An enemy within works against the interest of the group or community he belongs to. In 1982, London’s The Guardian newspaper stumbled on handwritten scribbles of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, wherein she said that her government had fought (Argentina) the “enemy without” in the Falkland war and now had to face the enemy within.
In a 1947 editorial, titled, ‘Enemy Within,’ England’s Daily Mail newspaper accused the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Harry Pollitt, and others of his fraternity in many other countries of “pouring out propaganda that is exclusively manifested in Russia, even though he speaks with a good English accent.”
A school of thought suggests that the dethronement of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, Sarkin Kano, by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State was only a matter of time. Sanusi went beyond his brief, they averred.
Sanusi put his foot in it the many times he berated the northern Nigerian political establishment for not doing well for the masses, whose optics is exemplified by the almajiri, the dreg of the region’s political realm.
In a submission at the 60th birthday of Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, Sanusi said, “We have been saying this for 20 to 30 years, if the North does not change, the North will destroy itself.”
He specifically added, “The country is moving on: The quota system that everybody talks about must have a sunset clause… You don’t need to rise on being from… the North, or being a Muslim to get a job.. . We need to get northern youths to a point where they don’t need to come from a part of the country to get a job.”
Then, he gives a clear warning:” If we (in the North) don’t listen, there would be a day when there would be a constitutional amendment that addresses these issues of quota system and federal character.”
Anyone who has seen the video of an interview granted by the Leader of the Yoruba World Congress, Prof Banji Akintoye, will read a bit of the impatience of the Yoruba with a system that they believe is dragging them down.
Prof Akintoye insists, “We do not have to leave our children, who go to school and come out of school, unattended to, because that is how Nigeria treats its children. We Yoruba don’t have to treat our children like that.”
He adds, “Whether we are in Nigeria, or not, does not… make it compulsory for us to follow Nigeria downward… We do not have to follow Nigeria’s poor quality of governance. We do not have to follow the disintegration and decline of (the) Nigerian economy.”
To affirm the Yorùbá’s position, Akintoye declares, “We do not have to surrender ourselves to disintegration and decline. So, we are calling upon the Yoruba people, the rulers and the governors to begin to attend to the needs of the Yoruba nation, in spite of the fact that we are part of Nigeria.”
Sanusi’s warnings and Prof Akintoye’s sentiment point to a future that will only entertain merit in running the Nigerian state. This future may not favour those who have prospered on the compromises that come with a quota and federal character system that encourages incompetence.
It is obvious that where compromise is allowed in order to serve the sentiments of affirmative action, the regions that profit from it and those that suffer deprivation as a result of it, are both the poorer for it.
Whereas inclusiveness is healthy, it should not be to the detriment of the entire nation, as it obtains now. The argument that is gaining currency now is that policies must be targeted at citizens and not interest groups.
Some individuals, across all the regions of Nigeria, take advantage of the quota system and federal character to corner advantages that should go to the best for themselves and those they prefer.
Sanusi attended King’s College on the Lagos Island. He must have had the opportunity to mix with the children of the southern elite and can determine why those children seem to excel in greater number than those of the North.
He may have observed that ability to excel is embedded in an atmosphere of fair competition. Therefore, he is in a hurry to make the Northern establishment see the futility of attempting to hold back the hand of progress of southern Nigeria, as a former Minister of Education of Northern Nigerian extraction was rumoured to have intended.
That minister had initiated the idea of educationally-disadvantaged states, whose candidates, albeit with lower scores in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, would be considered for admission above their compatriots with higher scores.
It’s the same thinking that skews juicy positions, which require high calibre personnel, to be given to incompetent and inexperienced novices, who happen to come from the “right” region, tribe or even religion. This won’t remain so forever.
The advantages obtained through military coups or the myth of a higher population will be lost by incompetence. Besides, the people of the South have found their voices and they are no longer prepared to play second fiddle in a country they call their own. That is what Sanusi is drawing the attention of the North to.
He appears to be saying that the game of quota system has gone past its sell-by date, southern Nigeria has seen through the smokescreen and it’s no longer going to be business as usual.
But the northern Nigerian political establishment seems to think that Sanusi, a beneficiary of all the status quo can offer, is an enemy within, who wants to railroad them into class suicide. He also appears like the climber who got to the top and pulled the ladder after himself.
For the records, Sanusi has called for an end to child marriage, although he once married a teenager; and he advocated for more schools, instead of mosques, and population control. Although he is a polygamist, he has argued that polygamy increases poverty in the region.
What seems to be the major concern of Sanusi is the education and health of the girl-child and social investments. As he once remarked, his bias for numbers, as a banker, has been altered by insight gained as emir to attend to the heart.
Leader of the Nigeria Muslim Shura Assembly, Sheikh Abbas Gumi, who is probably not a fan of Sanusi, advocates, that “(It is time to) give states some levels of autonomy, like we have in America where Texas, for instance, has different laws from other states, (and) they also control their resources.”
Sheikh Gumi thinks, “If you do something like that and the Federal Government concerns itself with policing so that states don’t infringe on minority rights, we will be treading the right path. When we restructure in this manner, then Nigeria will work…”
What is most important, despite Sanusi’s perceived contradictions, is that he is, at least, pointing to the way forward. Someone says you should pay attention to a message rather than the messenger. That makes sense.
Those southern Nigerians who think the message is for the North only, must begin to talk to the man they see in the mirror that Sanusi is holding. Or else.
