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OPINION: Ahmadu Bello Children’s Territorial Politics
Published
3 weeks agoon
By
Editor
By Festus Adedayo
There was territorial tension in Nigeria last week. Like in the famous fable where animals gathered in the forest to delineate their individual boundaries, last Tuesday, Northern Nigeria regrouped in Kaduna in aid of its territory. Western Nigeria Awurebe music lord, Late Ibadan, Oyo State-born Dauda Epo Akara, has the patent of a folklore that captures this fictional animal gathering. Epo sang about a quartet of animals comprising Lion, Fox, Cobra and Tortoise which can be extrapolated into a human gathering. It was a power show and territorial delineation. The animals did not only gather to flex muscles but to have a mutual understanding of the power in their pouches. In a July 17, 1995 article published in the Nigerian Tribune, authored by late Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, ex-governor of Oyo State, the famous mathematician and politician looked at that same fable from a power calculus prism. Ace columnist, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju, in an Olunloyo memorial symposium recently, uprooted the folklore from the archive and situated its essence.
Each of the animals was embittered by past territorial usurpation. As they complained, they also criminalized any further attempt to take one another for granted. This they curated in form of taboos, the irreducible minimum of their tempers’ elasticity, a violation of which would bring the beast out of them.
For Cobra, he could tolerate his head or even the back being stepped upon in elementary power duel. However, anyone who trod on his tail in power contestation should be ready to meet Asarailu, Muslims’ angel of death. Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) Board Chairman, Bashir Dalhatu, would seem to represent the Cobra in the folklore. Like a reptile ready to sting with its deadly venom, Dalhatu spat out the north’s grouse. President Bola Tinubu, he said, had underdeveloped the north. Rising insecurity, poor infrastructure, declining agricultural support, neglect of education and healthcare of the children of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, were the president’s 26-month infractions.
In territorial politics, the north has always been unexampled of the two old Nigerian regions. Highly savvy and purposeful in its romance of power, the North acts like the proverbial hollow-eyed whose tears stream out in a long course. The north’s entitlement, said Dalhatu, was its demographic contribution to Tinubu’s emergence. What gave Tinubu the temerity to trifle with Ahmadu Bello’s progeny who gave him 64 per cent of the total votes that crowned him?
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Convened at the instance of Uba Sani, Kaduna state governor and one of Tinubu’s political sidekicks, the undisguised raison d’être of the gathering was to dissolve mounting perceived undercurrents of the north’s dissatisfaction with the Tinubu government. In the last 26 months, the children of the Sardauna of Sokoto have bickered in ones and groups. The North, they claimed, has been severely marginalized in federal allocations, project execution, and key appointments. Of greater fundament, they complain, is the ravaging pestilence of insurgency. Don’t our fathers say, before the Sòbìyà, a guinea worm parasitic infectious disease, becomes a painful wound is the appropriate time to call for its doctor, the Olúgànbe?
Fox, Lion and Tortoise were also at The Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF)-organized event which drew participants from across the 19 Northern states and the FCT. For these three animals, their anger and prognosis for stopping further territorial hurt was without equivocation. Fox spoke next. It was abominable for his deadly face to be looked at by anyone, he said. It was then the turn of the Lion to speak. If anyone impugned this animal’s dignity, reputed for scarifying his victims without a scalpel (akom’oní’làláìl’abe), the recompense was bloodbath for the transgressor, he spelled the word audibly. Tortoise told the conferees that he was aware of his own bitchy ugliness, especially the amoebic shape of his splintered carapace, but it was not the remit of anyone to mock him. Anyone who engaged in such body-shaming would have to endure a “very lethal punishment” from him.
Chairman of the Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF), Prof. AngoAbdullahi, for that moment, became one of the animals. He was angry about recent relocation of key Central Bank departments from Abuja to Lagos, a move he condemned as “suspicious and divisive”. He equaled the so-called marginalization of Northern Nigeria as a threat to Nigeria’s unity and development. Abdullahi told the president that there was a growing number of out-of-school children in the north, a figure he put at 80 per cent of Nigeria’s estimated 20 million out-of-school children. As the animals proposed conditions for armistice, Abdullahi also proposed the allocation of N7.5 trillion each to education and roads in the North.
Amity reigned in the animal kingdom after this “Memorandum of Association”. It was the same peace that reigned after, I reckon, this same northern bloc met Tinubu before the 2023 election. What must have given the Abdullahis and Dalhatus of the north the weapon to show this kind of entitlement? My guess is that there must have been a breakdown of agreement between them and Tinubu. Not long after the animals signed their own Memorandum, a rupture soon came. One fateful day, Tortoise, with his wobbly weight and unsightly limbs, walked into the gathering of his colleagues. His gait immediately provoked laughter among them.
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Miffed by this rank rupture of a gentlemanly agreement, Tortoise, notorious for his trickster traits, reached for his pouch of trickery. He immediately hid himself behind a twig of trees not too far from the animals. From there, he dug his limb into the soil and spattered loose soil on the fur coat of Fox. Angered, Fox spat on the Lion whom he wrongly believed was responsible for this. Lion roared, his mane fluffing in indescribable fury as the whole forest shook in a seismic burst. He then charged at Fox who he assumed was responsible for breaking this taboo. In the pandemonium that ensued, Lion and Fox mistakenly stomped on the tail of the Cobra, breaking his spinal cord. As a last minute revenge, Cobra spat his venom which immediately temporarily blinded the two. The fight was so intense that both Fox and Lion inflicted fatal wounds on each other’s jugular. In no long a time, the bodies of the three giants of the forest lay in a heap, in a mutually assured destruction.
In the folklore told by the trio of Epo Akara, Olunloyo and Olagunju, the eventual tragedy of the quartet was similar. Olagunju explains the tragedy thus: “As to cause of death, Lion died from a fatal snake bite, Fox from being torn to pieces by His Royal Majesty, the Lion, whilst Cobra had his vital backbone crushed in the scuffle. The battered tortoise hobbled away quite amused but not before having his back shell broken when the lion squashed it, in a mad rush after receiving a snake bite.”
Since the 1914 amalgamation of the Southern and Northern protectorates by Lord Lugard, the two regions have worn their fatal flaws on their lapels. While the south, first port of call of white colonialists, took its Westernism to the extreme, the north prides itself in how it weaponizes its magisterial understanding of the calculus of power.
Why did Dalhatu, Abdullahi and other sons of Ahmadu Bello who railed at Tinubu last Tuesday feel they were entitled to their bile? The north always feels it holds the ace in Nigeria’s murky and voodoo demographic politics. The crisis from the 1962 census was part of what eventually led to the military putsch of January 1966.
The territorial politics that happened in Kaduna last week is the type the north has always used to transform ethnicity into an identity. It does this for the sake of aiming to gain political power. The weapon of actualizing this is demographics. This was hoisted a few weeks ago when the rump of CPC in the APC hoisted a nebulous 12 million votes with which it hoped to whip Tinubu into line. Since the British began attempts at a nationwide population census, it had always faced the accusation that it planned to favour its northern quisling ahead of the south. The south claims that the whole population exercises in the north is a sham, buoyed by the amorphous Purdah system where enumerators are forbidden from entering delineated harem homes wherein is written “Baa siga, gidanaore ne” – entrance barred because it is inhabited by married women.
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Accusation of sudden inflow into Nigeria of nationals of Niger, Chad and contiguous countries surrounding the north is also rife in enumeration time. The aim of doing this is to bloat population numbers for the sake of securing more government funding and political representation.
Since 1999 when the 4th Republic commenced, as each election cycle is afoot, the north takes Nigeria into inter-ethnic tensions while hoisting the primacy of its ethnicity. This politicized ethnicity made Goodluck Jonathan run from pillar to post to satisfy the region in 2015. It was all to no avail. Jonathan flew to Sokoto to establish the nomadic school. I doubt if that school ever functioned till today. His fatal nudge was to think education was the problem of the North. He was wrong. Continuation of a feudal hold on the Talakawas is it. Jonathan brought on board his government elites of the Ahmadu Bello’s progeny. It failed to rouse the region in his support. The north was rather obsessed with bringing its most vacant-minded son to administer Nigeria. From 2015 to 2023 of Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, he kept on nourishing that same barren path of prejudicing northern elite ahead of rescuing northern children from ignorance of Almajiri. The result is the metastasis we have today of insurgency. The roam-abouts of yesterday have come of age, equipped with burning fury against their elite captors.
I agree absolutely with Kaduna State governor, Uba Sanni, that it will be unfair for the north to blame its backwardness on Tinubu. From July 28, 1966 when it took over power, except for the accident of history that produced Olusegun Obasanjo in 1976, northern leaders have consistently and woefully failed to provide a future for the north. It was the lack of the will to combat the vermin of roam-about, born-trowey children – apologies to Mrs. Patience Jonathan – that birthed and energized the incubus of Boko Haram and allied insurgent activities in the north. How can Tinubu be victimized for this? On this violence affliction which the north brought upon Nigeria, this country has spent trillions of Naira of annual budgetary allocations, as well as martyred thousands of its soldier children, in service of decades of this elite fatal flaw.
I am interested in knowing how northern son, Buhari, fared in taming insecurity in his eight years rule, as compared to Tinubu’s two years, to warrant Dalhatu’s blame. Dalhatu’s allegation is that, under this government, “the North remains under siege, with insurgent groups multiplying and attacks becoming increasingly deadly.” How much of Dalhatu’s “widespread violence — including massacres, bombings, kidnappings and cattle rustling” which he said “has crippled economic and social progress across the region” did Buhari tackle? What was the percentage of Buhari government’s funding of agriculture, education, infrastructure and healthcare, and implementation of policies that promote equitable development across the country? When Buhari sat in Aso Rock for eight years picking his teeth, how much of this territorial politics did the north play? Only statistics can trump the mashed potato of rhetoric and impassioned arguments of the north.
Like the intense fight of Fox, Lion, Cobra and Tortoise and its attendant mutual infliction of fatal wounds, the north’s card of politicized ethnicity has a potential of a mutually assured destruction. As the bodies of the three giants of the forest lay in a heap, the moment Tinubu finds a way round the north’s territorial politics, he will, like Tortoise, though bruised, walk away from its self-inflicted wounds. When some of Ahmadu Bello’s progeny’s brown-noses argue that since 1999, the north has spent less years in the Villa than the south, as rationalization for the region to again be in office in 2027, they make one want to puke. It is a self-serving argument. The question to ask is, is the period from 1966 to 1999 no longer part of Nigeria’s history? In other words, did Nigeria start in 1999?
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News
FG Predicts Heavy Rainfall, Flood In Seven States
Published
1 hour agoon
August 23, 2025By
Editor
The Federal Ministry of Environment on Saturday predicted possible flooding in seven states and 25 locations across Nigeria.
The ministry, in its flood alert warned that heavy rainfall expected between August 23 and 24 could lead to flooding in the listed areas.
The alert was signed by the Director of the Erosion, Flood and Coastal Zone Management Department, Usman Bokani.
He further directed residents of communities along the flood plain from Jebba to Lokoja to evacuate immediately as the River Niger’s water level continues to rise.
READ ALSO:NiMet Predicts 3-day Thunderstorms, Rains
“Due to the rise in the water level of River Niger, communities on the flood plain from Jebba to Lokoja are advised to evacuate,” he said.
The states and communities expected to be affected include Benue State (Abinsi, Agyo, Gbajimba, Gogo, Makurdi, Mbapa, Otobi, Otukpo, Udoma, Ukpiam); Borno State (Briyel, Dikwa, MaiduKamba; Gombe State (Bajoga, Dogon Ruwa, Gombe, Nafada); Kebbi State (Gwandu, Jega, Kamba); Nasarawa State (Agima, Keana, Keffi, Odogbo, Rukubi); Niger State (Lapai); and Yobe State (Gashua, Gasma, Potiskum).
On Friday, the National Emergency Management Agency urged residents in high-risk flood plains to evacuate to safer and higher grounds.
READ ALSO:Again, NiMet Predicts Three-day Thunderstorms, Rain From Saturday
The states at high risk according to the agency are Kebbi, Niger, Kwara states that share borders with Benin Republic.
This was disclosed in a press statement signed by the agency’s Head of Press Unit, Manzo Ezekiel.
The Director General of NEMA, Mrs. Zubaida Umar, also directed all NEMA offices covering communities along the River Niger to intensify advocacy and mobilization for flood preparedness following alerts of rising water levels in the upstream of the river in the Republic of Benin.
READ ALSO:NiMet Predicts 3-day Rains, Thunderstorms Across Nigeria From Sunday
“In an urgent directive conveyed to the operations offices, Mrs. Zubaida Umar instructed them to sensitize communities to remain vigilant and advise residents in high-risk flood plains to evacuate to safer, higher grounds, especially those in Kebbi, Niger and Kwara states that share borders with Benin Republic.
“She further urged the State Governments of the identified high-risk areas to support their Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) and Local Emergency Management Committees (LEMCs) in activating contingency plans and preparedness measures to mitigate the potential impact of this year’s flooding.
“The Director General reaffirmed NEMA’s commitment to ensuring coordinated actions to safeguard lives and livelihoods along the River Niger,” the statement noted.
News
‘Court Of Corruption’ — Obasanjo Knocks INEC Chairman, Judiciary In New Book
Published
2 hours agoon
August 23, 2025By
Editor
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised the Nigerian judiciary, saying it has been “deeply compromised” and that corruption among judges has turned courts into “a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.”
In his new book, Nigeria: Past and Future, Obasanjo laments the steady decline of the Nigerian judiciary’s integrity, warning that justice has become commodified in Nigeria.
“The reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has steadily gone down from the four eras up till today. The rapidity of the precipitous fall, particularly in the Fourth Republic, is lamentable,” Obasanjo wrote.
He expressed concern that the judiciary’s decline poses a significant threat to the nation’s stability.
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Obasanjo recounted an incident where a governor showed him six duplex buildings belonging to a judge who allegedly acquired them from money made as chairman of election tribunals. This anecdote, he said, illustrates the depth of corruption in the judiciary.
The former president also accused Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, of undermining the electoral process since 2015.
“No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade,” he said.
Obasanjo further alleged that politicians believe the outcome of election disputes depends on the will of tribunal judges, court of appeal judges, and supreme court judges.
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“No matter what the will of the people may be, the Chairman of INEC since after the 2015 election had made his will greater and more important than the will of the people,” he added.
Moreover, Obasanjo directly accused the late former President Muhammadu Buhari of colluding with the judiciary during his election cases.
“Buhari threw caution to the wind, no matter what had transpired between him and the judges who did his bidding. In his election cases, financially, he topped it up with appointments for them no matter their age and their ranks,” Obasanjo alleged.
The former president concluded that the current state of the judiciary and electoral system in Nigeria is alarming, saying, “After a false declaration of results, making losers winners and winners losers, the victim of the cheating is advised to go to court, which is a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.“

Lagos State Governor, Sanwo-Olu, on Saturday inaugurated a state-of-the-art leather processing and manufacturing hub in Mushin, projected to create 10,000 direct jobs and generate over $250 million in annual export turnover when fully operational.
In a press release sent to PUNCH Online, the governor said the facility was formally inaugurated on Saturday by the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, during her three-day official visit to Lagos.
He added that the hub was named in her honour to recognise her grassroots initiatives in social investment and economic empowerment, with 70 per cent of its employment slots reserved for women and youths.
The hub is equipped with modern machinery to support Nano, Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (NMSMEs), enabling mass production of shoes, bags, belts, packaging materials, and other leather products.
READ ALSO:I Will Snub Gov Sanwo-Olu Again – Mr Macaroni
It is designed to ease production bottlenecks, scale operations, and position Lagos as the leather logistics capital of West Africa.
Speaking at the inauguration, Tinubu described the hub as a “trailblazing project” aligned with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda to diversify Nigeria’s economy through industrialisation, manufacturing, and innovation.
The Lagos State Leather Hub in Mushin, formally commissioned by the First Lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, on Saturday, 23 August 2025.
“Leatherwork is a traditional craft that has stood the test of time. This facility will empower artisans, scale up leather goods production, and enable them to compete confidently in both local and international markets,” she said, urging entrepreneurs to dedicate themselves to excellence and continuous learning.
Sanwo-Olu said the project would provide training and start-up support to over 150,000 artisans, boost the local economy, attract investments, and strengthen trade links with fashion districts, e-commerce platforms, and future rail services.
READ ALSO:Sanwo-Olu Unveils Bus Terminal, Slashes Red Line Fares By 30%
“Hides and skins that once left our shores unprocessed will now be transformed here in Lagos into world-class footwear, garments, and accessories proudly stamped ‘Made in Lagos, Made in Nigeria’,” the governor said.
He pledged to expand the facility through transparent regulation and continuous infrastructure upgrades, adding: “True dividends of democracy are best felt when they reach the cobbler in Mushin, the tanner in Oko-Oba, and the young fashion designer in Yaba.”
Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Akinyemi Ajigbotafe, said the hub would lower production costs and raise quality standards, positioning Lagos-made leather products for dominance in both local and export markets.
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