North After Restructuring: An imaginarium, by Abu Shekara
It is the year 2031 before that or thereafter. The bill to restructure Nigeria has been passed into law. The six geopolitical zones of the country are preoccupied, trying to adapt to the socioeconomic realities of a newly secured autonomy and the emerging new situations that has thrown up for their people.
All parts are realising their true strengths and weaknesses, as confirmed or disproved by their condition in the new dispensation.
For the North, baggage from the old order still weights down. Socioeconomic indices score Northern Nigeria comparatively below other parts of the country in terms of development. Poverty in the form of low level of western education, acute lack of access to health care and clean water, in addition to less than modest prosperity are the features of the state of the region. Entering into the new structure, this is part of the crisis that the three new autonomous subregions of the North are bracing to surmount.
The new structure however, offers Northern Nigeria the opportunity of turning this situation around. The three sub-regions have been freed by their new status to pursue policies that are sensitive to their people’s cultural norms and values, a departure from the previous federation, when the necessity of upholding the national character of a culturally diverse nation, made governments’ policies roundly rejectable because they were alien to the people’s traditions and beliefs in both antecedent and approach.
Another challenge for the North is posed by religious tensions, a disruptive phenomenon that has been the region’s serious drawback for several decades. Mistrust and antagony between followers of the two major religions, Islam and Christianity have caused bloody clashes that have claimed uncountable number of lives and exerted incalculable social and economic costs on the people, especially in the North-Central and Northeast. But with the new structure, which groups historically and culturally homogenous peoples together in self-determining political enclaves, that problem may have been substantially resolved.
A more sticky menace though, that the old federation had struggled to eliminate in the North is insecurity. Although the former central government had made gains in the fight on Boko Haram insurgents in the Northeast and armed bandits in the Northwest and Northcentral, the new autonomous zones still have to deal with remnants of these terrorist groups, who have the propensity to regroup and reinforce within a short period. And the interregnum, within which the regional governments endeavour to consolidate may provide that leeway for these elements to recoup and resurge.
The feasible approach to dealing with this eventuality is prompt rallying and harmonisation of security initiatives and efforts across the zones to constitute a united front against bandits and insurgents. The fight should be multi-pronged and simultaneous in all affected areas and swift, so as to eliminate the menace at once, without giving the reprieve for the terrorists to rebound in the near or distant future.
The new structure has significantly addressed the problem of suspicion, mistrust and resentment that prevailed in the old federation when all parts of the greatly diverse Nigeria were constrained to coexist as a single entity. But even for the new independent units, survival depends on internal harmony, which is the prerequisite for unity, common aspiration and progress. Division on the other hand, will prove to be more destructive for them than it was for the previous federation, as it will bog them down and more rapidly lead to crises that will render them dead on arrival.
In the North, an emergent factor that was totally neglected during the old order has now evolved to become the biggest threat to the corporate existence of the region. This factor that transcends all the three geopolitical zones and portends a clear-present danger to their individual and collective survival, is the deepening division and stiffening hostility between members of increasingly divergent Northern Muslim sects.
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Up till the late 1970s, sectoral differences subtly manifested in the conduct of religious rituals and daily acts of worship and did not cause noticeable antagony amongst clerics or their adherents. In the last half century however, disagreements between Muslims on issues of faith have rapidly escalated, giving rise to consistent acrimony and hostility, with the hardening postures of sect leaders on matters of religious practice and other socioeconomic issues as an impetus to the situation.
Sharp divisions amongst the religious elite have invariably had the rippling effect of embroiling the masses in fierce disputes over matters of belief and almost every single issue of worship, including for instance, the sighting of Ramadan and Eid-el-Fitr moons, which is supposed to unite the faithful all over the country in one moment of spiritual activity. This state of affairs has worsened to divide Northern Muslims in opinion and attitude concerning all facets of life, constantly igniting heated disagreements over weighty and trivial issues alike.
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Under this situation, the sub-regions of Northern Nigeria are experiencing serious difficulty in deciding on policy and determining the approach to the implementation of development initiatives. Thus, the new regional governments are bogged down by excessive and heated public debates about the stand of Islam on virtually every single action or inaction by constituted authorities. As a result, governments programs are at given times, faced with rejection from one section of the masses or the other, instead of gaining wider public support, which is crucial to progress and advancement.
Even the fact that re-structuring grants the freedom for the subregions to adopt their own administrative models, causes an even greater crisis for the North. Intra-religious disharmony has lead to the scramble of rival sects to influence the choice of the forms of government by the new units and they are poised for the subsequent struggle to dominate any structure that is eventually assumed.
This has sharply polarised the people along the lines of conformity and opposition, with the latter constituting a potential threat to peace and stability, as dissent may harden and crystallise into actual rebellion.
Still struggling with religiously motivated insurgency in the East, the North is no stranger to this scenario. The emergence of new flash points of insurrection will however sound the death knell for the zones and the region as a whole.
The devastation will be complete and worse than witnessed anywhere in the world in contemporary history because it will not be a dispute over defined territory or tangible resources but a clash over power between sub-ideologies that is so intangible as to defy any rationale for reconciliation or detent.
The safeguard against this spectre in the North should have been instituted from the inception of the new structure. Since religion is the major guide of the people’s lives, the geo-political zones ought to have individually or collectively set up mechanisms to determine its role in governance.
In the process, a resolution should have been reached through consultation involving various religious groups, on which religious precepts should be adopted in modelling the form and guiding the operation of government. This would have served to guarantee an equitable inclusion of all groups in the affairs of state and eliminate suspicion, mistrust, unhealthy rivalry and antagony.
Nigeria is inexorably approaching that moment in the near or distant future, when the realities of its corporate existence make its political restructuring exigent.
The North needs to better sooner than later, take stock of the potential strengths and weaknesses that will determine its progress or drawback as an entity. In that exploration, the current issues that the region faces should serve as indicators of what its destiny will be.
Abu Shekara is a journalist based in Sokoto
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