by Kene Obiezu
In her seminal work Inheritance, philosopher, historian, and anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse explores what she refers to as “the evolved biases that have, over thousands of years, been extended by our forebears and helped forge the peculiar world we now inhabit”. She describes these biases as conformism, religiosity, and tribalism.
As the tax reform caravan of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has rolled into the National Assembly seeking to address some of Nigeria’s most pressing taxation issues, some politicians from the North have jumped on the bandwagon of parochialism and provincialism, dragging with them many of the region’s heavyweight. Together, they threaten to turn one of Nigeria’s most important conversations of recent times into a circus. If this circus succeeds, there is no prize for guessing right who the laughingstock would be.
The sweltering nonsense full of nothing on the tax reform bills is symptomatic of the reasons Nigeria remains where it is today—immovably stuck in the mud of underdevelopment with no hope in sight. In a country that chants unity in diversity only when it is extremely convenient, it is jarring that conversations over pressing national issues and priorities always descend into purulent polemics over Nigeria’s politics of tongue and tribe, and who would be cheated eventually. This suspicion, as ruinous as it is, harks back to Nigeria’s fractured history and its extremely fragile sense of unity and patriotism.
Recently, the chief culprit in this extremely narrow interpretation of everything has been the North and its cohort of National Assembly members, who have seemingly gone into overdrive since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in last year. This lot of Northern politicians and their often limited and lazy interpretation of events and proposals is led, and often comically, by Mohammed Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno South in the National Assembly.
When the Federal Government decided to move some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria and Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos for administrative convenience and to cut costs, Ndume wailed to the highest heavens over the decision, accusing the president of an attempt to strip the North of such key institutions. In insisting that even if there was any need to relocate agencies of government, states like Kogi and Nasarawa should be considered first, Ndume, a federal legislator, conveniently and alarmingly ignored other federating units in the country, airing in the process his provincial streak that is such a disaster in a fragile federalism like Nigeria.
Expectedly, Ndume is leading the shrill but embarrassing outcry over the tax reform bills. He has managed to corral other politicians of Northern extraction to his camp, not that they needed much persuasion anyway, with Babagana Zulum, the Borno State governor, joining him in their new-found career as political moirologists.
To complete and complement the circus, one of the legion pseudo-political groups who prefer to lick the boots of power and scrap for craps instead of pressing for genuine political reforms has declared a one-day fast to support Zulum and Ndume in Borno.
It is laughably ironic that it is Borno State, a major beneficiary from Nigeria in recent times, and a handful of political jobbers from the state that have made an occupation out of crying wolf over every government decision since the presidency moved from the North to the South. Since the Boko Haram crisis started around 2009, more than two trillion naira has been spent on humanitarian aid, most of it on Borno State where the terrorist group has wreaked total havoc. The country fully supported the state when floods wreaked havoc there recently. Vice President Kassim Shettima is a former governor of the state and a loyal son of the North who would have been a chief wailer over Nigerian affairs were it not for his exalted office. It is telling that even his presence in the government has not served in any way to reassure the North, especially his brothers from Borno State, that their interests are well protected in the current administration.
What is happening between the North and the South now that the presidency resides in the South-West may be tit-for-tat wailing as the South-West before the administration of President Tinubu had some of the loudest wailers in the country. But even during the disaster that the Buhari presidency was, the wailing from the South-West was not as piercing.
With the way Nigeria’s fragile federalism is structured against them, it is the South-East that should be wailing non-stop. But the people of the region, as proud as ever, have simply refused to be pitied or pity themselves, showing exemplary dignity as the rest of the country continues to convulse.
Ndume and his ilk should resist the temptation to always flash their provincial cards at every major policy decision in Nigeria simply because the presidency now resides in another part of the country. If Nigeria is to find common cause around anything in the country, then those who represent the country must show more nuance and nous as they approach national issues.
*Obiezu can be reached at keneobiezu@gmail.com
