Fulani North, Aba Kyari and the dearth of Common Sense in Yorubaland
The Irohinoodua Editorial April 30, 2020
When a person dies, people eulogise for two reasons: either for truly being a great person or for representing extreme evil, but entrenched system that beneficiaries dare to condemn. Nigeria is essentially an evil system, but those who profit from the rot, who seek personal lucre see the system as the greatest benefactor.
Two weeks ago, some Yoruba men and women fell on each other to honour the late Chief of Staff, Aba Kyari. Many people did for many reasons, the least being their consideration for the pain and anguish of their own people. Some claimed they attended the same school with Kyari; one said he worked in the same chambers with him; many claimed he sponsored 1000 people to Haj and he never wanted anyone to know, yet the persons who made this claim were no ghosts and they were in hundreds. The line of mourners became a competition that everyone wanted to be seen by the custodians of the system Kyari fought and defended, a system that also consumed him at 68. There is a common mistake made both by those who eulogized Kyari and those who pinpointed his malicious legacies.
The former COS represented a system, he was not himself, he was an proxy, a conscious one, set cleverly to promote a time honoured political philosophy of the core North. He acted to the faith and fate of a filthy and destructive hegemony which he never betrayed. That specter is the retention of a rogue and mercantile political economy that ensures Nigeria remains perpetually a disposable pencil in the hands of a few incompetent individuals who are notorious for seeing the future from parochial, narrow ethnic prisms designed to keep them in power for the sake of power and the personal profit they and their rookies stand to gain. They are men and women of the past, nevertheless strong and dominant, but are vain, inept, corrupt, unskilled and rabidly opposed to a new order where lay Nigeria unchained from the fetters of iron.
Kyari is one of the spy-lords of the core North who has been raised for that destiny irrespective of his political party or class. Mamman Daura told the country that Kyari could have become the Vice President to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, confirming what any deep thinker should know that Aba Kyari cannot be defined by the All Progressives Congress, (APC) that he belonged, nor by the schools he attended and knowledge acquired, not by the Yoruba friends he kept, but by his status as the hatchet man, destined to live and die for the interests of the caliphate North and to achieve this by all means possible.
President Mohammadu Buhari announced to the country that all Ministers and government officials must report to the late Aba Kyari. In a way, he had appointed a substantial Prime Minister. The President then effectively took away the office of the Vice President and gave powers to Aba Kyari.
Both did not act alone, but rather acting for a well-defined script by a spineless, nevertheless intelligent and crafty ruling hawks whose perpetual error is their failure to know that a house built on dew may have endured, and many even still endure several maelstroms but at full moon will eventually collapse even on their heads. It is lack of common sense to assume that the death of Kyari would lead to a paradigm shift. It is even more dangerous to assume that picking a Yoruba as the next COS will spur a renaissance. If that happens, it simply would mean changing of the engine room of this cartel from the office of the CSO to that of any other portfolio. In the first Republic, Sarduna of Sokoto personally held the key, between 1979 and 1983, it was the Minister for Transport, Umaru Dikko that held the key. Under late Sani Abacha, it was Major Al Mustapha. The issue is not the position, but the trigger held at different times by a system that points the nozzle against the Yoruba nation at all times.
The most important challenge for Nigeria is not her battle against corruption, it is not the fight against Boko Haram, it is not her flawed elections, neither is it the absence of a progressive as the President or a Governor. These are effects of a main cause. The curse of Nigeria is one and simple: The sustenance of a totalitarian and despotic central system that turns all Nigerians into begging for crumbs from what rightly belongs to them. The simple word is the restructuring of the country on the terms of the people themselves.
Let us make it clear that restructuring is not national-specific. There necessarily should not be a national consensus, each ethnic group should be able to present, negotiate or defend its own narrative of restructuring. Those who push economic and class index miss the point. The issues before Nigerians is not just how to feed. There is a greater storm, mightier than bread and butter. Of what use is food, when legs and hands are in chains? The fundamental is how to protect their civilisations, their culture, values, the way they wish to eat, the way they wish to live and die; the needs of mankind go far beyond economic variables. There are fundamental philosophies. Trampling on these in the past has led countries to avoidable violent wars and calamities. It is time to face the reality of the moment: Nigeria must shrink or sink.-This Editorial was produced by Irohinoodua—The Pan Yoruba Newsmedium