Unfortunately, those who have the historic opportunity to change the narrative including Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari did everything except revisiting the unresolved national question.  But because of President Tinubu’s many years of preparation for his current job, Nigerians had expected him to take the first step towards a national rebirth by ensuring distributive justice through resettlement of those condemned to IDP camps by terrorist that have been identified as immigrant Fulani herdsmen back to their ancestral homes.

Unfortunately, as if it were possible to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, Tinubu like his predecessors, chose to focus exclusively on the ‘economies of the national question’. The result is that even with the new Sheriff in town, mindless killings, banditry and kidnapping for ransom continued in Plateau and other parts of besieged northeast and northwest. With last week’s killings of three Obas and kidnapping school children from his otherwise safe Yoruba nation that had hitherto provided succour for those fleeing violence from other troubled areas of the north, the battle has finally been brought home to him.

With what now appears to be an open challenge to his legitimacy, it is hoped the president understands it is time to stop playing the ostrich especially as regards immigrant Fulani terrorists and behave like an elected sovereign with a license to breach the constitution, if necessary, to protect the nation from those holding her hostage.

On the unresolved national question, the president has so far aligned himself with those who believe attainment of economic justice i.e.  “Ensuring equitable allocation of resources and effective and sustainable production and distribution of appropriate goods and services is the ultimate solution to the national question”. The promoters of this approach led by Professor Dupe Olatubosun, formerly of NISER and a United Nations Consultant for many years and his fellow school of thought had argued that “promoting efficiency within existing structure will usher in all round prosperity and life abundant for all the people of Nigeria which will in turn lead to peaceful and equitable cohabitation of the various communities in Nigeria”. (The economies of the national question in Dupe Olatunbosun: An Autobiography (2005) pg. 175.

Unfortunately, today 24 years into the fourth republic, we are more divided than we were in 1999.  Instead of ‘life abundant for everyone’, Nigeria has become world poverty capital. The problem with proponents of this approach is the assumption that every nationality wants life abundant for its people. Although, while they admitted we are a multicultural and a heterogeneous society, they however ignored the fact that it is the level of cultural development that determines if the ruling political elites create an egalitarian society or seek power to preside over an empire of slaves.

There is a competitive spirit in every Igbo man which makes him believe he could, with hard work, become a Coscharis (Cosmas Maduka, Kalu Uzor Kalu or Rocha Okorocha, Igbo multibillionaires who started by hawking on the streets. For the average Igbo man therefore, it is self, first.

The north remains the poorest part of Nigeria despite monopoly of power for the greater part of our history. The north harbours more than two-third of Nigeria estimated 15million of out school children while their political elites send their children to the best schools in the world. Rather than a crusade for ‘life more abundant’ for the impoverished people of the north, the goal of the northern ruling elite is presiding over an empire of slaves. 

The South-south political elites especially the Ijaw, the fourth largest ethnic group in the country, share the same world view with the north they had aligned with since independence. Their leading light include the likes of Alfred Diete Spiff, governor of Rivers in his twenties and remembered more for shaving with a broken bottle, the head of a reporter who ran a story about the governor’s inability to pay salaries of teachers on the occasion of the governor’ birthday. It turned out that was at a time he was cruising around the Atlantic Ocean in his private ship according to Murtala Muhammed regime that demoted and retrieved a number of properties from him. We remember Peter Odili who secured a perpetual injunction against probe for financial malfeasance against his state by EFCC. There was the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who escaped arrest and prosecution in Britain for defrauding his state by disguising as woman while on a flight to Nigeria. We can add James Ibori who served a jail term in Britain for defrauding his Delta people as a governor.

And if Tinubu needed additional reasons to know the answer to our crisis of nation-building is politics, the ongoing conspiracy of dubious bank owners to derail his government through foreign exchange manipulation provides just that. The time to placate them is over.

Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, our former foreign affairs minister once said that most Nigerian billionaires made their money through government. From the revelations from the ongoing probe of Emefiele’s leadership of the CBN, isn’t it time we beam light at the source of wealth of those who without inheriting industrial empire from their parents’ bought banks and today leave like film stars?

Yemi Cardoso, the current CBN governor last Monday told the nation that the Tinubu government met $7 billion in unpaid obligations and that the results of Deloitte forensic audit of what is valid or not, revealed that: $2.4 billion had issues including not having valid import documents; that entities that did not exist got allocation; entities who asked for forex got more than they asked; and that entities that did not ask got allocations. All these went through the banks that are currently engaged in foreign exchange speculation that has moved the exchange rate from about N750 to N1,400.

Do we need further explanation as to why some of these banks are declaring such huge profits that will make bankers in Europe and America green with envy?

It is on record that two-third of staff of the banks declaring profit in trillions pay slave wages of about N75,000 to their workers. President Tinubu, as an elected sovereign can borrow a leave from Niccolo Machiavelli, the apostle of politics of ‘the end justifies the means to charge the forex speculators trying to sabotage his economic policies for defrauding their workers.

The president’s other political battle over the national question is restructuring or devolution of power. There is no known multi-ethnic nation in the world that has survived by operating a federal constitution where close to 70% of the items are on the exclusive list. With about 23 states already managing one form of security outfit or the other, the time for state police is now. Local people are best at providing security for themselves even if elder statesman Theophilus Danjuma did not accuse the military and federal police of betrayal.