Re: ACF As Agent Provocateur

By Anthony Z. Sani

Yar’Adua The attention of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has been drawn to a material on page 39 of Saturday Tribune, 5th of April, 2008, under the topic “ACF As Agent Provocateur,” in which Taiwo Adisa tried to cast aspersion on ACF for recoiling from noble ideals and values which its venerated late Chief Sunday Awoniyi stood for, as the forum’s leader, to sectional irredentism. ACF does not normally join issues on discourse that are based on speculations and inferences that cannot be supported by facts. But since the writer and the medium used come from very powerful and influential constituency, a rejoinder may serve some purpose lest misrepresentations, inaccuracies and misconceptions about ACF be allowed to inch their ways into convictions with all the attendant implications. Therefore, this rejoinder should not be regarded as declaration of hors de combat. So, concentrate on the issues and not on how they are presented. Now some facts:

It is correct that ACF missed Chief Sunday Awoniyi’s confidence that comes with convictions; strength that comes with character; humour that comes with wisdom; easy grace that comes with humility and transparency/openness that comes with honesty as well as patriotic courage. But to charge ACF of stone-groping is to accuse the late chief of running the Forum as a one-man show. To be sure, Chief Sunday Awoniyi was an excellent team player who never regarded the rest of the members of the Forum as snot-nosed brats whose views must be discounted. Unlike former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Aro of Mopa never introduced a style of leadership akin to patriarchies. ACF, therefore, is not in search of its bearing, or finding its feet. It is on course. Any perceived distinction between ACF under the watch of late Chief Sunday Awoniy

i and that being led by General IBM Haruna may be more thespian than substance. In any case, both the bellwether and the lodestar are instruments for direction.

It may not be totally wrong to submit that under Senator Awoniyi, ACF acted like an opposition party to the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). But that was to be expected in an era when both the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the Lagos-Ibadan press decided to shirk their responsibility of opposition status in favour of unusual silence that reeked of complicity, considering their capacity to beleaguer past governments. What is more, all the political parties became clones of one another and gave Nigerians no choice. Chief Sunday Awoniyi’s contributions tended to give an impression that ACF was into partisan politics, but it was not. The impression that Chief Sunday Awoniyi hectored President Obasanjo, his fellow-Yoruba, in order “to prove his loyalty to Northern oligarchy which gave him the job,” is very misleading and uncharitable, precisely because he did not need to do so to curry public trust from the North, since the Chief had paid his dues a long time ago.

As a matter of fact, the Congress of ACF literally forced the helmsmanship on the Chief who protested vehemently on grounds that his health and age would not allow him to provide the needed effective leadership to the Forum. The reading public may not be aware that the fatal accident, which subsequently claimed Senator Awoniyi’s life, occurred on his way to Kaduna for a Congress meeting to elect the next leadership of ACF, among which officers he was not an aspirant. We, therefore, shudder to submit that any promotion of an impression that Chief Sunday Awoniyi had to work so hard to gain acceptance in the North is designed to detract from his well-deserved credits which cannot be perverse. The Aro of Mopa was a Northern minority, yes, if the conflation of Hausa and Fulani into one Hausa-Fulani is the majority. But Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was also a minority, so is General Haruna, and this writer from an obscure ethnic extraction known as Mada, found in Nasarawa State and Southern Kaduna.

Membership of the ACF has many minority ethnic groups in the North, of which Awoniyi’s was just one. But for the recent upsurge in our national politics of identity popularly known as power-shift, rotation and zoning, which have suddenly thrown up rifts the country does not need, the North has not been bothered really as to whether the cat is black, white, brown or spotted so long as it can catch the rat. One would not be totally wrong to submit that Chief M.K.O. Abiola and subsequently, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, got what they got by way of votes from the North because of such Northern attitude. And so, while the charge of irredentic recidivism against the Northern establishment may be understood, it may be hard to forgive. Anyway, Chief Awolowo once told us that a hawk believes all animals live on chicks. If Chief Sunday Awoniyi inveighed former President Obasanjo because he had personal scores to settle with him, does that detract from the issues the Senator raised? We must not forget the place of frustration and anxiety in the order of things. That is why those who do the right things because of personal reasons are entitled to some plaudits from us. The late Chief was very close to President Umar Yar’Adua, yes, but he was also very close to General Buhari who is contesting the victory of President Yar’Adua in the courts. If the late Chief were to be alive, he would advise ACF not to spare a misfiring President Yar’Adua. Now to the reforms.

As the writer himself admits in his analysis, the sentence on the socio-economic reforms of President Obasanjo was non-specific. But of the reforms for the purpose of forwarding a well-articulated disquisition to the appropriate authorities. But the communiqué contained some mentions of many issues. For example, the communiqué drew the attention of the nation to the food scarcity and food prices that threaten food security in the land. And so ACF called for national policies on agriculture, grazing land and security of livestock. The need for peaceful co-existence among different ethnic groups and faith through tolerance and accommodation to foster national relative pluralism was also canvassed. Another item that was specifically mentioned was the support for the Child Right Bill now with the National Assembly aimed at reducing child abuses that are occasioned by economic miserabilism. The Forum called on the governments to take the education of our youths more seriously. The ACF talked of refineries, of power probe, of the release of General Bamaiyi, Al-Mustapha and others. But Taiwo Adisa was still not impressed with the worthy attempts by ACF to nudge our governments to assume real responsibility for real issues of real concern to real Nigerians. What mattered to him was the sentence: “the reforms by the last regime have produced a class-based economy with few people living in affluent island surrounded by sea of misery. ACF, therefore, appeals to the federal government to critically re-examine the socio-economic reforms with a view to making appropriate adjustments that will not put some segments of the society and sections of the country at the short end of the reforms”.

We have gone as far as efforts can go to parse the contentious sentence, but are unable to find where and how it recommends total and abrupt discontinuation of the reforms, policies and programmes of the last dispensation. Nor are we able to locate how and where it is larded with sectional carriage. As a result, we have no choice but to stand by the communiqué. Taiwo Adisa and many international and national agencies, fora, groups and individuals are in chime with ACF’s notion that the reforms by the last regime have failed to deliver the promises of democracy, since they could not make a difference in the lives of the people let alone how to enable the people make differences in their own lives and those of others. The President himself has tacitly admitted that much, hence the reversal of some of the actions by the Obasanjo regime. As to the monetisation which the writer of the analysis is obsessed with, it is noteworthy that all the pillages and wastes used to sell monetisation to the public are vociferous bunkum, precisely because they are more of admissions of imperfections in management practices of public services, rather than matters of principles. We cannot afford an impression that our public services can never work. Meritocracy tinged with humane face and fair sense of social justice is working in public services of some other countries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Netherlands. We agree with President Yar’Adua that there is nothing quirky as “Nigerian factor”. In any case, how would the collapse of the monetisation favour the North in an era when the bulk of the civil servants and the landlords in Abuja is from nowhere but the North?

The Chairman of RMFAC who actually alerted the President to the stymie in the purchase of official cars for some categories of public officers as canvassed by SFG is himself a bona fide Northerner who should know Northern interests that he can protect. ACF is fully in the know that regionalism, religion and ethnicity and politics will always exist and mix. The critical thing is how to manage the reality in order to minimise their negative effects and make the most of their possible good. That may explain why the Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, told the great Zik that it is no use to forget our differences but to convert them to good purposes. He knew that differences in religion and even ethnicity would continue to be some of the contending forces in the arena of politics in the country which could check and balance one another. A happy Sardauna once said in the early 1950s that their achievements as leaders were largely due to their ability to make needed compromises and make friends of former foes. To that, ACF is committed.

Sani is National Publicity Sec, Arewa Consultative Forum.