23-7-2025.

The Hausa people have a saying that ‘Ruwa ya qarema dan kada’, roughly translated, as water (river’s) has finished for a small crocodile. The death of Muhammadu Buhari (named Maigaskiya because of his impeccable abhorrence to corruption, and other misdemeanours everywhere), the immediate past president of Nigeria, has no doubt NEGATIVELY affected the 2027 chances of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Although, he and the motley of people around him would not publicly admit it.

Nevertheless, the president would have to choose the next ‘saleable’ action to employ to ‘win’ the Northerners, who he has alienated in his appointments, dominated by his tribespeople.

The recent appointments, where Northerners are mostly on the list suggests a kind of panic, subtly designed to address the DELIBERATE imbalance in the appointments that the president HAD made before Buhari’s death. Some people (Southerners for that matter) derisively call the government as, ‘the government of Yoruba, for Yoruba and made up of Yoruba’. In fact, about 90% of the President Tinubu’s appointees are all Yoruba people, mostly made up of members of his former cabinet when he was the Governor of Lagos State.

What is more, some of them are clearly unqualified for the positions they were given, others have overstayed in the Federal service, and all the appointees are placed in ministries considered as the Commanding Height of the economy.

In any case, the appointments are made to appease certain powerful interest, not to represent Northern interest. It is therefore a move that is done in panic and bad faith. It was not done for the advancement of the Northern region, but the massaging of certain egos in the region.

The hasty but thoughtless renaming of the nearly fifty-year-old University of Maiduguri, to ‘Muhammadu  Buhari University’ is also a panic move to ‘appease’ the Northerners. A similar move made by an earlier administration to rename the University of Lagos was roundly REJECTED by Southerners, many of whom mounted the rostrum to voice their rejection. The then government was FORCED to ABANDON the unpopular and unacceptable decision. But not so the present dictatorial Tinubu regime.

If the’elected’ president could be so vain and vindictive in his first term, only God can imagine the DAMAGE he would cause to the Northern part of the country if he is UNFORTUNATELY allowed to be ‘reelected’ for a second term. He has already unilaterally renamed some federal institutions, eg, the Abuja Conference Centre, a Military Barack, and an airport, to name a few, after himself. He has moved some key federal agencies, such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from the Federal Capital, Abuja,  to his state of birth, Lagos.

The president has also single handedly (while the Rubber Stamp National Assembly (NASS) watched) awarded contracts in his native southern region worth trillions of Naira, and has single handedly ‘bought’ (converted) some assets belonging to the federal government, eg the Transcorp Hilton Hotel. He has unilaterally bought for himself three unnecessary, but expensive items of comfort in the form of a brand new aircraft, a brand new yacht, and a brand new car to add to the burgeoning presidential fleet.

The Northerners have not forgotten how the entirety of the region, minus the FCT, is REGULARLY allocated by the TCN an insignificant 160MW of electricity, while the Southern part of the country is REGULARLY allocated a humongous 3,200MW. There are also the many ‘collapses’ of the National Grid, and the weekly ‘falling of the line’. All these happen only in the North. The result of the DELIBERATE denial of electricity to the North is the COLLAPSE of VIRTUALLY all manufacturing industries in the region. Only a few operate epileptically . 

The Northern region has also not forgotten the unilateral relocation of the Nigerian Military School from its founding location of Zaria, to Ogbomosho in the Southern part of the country. This came not long after the Zaria-based School of Aviation was scattered one each to the six geo political zones in the country.

Northerners have neither forgotten how attempts are being made to divide into pieces Emirate Councils in the Northern part of Nigeria, while nothing of the kind is being contemplated for their counterparts in the Southern region, even as some traditional rulers in the South dare those that are supposed to be very POWERFUL in the country to do ‘their worst’. The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi (Ojaja 11), not long ago urged ‘universities in the country to study how’ Nyson Wike of the FCT, became a cabinet minister in the Tinubu cabinet, in the first place.

I have said in my tribute to Muhammadu Buhari titled ‘Au Revoir Maigaskia’, written on 16-7-25,

that the “death of Buhari has obviously sounded the death knell for the APC, and the Tinubu contraption of a regime. The ‘tears’ that President Tinubu shed when he heard of the death of his immediate predecessor, were just CROCODILE TEARS’. Even in death, Buhari has continued to work for his ‘FRIENDS’, the poor people. As one of his presidential spokesmen, Garba Shehu, would say, ACCORDING TO THE PRESIDENT’, “the poor people from every part of the country would remain his concern”.

Since Tinubu’s imaginary millions of votes ‘helped’ Muhammadu Buhari win the 2015 Presidential election, he should now be able to cost to victory without problems in 2027, without the confirmed 12 million votes of his immediate past predecessor.

Northerners should be wise to Tinubu’s shenanigans. A leopard cannot change its spots, and expects to be believed by its prey as a changed animal that only wants to play with, not kill those animals for a meal, be them on land or in the water.

In politics, as in a game of chess, one cannot afford to make a mistake twice and expect to succeed, especially if the writing is on the wall what the second time may portend for the opponent.

May God give Nigeria another president like Muhammadu Buhari, who never wanted to enrich himself, while most of the citizens of his country live in pervasive hunger, poverty and unbearable hardship.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.