By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.

 I am not known for making politically wrong statements, or what may appear to be politically incorrect statements. That is however, going to change now, if stating the fact as I know it, is politically wrong.

I live close to the state branch headquarters of a national union which vast but well-appointed hall and surrounding spaces are rented out on weekends as ‘event centre’.  I was on a weekend in my hometown one evening, when the sound of festivities at the ‘event centre’ hit me. It were the voices of some people from the south west celebrating something. It was not the first time that I heard similar sounds or some voices from the north.

Feeling curious, I rang the chairman of the union to enquire about the renting policies of the place. Thinking that I wanted to rent the event centre, the chairman promptly promised to give me the place free of charge, if I could tell him when I would need it. I politely told him that I only wanted to find out the type of people that the union hire the centre out to, to which he replied that to any person provided that the day they wanted the place had not coincided with an earlier booking.

I then asked why people from a certain area never came to the center for their activities and he told me to find out from the said people if they ever came and denied the place. My findings later indicated that the people prefer to go to an hotel owned by their kind, and perform whatever celebration or ceremonies they had there. 

I am further to understand that they were always lied to by their pastors and other leaders against coming to the north. They were warned that there was no freedom of religion, as everyone must be a Muslim or that they would be killed at the slightest opportunity by ‘jihadists’ who populate the place. 

They were further told that most of the money belonging to the nation was spent in the north. Some were even shown the picture side of post cards, depicting beautiful foreign cities. But the people, particularly impressionable youth coppers coming to the north for the first time, that all the buildings were built by the federal government in some towns in the north of Nigeria.

These were confessions made by some of the  youth coppers who came to some cities in the north for their one year stint, after they found out the peaceful nature of the people in the northern part of the country.

One of the youth copper told of seeing a similar post card to the one given to him back in his hometown. The one given to him from his hometown had its back defaced so that the legend could not be read, but the one he stumbled upon in the north had its back very legible. He saw the post card actually depicted a part of London, not any city in Northern Nigeria.

The same about the north being homogeneously Muslim. The female youth copper found out that not only were believers of other faiths free to practice their own religion, there were towns and villages that were made up of more followers of other religions than Islam. It convinced her that even the northerners who lived and attended the same church as her, were actually Christians, not the ‘closet’ Muslims who must not be trusted, an allegation usually made by the pastor of the church.

These incidents reminded me of a governor in the area, who once gave an order that all northerners must wear an identification tag on one of their arms, and adamantly refused to back down even when there were pleas from many quarters for him to stop the implementation of such a retrogressive policy. He later backed down when a ‘radical’ governor from the north visited him and threatened to take retaliatory action against the former governor’s people who could be found in large numbers in the north.

 This is the same person who now wants to rule the whole nation at all costs, hence his becoming a serial presidential candidate on the platforms of two different political parties.

There was a one time Secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) who sacked many of the staff working in the office and brought in people from his area as replacement. And they remained with him up to the end of his tenure.

I am talking about the place that was also responsible for nearly taking Nigeria to the brink of collapse, when officers from there spearheaded the first military coup, by assassinating most ranking politicians and military officers in all the areas in the country but their own. It was followed by a counter coup, which led to the three-year plus civil war in the country.

Only recently, all the Hausa people living and doing legitimate businesses were given one week notice to leave a town in the area, on the allegation that they were behind the ‘disappearances of some natives for ritual purposes’.

Such denial of the right to stay anywhere and pursue legitimate business, as guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution, was never perpetrated against anyone in the north. In fact there are some businesses that are dominated by a particular ethnic group which is not originally from the north.

Anyway, the political scientists and or the historians are in a better position to say more on the topic than the not so knowledgeable yours sincerely could ever say.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.