By OGACHEKO OPALUWA
I seldom rejoin personal issues in public spaces because of my unwavering belief that people are entitled to their individual and personal opinions. However, I was constrained to break tradition when I came across a piece on one of the social media by one Cham Falia Sharon whose specific gender is confusing to me because of my ignorance of the generic origin of some of her names.
I hope the writer will pardon me for that and my reference to the person of the writer as he or she henceforth in this rejoinder. I decided to during a bout of insomnia occasioned by the current inhospitable natural and man inflicted living conditions in Nigeria.
The heat in Nigeria, including places like Jos and Mambila that are reputed for their temperate climates attest to the surety of climate change no matter what some naysayers would want to have us believe. This, coupled with the disastrous manner in which Nigerian politicians are governing the country currently are enough worries to make one lose sleep endlessly.
But this will be a story for another day. The reason that I chose to rejoin this personal piece against my standing principle is simply because of the transparent veil of lies, deceit and self delusion that is wrapped around the hateful and arrogant article.
Firstly, I don’t believe the writer of that piece exists really on our planet earth in that name, and if he or she really exists in spirit and flesh like other Nigerians under that ‘christened’ name, the person may be acting a hatchet for some faceless oppressors that may have paid him or her to do some dirty jobs for them.
If that be the case, I will advise her sponsors to retrieve their money due to a very poor job. For all I care and guess, this piece may have been written by someone that ranks highly among those that want to keep the peoples of middle belt under perpetual political and socio-economic subjugation using a sort of nom de guerre to conceal his or her true identity.
The futility in such effort is that, the message is clear and well understood by most middle belters and the language is even clearer and characteristically that of core northerners so called in its vituperatious arrogance and adulative vanity. Couched in uncouth language and delivered in the mode of what Americans refer commonly to as ‘cancel culture’,
it nevertheless reflects the anger and frustration of a slave master whose servant suddenly realizes that he or she is indeed a prince of a distant great empire and therefore needed not to be in the current condition.
Without intending to bore us with history, let a Mr or Ms Cham Faliya Sharon know that the place that is being asserted today as middle belt has existed geographically, culturally, politically and socio-economically as an entity long before the arrival of Lord Luggard and his band of adventurous colonialists in what we call Nigeria today.
Just like the Hausa and Dahomey kingdoms or the Oyo Mesi and Igbo dynasty, the peoples of Middle Belt also existed separately but interdependently as a collection of kingdoms, chiefdoms, dynasties and empires.
The great Igala kingdom, the Jukun confederacy as well as Zuru and Bachama Kingdoms, just to mention a few, existed alongside those of the Hausas, the fabled Oyo Mesi, Kanem Bornu empire and the Igbo dynasty.
It will interest Cham to know that established and sustained ancient kingdoms and dynasties was a product of the strength of their armies and militias which were not in short supply in the middle belt up until this moment.
We were not labeled ‘savages’ for nothing by invading British colonialists for nothing, and perhaps for want of a better word to describe our bravery. However, the amalgamation treaty of 1914 that herded all ethnic nationalities into a single contraption called Nigeria, and which has remained unmanageable till date, is what gave some persons that refer to themselves as ‘core north’ the temerity to seek to cancel the great peoples of the middle belt in order to insatiate their greed and proselytizing agenda. Otherwise, we would have been existing separately and independently as we did before the advent of colonialism.
Some gullible persons like the writer and his or her ilks will be quick to remind us of the exploits of Othman Danfodio whose band of jihadists chose flanking manouevres over frontal attacks to avoid confrontation with savage middle belt region. Of course, that the region remained intact socio-culturally till now despite the intervening influences of Christianity and Islam tells of a peoples that could not be conquered. So, allow us to hear a word with your hackneyed tale of how different Nigeria would have been had the British colonialists not stopped Othman Danfodio and his band in their tracks on their way to dip the Holy Quran in the sea.
In any case, that version of history remains in the realm of imagination of some deluded felas that think Nigeria rightly belongs to them. I say so because Islam was existing in south western Nigeria long before Othman Danfodio’s jihad, and in fact, it preceded Christianity in that region.
Check history for your self my dear apologist of a monolithic northern Nigeria. Mr or Ms Cham also unleashed his or her unsavory venom on people of southern Nigeria, blaming them for the current journey of self rediscovery by middle belters. It goes to show how myopic and thoughtless the writer could be in his or her beclouded vision of a monolithic northern Nigeria.
To say that the middle belters are being goaded on to reassert themselves as equal partners and partakers in the Nigerian project is not only an insult to our common psyche, but such a nebulous and unsubstantiated statement also reflects the common character of oppressors all over the world. Scapegoatism is a common denominator of feeble minded apologists and unrepentant oppressors. You see why I said that Mr or Ms Cham Faliya Sharon is simply pretending to be one of us by name whereas in fact, may be a northern prince or princess sitting idly on the saddle of oppression. We know who we are and know what we want, my dear Bro or Sis. Middle Belters do not need anyone to tell then what they want or what to do.
However, they are neither shy nor afraid to associate with any individual or part of Nigeria that believe in, and share our common dreams and aspirations. That is what aligned us with the core north, so called, over the years in the believe that our shared values and beliefs would make them to accept us as equal partners in the Nigerian project.
But what did we see? Deliberate acts of marginalization and exclusion whenever our so called brothers and sisters from core north are at the helm of power using ethnicity and religion as weapons. Sadly, our brothers and sisters from core north do not even believe that they have anything in common with Middle Belters even when the region has substantial population of Muslims and Hausa speakers. The only time Middle Belters get their dues in public service of this great nation is when Southerners are in power.
Otherwise, Middle Belters, especially Christians, are routinely denied promotion and posting to ‘plum’ positions whenever those that call all of us ‘northerners’ from contrived core north are in positions of power. This happens unapologetically in the civil service, the Armed Forces, Police and para-military agencies.
A friend of mine of unassailable qualities that recently retired from the military out of frustration, once told me of how mediocrity, ethnic and religious discrimination with monumental corruption are gradually destroying the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
According to him, a former Minister of Defence who is a retired General, once brazenly resisted his posting to a ‘juicy’ military parastatal simply because he is a Christian and the Minister was receiving generous handouts from entrenched interests within, notwithstanding that he knew those monies were proceeds of corruption.
The same Minister in cahoot with some of his equally corrupt and lascivious aides supplanted my friend’s promotion that he earned on merit with that of another patently corrupt and mediocre officer who neither attended requisite military courses nor had the pedigree for promotion to a higher rank other than the fact that he is a Muslim and a huge amount of money had exchanged hands. My retired military officer’s case is not an isolated incident as such practices are the norm rather than exception in Nigeria right from the time of independence of the country.
Such are the remits of persons from core north whenever they are in power or find themselves in exalted public offices. Yet, a Mr or Ms Cham Sharon would have us believe that we are better together as one indivisible north than claiming to be Middle Belters.
I am sorry, that is what we are unapologetically. We will no longer take orders from Sokoto or Maiduguri or Katsina or obey their commands, just as Ali Campbell’s UB40 Reggae Band once sang in the 80s in defiance of the obnoxious apartheid system in South Africa.
If what the Middle Belters are saying or doing currently annoying Mr or Ms Sharon, wait for the real frustration when our current President with his Lagos crowd finish their Oduduwa Kingdom or country agenda after they might have finished with Nigeria.
That time, every Nigerian shall remember the name of his or ancestors with the name of the village that they came from. I pity people like Cham that either don’t have any identity or are too afraid or ashamed to be identified with their true persons.
For all I care, they may require visas to visit Middle Belt Republic or Oduduwa Republic or Biafra Republic. I don’t know about a Hausa/Fulani Republic but the choice of where to belong is entirely the business of Mr or Miss Chan as events unfold.
Don’t get me wrong please because I am not a doomsday prophet. I am far from being one, but the realities on ground currently points to an inevitable end for us as a country unless the current injustices, marginalization of sections of the country, exclusion of vast majority by a scant political class with their collaborating Nigerian elites, pervasive insecurity and monumental public corruption that has weaponized hunger and poverty in the country are urgently addressed. Regrettably, I don’t have faith in the ability and courage of the current crop of Nigerian politicians to change anything.
If anything, those that are benefitting from current status quo are doing everything practically possible to continue to do so, while those outside the corridors of power are devising every conceivable means to take their turn at the table. This is the same tune that Mr or Ms Sharon is echoing on behalf of oppressors of Middle Betters.
Just as the people of Kwara State coined a common parlance in Yoruba language when they were tired of a political dynasty and oppression of a popular family in the State that goes thus “Oto gé”, or ‘it’s enough’ translated in English, it’s also “Oto gé” for a monolithic north to us Middle Belters.
Similarly, as late Emperor Idi Amin of Uganda once thundered out angrily about the leecherous presence of Asians that were oppressing his people economically by saying “Let the British have their Asians and Ugandans their Dukkas”, we in the Middle Belt will also soon say ‘Let the British take back their Nigeria and the regions have their Kingdoms’. I rest my case.
Ogacheko Opaluwa is a Public Affair Analyst and a Freelance Writer.
