How Buhari reshaped Nigeria, entrenched Northern/Muslim dominance

By the time President Muhammadu Buhari left power on May 29th, he had cemented a legacy of northern domination of Nigeria. By handing over to Bola Tinubu, former Lagos State governor, and Kashim Shettima, former Borno State governor, in what would be the first time in the country’s democratic history that both the president and the vice president would be people of Muslim faith, he sealed what he started in 2015.

It’s not an outcome that would surprise any keen observer of the country’s politics and power play. While many, especially in the south, assume, often, that the country is a settled secular state, there has always been a lurking push by elements to inevitably define it as one dominated by the Muslim faith, and within the eight years of his rule, Buhari brought it closer to that outcome more than at any other point in history.

Most commentaries about Buhari’s eight-year reign have been about his failures in the areas of the economy, security and anti corruption, which were the key planks of his campaign going into the 2015 election that brought him to power.

But while there is a consensus among observers that the former president performed below expectation in all three areas, he was, many would agree, very successful in accomplishing a Northern, cum Islamic domination of the Nigerian polity, which was the underlining force behind his rise to political prominence.

First, at the helm as military head of state in 1983, until he was booted out of office in a 1985 palace coup led by his eventual successor, Ibrahim Babangida, in part for failing to recognize the country’s diversity, Buhari would gradually rise to prominence with the return to democracy in 1999, in the wake of the post year 2000 Sharia crisis in the north that greeted Olusegun Obasanjo’s ascension to power.

Obasanjo, who was backed by the northern establishment to take power as a compensation to the Yoruba, who had become restive over the MKO Abiola June 12, 1993 debacle, was to hold same for four years and hand it back. But it was soon clear that he wasn’t keen on serving one term in office as president, and this realisation frayed nerves in the north. Part of the response was the recourse to Sharia, a perfectly crafted trap laid for the Ogun State born former general, but which he cleverly avoided.

But beyond Sharia, the north needed a champion, and with the likes of Babangida declining to lead the charge on account of, it was gathered, Obasanjo being his boss, Buhari stepped into the picture as the face of the north’s opposition to Obasanjo.

Speaking openly for Sharia, he gradually built cult following in the region, such that by the time another election was due in 2003, he had gathered sufficient political weight to beat Obasanjo in much of the Sharia north. And although his ever growing northern support base was not able to see him go over the line in subsequent elections in 2007 and 2011, an alliance with the Tinubu-led South West saw him achieve his dream in 2015.

Obasanjo’s eight years, which favoured market economy, had brought about a burgeoning private sector. Lagos was emerging from the ashes of the June 12 unrest into a thriving commercial hub, and it was becoming clear that it was no longer a country that existed on northern terms.

And although Obasanjo handed over to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a northerner from same Katsina State as Buhari, he only spent three years in power before passing away after an illness. His death inevitably meant power return to the south, with Goodluck Jonathan, then vice president, taking the mantle in 2010.

Jonathan, who would go on to win the 2011 presidential election ahead of Buhari – a victory that led to sporadic violence against Southerners by infuriated supporters of the former head of state in the north – would consolidate on the market economy favoured by Obasanjo. This led to even more prosperity in the South. Such that by time another election was due in 2015, it had become, for the north, an all out war to regain power and control.

The region found the right platform in the APC, which had been formed in 2013, birthing an alliance between the North and the South West. In the lead of up to the polls, leading northern figures in the then ruling PDP, such as Atiku Abubakar, former vice president; Aminu Tambuwal, then speaker of the House of Reps, and former Sokoto State governor; Bukola Saraki, former senate president, among others, ditched the party for the APC.

And with Buhari as its candidate, the APC took power in 2015, as Jonathan, probably aware of the odds against him, easily conceded defeat. Once in power, Buhari made his intention of returning the north truly to power, but more specifically, entrenching Muslim dominance of the polity, known from the get go.

Starting with the appointment of his kitchen cabinet in 2015 – the first set of appointments he made, which had an overwhelming Northern domination – the former president made it immediately clear, some say, that contrary to his inaugural speech postulation of “belonging to everybody and to nobody”, he, indeed, belonged to the North. He didn’t looked back, and eight years after, he successfully reshaped the country.

“President Buhari deliberately sacrificed the dreams of those, who voted for him to what seemed like a programme to stratify and institutionalise northern hegemony. He has pursued this self-defeating and alienating policy at the expense of greater national cohesion,” declared Matthew Kukah, bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, in a scathing 2020 Christmas homily.

“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it. There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war. The President may have concluded that Christians will do nothing and will live with these actions.

“He may be right and we Christians cannot feel sorry that we have no pool of violence to draw from or threaten our country. However, God does not sleep. We can see from the inexplicable dilemma of his North.”

The Buhari administration will be the first in the country’s history that all three arms of government would be headed by Northerners or people of Muslim faith, in a country that has nearly even Christian and Muslim population.

In his second term, which began in 2019, both the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, were people of Muslim faith. And the unceremonious dismissal of Walter Onnoghen, as Chief Justice of Nigeria, meant that the mantle fell on Tanko Muhammad, yet another Muslim.

Beyond the three arms of government, the former president’s direct appointments reflected a certain agenda to achieve northern hegemony. He filled nearly all strategic revenue collecting and security agencies with Northerners, ensuring that ranging from the military to the police and civil defence, including other arms bearing security agencies, and over 80 percent of key government ministries, agencies and departments were disproportionately headed by Northern Muslims.

Perhaps, even more infuriating to many, the administration seemed unwilling to act while marauders, often identified as Fulani herdsmen, unleashed mayhem in Benue, Plateau and many parts of the country, in what many saw as an expansionist agenda.

Yet, while not doing enough, in the estimation of many, to tackle the challenge, he would add insult to injury by proposing such obnoxious ideas as Ruga, a programme meant to create settlement for the same herders in every locality in the country; as well as the National Water bill recently rejected by the National Assembly.

Yet, when that failed after several attempts, his administration sneaked in another suspicious bill, the Water Resources Bill, which sought to cede control of water bodies in the country, and the adjoining lands to the federal government.

Seen by many as attempt to seize water bodies and lands for the benefit of herders, many lawmakers in the south and middle belt rose up in arms against the bill, buoyed by strong rejection of the bill in their respective constituents. Only last week, the national assembly eventually threw out the bill, and Buhari, whatever his administration planned to achieve with it, failed in the event.

“Buhari came and put Fulani herdsmen in place for the destruction of the non-Fulani. That is his achievement as far as I am concerned. All other things said about his achievements are begging the issue,” declared Ayo Adebanjo, elder statesman and leader of Afenifere, a pan Yoruba sociocultural group.

“He made sure he pursued the Fulanisation agenda in the country, ensuring displacement of people from their homes by the Fulani, who are from all parts of Africa, by by because he believes they have no home and must, therefore, come to take over Nigeria. All other things he does is just camouflage. That is his best achievement.”

But, while Buhari failed his seeming quest to legitimately settle the Fulani herders in various parts of the country through Ruga, the herders never relented in their campaign of bloodshed in many parts of the country, but particularly in Christian majority north central states like Benue and Plateau, and Southern Kaduna, where inhabitants of a number of communities now live in IDP camps, and their homelands allegedly occupied by same marauders without let.

“Another problem is the Fulanization agenda, which gave the Fulani the right to embark on the occupation agenda. At the time he assumed office in 2015, he said he belonged to everyone and belonged to no one, but the experience of the past eight years has shown that he belongs to his Fulani people,” noted Iorbee Ihagh, a retired Comptroller of Prison and the President General of Mzough U Tiv, in an interview with Tribune.

“Take for example, all those killings across the country, in Yoruba land, Igbo land, Benue and other parts of the country and ask yourself, has Buhari for once called these people to order? So, it was purely his agenda to ensure that Fulani occupied the whole country.

“Part of his agenda was the population census. We told him that the moment he succeeds with the census, his people (the Fulani) who have forcefully chased people away from their ancestral homes and occupied the place will be registered in those places and will automatically become owners of those places.

“Until you allow all the displaced persons to return to their ancestral homes, a census cannot be done. For instance, in my country home, the Moon council ward in Kwande Local Government Area for the past seven years, the Fulani have occupied the place having chased away the people and destroyed their houses and public institutions and have occupied the place.”

Beyond the activities of herdsmen and what has been described as conquest agenda, Buhari has also left Nigeria’s hitherto thriving private sector comatose. By slamming the country’s borders close for 18 months, and imposing ill-advised import restrictions, among other anti market policies, the once burgeoning private sector is battling to regain its flair.

“You know, if one wants to be a conspiracy theorist, one could suggest that the failures recorded under Buhari were deliberate outcomes targeted at achieving certain objectives,” said Chidi Anthony, lawyer and public affairs commentator.

“For instance, we say that Buhari failed in tackling insecurity, but the other side of it is that Fulani herdsmen have sacked communities and occupied their lands. We also say that he failed in his anti corruption fight, but look at how people close to him have become stupendously rich. In essence, he has empowered several of his people, which is largely what he came to do.

“Also, look at our flawed electoral system. What the rigging of votes has done is to give the impression that the north now has all the numbers.”

Indeed, prior to his coming to power in 2015, Buhari, despite sweeping votes across the core northern states, often failed to pose serious threat to successive PDP candidates, not until the South West came into the picture.

However, after eight years in office, he has left behind a country that has the north as an overwhelming majority of voters, in what many say is an impression created by inflated vote numbers in the region and suppressing those in the South.

“Yes, if you look at how the electoral map has changed in the past few years, you will discover that while the south has gone down, the north has comparatively increased,” said Anthony. “And my guess is that they wanted to use the planned 2023 census to validate the anomaly.”

Many observers agree that at no point since the country’s 30 months civil war, has it been as divided. The former president’s policies, coupled with growing mass of unemployed, hungry youths, they say, portend an already manifesting danger.

“The chicken has come home to roost,” political scientist, Professor Anjorin Adesida had noted in an interview with BH. ”Buhari’s idea of change is in line with the Fulani caliphate, it has nothing in common with western liberal democracy that his southern backers had in mind.”

Also miffed by Buhari’s lopsided appointments while in office, former military governor of Kaduna State, Col. Abubakar Daginwa Umar, once cautioned the then president that, “I regret that there are no kind or gentle words to tell you that your skewed appointments into the office of the Federal Government, favouring some and frustrating others, shall bring ruin and destruction to the nation.”

But like that of everyone else, Umar’s warning was ignored. Buhari doubled down and ensured that he achieved northern and Muslim domination of the country, even if he failed in everything else, which would have given the APC the impetus to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 polls; what was perhaps the perfection of an experiment started by Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, in 2018 when he first opted for a Muslim-Muslim ticket ahead of the 2019 election, in a state that had, in recognition of its significant Christian population in its southern part, run balanced ticket to accommodate the two leading faiths.

Confirming the fear of Christians, the former Kaduna governor, while addressing Imams in a viral video that came to light recently, told his audience before handing over to his successor that the Islamic dominance in Kaduna had been successfully replicated in Nigeria and that it shall continue.

El-Rufai noted that in the course of the electioneering campaigns, when “they”(Christians ) tried to ask questions on why the Muslim/Muslim t byicket, he deceived ‘them’ that it was not for religious dominance when in reality, the tickets both nationally and at the state level were for Islamic dominance.

“Religion was used, God made Asiwaju victorious. What we did in Kaduna has now been done in the country. No liar, who is going to contest using politics of Christianity will ever win any election again. Peter Obi tried and see how he ended. We’ve tackled it,” he said in the video.

“Since Asiwaju won the election CAN has been quiet. That is how there will be peace in the country. If this is done again and again and again everything will….. wallahi (swearing) that was what we did. And myself and others, we think we have done our part, Asiwaju has won the election, so our job is done. Our appeal to you is to pray for him to find good people to work with him.”

El-Rufai’s comments predictably elicited angry reactions from a number of individuals and groups, particularly the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

But the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria promptly defended him.

The Sharia Council, in a statement on Sunday fortnight ago by its Secretary, AbdurRahman Hassan, said “For the past one week, the Christian Association of Nigeria, Kaduna State Chapter has been wagging tongues, accusing the former governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasiru Ahmad El-Rufai, of making some inciting statements as far as CAN is concerned, simply because he aired his view on the political realities of Muslim-Muslim ticket.

“During the campaigns for the just concluded elections in this country, where was CAN when majority of pastors were making unguarded utterances, which if not for the help of Allah (SWT), Nigeria would have been history.

“Where was CAN when a pastor stood on the pulpit with an AK-47 in Abuja? Where was CAN when some Christian clergy were making prophecies of doom for this country? But Alhamdu Lillah, all the hullabaloo and all the fake and false prophecies, nothing negative happened to our dear country, Nigeria.

“The Muslim Ummah have been tolerant enough, if not, there is no way a Muslim-dominated state like Taraba will be governed by a Christian. If Plateau State, with a population of over 35 per cent Muslims, were denied the deputy governor slot, why should Kaduna State, with Muslim population of close to 75 per cent, not have Muslim-Muslim ticket?

“Good men of God always preach peace, not violence and inciting tendencies which, in turn, will be a threat to peace and development. We enjoin CAN to toe the line of honour in neutrality, rather than playing double-standards.”