A memorial foundation for me? No, thank you!
I am sure you are not shocked by the fact that I wasn’t ready to call you ‘Your Excellencies’, Why should i? I was there before the whole lot of you, not to talk of the fact that it was my job that is now being done by all 19 of you. I heard that […]
I am sure you are not shocked by the fact that I wasn’t ready to call you ‘Your Excellencies’, Why should i? I was there before the whole lot of you, not to talk of the fact that it was my job that is now being done by all 19 of you. I heard that you staged a big show in my honour last week. Don’t be surprised that I got to hear about it. The religious among you must have heard from their clergy, that the dead are often awoken to hear what is being said about them by the living. This really nice angel woke me up and said I shouldn’t miss the great Kaduna event, and I was glad he did. I mean all those superlative tributes? They sure are the stuff to please a dead man’s heart.
And so you decided to set up a memorial foundation in my name, and the proceeds from the big launch are expected to go into researching my legacies and developing the north further. Why, if I may ask, do you need an Ahmadu Bello Foundation to do what is right? Did I ever have to invoke the goodwill enjoyed by my illustrious ancestors to do the many good things attributed to me today? I saw the need and simply did what I had to do. As some of you might have heard from that white man, my authorised biographer, Professor John Paden, my driving force was simply the phrase ‘catch up’. I was driven by the great desire to see the north catch up with the other regions of Nigeria. That was my wish, my dream, my desire. I pursued it with inordinate passion, and some say, paid with my life for it.
Today I hear that even local government councillors get to travel not just to other parts of Nigeria, but to different parts of the world to enjoy the fruits of modern development, but the desire to push their locality to ‘catch up’ is simply not there. Frankly, my dear governors, I have to tell you that I am thoroughly disappointed in most of you. A few of you seem to have a little desire to develop the states in their care, but the majority of you simply see the office they occupy as a means for personal aggrandisement. Imagine getting to the governor’s office and your first wish is to take another wife, as if you were a bachelor who needed to marry quickly to earn the respect due to your newly-acquired status. As if it wasn’t bad enough that taking new wives has been unduly prioritised by some of you, it also comes with unnecessary waste of public funds?
In the last three decades, I have cried my heart out any time a new arrival to the Great Beyond comes with stories of what has befallen my beloved North. To say that you and most of your military predecessors have vandalised my legacies and dealt the North severe unpatriotic blows is to put it mildly. Of particular heartache to me is your total disregard for educational development. Yes, many of you pay lip service to it, but few of you treat the sector with the necessary commitment it deserves, yet not one of you can claim that he was not a beneficiary of free public education, or foreign scholarship by either the regional or subsequent state governments. But you begrudge your fellow compatriots, the current generation of Northerners, any chance at a good public education. Have you no conscience?
When school teachers went on strike last year, seeking a pay raise code-named the TSS, where were you all? You decided to team up with the federal government and refuse them this increase, even while knowing that each and every one of the teacher’s grievances was true. When you finally condescended to talk to the teachers, it was to make promises you had no wish to fulfil. Most of you effected an insignificant increase and took several months to implement even that. The majority of you are yet to start implementing the increase. And you want to call yourselves my heirs? I beg to differ, I never joked with the issue of education, and all of you wouldn’t be where you are today without my single mindedness on that issue. It broke my heart to hear about the two young women who died when a classroom collapsed on them in Kebbi state recently. What better proof do we need that you people have neglected educational infrastructure in the North? Oh yes I have long since heard about the under- the- tree classrooms and the roofless, windowless and chair less classrooms, but it grieves me even more to hear that thIs criminal neglect of the education sector can lead to such avoidable tragedies as the death of these promising young ladies, even as they were preparing for their exams.
Another shameful testimony to the shabby treatment given to education by you people, is the incessant strike action by university lecturers and federal government’s inability to decisively address their demands. I am not at all surprised that some of them decided to call the government a Boko Haram administration, what else can explain its indifference to the plight of tertiary education in Nigeria? Or is it the fact that most public office holders today have their children studying abroad? I laughed at those Nigerians who celebrated that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, two university graduates are leading the country. They have since learnt that a president and a vice who have been through the university are the best recipe for a boko haram government, poor them.
I have also heard that some of you refuse to live in government houses, only to allocate an incredible portion of state resources to yourselves as housing allowance. Why defraud your people so? Why don’t you just move into the government houses and channel these huge funds to other uses? What or who will kill you if you move to government house that you refuse to do so? Well, granted that someone did kill me in government house but believe me Nzeogwu only succeeded because it was my time to go, but at the time he killed me no other house in Kaduna was as secure as my residence. According to John Paden, Nzeogwu had such grand plans to eliminate me that if I had accepted the Prime Minister’s offer to ride a plane out of the country, on the eve of my assassination, he would have bombed the plane, because by his own admission he had me under surveillance 24 hours a day. But you people don’t have such enemies today. If you do, be sure they are of your own making, you know, the countless youths you have left without a future, no education, no meaningful employment, and no spiritual base to guide their actions. Whenever there is a sectarian crisis, which I hear is now very frequent, you crack your brains to find out why when the answer is facing you very much in the face: the neglect of Northern youths.
So all 19 of you came together last Saturday to honour me with a foundation, which you claim will among other things undertake research into my life and legacies. I Say NO THANK YOU. If you want to honour me, live my legacies. You have all heard about how I died leaving behind no house but the one I was given by my father but I have heard about the numerous houses you own, not just all over the country but even abroad. Some of you are even said to own not just houses but factories in far East Asia and shopping malls in a new middle eastern city called Dubai. How can you honestly say you admire my life when your lifestyles are positively at war with mine? Apart from your children mostly studying abroad with public money, your wives’ regular junketing is another bottomless pit for public funds. You can’t possibly admire me and engage in relentless squandermania.
So when I say ‘No, thank you’ I mean return every penny, or kobo as I hear you now call it, back to the donors. Let everyone who admires me enough to donate take back his money and do something meaningful towards reviving my vandalised legacies. The Dantatas and the Dangotes can try to revive the numerous industries shut down in Kano and provide jobs for their people as well as fight the endemic poverty now prevalent in the North. The local government chairmen and their councillors should take back their money and renovate as well as equip primary schools and provide drainages. I have heard all about the recent floods which were for the most part, caused by lack of proper drainages. The local councils should also use their retrieved funds to clear those heaps of refuse said to have overtaken most roads in towns and villages. How can you lament the recurring cases of Cholera and other epidemics when your people live in such filth and you are not bothered? I remember how gladly I used to accompany foreign dignitaries to our towns and cities, after what I have heard from new comers here, I wouldn’t dream of doing that today, given the extent of dirt.
You yourselves should take back your donation and go back to your states to revive agriculture. It used to be the mainstay of northern economy, but with the discovery of oil, you have neglected it and caused on yourselves and your children endless derision and name-calling from our southern compatriots. And why won’t they call you parasites when you wont do anything visibly different to show that you are building the economy?
Again I say “No Thank You” I don’t need a memorial foundation but I need my legacies relived. Revive the textiles industries, the newspapers, the bank, the investment firms, agriculture, education etc and I shall rest in peace knowing that the North is progressing. Otherwise, just forget it.
Yours sincerely, Sir Ahmadu Bello, CON, KBE, RIP, Firdausi Boulevard, Great Beyond.