Got this from facebook.


When power shifted from North to South in 1999, Zamfara decided the time was ripe for Sharia. It was the beginning of a long road that culminated in Mohammed Yusuf and his band of followers rejecting the politician’s Sharia, and demanding more. So, somebody killed him. And Boko Haram climbed out of his grave. And its resilience in the face of Jonathan’s attempts to push it back into that grave played a big, big role in ensuring that power rotated back to the North in 2015.
No. This was not the first time in our history when violence (or the threat of it) combined with the demand of an ethno-regional bloc for greater representation to achieve political ends. When IBB annulled the June 12 elections, it gave birth to many things, one of which was the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), and a determination to make the country – how do we like to say it now? – ‘ungovernable’. It was a threat that did a lot to help Obasanjo’s odds in 1998, when the power brokers went scouting for the next President.
Not very different from the thinking of the grand chess players who dipped into Bayelsa in 2007 to pick a running mate for Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; for the South-Southerners had come a long way from Isaac Boro. After years of being ignored, the late 1990s saw a turn to militancy, and the more effective they became at it the more leverage they gained in politics. As surely – and for the same basic reasons – as power had to go up North in 2015, so in 2011 it could not have gone anywhere else but to the region with the most capacity for troubling the waters.
So, please, let us not act surprised. Honestly, the transition from Ralph Uwazurike to Nnamdi Kanu is not very different from the transition from Saro Wiwa to Asari Dokubo, or from Mohammed Yusuf to Abubakar Shekau. (Indeed, if you are into history, you will know that it is not even very different from the transition from Herbert Macauley to Nnamdi Azikiwe.) True. So, I don’t really understand all this going around scratching our heads and shouting, ‘What is wrong with these Igbo people?’
Please, let us not behave as if this country began with the swearing in of Mohammadu Buhari. No. The real questions we should be asking are: (1) In


Nigeria, why is the rise to power of an individual always PERCEIVED as the rise to power of the ethno-religious bloc he (or she) is indigenous to? (2) In Nigeria, why does the PERCEIVED rise to power of one ethno-religious bloc always create fears of marginalization in some other ethno-religious bloc? (3) In Nigeria, why is it that those who complain loudest, most persistently, and most bitterly about the standards of living in the country are often those belonging to ethno-religious blocs OUTSIDE central power? (4) In Nigeria, why is it that the moment a member of an ethno-religious bloc rises to power, other members of that bloc – REGARDLESS of whether their standards of living actually improve as a result or not – immediately become more supportive of Government?
I know. These are not easy questions. But until they are answered, and our social attitudes to power begin to change, then when the Christian enters office, let him get ready for the Muslim to start raising points of order; and when the Muslim enters office, let him get ready for the Christian to start raising points of order. And in the mean time, my brother, after all these years together, let us at least stop acting surprised. Because it only helps history to repeat itself.
December 1 at 5:36pm · Edited · Public