I am sure you will agree with me if I say no matter how anyone tries to describe your own features to you, whether you are black or white, beautiful or ugly, a simple look in the mirror is worth more than a million words of description.
A simple anecdotal event just last week, on the eve of the local government elections in Kano State, solidified my above belief. A close friend of mine since childhood, the popular Kannywood producer and actor, Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, who happens to have thousands of followers on Facebook, threw a simple question to his audience. He wanted to be advised out of a seeming dilemma as on the morrow, he would have to make a difficult decision between choosing his own brother, the APC candidate fielded for Dala local government chairmanship slot and his childhood friend fielded by the NNPP. Who should I choose? was his simple solicitation.
I scrolled down the comments section and noticed among the hundreds of comments 99% advised him thus: “Naka naka ne”, “Zabi ɗan’uwan ka”, “Gida, gida ne”, and similar wordings, all encouraging him to simply be “nepotistic”. This ugly word is the greatest enemy of the North and it was inculcated deeply into our psyche that when it comes to it, it easily oozes and flows from our subconscious minds. Could any society live up to expectation when a simple decision of voting someone to represent and protect your interest stems from nepotistic lenses at the detriment of excellence? This simple attitude scared the hell out me and made me realise that the north is doomed and I don’t know how it could ever be saved. That is why the politicians are having a field day doing the unthinkable and getting away with it, as they learned the nepotistic tendencies we inhibit and how they can deploy and exploit it at will.
Tracing back this culture of nepotistic tendencies, we can see that it was an artificial construct made by our colonial powers (I believe with a hindsight to reap its outcome in post-colonial times). The amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 was a calculated insight by the Europeans to simply siphon our wealth under colonialism and continue to shackle our development in post-colonialism.
With independence, the tripartite regional arrangement continued to divide the country as the Azikiwes, Awolowos and Sardaunas operated within the spectrum of regional lens. Naturally it eventually led to the civil war. The rest remains history.
With the exit of the first set of post-independence leaders that assumed nepotism with a positive attitude towards regional development, there arose a band of wicked ‘yan boko (in the military, civil service and politics) that took nepotism to another level where it became the means of looting and siphoning, which opened the floodgates for the hydra-headed monster, corruption.
Anyone above 40 can, with nostalgia, reminisce the good old Arewa, where community values worked and the spirit of sharing was working before it was destroyed. The emergence of a new class of clerical merchants coupled with the wicked ‘yan boko and the top-down dissemination of ninanci nailed the coffin and may soon seal our fate for good.
When a people no longer have a common goal and allow nepotism to become the main vehicle in driving policies and yardstick for choices as individualism favoured against excellence, be sure to expect a failed state.
The North has no business being where it is today considering our vast resources, but the singular attitude of ninanci – the culture of me, myself and I – would continue to wreak havoc on our existence as it penetrates even the lowest rung of society and permeates the thinking of all and sundry.
Unless we, at least, learn enlightened-self-interest, promote selflessness and excellence then we would most certainly continue living no better than animals. Even animals follow their biological wiring and depict altruistic behaviours, but here we are in the North as superior beings blessed with the greatest religion that promotes the dictum of “You can’t be a true believer unless you love for your brother what you love for yourself”, but living far below animal standards.
You, me and her cannot come together today as neighbours and work for a common goal. No issue in the North is big enough to warrant concerted effort. A great example here today is the power outage. Did we see any concerted effort? We didn’t, and I believe we will not. Is there any issue that affects one and all like it? No. Alas, we can’t do anything about it but lament until it comes to pass and we wait for the next round of another topical issue to pick up for lamentation. That is the North for you at the 21st century.
The sooner we realise we are our own worst enemy and we are in the process of destroying ourselves from within by our sheer greed and self-centeredness, the more likely for us to steer away from the bottomless void we are rushing headlong towards to.