Of course, I appreciate that the Speaker has tactically emasculated the reps through their standing orders, and Senate President Bukola Saraki through Senate committee appointments, they should know that the next election is not eternity – they will have to more than justify a re-election.
No Nigerian, aged 25-30 years and can read newspapers, would ever forget that Professor Olatunji Dare it is, who owns the patent to the title of this article. He used it to great effect in his Guardiandays, trying to catch a whiff of the ‘zillions’ of events, some of them macabre but most certainly outrageous, cascading daily in the country especially during the long military era, now aptly dubbed the years of the locust.
We are obviously back to those days and given a group of unreflecting northern legislators who seem bent on bringing back those years of a repugnant Hausa-Fulani hegemony, Nigerians from other parts of the country must let them know that what we will not eat, we will not as much as sniff. Apparently buoyed by the return of a northerner as Head of State, I haven’t the slightest doubt they are out to demonstrate their usual arrogance once again. Hear what Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, told Nigerians on why the North-dominated leadership of the National Assembly threw out the one project that was sure to open up the deep South and create jobs for our educated, but unemployed, youth in their thousands: “It is true that there are projects allocated to my constituency just like other members did. Just because I’m the chairman of the appropriation committee, my constituents should not get projects? Are my constituents not Nigerians? “Every member has one project or the other in his constituency, so I don’t think I did anything wrong by having some projects in my constituency”.
Their preferred projects, in place of the rail project, included such mundane state and local government projects that it is a surprise they forgot to include their ancestral shrines. They included such things as tricycles, town halls, classrooms; solar street lights, rehabilitation and construction of roads in Kiru/Bebeji, pedestrian bridges, boreholes etc. This 40 -year-old, PhD degree holder, who allocated a princely sum of N4.169 billion naira to his constituency from cancelling the Calabar-Lagos Rail project, should be asked how much his entire geo-political zone contributes to Nigeria’s GDP. It is worse that Speaker Dogara, who ideally should give an example of even-handed leadership, allotted N3billion to his own constituency. Jibrin, the ethnic champion, did not stop there. Knowing that cancelling that rail project, while simultaneously increasing the allocation to a project in the North from N80B to N92Billion, was a geo-political conspiracy that had to be defended with the last drop of their blood, if necessary, The Guardianquoted him as sending out a text message intended to rally his conniving troops. The text message allegedly read, inter alia: “to all Hon Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of Standing Committees: As you are aware, we have transmitted details of budget 2016. After consultation with the leadership of both Chambers, the reports of all standing Committees were sustained in the details. Though all items submitted by Committees were retained, you will see additional inputs that were necessaryto be accommodated via little cuts. You are therefore enjoined to be prepared to justify reports both in media and elsewhere; in case, the executive arm disagrees. We are already justifying your reports, but you must join in doing so, especially in the media…’
Now, if these people would do this to a project meant for the most productive parts of this country –South-South, with its oil and Lagos, accounting for more than 60 percent of Value Added Tax, to which the North contributes only a miniscule portion, what would they not do to other areas not known to bring that much to the table. It would have been great if this was done for love of their communities. But as Nigerians have come to know of our politicians, it is intended to cream off billions so that they too can build their own hilltop palaces. If Yar Adua and Jonathan allowed it, Nigerians will be highly disappointed in President Buhari if this kleptomania continues in an era of change. Any threat of impeachment, as the Senate is beginning to do through innuendos, they will have Nigerians to contend with.Increasingly, one gets the impression that Southern legislators have forgotten their primary purpose in the National Assembly, i.e to be the ears and eyes of their people. Of course, I appreciate that the Speaker has tactically emasculated the reps through their standing orders, and Senate President Bukola Saraki through Senate committee appointments, they should know that the next election is not eternity – they will have to more than justify a re-election.
The above warning becomes more germane when Nigerians get to know of the so-called “ National Grazing Reserve Bill”, about which my friend of over half a century, the inimitable Tola Adeniyi, wrote a sparkling article titled:’Grazing Bill an insult to Nigerians’, this past week.
According to Tola, “the National Assembly is about to pass a Bill that is set to kill whatever is left of our so-called over-centralised federal System. The Bill, if passed, will be the greatest rape on our democracy and the biggest insult on our collective sensitivity as a people and as a country”. Continuing, he wrote: ”The Fulani National Grazing Reserve”, is presently before the National Assembly. The bill has successfully scaled through second reading in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. For it to become law is for it to pass through the third reading. “The bill seeks to provide for the establishment of national grazing reserves and stock routes. It is sponsored by Senator Zainab Kure. “It proposes to establish a National Grazing Reserve Commission (NGRC) for the country. The NGRC will be charged with the responsibility of using funds received from the Federal Government to forcefully acquire farmlands from Nigerians in all the 36 States of the country, develop same at government expense through the provision of bore holes, water reservoirs, etc; for the exclusive use of nomadic cattle rearers. The issue here is very clear wrote Tola. Fulani Herdsmen are cattle farmers. They could as well keep their cattle in ranches. They could devise whatever means like their counterparts in Argentina, Australia and the rest of the civilized world to do their animal husbandry. The men and boys roaming the streets, roads and bushes driving cattle are not the owners of these animals. They are just employees. The owners of these cows like Generals Obasanjo, Nyako, Abdulsalami Abubakar and our president Buhari are big time farmers. They are businessmen. It is immoral to ask tax payers to finance the operations of these businesses. Cattle owners must provide capital through bank loans or whatever means to create their grazing lands in their localities…” Commenting on this elsewhere, I wrote, “If this bill passes, and we in the South sleep walk and allow it, then any Zainab Kure can wake up tomorrow and present a bill to the effect that Nigeria is an Islamic country”.
What is more important, however, is that President Muhammadu Buhari must, post haste, let Nigerians and the world know that he is no party to this seeming, aggressive but incipient recrudescence and rehash of the dead and buried Hausa-Fulani hegemony of yore. One way of doing this, which the Zainab Kure in-your face ploy is not, and will never be, is to propose a meaningful way out of the Fulani herdsmen’s needless killing of Nigerians in their own farms and homesteads. Multi-millionaire Cattle owners, who are believed to provide them with arms more sophisticated than what our policemen carry, should provide the wherewithal to do their businesses and stop the marauding Fulani killers they have let loose all over Nigeria. It is worse that DSS operatives are now investigating those who killed 3 of them whereas they kill in hundreds, without a whimper from the security agencies.
The DSS should be told that no Nigerian is superior to another.
Far from being an ethnic bigot I can, at 70, proudly describe myself as a realist of the first order. We either have a country or we don’t. No part of this country should see the other as subservient to the other in anyway. Indeed, were it so, it would be the other way round. I would like to see a northerner who supported and publicised candidate Buhari more than I did. If there is any, I challenge him or her to let us come out with the facts.
Enough is enough.
NATION
END
Where is the commonsense senator in this budget scandal that affects his area. Commonsense indeed. Jubril like his sticky hands law makers are bent on stealing public funds by all means since they could not ask the ministers for bribe before approving their budgets. Enough is indeed enough. I’m not an ethnic bigot either, but I challenge any northerner who publicly campaigned and supported PMB like I did to come out with the facts. Heartless and greedy lawmakers!