BEFORE some headline and title readers arrive on this scene to deplore this article before reading it, let me quickly state from the outset that this stuff isn’t about the elite in the North some of whom have been quite remarkable in their interventions on National issues. This commentary is about our nation’s capital some crisis merchants in power would like to use to get attention again at this perilous time. And here is the thing, Abuja, the symbol of our national unity has never been in short supply of such scoundrels. In the same vein, there have been good members of the northern elite who have been significant parts of the building of the remarkable capital of the federation.
I have written it here several times, that the man who set up the first newspaper in Abuja, Buakar Zarma, a brilliant product of the Universities of Ibadan and Lagos hail from Borno State. The former Editor of New Nigerian, who recruited me to join the management staff of the pioneer newspaper in Abuja, Abuja Newsday in 1988 didn’t know the states of origin of any of the associates he gathered from all over the country in 1988. As I have contextually reported several times here. Alhaji Zarma, is a Muslim but most of the editors and managers he recruited for the premier newspaper in Abuja hail from the South and are Christians.
Below is a paraphrased excerpt from an article (Before Abuja becomes a toxic federal capital’) I wrote on the same subject in 2016.
Not many young people will know why I have always been very passionate about Abuja affairs. The nation’s capital is actually my second home. My journalism career grew luxuriantly like yam tendrils in the rainy season from there, thanks to my relationship with the capital about 36 years ago when Alhaji Bukar Zarma, former editor of New Nigerian established the first newspaper the Abuja Newsday there.
I was pioneer Lagos Bureau Chief from 1988 to 1990 when I was promoted Editor of the newspaper.
Abuja is the place my colleagues (bureau chiefs) including the dangerously hardworking Yusuf Ali, the ever clean, no-pimples Sam Akpe, never-say-die Yomi Odunuga, etc named me “The Dean” of the Bureau Chiefs’ cabal while some others outside journalism would call me “The Mayor of Abuja”. There is nothing extraordinary about the sobriquets other than my long-standing experience as a reporter, writer and editor in the 47-year-old “capital of the federation” as the constitution calls it.
This background is germane to the points at issue today in Abuja where partisan politics, religion & ethnicity have become dangerous tools in the hands of our politicians. I would like to use this background to trigger some rhetorical questions later about where rains began to beat us as a nation. We are talking about a nation where the bogeyman called the national question is still threatening the security of the nation again, no thanks to some emerging political mismanagement of the complex federation by some Abuja-based political leaders and their inner-circle men.
I mean that when the newspaper civilization kicked us in the face in Abuja in 1988, there was a good country where religion and ethnicity did not play so much overt role in interpersonal relationships, let alone in recruitments into private enterprises. Then Alhaji Zarma, who hails from Borno state shaped the business plans of publishing the first newspaper in Abuja with Alhaji Hassan Adamu, Wakilin Adamawa, from Adamawa state. They are both Muslims.
But the striking element in the story in 1988 in Abuja was that Alhaji Zarma, who advertised for vacancies for journalists in a national daily, then did not consider religion and ethnicity when he hired very resourceful journalists from different parts of the country. One thing was clear then: he never asked any candidate’s state of origin. And so coincidentally, all the senior editors and most reporters recruited from the North and South were Christians. This is the evidence: Mr. Nick Dazang (Christian from Plateau) was the pioneer Editor; Mr. Jackson Ekwugum (Christian from Delta State) was News Editor, Mr. Dennis Mordi (Christian from Delta State) was Chief Sub Editor; Mr. Samm Audu (Christian from Kaduna State) was Sports Editor; Mr. Skekwogaza Wasah (Christian from Abuja) was Features Editor, Martins Oloja, (Christian from Ondo State) was Lagos Bureau Chief. Other notable names in the newsroom then included Shok Jok, Camillus Eboh, Moji Olaniyan, Moji Olajide, Alex kabba, Emmanuel Obe, etc, all of them Christians.
It is significant to reveal here that when Professor Humphrey Nwosu’s National Electoral Commission was releasing piecemeal the June 12 election results then and chief M.K.O Abiola was in the lead and it was clear the Egba wealthy chief had beaten Bashir Tofa from Kano, the publisher, Zarma was quite upbeat about imminent return to democracy through a free and fair election. And when the result was suspended, he was very sad. He remains very sad till he present.
The point really is that as a young Nigerian, I have seen the good part of the country even in Abuja where it is now becoming increasingly difficult to associate with it as a capital of the federation. I succeeded Nick Dazang in 1990 as Editor in Abuja and I can recall that Abuja was gloriously promoted as a great city, a unity capital. In fact, our newspaper’s masthead carried a motto: ‘A great paper for a great city’. Besides, the FCT administration we were covering then had a lot of Christians, Muslims and free thinkers alike from different parts of the country.
The atmosphere then was so conducive in the nation’s capital to the extent that even the land administration department then had a federal character code of conduct in plots allocation to states. In other words, if Plot 25 in Garki were to be allocated to a citizen of Anambra state, for instance, Plot 26 would be allocated to a citizen of Adamawa, and not to another allotee from Anambra State. That was what led to naming Abuja “Centre of Unity” when the Federal Road Safety Corps came up with various slogans for the 36 states and Abuja then. Lagos was named “Centre of Excellence…
That is why it is sad to read in the newspapers barely 25 years after the capital relocation from Lagos that a Christian woman was killed (in 2016) for preaching the gospel of Christ in the same “Centre of Unity” that General Murtala Mohammed gave to unify us as a nation in 1976. The Hurricane Murtala proclaimed Abuja as Nigeria’s capital on 3rd February 1976 and on 13 February 1976 was assassinated in Lagos. Yet General Olusegun Obasanjo (a Christian from the South) who succeeded the fallen hero, did not annul the new-capital-of-the-federation project. Obasanjo began to implement the capital project through Ajose Adeogun as Special Duties Minister (supervising Abuja project (1976-1979).
It is really catastrophic that the nation’s capital that Justice Akinola Aguda (from Ondo state) recommended as a “centre of unity” through a presidential panel he headed in 1975 has become a toxic “centre of disunity” where some citizens are still angry that Nyesom Wike was sworn in as first (substantive) Minister of (FCT) from the South after 47 years of northern domination of the portfolio.
How do we interpret the implications of a recent groundswell of opinion by a group of northern elite and youth that president Bola Ahmed Tinubu was planning to relocate the capital of Nigeria to Lagos just because a department and some units of the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) and an agency of the Aviation Ministry are being made to relocate to Lagos where their operations will be more cost effective to both the operators and regulators. Why would a group of privileged people and leaders be fabricating lies against the president because they already have some fixation that Abuja is indeed one of the states in the North?
It is gratifying to note that last Wednesday, the presidency clarified that the Tinubu administration was not planning to relocate the Federal Capital of Nigeria back to Lagos, its previous location. It described the insinuations as a creation of those it called “mischief-makers” who are bent on “fueling needless ethnic mistrust” to “pit the North against the South. The clarification followed the CBN’s recent decision to relocate the Department of Banking Supervision of the Central Bank of Nigeria to Lagos and the directive of the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development to relocate the head office of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos. Some Northern senators and youths who should be thinking of what to do with economic challenges and out-of-school children in the north, have expressed displeasure over the move, which they contended was a calculated move to short-change the North.
And curiously, while amplifying the dissenting voices from the North, the Senator representing Borno South Senatorial, Ali Ndume, said President Tinubu was being misinformed by “political cartels” to make wrong decisions.
Ndume, who spoke during an interview with Channels Television last Tuesday, said the President was being ill-advised by “Lagos boys” in the corridors of power, stressing the planned relocation would have “political consequences.”
But responding to the northern voices on Wednesday, the Presidency in a statement by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, dismissed claims that the FCT would be relocated from Abuja.
But the beauty of diversity of opinion in this federation also manifested at the weekend when the former CBN Governor and former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido, Sanusi urged the authorities of the Central Bank of Nigeria to go ahead with the move to relocate selected departments from Abuja headquarters to Lagos. Sanusi, on Thursday, deemed the move as “eminently sensible,” citing the larger infrastructure capacity in the Lagos office.
Sanusi advised the CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, against yielding to political pressures surrounding the contentious move.
“My advice to the governor is to go ahead with his policy. Once the CBN starts bending to political pressure on one thing, it will continue doing so. Northern politicians will shout that this is moving from Abuja to Lagos. Abuja is a federal capital, not a northern issue. So long as this is a principled decision the noise should be ignored…”
Let’s continue next week with the ticklish national question of whether Abuja should be regarded as our or their capital. Or should we ask: Abuja: who owns the land?
Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.