One of the frailties or weaknesses of humankind is the tendency to easily forget what had once bothered him. That is why majority of Nigerians have kept on becoming victims of political conmen who dupe them during election time and vanish into thin air only to reappear during another electioneering period. They will then carryon with the same old trick on the unsuspecting electorates who could not discern their art of trickery and outright dishonesty. There was nothing the poor electorates could do after they have been swindled but to swear that such act of dishonesty would never happen again. But such resolution was always short lived; they continually fall victims of another round of trickery from experienced scammers. In short Nigerian plebeians, especially the Northerners are always the fall guys of scheming politicians who perfect their exploits with the coming of each election.
Northern politicians and their leaders have always sacrificed their followers on the alter of their insatiable ego for wealth and political power, making it extremely impossible to understand the snare laid before them, and even if they do, they lack intuitive ability to circumvent it. Majority of those in power or at the helms of affairs in the North are always pandering to the whims and caprices of their adversaries that set them up as veritable tools for the subjugation of their fellow citizens. Their preoccupation is mainly how to distract and detract the northerners from the course upon which they will realistically attain the actualization of their varied interests. After their people have been done with, they will then shed crocodile tears, lamenting with the same people they have betrayed over the loss of their rights and privileges.
The military rulers of Northern extraction that succeeded the founding fathers of Nigeria have been variably accused of squandering the riches of their region and gross inaction and complacency in developing the vast Northern Region which had obviously lagged behind its three counterparts in the First Republic. The same bunch of people, after bowing out of power, consorted with the southern political elements that had for long been plotting the downfall of what they disparagingly referred to as giant North. In doing so they found it simple and expedient to supplant the Northern minority tribes in key government and military positions from where they in turn, dispensed favor and support to their undeserving kinsmen.
That was what gave impetus to the politics of tribalism which consequently gave rise to undue nepotism and excessive favoritism. Subsequently a detestable dimension of religious bigotry was added to the whole affair making it possible to polarize the North along reprehensible divides. That was the straw that broke the back of the camel and since then the Northern community which hitherto enjoys relative calm, fortified by strong bonds of unity and pervading fraternity, progressively drifted into tempestuous waters of social upheavals
That sorry state of affairs did not come perchance; it was carefully premeditated to create more divisions and cleavages among the peoples bounded by a common destiny in their struggle to emancipate themselves from the shackles of their political detractors. Whenever there seems to be a light at the end of their dark tunnel their unpatriotic and self-seeking leaders will provide an effective obstruction that will seal off their chance of realizing the grand objective.
The purpose of these leaders in running down their people is to principally deny them utilizing their numerical superiority to elect a president from the region that has the majority. That was what obtained in 1999 when unscrupulous politicians from the region connived to foist on northerners and the nation at large, two southern presidential candidates belonging to the same ethnic stock, thus thwarting the possibility of the emergence of a more credible and acceptable candidate from the North. In the same vein, the Northern establishment conspired to throw up a defective candidate — a wishy-washy contraption from their weird political machinery — who was easily defeated by their secretly anointed candidate at the biggest party primaries. Needless to say the North lost out when its leaders deliberately refused to throw their weights behind the most popular candidate persistently presented by majority of Northerners.
The struggle for power-shift to the North by the political elites in the area may suffer a serious setback if Northerners fail to get their acts together by closing their ranks and acting in unison. The immense population of the North may no longer be advantageous to it since the two mighty political parties firmly entrenched in the region are threatening to divide the votes among them and, coupled with the existence of three different political movements and each working at cross purposes, could frustrate plans for shifting power back to the region. Unless and until the Northern divisive forces represented by the retired military Generals, the cream of its elites and the spectrum of the Ulama and the cleric close their rank to forge a common platform their attempts at shifting power to the North will simply hit the rocks and further accelerate the dissolution of the region.
