetings that they have had, they (the promoters) have never invited anybody of consequence from the North. They decided that somehow, the North is against the convocation of the Sovereign National Conference and they will not invite the North.

Or they were prepared to have hired thugs, who will accept what has been written for them to go and say it. Now, if you are to be in your mind, can you see Balarabe Musa representing the North or even representing the defunct PRP? But he was invited and he claims to be speaking for the North. That to me shows the level of duplicity and audacity of this people and those behind the calls for the Sovereign National Conference. If you want people to be represented, you look for their genuine representatives, the genuine people who speak for them. Whether what they will say is pleasant or not, but at least, you know that they are speaking for some people. If you ask a rather nobody like Balarabe Musa to, then he will speak for nobody.

Then, when it suits you, you say that Balarabe  Musa is representing the North; and when it does not suit you, you say the North does not like Sovereign National Conference.
Now, if these people decided to hold a meeting of the conference for any reason or for any purpose, and they did not invite other people who also have a stake in the outcome of that discussion, is it fair for them to say that nobody wanted to come from this part of the country? Is it also fair for them to decide to choose those who will represent this part of the country?

Are you canvassing that those in the South West who held the meeting for the conference should have reached out to the genuine leaders of the North?
And to other leaders, not just that of the North: To the leaders in the East also. The young man who chaired the so-called pre -Sovereign National Conference meeting, who does he represent? He was born in Gusau in Zamfara State. He had his education here at the Igbo Union School. At the moment, he cannot even be regarded as independent because he is beholden to Lagos State Government, beholden to Tinubu and Fashola, because they have given him a political appointment and he is still holding that political appointment and that appointment is also lucrative. Secondly, they also facilitated his becoming the dean of the Lagos Business School.

Now, you may be a little too young to remember: The last time there was an attempt to give a non-Yoruba person the Vice Chancellorship of the University of Lagos, which was still a federal university, there was mayhem. The Vice Chancellor was Late Professor Njoku, an eminent biologist. Somehow, not because he did anything wrong but because he was not from that area, they decided they didn’t want him, that they wanted a Yoruba professor and that grounded the entire Lagos.

 The meeting you convened in Abuja is another conference. But is it a reaction against the proponents of SNC or a genuine effort of national building as some of you have claimed?
 Well, first and foremost, if you look at my political career, I have never been involved in anything parochial. And I have never needlessly reacted, even when people( Lagos press) have been provocative to me or towards me. But where an issue has become a national issue, rightly or wrongly, whether the issue has been properly defined or not defined at all and we are at the risk of being dragged or pushed to slip into another civil war, without knowing it, I think anybody of conscience, especially those of us who are young men, who saw what happened between 1967-1970, we have a responsibility to say, “ look, yes here I am, if this is a valid and meaningful discussion, I will participate. If you want to have a fight, I better start preparing my own side so that I don’t get slaughtered in my sleep”.

 As far as I am concerned, this issue of Sovereign National Conference has been on the table for a very long time. Governments, even those who made promises that they will convene an SNC dodged the issue. And if anybody were to be accused of being afraid of the so called SNC, it should have the likes of Obasanjo, who promised while he was campaigning that he was going to convene one, and when he came, convened a different thing entirely and wanted to use the constitutional discussion or whatever, to perpetuate himself in power and extend his self in power to be a life president. Now, those of us who have nothing to do with it, then and now, are being accused and are being called names. So now, those who want to hear from us what our position is will have the opportunity. Yes, let us go ahead and do the conference but I want to warn every Nigerian, that what they call -those agitators in Lagos – what they call Sovereign National Conference is nothing but a complete transfer of power from the current leaders of the executive branch, from the legislative and even certain judicial powers to the Sovereign National Conference, which will be sovereign. It will be the ultimate authority in the land.

Please, enough of the talking and get on with it!
Cowards talk too much.
Time for action.
Break up and lerrus hia word!
I am staying in my darling America. Period.
Thank you!

Pigs in Manor Farm

Amen somebody !!