Jarmai Zazzau: Healing the Northern sore

The content of Danjuma’s speech at the occasion of the traditional event, especially his profuse gratitude, and the unprecedented N2.3bn size of his gratitude and pledge to the ABU Phase-II project, tend to underscore the significance and importance of these twin awards. For all intents and purposes, Danjuma is entitled to these awards of recognition for the special circumstance in which providence has placed him.

Whenever the North found itself at critical crossroads in Nigeria’s political equation, Danjuma seemed to be the natural centre of gravity in the attempts to find a viable way out. But he seems very content, and curiously so too, in his habitual role of a serial kingmaker, than being the king himself.

After a successful career in the army, Danjuma retired to an equally highly successful and lucrative private life of stupendous means. Whatever he touched in business turned to gold, it seems. While he was a General in military power politics, he became a superior General in private business.

In comfortable retirement, Danjuma had watched, proba-bly in utter exasperation, how along the line acts of omission and commission had cumulatively conspired to betray and defraud the North of its corporate identity and cohesive unity, where an important but aggrieved part of it seeks, and insists on deluding itself with, a separate political identity and a rather self-defeatist sentimental fraternal alliances with others in the South.

The Northern house of the legendary Sir Ahmadu Bello now stands divided, and rendered prostrate to the orchestrated provocation and daring political taunts of its opponents. The North has never been this low and bad, and seemingly helpless, since 1966.

With hindsight, there was this ominous historical picture of youngster officers Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida playing the game of draught in deep concentration, while a seated Danjuma and standing Sani Abacha watch attentively. The prophetic significance of that picture and game has come to pass, as those same characters and players have continued to characterize and play the chess-game of Nigeria’s power politics. Whether by coincidence or design, each has led the country as a uniformed General, and led or sought to lead it again, as a democrat, all except Danjuma.

    The Obasanjo brand may have achieved its immediate purpose, but it soon assumed a devious character that tended to betray the respective personal expectations of its sponsors and that of the North. A politically confident Obasanjo not only orchestrated the subversion of the North as an obvious agenda, but audaciously went after the respective economic interests and political aspiration of his fraternal benefactors, with a seeming vengeance. The current back-seat disposition of the North is the designed outcome of the deliberate ploy of an agenda against Northern unity and its political advantages. The North may have suffered an almost fatal betrayal when an ailing Umaru Musa Yar’adua was foisted on the country, with tragic results, as we have seen; it currently seems in a critical coma indeed!

There seems to be a certain realisation in the Northern elite that the strength of each of the constituent units in the North is dependent on the unity of the whole. The sectarian divides and the frequent inflammation seem to be orchestrated and exploited by internal and external forces at the peril of Northern unity. Today the Northern landscape is dotted with armed violence and bloodshed from Boko Haram to Fulani herdsmen clashes with local farmers all over the place, from Tiv and Jukun mayhem in Taraba, to inexplicable mass armed invasions in Zamfara and elsewhere in Plateau, etc. The North is in orchestrated turmoil and disunity, and it is unlikely to assemble the critical unity required to reclaim its usurped turn to govern by 2015, if something doesn’t give way.

Providence seems to beckon on TY Danjuma yet again at this seemingly helpless juncture for the North. Indeed everyone would has thought that at over 70, Danjuma is rather a spent force that has already paid his dues both to the nation and to the North. But the torrent of very genuine Northern honours and awards is apparently sign of things to come, rather than a stream of cumulative indebted and belated gratitude of the past.  

There are indeed very few recognition awards of such Northern symbolism, significance and magnitude than that of ABU, because it uniquely carries with it the name, spirit and memorial of the Northern legend, and indeed a proud inclusive consciousness of our collective patrimony. And Danjuma has proved himself a thorough Northern legend too, that has continued to pay his dues, which he isn’t done with yet!                

It is increasingly becoming clearer that while the North will, as a strategic necessity, continue to recognise and accord Danjuma his dues and the arrears of its indebtedness, he in turn seems to owe the North a personal debt of political leadership. That will seem to be the significance of the symbolic public pronouncement by IBB of the informal award of the contrived traditional title of the Sardaunan Arewa on Danjuma. This may as well be an ominous indication of an impending coronation of a Northern king. And there are arguably no higher credentials of a universal Northern endorsement and blessing in this regard, than those two recognition awards that carry the name, the relevance, the spirit and the myth of the Caliphate itself. Thus the monumental significance of a special doctorate degree from a University that seats in Sokoto and bears the name of the legendary Shehu Uthman Danfodio, and the formal conferment of the unique title of Sardaunan Arewa by the Sultan of Sokoto, would have endowed in Danjuma the uniqueness he already seems to occupy and symbolise, by popular acclaim.  

The serial celebration of TY Danjuma could help to create a strategic consensus around a quality brand, in addition to the tactical healing of the open sore of Northern unity. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the emergent political scenario in the North, giving Caesar his dues, itself a measure of fairness and justice, could indeed make all the decisive differences for the North.                        

Dr Abdulsalami wrote from Kaduna <[email protected]>