Professional Documents
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Imperatives of The Nigerian Revolution by Dele Farotimi
Imperatives of The Nigerian Revolution by Dele Farotimi
OF THE
NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
————•❀✼❀•————
‘Dele Farotimi
(Author of DO NOT DIE IN THEIR WAR)
Copyright ©2021 ‘Dele Farotimi
ISBN: 979-851-35102-7-7
v
Chapter IV: The President of the Republic .......................................... 316
Chapter V: Parliament............................................................................. 320
Chapter VI: Executive Powers ............................................................... 337
Chapter VII: Police ................................................................................. 350
Chapter VIII: Courts............................................................................... 352
Chapter IX: Finance................................................................................ 369
Chapter X: The Public Service of the Federation................................. 378
Chapter XI: Transitional Provisions ...................................................... 384
Index ............................................................................................................. 389
vi
Dedication
THIS book is dedicated to the three women that had been
handed my custody at critical stages of my life, and that have
loved me, in spite of my several imperfections and
peccadilloes.
Maami, Maria Ige Olukole, the grandmother that was my
mother, may we be gathered together when I sleep as is the
way of all mortals. Rest on and keep taking care of Adetoun,
there’s hardly a day I do not remember you both. I shall yet tell
the world of you.
Helen Omolara, the mother who fathered me and taught
me how to be a man. I owe you more than I can ever repay, but
know in the moments when you as a mother urge caution; that
I learnt how to stand by the truth from the very best at standing
by the truth regardless of cost: you. I never saw you settle for
the choice undictated by your conscience. Thank you for the
man you raised, and for being more of a man than the keyboard
warriors of this age.
Olufunmilola! Olufunmilayo! The one that allows me to be
me. My facilitator and co-conspirator. I am blessed to be loved
by you, and I know that you have loved me more than me. The
spoil wey my mama no gree spoil me, na you kukuma dey spoil me
like say i be ya only pikin. Thank you. I might not say it often
enough, I have certainly not been the best that I can be, but
never be in any doubt, I’d marry you again and again, if I came
back to this life, a thousand times.
Igbayilola, Ajibola, Afolarin, I do what i do because of you.
I do not want to see you become refugees in another man’s
vii
land, and I do not want to see you live through unending wars.
Ayaba Esteri! When am I going to practice for Igbayilola’s
wedding? I am getting impatient o. Never forget the daughters
and sons of whom you are.
In spite of my several flaws, never forget that I love you all.
viii
Acknowledgements
I HAVE been blessed to have shared time and space with some
men and women, and to have benefited immensely from God’s
orchestrated twinning with some of these persons. Taiwo
Akinlami, a brother with whom I somehow avoided sharing a
uterus, but a brother in every sense of the word. The
Okokomaiko Brotherhood of Bayo Ayo, Afolabi Solebo, Dele
Soetan, and the larger LASU family, I am grateful to you all,
and i do not take your love for granted.
My partners and the entire staff of DF Legal. Abiola, the
sister God gave me in place of the one that he took early, the
legal owl and mother hen, Ralph, the most intelligent legal
draughtsman I have ever met, and a man of uncommon
integrity and fidelity. Seyi, Mobola, Maryanne our Yoruba
Biafran, Funmi, and the support staff: Thank you all for your
love and loyalty, I am comforted in the knowledge that the firm
is in excellent hands, may God bless your endeavors. Amen.
I have the best assistant in the world. Feyisayo Olatunde, take
a bow. You have made my work easier without making any
fuss, and your capacity to anticipate my needs, are second to
none. Honest efficiency defines you. Thank you.
ix
“
The Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ does not
live in the country that they have
ruined. They cream the land for their
all-right living, but they do not live in
Nigeria. Their homes are in the Gulf
Arab states, on the Potomac in
Washington DC; they live in Dubai,
London, Monaco; some live in Niamey,
others in Niger… Their children, rarely
ever born in Nigeria, do not go to
schools in Nigeria, and where they do,
it would mostly be the elementary
schools. The Nigeria ‘ruining crass’
does not use the antediluvian
healthcare facilities…
x
Preface
The Foolish Warriors
A
s the Buhari presidency has enabled the very worst
of the Fulani Islamist agenda, and heated up the
country in furtherance of these treasonous agenda,
the rhetoric has become extremely violent everywhere in the
country.
Only a few men have dared to speak to the unity of
Nigeria, when the head of the state himself has proven to be
a shameless ethnic irredentist.
In the face of the manifest failure of the Nigeria State and
its security forces to protect the lives and properties of the
victims of Fulani militias, and in the face of the objective
realities that would suggest that the president condones the
actions of these violent criminals by his inactions,
considering the bewildering directive of the Defence
Minister to grieving victims, to defend themselves, it is
becoming increasingly difficult to speak to the unity of a
country that is being killed by its RUINING CRASS.
The venal brutality of the Fulani militias operating across
the length of the country, from Otuoke in the Bayelsa
swamp, to Epe in Lagos, its evil excesses, and arrogant
flippancy, have kindled a flame of ethnic nationalism, the
like of which Nigeria has never seen before. The lines were
xi
clear during the civil war. The borders were defined. The
tribe being hunted was known. This is different, and it is
dangerous. There would be no explosions; only implosions.
The battlefront would not be there, it would be right here.
On the victims’ doorsteps… in their homes.
The Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ does not live in the country
that they have ruined. They cream the land for their all-right
living, but they do not live in Nigeria. Their homes are in the
Gulf Arab states, on the Potomac in Washington DC; they
live in Dubai, London, Monaco; some live in Niamey, others
in Niger. The northern aristocracy has long-favoured homes
in the Sudan, and a few have kept residences in Cairo. The
Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ hates living in Nigeria.
Their children, rarely ever born in Nigeria, do not go to
schools in Nigeria, and where they do, it would mostly be
the elementary schools. The Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ does not
use the antediluvian healthcare facilities. A country that
once had an internationally renowned healthcare system,
once good enough for Saudi royalty, has had its President
travel abroad to fix his unhearing ears. I am sure that you
get the point: the Nigeria ‘ruinous crass’, does not live in
Nigeria.
Fela famously dubbed the Nigeria ‘ruining crass’, Alhajis.
He lamented that we were being ruled by strangers who are
untouched by the pains of our afflictions. He had no idea
just how right he was, and just how bad it is. The case of
Dizzy Baby, Deziani, has brought some attention to a
xii
notorious fact that should engage the attention of the
warring victims. Almost the entire ‘ruining crass’, political
and economic, is possessed of second passports; not subject
to the same travel restrictions, that affect we, the foolish
warriors.
In the cauldron of the afflictions unleashed on the victims
by Buhari, secessionist agitations have boiled over. Self-
defence against the rampaging Fulani militias have become
a fair ground upon which other ethnic warriors are being
raised across the length of the country. The extremes of the
Fulani herdsmen in the Oke-Ogun part of Oyo State, raised
the person of Sunday Igboho as the “Yoruba freedom
fighter” (apologia Punch newspaper).
The prevailing circumstances have led to a situation
where the voices of reason have been ignored, drowned out
and disparaged by the government, and reasonable men and
women have been rendered impotent in the face of the
rampant insecurities, and the government’s failure to
protect the lives and properties of the hapless victims. The
violence of Igboho’s response, was received with respect by
the perpetrators of violence, and by the Nigeria State itself,
in further validation of the extremist view, that the voices of
reason, are being useless in an unreasonable place, and
validation for those that have believed, that violence works
with the State, and is respected by the Fulani militias that
have carried on like an army of occupation.
xiii
Variant of warriors
THE foolish warriors may be broadly divided into two
categories. The chief protagonists are rarely ever resident in
Nigeria. They are the ones that have escaped. They could see
that the Nigeria State was failing early enough, they escaped
the insanities pretty early in most cases. They have built
good lives away from the Nigerian madness. They are
citizens of the countries of their refuge, a privilege that is
denied to them in the country of their birth and origin. But
unlike the Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ that can hardly wait to be
rid of Nigeria, these escapees have never managed to leave
Nigeria behind. Take the monkey outta the jungle, but the
jungle is inside the damn monkey, you might say.
The Nigeria Diaspora is the most homesick you’d find
anywhere in sizable numbers. I have never come across a
single Nigerian in my travels who wouldn’t rather be in
Nigeria; if the country was “working”, they’d say. The
Nigeria diaspora is the most patriotic layer of the Nigerian
peoples, and I say this without ignoring the fact that the
Nigerian is not a citizen in truth. They are the ones that
consume the most news about the Nigeria State, they are
extremely tuned in to the politics, and are constantly
bellyaching about the country that they have been forced to
flee, but which they have never desired to be separated
from. These ones are the first category of foolish warriors.
xiv
The Nigeria Middle-Class, or its ‘middling class’ as I
have sometimes been forced to label it, is the most foolish
and willfully ignorant of the different layers of the Nigerian
peoples. It is the class that is most incapable of identifying
what is in its own best interests; the most existential of the
classes, and the least reflective of all. The Nigeria middle
class pays for the excesses of the ‘ruining crass’, but instead
of seeking critical engagements with the system to make it
better or to change it, the middle class is in a constant race
for survival, even as the objective realities should have
announced to it that it is fighting a lost battle against the
forces of feudalism.
The Nigeria middle class is the fertile ground for the
promotion of all of the divisions sowed by the ‘ruining
crass’. They are the ones that you would find on the internet
fighting the battles of the ‘ruining crass.’ They are the ones
that have embraced religiosity as a refuge from the harsh
realities of their existential lives, and they are the ones that
have failed to make use of their education and learning, to
teach, instruct, and guide the lower classes with whom they
interact daily. They are the ones with the capacity to
recognise the several iniquities of the Nigeria State. They are
the ones acquainted with its evil wickedness. These ones
have eyes, but are willfully blind. They have failed to discern
that the evil befalling them are visited on them by their own,
and they have bought the hate: hook, line and sinker.
xv
For these foolish warriors, the solution to the Nigerian
problem is simple, and as simpletons they have believed:
divide Nigeria, and be done with it already. The dangers of
the simple solution have never been better illustrated.
NOTE: I understand the pains and frustrations behind
these agitations, and I am not promoting or counseling
inaction, but beyond people talking about war, have they
factored in the fact that talks inevitably follow wars, before
they might be ended? Why is it so cowardly to offer
alternatives to wars, whilst everyone is demanding war,
when the only way to end that war, would be to speak to
each other and then work out the peace deal?
The war fronts would be our doorsteps, and most of the
keyboard warriors would be in their own homes outside
Nigeria, keeping scores and watching cable networks. But
those of us that have either elected to stay in these blighted
lands, already living as though we are in a war zone, would
find ourselves truly at war, and would have stumbled into
the still avoidable calamity because of our collective idiocies,
and even more ironically, because of our moral cowardice.
The same Nigerians, who have refused to engage with
the system to peacefully demand citizenship, but are happy
with indigene-ship, whilst eyeing promotion to the ‘ruining
crass’, are the ones promoting and demanding the break-up
of the country that they wouldn’t fight to birth. It is lost on
them that it is easier to gain everything they have imagined
xvi
from their tribal homelands, in a restructured and equitable
Nigeria State that has citizenship for all of its citizens.
The Nigeria ‘ruining crass’ is not going to miss the
Nigeria State. As I have sought to establish, the rulers of
Nigeria have committed several crimes against the Nigerian
peoples, and they are afraid of the day when they might be
asked to explain their crimes. They have concluded that the
destruction of the country would assure that they wouldn’t
have to account for the evils that they have perpetrated in
the land. Our ruiners are pyromaniacs; burning down the
State erases the huge crime scene the country is. If Nigeria
would be saved from the impending catastrophe, it would
be Nigerians of all ethnicities, languages, and biases that
would have to collectively save the State from itself. It is the
victims of Nigeria’s several afflictions that need Nigeria to
survive.
Those named Nigerians have never been allowed to
become citizens of Nigeria. The governance systems have
been structured from its beginnings to think in terms of the
tribe; the delineation of rights have been based on tribal and
ethnic foundations. It is not for nothing that the Nigerian Bill
of Rights, found in the 1960 Independence Constitution,
arose from the agitations of the minority ethnic groups, and
was a recommendation of the Willink Commission on the
rights of the minorities. Nigeria was founded on indigene-
ship, and Nigerians have never been citizens in the true
sense of the word.
The foolish warriors have fought against each other, in
the army of the evil rulers, for the benefit of the evil rulers,
and in preservation of the evil rulers and governance
xvii
systems that have mutually assured their enslavement. If the
foolish warriors shall incline their eyes, if they would behold
the evidence of their own eyes, they would see very quickly
that whilst the Fulani elites might be responsible for the
architecture of their oppression, the beneficiaries are not the
Fulani peoples, but a class of people drawn from every nook
and cranny of the Nigeria State.
The overarching ambition of the Nigeria ‘ruining crass’
is to steal. The overarching ambition of the Islamist jihadists
is to push their vile interpretation of Islam across the
country, and the dream of the Fulani peoples across the
Sahel, is to find a homeland, a place to call home, and a
refuge from the hardships of being a nomadic people, in a
region where they are effectively a minority. These
ambitions have collided at a critical point in the history of
Nigeria, and they have found oxygen in the person of a
Nigerian president, whose base instincts and reflexes are
nepotistic in the extreme.
xviii
History beckons the ones that would dare to desert the
ranks of the foolish warriors.
xix
“
I spent time in the book to deal with
the individuals whom I refer to as the
principalities and the powers that have
governed Nigeria over the years. I
dealt with the systems. I treated it
from a historical perspective in order
to be able to situate each one of these
phenomena in time and in space, so
that the reader, who is observing
these persons and entities today, has a
clear understanding of their root and
how they have grown over the years to
become what they are today.
xx
Introduction
A
s I wrote out the outline for this book, I came to the
reality that it was always going to be written. In
fact, I came to the knowledge of the fact that the
first book, Do Not Die in their War, was merely meant as
foundation for this book. This perhaps, because it would
have been incongruous to have made a call for the Nigerian
revolution without having first laid the foundation for
making such a radical call. So, I took a circuitous route, the
intention being to ensure that a rational basis and
foundation were laid for what is essentially a taboo call in
Nigeria.
The central idea of a revolution has for long been linked
with violence in Africa. And Nigeria with its long history of
violent coup d’état, the civil war, and military rule, with the
severally named revolutionary ruling councils, have over
the years managed to create a bogey around the idea of a
revolution.
But I use the word revolution advisedly. It does not in
any way, shape or form, promote the interest of the poor and
the disadvantaged, on whose behalf I presume to speak, to
call for violence, when they are not the ones who benefit
from the deployment of violence, and are neither the
purveyors of violence.
We will discuss this point in detail in the later part of this
book, when we begin to deal specifically with the issue of
xxi
tactics and the reasons for the adoption of non-violence, as
the only way to seek the attainment of that revolution.
In writing Do Not Die in their War, I sought to deal
specifically with the several lies, the foundational lies that
have undergirded the Nigerian governance system and
assured that instead of being a nation that caters to citizens
who are equal, Nigeria had over the years become a
feudalised democracy that caters only and solely for the
interest of the rulers, whilst the ruled are perpetually kept
underfoot.
I spent time in the book to deal with the individuals
whom I refer to as the principalities and the powers that
have governed Nigeria over the years. I dealt with the
systems. I treated it from a historical perspective in order to
be able to situate each one of these phenomena in time and
in space, so that the reader, who is observing these persons
and entities today, has a clear understanding of their root
and how they have grown over the years to become what
they are today.
These things I had sought to do in Do Not Die in their War,
but I also knew, at the time of writing the book that there is
a system that undergirds the totality of the evil that has
overtaken Nigeria, and that is impunity; the refusal of the
system to allow itself to be governed by laws and the
resultant inequalities and inequities.
I have dealt with this extensively in another book, which
would be released in future. But the primary intention in
xxii
that book is to show the systemic injustice; to show how the
system has become inured to the idea of the rule of law and
how we have systemised injustice and created the reign of
impunity. How men have bent laws, how justice has been
corrupted to the point where it no longer serves the purpose
of the poor man, but the narrow interest of the few.
The inescapable conclusion I had come to years ago are
the arguments contained in the current book, where I will
endeavour to make a case for the inevitability of the
inescapable conclusion, that a revolution is the only way
forward for the Nigerian people.
I have taken a circuitous route to get to this point. But
that route was rendered inevitable by several factors outside
my immediate control. The first is the successful
weaponisation of ignorance against the Nigerian people. I
touched on this at great length in Do Not Die in their War,
where I had seen that the people are constantly having their
stories told to them by their oppressors and the oppressors
are then the ones who set the parameters for the discussions
and if you really think about it, it becomes inevitable that as
long as the lions are the ones telling the stories of the hunt,
it will always glorify the hunter.
The people became oblivious to the fact that the very
people for whom they die, and for whom they sometimes
kill, are the ones responsible for the state of their existence.
Second is, I wanted to avoid a situation where the system
xxiii
gets the opportunity to define me, and thereby make it
impossible for the reader to hear what I have to say to them.
So, it became very important to lay the groundwork
in Do Not Die in their War, because I found a people so cowed
by poverty, which had been weaponised against them to the
extent that they were completely disconnected from their
own liberation and in most cases, particularly in the middle
class, probably devoid of all intellectual curiosity. I found
constantly that the victims were the ones who have self-
abnegated, make excuses for, and, in some cases, find
justifications for their ill-treatment in the hands of their
oppressors.
Then it got to a point, where I realised that they had been
so successfully indoctrinated and subjected to weaponised
poverty and ignorance, that speaking to these people cannot
be said to be unlike speaking to the deaf. With this
realisation, it became apparent to me that I am not writing
for this generation, but for history. Let history judge whether
I be right or wrong in the choices I have made.
xxiv
Prologue
I
finished writing the succeeding chapters in the months
of April and May. As the COVID-19 lockdown bit and
the worst effects of hunger began to manifest on the
streets, I began agonising to comrades about how we were
asleep whilst a revolution raged.
The book that was intended as a guide for a revolution
became a redundant exercise, and I soon abandoned all
attempts at concluding what I had determined to have ready
for publication by the first anniversary of the publication of
Do Not Die in their War.
I experienced a condition not unlike the writer’s block. I
could write, and I did write, but I simply couldn’t write
anything related to this book. I was convinced that I was
witnessing a revolution in real time, and I was intent on
studying what I was seeing instead of spending time writing
about what appeared to be happening already. I was both
right, and wrong. All at the same time.
The body of work derived from this season would be
compiled and shared, but I shall resume the purpose of my
immediate work by fast forwarding to the immediate
crystallisation of the social ferment that I was observing: the
#EndSARS protests.
I am not a historian, and I shall leave it for the persons
better informed and interested in the history to tell the tales,
but the #EndSARS protests are as historic as they are also
xxv
predictive of the future. It is for this predictive purpose that
I have deemed it important to analyse what took place in
that season, as a guide to the future, which lies inexorably
ahead of us.
“Ndi lazy youth, are you planning a revolution in disguise?”
After one of the several episodic eruptions of murderous
venality by the Nigerian police, this time in Delta State,
blame as always on the dreaded SARS unit, which had
ended with the end of another innocent life, several
conditions conspired to birth a moment in time, when the
Nigerian youth became engaged enough to demand
answers of the Nigeria State and its evil rulers.
The youth, under the umbrella of the #EndSARS
movement, demanded the end of the SARS units across the
country in the immediate aftermath of the Delta murder,
and they issued a raft of demands which soon enjoyed
celebrity endorsements, and began to take on a life of its
own. I was sufficiently bored enough to read the occasional
news item about one celebrity or the other being called to
the IG’s office as the state scrambled to head-off what would
appear to be getting out of hand.
I soon began to see carnivals on the streets disguised as
protests, abi na protests disguised as carnivals. Ndi lazy
youth became engaged, and the Nigeria State became
uneasy and flustered. The State began to seek whom to
influence, and they began to seek the leadership of the
movement for the usual compromise.
xxvi
The protests were centered in Lagos, Osogbo, and Abuja.
In Lagos, there were two main protest grounds - one at
Alausa, the other at the Lekki tollgate plaza by The Palms
Shopping Mall.
The one in Osogbo owed its visibility and vibrance to the
efforts of Comrade Mandate and other RevolutionNow
elements in Osun. The Abuja end was extremely successful;
it had practised activists on hand in the persons of Aisha
Yesufu and the inimitable Omoyele Sowore to ginger them,
if they ever required it. Not that they ever seemed tired.
As already confessed, I am not a historian; I have merely
recalled what I can of the protests in order to offer context.
My major preoccupation is with the relevance of the season
in the quest to predict the future. I am keener on identifying
the responses of the Nigeria State, its rulers, the Nigerian
peoples themselves, the governance systems, and the
several other actors, local and foreign, with a view to a clear
understanding of what to expect, when the time shall
come… As it must.
As the protests began to gain popularity and traction, the
Nigeria State began to unfurl its usual tactics. In Benin,
prisoners were released by the prison authorities, and cries
of a jailbreak provoked by the #EndSARS protesters rent the
air, at least it did until the prisoners began to tell of how they
were practically chased out of their cells by the wardens.
In Abuja, there are several photographic records of state
security personnel coordinating with thugs and miscreants!
xxvii
The state complicity in Lagos was as brazen as it is
predictable.
The relationship between the Lagos State Government,
the Tinubu political family, and the organised crime
syndicates in the state has always been incestuous, but the
#EndSARS protests, more than anything else in recent times,
have removed the veils that had concealed the truth from all
but the most discerning and diligent seekers.
The protests in Lagos were the largest and most effective
of the #EndSARS protests. The one in Alausa was at the seat
of state power, and the one in Lekki had shut down an asset
with which Tinubu has not once been known to joke: his pot
of soup, the Lekki tollgate.
On the 20th of October, and in the full glare of several
cameras, a notorious thug, positively identified as “Oosha”
and based in the Agege axis of the Lagos metropolis,
alongside his confederates ferried in state-owned buses,
attacked unarmed protesters with the intention of breaking
the protests at Alausa. They failed.
The Lekki protests were a different kettle of fish. The
protesters were not on a piece of land, and they were not just
occupying a government building; they were occupying the
Lekki tollgate. The tollgate plaza had seen protests in the
past, both the one at the point that became the killing field,
and the toll plaza at the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge. Tinubu had
never been tolerant of those that had dared to do so in the
xxviii
past; Ebun Adegboruwa, who later sat on the #EndSARS
panel, was a victim in the past.
The modus operandi of past breakup of protests at the
Lekki tollgate plaza bears retelling, for it succinctly
illustrates the criminal syncretism that governs the state. The
oppressed residents of Lekki, who had proceeded in a
peaceful manner armed with placards, were set upon by
hired thugs, and after being thoroughly beaten and serially
injured by the hoodlums, were arrested by the Nigerian
policemen who had stood by and watched them being
attacked. The hoodlums, employed by the state, and the
police, worked together to put down the attempts to
mobilise public opinion against the tolling.
By the time of the #EndSARS protests in October, the
mammoth crowds at the Lekki tollgate, the organisation of
its security arrangements, and the level of awareness and
participation, made the preferred choice of the Jagaban
franchise for dealing with Lekki protests obsolete. It is also
what rendered the murderous violence unleashed, both
predictable and inevitable, the moment that the protesters
were not persuaded to abandon their demands by the
several lying moves of the government and or its farcical
gyrations.
The Nigeria State is happy to deal with mad men; it has
never had any problems with the many insanities that it has
birthed, nurtured, and enabled in its long history of venal
bestialities, but it has never developed the capacity to
xxix
tolerate those that would dare to demand citizenship of it.
The refusal of the protesters to accept the lying
compromises, coupled with the absence of a leadership that
might be compromised, crystallised the events of the 20th
day of October, 2020.
The #EndSARS protests are the seeds of the Nigerian
revolution scattered to the winds. The massacre that took
place at the Lekki tollgate plaza watered the seeds, and it is
the destiny of the survivors to finish what was started with
the #EndSARS protests.
The #EndSARS protests were a practice run by the
Nigerian youth for the revolution that must happen, if we
are not to end up in an avoidable war. The Nigerian
revolution is not inevitable, and neither is the smoldering
ethnoreligious war that is either raging, or looming over
these lands, depending on your location. How?
#EndSARS as a Reaction
THE Nigerian youth is a citizen of the world. He is a global
citizen enmeshed in the pop culture of the western world,
the heady inventiveness of the Asians, the burgeoning
growth of the Arab world, he sees the Americans and their
many freedoms and contradictions, and he is a denizen of
the global village. But at home in Nigeria, he is not a citizen.
xxx
I have spent a lot of time and effort in trying to persuade
the Nigerian, by deductive analogies and logic, to see how
we are all rendered serfs and slaves by the governing
systems and the fraudulent 1999 constitution, but nothing
that I have ever written or said in lectures and interviews,
have illustrated the point, better than the entirety of the
#EndSARS protests and its brutal put-down at the Lekki
Massacre of 20/10/20. I shall elaborate.
The #EndSARS protests were reactionary in conception
and execution. They were crystallised by the excesses of the
Nigerian police, and were in direct reaction to the venal
brutality of the police SARS units in particular. Having
decided that they had had enough of these excesses, the
conscious layers of the Nigerian youth movements, allied to
some politically-conscious celebrities, organised these
loosely coordinated protests with demands made on the
state to reform the Nigerian police; specifically, to scrap the
SARS units.
The widespread and general nature of police harassment
in the economically well-off southern part of Nigeria is
largely due to the fact that the richest Nigerians are to be
found in these parts, but the fact that the southerners are also
less respected by the law enforcement officers, who are not
necessarily all of northern origin.
The poor Northern Nigerian is more likely to have a
brother in the army, and or the police, that he might call if
and when he is accosted by the Nigeria State and its venal
xxxi
security forces, but the southerner is less likely to have a
brother on whom he might call. The southern Nigerian is
acculturated to paying the police, before his rights might be
recognised, or respected.
The Nigerian police officer, himself a victim of the
Nigeria State, is also the loyal enforcer of the impunity of the
Nigerian ruling class. Paid a pittance that guarantees
penury, he is rendered a disgrace to the name: police. The
Nigerian police is little different from the criminals that he
is pretending to catch, because in truth, that was the
systemic design. The Nigeria State has ensured that the
Nigerian police is kept in its current state, so that it might
never be able to fulfill its declared functions, and become a
law enforcement agency in a state ungoverned by laws.
The Nigerian police runs in the manner of a business
entity. The DPO, as explained by the afrobeat music
maverick, Fela, is the Branch Manager, the Police
Commissioner might be called the General Manager… you
can do the remaining approximations as your imagination
sees fit; but the IGP ‘Ilabe’ is the Chairman and MD of the
board. Whilst the upper management level might be well-
fed and rotund, the lower ranks are wickedly brutalised and
dehumanised. The Nigerian constabulary is one of the
poorest paid and resourced in the world, and this is not by
accident, but by systemic design.
Rendered vagabonds, impecunious, and serial
accessories to the virulent criminalities of the Nigerian
xxxii
ruling class and the immunities they enjoy from any form of
lawful retribution, the Nigerian policemen have embraced
their design purpose, and have become what they were
intended to be: enforcers not of the law, which they quickly
learnt means nothing, but of the will of the men who sit in
the seats of powers, and men, who are able to pay to have
the same unconscionable powers deployed in their services.
The Nigerian police is criminal ab initio.
The Nigerian youth, as I have explained, is a global
citizen, and this is more so in the cosmopolitan southern
states and in the Federal Capital Territory. He has largely
embraced the counter-cultures of the western world, and in
some cases the outward expressions of these cultures and
the totems. He is wearing his hair in dreadlocks, and he’s got
tattoos. He probably has a few piercings and earrings, and
he is somewhat forgetful of the harsh realities of his
Nigerian existence until he runs into the Nigerian police,
and he is reminded that whilst he might be a global citizen,
he is not a citizen in his own country.
These encounters with the Nigerian police, be that the
dreaded SARS units, or any of the several other units that
have become parts of the systemic terrorisation of the
Nigerian peoples, have left a lot of tears, blood, and gore in
its wake. Several families have been irreparably injured,
lives cut short, limbs lost, freedom denied, and lives ruined.
The SARS units are not only dreaded in the southern part
of the country, they are deeply hated and reviled. This is the
xxxiii
cauldron in which the reaction that was the #EndSARS
protests was born, and these were the factors that fed its
growth and popularity.
xxxiv
untrustworthiness. The trust deficit became a gulf, and the
Nigeria State, along with its Luddite and antediluvian
rulers, were left floundering for the trusted weapons of
choice; impunity and murderous force.
The demand that police brutality be ended, and that the
SARS unit be scrapped is, in truth, a disguised demand for
citizenship. And whilst the protesters did not appear to have
made this critical connection early, they would appear to
have cottoned on to this reality as the protests took hold, and
the government’s inability to engage honestly with the
protesters became undeniable. The more resolute the
protesters became, the more flummoxed the State became.
To end SARS is to end the support infrastructure that is
required to scaffold the reign of impunity that has Nigeria
in its stranglehold, and ultimately, end the absolute powers
enjoyed by the rulers. The Nigeria State, the evil rulers, and
the iniquitous governing systems responded true to type;
deployed its weapon of choice, violence against the
protesters.
Left without any card to play on the protesters, and
without any leverage to exploit, the Nigeria State at various
levels began to embrace the use of violence in its quest to
break the strike and to return to some sort of normalcy. In
Abuja, operatives of the DSS or some other state security
forces were seen and recorded openly coordinating counter
protests. These protests were initially comical and
nonviolent; street urchins were handed placards declaring
xxxv
love and support for the Nigerian police and the SARS unit,
and as the protests gained ground, the placards carried
upside down, quickly became machetes and cudgels.
The State-coordinated thugs began to attack southerners-
owned businesses in the Abuja metropolis. Car lots were set
on fire, the furniture market was torched, and at some point,
peaceful protesters were set upon and brutally attacked by
these thugs, and sometimes by the policemen themselves.
Peaceful protesters became serial subjects of ferocious
violence perpetrated by these State-sponsored miscreants
who were themselves victims of the iniquitous State.
In Benin, the prisons were breached, and the initial
attempts were to blame it on the #EndSARS protesters. The
emergence of the prisoners’ accounts of their escape began
to emerge soon enough, and it soon became apparent that
the prisoners were deliberately set free, and that the prison
break had nothing to do with the protesters, but were in
truth mere pawns in the government’s games.
The protesters in Osun were set upon by the usual
agencies and proxies of the State. Leaders of the protests
were serially harassed. Olawale Mandate Bakare was
targeted for special treatment by the DSS, and a series of
well-coordinated attacks were mounted against the
protesters. It quickly spiraled out of the control of the
government that embraced it. The governor’s convoy were
set upon by thugs, and cars were damaged and people
injured. The quick response was to blame the protesters for
xxxvi
the violence, but the governor himself contradicted these in
the face of the clear evidence. But it was all that was required
as excuse for arresting leaders of the Osun protests.
The Lagos theater of the protests was proving to be
resistant to the charms of the state government. The
governor oscillated between identifying with the protesters
to threatening them when they wouldn’t be pacified by the
usual tactics, and were not amenable to state control.
The Lagos protests were largely confined to two
locations: the Alausa protests, and the Lekki protests. The
first protesters to be visited with violence were those located
at the state secretariat in Alausa. On October 20, state-
branded buses were used to convey armed thugs from the
Agege axis of the state, led by one Adagun Osha, to attack
the protesters. They were repelled.
The Lekki protesters were pretty well-organised, and
their security consciousness and preparations for the
possibilities of armed attacks by sponsored thugs were
topnotch. This was a product of experience and not
paranoia.
The Lekki tollgate plaza had seen protests before, and
some protesters were veterans of the past skirmishes.
Previous attempts by the residents of Lekki to protest the
expropriation of the only road in and out of the peninsula
had been met with organised violence by the state
government and the owner of Lagos. The modus operandi was
pretty basic: peaceful protesters would be attacked by State-
xxxvii
sponsored thugs in some sort of counter protests, and the
police would set upon the protesters and arrest them for
Affray and Breach of Public Peace. The State thugs get to go
home, while the peaceful protesters would end up in police
cells.
The Lekki protesters deployed private security
personnel in securing the protest ground. The protesters
were impossible to engage as had been previously done, and
as preferred by the State. Lekki became a major headache for
the Jagaban franchise, and a major bone in the throat of the
Nigeria State. It was one thing to use uniformed and
ununiformed thugs to break peaceful protests, and as
demonstrated in Abuja and at Alausa, the Nigeria State, at
all levels, is fine with employing criminalised victims,
sufficiently armed to do its dirty work. But the Lagos
situation demanded more; the protesters were entrenched.
The Denouement
Oro’modie ko mo Awodi, iya eh lo mo Asa. The chick has no
knowledge of the gosling hawk but its mother knows all the
raptors in the skies.
As I watched the unfolding scenarios nationwide, I
became convinced that the Nigerian youth had stumbled
into a revolutionary moment in the sad history of the
Nigerian peoples. It became obvious to me that we were at
an inflection point in the trajectories of the Nigeria State, its
xxxviii
rulers, and the peoples. I knew that something simply had
to give. I was deeply worried and equally excited about
what was unfolding before my eyes.
The protests started as a reaction against police brutality,
but it quickly began to take on a life of its own. The long
suppressed and unexpressed grievances of the Nigerian
peoples began to emerge, and the creative energies of the
Nigerian youth were unleashed. Long unheard-of faith in
the Nigerian enterprise emerged as the youth began to
recognise the clear commonalities of their collective
afflictions.
Nigerians began to speak in nationalist tongues, and
ethnoreligious divides were being rapidly bridged. The
Christian protesters physically ring-fenced their Muslim
comrades during Friday prayers, ensuring that they had
protection as they prayed, and the Muslims stood as
Christians worshipped on Sunday.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu spoke to Nigerian unity in the wake
of the protests.
The Nigeria State is happy to speak with violent
terrorists, it has absolutely no problem with kidnappers,
hostage-takers and militants of all sorts, but it has never had
room for engagement with citizens. It has no template for
such engagements because it has no room for the mutual
accommodation of its rapacious rulers, bred on impunity,
and the lawful demands of the citizens, and the obligations
and restraints that that would place on the rulers.
xxxix
When confronted by demands for citizenship rights, the
Nigeria State never failed to respond with violence.
The murderous end of the #EndSARS protests were a
tragedy foretold.
In November 1993, as the pro-June 12 national protests
began to bite deep, the Nigeria State began to lose its fear
factor. I was a student at the Lagos State University, LASU,
and a participant in the revolt against military rule.
The LASU corridor, Oyingbo to Okomaiko, had a lot of
military formations dotting the landscape, and military
personnel were pretty ubiquitous in the neighborhood.
There was the Signals Barracks at Mile 2, the Navy Town at
Ojo, and the Army Cantonment, also at Ojo. Military
personnel were part of our daily lives. They announced their
presence as “staff” on the buses, and wouldn’t pay the fares.
This changed as the rebellion took hold.
The Nigerian peoples began to realise that power did not
begin and end in the barrels of guns. The labour movements
shook the country to its very foundations. One of the earliest
indicators of the newfound boldness of the Nigerian was the
refusal of Lagos bus drivers to accept that military or police
personnel ride for free as before.
The bus drivers and conductors could count on the
passengers to support them in demanding that men in
uniform pay their bus fares. Every bus was being powered
by Black Market fuel, and these were mostly sourced from
markets exclusively supplied by the security forces, which
xl
had control of the distribution system, upon the Kokori-led
NUPENG strike.
The streets became hostile towards the military, who
were widely blamed for the annulment of a popular
democratic mandate.
The General Sani Abacha regime was birthed in the
midst of the national paralysis that followed the annulment
of the election. The regime reestablished governmental
authority by violent suppression of the popular will, and the
peaceful protests that had ventilated same.
Soldiers were deployed to all the theaters of protests;
protesters and passers-by alike were brutally attacked with
deadly force. I personally witnessed the wanton killings on
the length of Ikorodu Road between the November 12-16; I
saw the brutal efficiency of the Nigeria State and its killing
machine close-up. Memories of this season began to come to
me as the #EndSARS protests took on a life of its own.
xli
at the Lekki cashcow, became just as desperate for the
protests to end. The desperation of both levels of power
became the breeding ground for the evil that was unveiled
at both the Lekki tollgate, and at the Alausa protest ground.
“We did not invite the soldiers” was retorted by “you invited
us.” “Blanks were fired by soldiers” soon gave way to “the
soldiers were carrying blanks and live bullets”.
“Nobody was killed” soon transmuted to “one person died”
and then it became two.
The truth of what happened that fateful evening, after
the LCC had acted to remove high-resolution cameras at the
tollgate, switched off the lights for the first time, and clearly
coordinated itself and staff with the invading soldiers, might
never be known, but the many parties to the crimes against
humanity have lied enough for the truth to be apparent to
all seekers of truth. The mask of democracy came off, and
the beast of fascist impunity bestrode the land in the evening
of 20/10/20.
xlii
The thing is, the Shiite are a religious minority, much
reviled by the Sunni Muslims, and particularly more so by
the Wahhabis that forms the mainstream of Islamic thoughts
in the northern part of the country.
The soldiers turned their guns on the Shiite, and left a
bloodbath in its wake.
Shiite sources placed the death toll close to a thousand,
but the army initially denied that its men had killed anyone.
Then it admitted to a couple of deaths. The panel of enquiry
set up by the Kaduna State Government was to establish the
death of about 347 Shiite men, women, and children. No
soldier was ever sanctioned for these murders, and Tukur
Buratai was still in office as the COAS when the army was
deployed to break the #EndSARS protests! It is only the
Justice Doris Okuwobi panel, that might be able to establish
a figure for the casualties. But enough lies have been told to
establish a semblance of truth.
The Nigerian army murdered peaceful and unarmed,
flag-waving, national anthem-singing protesters. Soldiers
opened fire on defenseless civilians, and the Lagos State
Government, who had invited the soldiers in order to regain
control of the tollgate, was an accessory before and after the
serial murders that it had consciously commissioned. The
LCC, actively coordinated with the soldiers, and is a major
party in the serial murders and countless injuries.
The denials that followed in the wake of the evil done by
the State and its evil rulers has provided a more telling
xliii
testament of the diabolical nature of all the participants, but
the insidious nature of the evil does not become apparent
until one considers the fact that there was a live Instagram
feed of the evening’s events. This was, however, not enough
to deter conscious men from denying the evidence of their
senses, and the truth of the evil that has befallen Nigeria.
I shall allow others to deal with the history of the
#EndSARS protests. How the Doris Okuwobi panel pans out
shall also be left for history to chronicle. My task and
purpose are a tad too urgent to await the pens and judgment
of history, for the very future of the Nigeria State and its
victimised peoples might depend on the success of this and
several other efforts in the same direction.
It is my purpose to draw on the lessons afforded by the
#EndSARS protests, the murderous suppression of same, the
several events triggered by it, and influenced by it to shape
the nature of the Nigerian revolution and or liberation
struggles, going forward.
********
xliv
depend on the endorsement of the citizens of the country for
validation and revalidation of their electoral mandates. The
political class in Nigeria is unencumbered by the wishes of
the Nigerian peoples, who having been denied citizenship,
are not in truth or reality, the electors of the Nigerian ruling
class.
The loss of citizenship and the resultant impotence of the
Nigerian vote are aptly illustrated in the national election
cycles. In the southern part of Nigeria, there is a gallant
pretense of voting during elections, but some factors have
conspired to render such efforts largely fallacious, and
misleading in the extreme. In the Yoruba homelands, away
from the bright lights and cameras of Lagos, the popular
phrase is “Di’bo, se’be”. This literally translates to: vote and
cook stew. This is a system that exchanges the vote for a pot
of soup.
The party agent would be at a vantage point, he would
sight the ballot held up by the voter, and having confirmed
that the electorate had voted for his party’s candidate, he
pays the agreed price for the exchange. The amount paid
would vary from location to location, and the closer the
disputation amongst the thieves is adjudged, the more
expensive or relatively expensive the ballot becomes. The
going rates in the 2020 Ondo election oscillated between
N5,000 to N10,000. The epidemic of hunger in the land,
accentuated by the weaponised poverty in the country, has
xlv
rendered the vote useless, and assured that Nigeria has a
democracy that offers no right of choice.
When the people do manage to express their imperfect
will, as was the case during the last gubernatorial elections
in Osun State, the unbridled powers founded on impunity,
assures that they are silenced. Inconclusive elections might
have originated in Kogi, the maneuver was perfected in
Osun State, just as ‘Ade Dancer’ appeared poised to defeat
the incumbent governor of the state.
The near magical transformation of Iyiola Omisore from
venal pirate to saint, and the immediate evaporation of his
criminal charges, should engage the attention of historians
in the future, but of particular importance are the words of
Adams Oshiomhole; one a Freudian slip, the other, a class
declaration of intent and consensus.
“Join the APC and all of your sins are forgiven” and “if
you cannot bear the pains of RIGGING, get out of politics.”
I am not sure it is possible for the Nigerian political class to
be more direct in telling us exactly where they have us.
The purpose of the fascist State is pretty simple, and its
ruthless efficiency is found in the simplicity of its declared
objective: retain power at all and any cost. The Nigerian
ruling class is united in its determination to keep the peoples
underfoot; and regardless of their private vituperations the
general truth is that the peoples do not matter in the
cogitations of the rulers, and are constantly discounted and
dismissed when the affairs of state are being considered. The
xlvi
welfare of the ruling class, and the preservation of the
governing systems are the sole preoccupation of the Nigeria
State.
xlvii
“
The demand for a change in the way
Nigeria is governed started with the
Nigerian people. The need for this
change had become obvious to the
people much earlier and the first
attempt at the expression of that
desire is the botched elections of 1993.
Even though most of us, at the time,
did not understand the actual purports
of our exertion, what was clear to all
was that Nigerians were simply tired
of the way the country was being
governed.
xlviii
Chapter 1
Change not Violence, the need to educate
I
am ordinarily an incredibly careful person in the
manner of my use of words. I have been adjudged
guilty of what some have described as linguistic
exactitude, and I have been told that I can be quite
argumentative about the specific definition of words. I am
not one to use words lightly. I use the word revolution with
clarity on the exact import of the word, in the context in
which I have used it. The word revolution appears
generously in this book; it is the entire preoccupation of the
text. I seek to persuade the people to accept that the only
way to save our country is by endorsing a revolution.
The experience of the orange revolution called by
Omoyele Sowore has brought home for me the very idea
that had led me to originally decide to write this book, and
the others I am writing. Because I realise that if you do not
carefully define the content of the revolution you seek, you
leave it to the system to define it in the term that suits the
system. And, that term has always been to cast the
revolutionary as a man of violence, who is seeking a violent
overthrow of a just and lawful order and society.
Contemporary usage of the word revolution would tend to
1
IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
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‘Dele Farotimi
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‘Dele Farotimi
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‘Dele Farotimi
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IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
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‘Dele Farotimi
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IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
students were natives and lived in the town of Ife, and even
back then, there were the inane arguments of the existence
of another town called Modakeke…
I have always thought that the distinction belittles those
making it on both sides. I came from the melting pot of
Ibadan, and the whole place wasn’t larger than a tiny piece
of my childhood home.
But as usual I have digressed.
********
12
‘Dele Farotimi
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IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
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IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
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Iya Onifufu
THE legend is often told of a revolutionary woman in
Osogbo. She was arrested for her part in the protest marking
the Orange Revolution in the city of Osogbo, and the
uniqueness of her story is found in the details I read an
interview that she had given to the press in the immediate
aftermath of her release from the detention that followed her
arrest.
In response to a question asking how she came to be
arrested as an Orange Revolutionary, Iya Onifufu laid bare
the errors of the would-be Nigerian liberators.
She had been
hawking her fufu on the day, and she happened upon the
protesting youth made up as always of the Nigerian
students of higher education. She was attracted to the
turmoil, and she asked the reason for their exertions. The
youthful revolutionaries offered her a crash course in
political education, and Iya onifufu became a converted
revolutionary. The tray of fufu was thereafter abandoned,
and mama in the manner of Christ’s fishermen disciples,
became a soldier of the revolution.
When a person is related to the battle, they fight with no
regard to their personal safety; the interests that are intrinsic
18
‘Dele Farotimi
19
“
The problem with Nigeria is that
because we have for long
misdiagnosed the problem, we have
also always been left constantly
reacting. So, in place of revolutions,
we have had implosions, and the
Nigeria State has like every repressive
regime all over the world, been the
ultimate beneficiary when there is a
resort to violence. The Nigeria State is
a purveyor of violence, until very
recently, when its many lies and
inconsistencies, birthed the several
contradictions that have ensured that
it no longer has the monopoly of
violence.
20
Chapter 2
The fallacy of the inevitability
of a Nigerian revolution
W
hen knowledge is coupled with intellectual
arrogance, there is an abiding idiocy that
results, and that is the one that presumes that
every person with whom the knowledgeable comes into
contact or conflict, understands and knows what the
knowledgeable does.
I had touched on this subject in the foregoing section,
where I explained how the Nigerian left has always
presumed that the Nigerian people on whose behalf they
have laboured, had understanding of the issues that agitates
them, or that they appreciate the sacrifices they are making.
This assumption has led to a critical disconnect between
those who presume to lead the people in their liberation, and
the people that they purport to lead.
This presumption of correctness combined with
intellectual arrogance of the most infantile sort, has robbed
the Nigerian Left of the wisdom to realise that there is an
existential and important need to bridge the gap between
themselves and the army by which they might ever hope, to
one day, peacefully change the Nigeria State. There is a
presumption in the mind of the Nigerian Left that, for an
21
IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
22
‘Dele Farotimi
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23
IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
Disunited Progressives
THE language of the Nigerian progressive has always been
the language of conciliation, but it has also not allowed itself
to take advantage of the knowledge that it has of the system
within which it functions. I have witnessed two inflection
points in Nigerian history where the populace was clearly
ready for a revolution, but there was no leadership to
provide the alternative that would have galvanised one.
I speak specifically of the June 12, 1993 election as the
first. After the election itself, which had Nigerians
expressing a national will, for the first time in my lifetime,
the people rose as one to demand the validation of the
election results won clearly by Moshood Abiola.
The election in itself was already a revolutionary election
because for the first time, you had a Yoruba Muslim running
on the same ticket with a Northern Muslim, and Nigerians
across all the geopolitical zones had no problem whatsoever,
giving a very resounding valid mandate to this ticket.
Nigerians looked beyond tribe, religion and responded to
the empathy of the man, Moshood Abiola, and the sheer
force of his character unified the Nigerian people. The
annulment was not so much a brutal and evil action, but was
also one where the powers that be in Nigeria were showing
how little they thought of the sovereign will of the Nigerian
people.
24
‘Dele Farotimi
25
IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
up at Ojota and all the other places where the protest rallies
were held. The fraud of CHANGE in 2015 has its root in the
clamour for change of January 2012.
As at 2012, what the people communicated clearly was
the desire that things change and not continue the way they
were. The fact that they had become fed up with Goodluck
Jonathan after the euphoria of voting him in his own right
into office earlier in 2011 had worn off, made it very easy for
the opposition led by Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the time to
deflect the criticism and make it appear as though it was
Jonathan that was to blame for everything that was going
wrong with Nigeria.
The blame for the security problems in the north-east
were rightly laid at Jonathan’s doorstep. But even the
madness of Lagos, engendered by Tinubu’s own corruption,
was easily disguised as part of some failure on the part of
the PDP. That lie has only now become obvious that the
same party is in power, both at the federal and state level.
By 2012, and leading up to the 2015 election, it was quite
easy to focus everybody’s attention on the big federal
government; Bola Tinubu thereby escaped scrutiny of his
own stewardship of Lagos State.
The system simply reinvented itself, outthought the
progressives, who did nothing with the opportunities
presented by the manifest dissatisfaction of the people,
because they simply could not and did not offer the people
a viable alternative behind which to coalesce. The system
26
‘Dele Farotimi
27
“
There is a common thread that runs
through every one of the several
eruptions of violence and the different
struggles for one right or the other in
Nigeria. Be that the struggles in the
Niger Delta, or the Boko Haram
violence in the north-east, or the
banditry that has ravaged not just the
north-west, but the entirety of the
Nigeria nation; or the gangs that we
see in Lagos and other states in the
south-west, banditry and kidnapping
that are rampant and rife in the
eastern and the south-southern parts
of Nigeria; the fact of the matter is
that undergirding every one of these
outbreaks of violence is a demand by
the disenfranchised and the lost, those
who have become hopeless finding
avenues to express their pain,
disappointment and in most cases,
their rage with the Nigeria State.
28
Chapter 3
The Politics of Fractionalisation
T
he Nigerian ruling class has adopted the
fractionalisation of Nigeria by exploiting existing
schism in the system as a tactic of subjugation. This
tactic was elevated to an art form by General Ibrahim
Badamasi Babangida.
I’m not suggesting that we were always united before
Babangida turned the fractionalisation of Nigeria into an art
form. Afterall, we did fight a civil war after which we lied to
ourselves and talked about none having been vanquished,
and that nobody had lost nor won; no victor, no vanquished.
Nothing could be farther from the truth (I have discussed
this extensively in Do Not Die in their War). But there is
something unique that did evolve as a function of the
deliberate exertions of Ibrahim Babangida and successive
governments thereafter.
The government did not only exploit existing schisms in
the system, and in the society within the nation, but began
to actively exploit and promote these divisions. I’ll give you
an example:
The Nigerian student union movement used to be able to
speak with one voice. But as I have already explained, with
the fractionalisation of the student body through
exploitation of existing schisms within the body itself, and
29
IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
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‘Dele Farotimi
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IMPERATIVES OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTION
Whatever the case might be, is it not much easier for the
parties to have identified common interests within their
common industry, rather than to be working at cross-
purpose?
You might look at these lecturers, the students, the senior
staff association, the non-academic staff union and the
several other unions that are within the university system,
and begin to wonder exactly what their problems are. But
when you are done doing that, why not look at the larger
society itself; where our pathetic and painful incapability to
see what is in our common interests, has assured that we are
all mutually fettered and hogtied. But the balkanisation of
the struggles in Nigeria is essentially a function of our
inability to see what should be obvious for all to see
There is a common thread that runs through every one
of the several eruptions of violence and the different
struggles for one right or the other in Nigeria. Be that the
struggles in the Niger Delta, or the Boko Haram violence in
the north-east, or the banditry that has ravaged not just the
north-west, but the entirety of the Nigeria nation; or the
gangs that we see in Lagos and other states in the south-
west, banditry and kidnapping that are rampant and rife in
the eastern and the south-southern parts of Nigeria; the fact
of the matter is that undergirding every one of these
outbreaks of violence is a demand by the disenfranchised
and the lost, those who have become hopeless finding
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Deepening of feudalism
THESE rivalries were always there and had spilled over into
pretty tame affairs: like a bucket of crap thrown at someone
or a person’s hair shaved whilst they slept. But the benign
nature of these adolescent skirmishes changed and
hardened into something much darker and evil, because the
state got involved. State security officials came into the
campuses and joined confraternities, influenced their
actions, guided, and nudged them into violence. They
provoked it, orchestrated it, and thereby divided the
students’ solidarity.
In the northern part, religion was the tool employed by
the State. The Muslim students’ society, long a presence on
every Nigerian university campus benign and mostly a very
benevolent organisation, was equally infiltrated. Splinter
groups were encouraged in the northern part. And it became
so, that when southern universities would rise in solidarity
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narcotics, sex, etc., would also have these habits shape the
outcome of his life because the habits shape the choices.
But just as it is for persons, so it also would appear to be
for nations. I have found that in place of the habits that you
look for as hallmarks of the person’s likely end, in seeking
to predict the trajectory of a nation, or seeking to understand
where the nation is coming from, you would almost always
have to look both to its history, which would have shaped
its habits; in the case of nations, you must look to the
hegemonies. To explain this, it is my contention that just as
habits shape a man’s choices and outcome, the hegemonies
that control a territory equally shape what happens to that
nation or state.
In examining American history, you will find that at its
birth, there were clear west Anglo-Saxon protestants
shaping the future of the country. Their WASP principles,
religiosity outlook on life, view of the monarchy, ideas and
thoughts on governance and religion, shaped the very
foundations of the America State. It is the WASP hegemony
that shaped the very foundations of America, guided its
choices, and formed the nation America. It was founded on
the racist principles of its founding fathers.
Nobody consulted the red Indians, nor asked questions
of the enslaved Africans, the several Chinese and Japanese
labourers, or even the Irish Catholics, who were later day
comers. None of the people that later became known as
Americans were involved in the formation of the America
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State nor were they ever given a say as to what shape or form
the State would take. That is a function of the fact that they
were the dominant hegemony in the land where the State
was birthed. Their past, foundations, principles, and ideals
of the wasps, shaped the future of the nation.
The contradictions that we see in America today is a
function of the several conflicts that have rendered America
just as tribalistic as Nigerians have become, only that this
time, the American tribalism coalesces around different
principles and political interests that are in political parties.
But America is not my preoccupation, even though it is
very necessary for you to see how hegemonies shape the
future and trajectory of a nation, just as habits shape the
choices and outcome of a man.
Let us look at what we know today as the United
Kingdom. What was the British empire? The entirety of the
British empire was birthed on the back of English bloody
mindedness, the refusal to understand limits, the readiness
to expand boundaries, the Viking spirit that directed English
nationalism and made them begin to see themselves as being
exceptional and of particular specialty. The island status of
England made it begin to see itself as being separate and
distinct and far better than anyone of its neighbours. That
nationalism and the Viking spirit drove the expansion of the
English isle until it took over first, I believe, the Welsh throne
and then the throne of Scotland, and subsequently Ireland.
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“
The road to hell is paved with good
intentions and as well intentioned as
the British might have been, there was
nothing altruistic about the creation of
the veto that was created in Nigeria. It
was done with the assumption that
there would be a strong federation
based on the regional system to
ensure that peace would be kept and
that this peace would endure
regardless of the inequities of creating
a lopsided system that assured the
veto in the hand of one out of three
regions at the point of independence.
What happened subsequently was not
something they could have foreseen.
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Chapter 4
Birth of the Fulani Hegemony
H
egemonies are creations of history. To understand
and fully appreciate the impact of the Fulani
hegemony over Nigeria, it is apposite that we
examine the history of Nigeria and its very foundations.
The British were the sole powers within the Nigerian
space, and having assumed power by conquering ever more
territory, and after the decisive victory over the Sultan in
1904, the British took over complete control of what became
known as the Nigeria State. I have skimped on several
boring details including how the Niger Company had sold
its possessions to the British crown and how much of the
Nigeria State was fraudulently acquired by the British.
What we must understand is that the British developed
a system by which they governed the vast territories that
they had acquired. This was the indirect rule system, which
meant that the British adopted the existing systems of
governance in the different parts of the territories and in so
doing, they ruled by proxy. Of particular interest to any
discerning student of history, is the fact that the easiest of all
the territories to rule was the northern part of Nigeria.
I will confine myself to that, but there is a need to revisit
history even though I strived to do exactly that in Do Not Die
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the choice of Gowon was one that was more or less forced
on the Murtala Mohammed faction of the coup plotters, who
originally preferred Murtala Mohammed.
To them, Gowon was always a child of the concubine and
not one of them, but it was impolitic at that point to argue
this, because the bulk of the officer corps of the Nigerian
army at the time were drawn from the middle belt as were
the men of the lower ranks.
In the fourth paragraph of page 365 of his book But
Always as Friends, in describing the composition of the
Nigerian army at the dawn of independence in 1957,
Sharwood Smith said “at the moment in the army, men and
the fighting units were predominantly northerners. Not
northern Muslims as in the past, but pagans and
Christianised pagans from Tiv, Zuru and the hills and
valleys of Bauchi and Adamawa”.
These were the words of Sharwood Smith and this was
the reality at the dawn of the coup, even though a lot of
aggressive recruitment and promotion had been done in the
immediate aftermath of independence, when unqualified
persons such as our present president Muhammadu Buhari,
were recruited into the army based on enforced quotas.
These persons were the ones who at the dawn of the second
coup, were more or less forced to accept Gowon as a
compromise candidate, in order to ensure that northern
unity was preserved, but no pretense was made at Nigerian
unity.
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The veto that had been threatened by the first coup was
preserved, but under a new hegemony. The hegemony had
begun to change, because the original veto that used to
reside in the hands of the sultan and the emirs, moved with
political independence into the hand of a new political class
led by the Sardauna. When that class was decimated in 1966,
the new class of power holders comprised boys recruited,
mostly promoted by the NPC elements, who in actual fact
instigated the second coup and who continued to exert
powers behind the thrones, loosely known in later years as
the ‘Kaduna Mafia.’
Hence the powers moved, first from the political
leadership in the emirs to the elected politicians who
worked in consonance with the emirs and traditional
rulership, which then evolved over time into the military
political class of the north, to which was aligned to a very
large extent, particularly for reasons of street legitimacy, to
the traditional rulership system. But the essential nature of
the hegemony began to change at this point, because the
hegemony was not created to accommodate the rulership of
the children of the concubines. It was a veto that was
reserved for the children of the favourite wives.
But the Fulani is patient if nothing else. Murtala
Mohammed always saw himself as the president-in-waiting,
thus the coup of 29 July 29, 1975, that brought him to power,
was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Accounts of the Murtala coup
would leave anyone clear that even Gowon was aware that
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You will find that during this season, the likes of Arthur
Nzeribe, Orji Kalu, Arisekola Alao, Lamidi Adedibu, and so
many others who were beneficiaries of the powers that were
conferred on them, not by the people but by the military,
became the apostles of diarchy.
This was the season when the spread of feudalism and
the development of the new feudal class gathered pace in
Nigeria.
After the death of Abacha came the Abdulsalami
transition programme. Anyone who is truly interested in
understanding the phenomenon of grievance politics,
clientele politics and how these two combined to shape the
proliferation of the feudal system that exercises the Nigerian
veto in the form of the creation of feudal hegemonies in each
of the new states; anyone who is genuinely interested in that
history should become a student of the political history of
Abdulsalami’s transition. I will explain.
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“
Nigerians have seen constant
agitations to succeed to office but
there has never been any constant
agitation to change the society for the
better or to change the trajectory of
the nation itself and prepare it for life
in the new age. The rather unfortunate
consequence of this constant power
plays has been the liberalisation of
corrupt practices in Nigeria, the
normalisation of the same practices
and the complete subjectivisation of
the truth. To be sure, corruption in
Nigeria must be understood as being
completely different in meaning from
that in any other country in the world.
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Chapter 5
A foundation of Lies
L
ies have a way of multiplying. It gives birth rather
rapidly. The easiest way to illustrate the prolific
nature of lies is to consider the fact that for every lie
that a man tells, there would have to be other lies to scaffold
and maintain the lie that had been told. The lies that were
told to scaffold the original lie usually end up as it is in the
very nature of lies, to further multiply. A person caught up
in the web of lies, however good he might be, eventually
trips himself up with his lies.
When you construct anything on a foundation of lies
such as an edifice like Nigeria, you may then liken this to a
building that has a defective foundation.
Nobody better illustrates the tragedy, paradoxes, and
ironies of the Nigeria State than the person of Obasanjo. For
evidence of how horrible and dire our situation has become,
I will turn to him and will be citing, copiously, paragraph
62-65 of the address he gave at Oleh during the Diocesan
Conference of 2019. I will further be looking to reproduce in
its entirety at this point, Alhaji Baba Ahmed Joda’s letter to
Lamido Sanusi upon his removal from the Emir of Kano
throne. I had earlier cited this letter, but I am particularly
interested in the portion that relates to the evil of feudalism
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When the law does not bind a man and the morals of the
people have become as compromised as that of Nigeria;
impunity becomes the order of the day and the society itself
begins to implode from within.
Nigeria became a mad house during the successive years
of military rule.
When the system became scandalously unsustainable in
the dying days of Sani Abacha, the system coalesced, and the
different factions produced the Abacha solution: the Indian
apple.
The consensus that has always governed the Nigerian
space operates at best when it is working with the
assumption of Northern unity. And when this is in any way,
shape or form, undermined, be that as a result of some
disunity within the conservative class in the North itself as
became the case under Abacha; a disequilibrium is always
thrown into the system, demanding some resolution or the
other.
The Abacha apple episode was the resolution of that
chapter. But these resolutions happen almost always with
consequences. The emergence of Obasanjo was also a
consequence of other things that had happened within the
hegemony.
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Chapter 6
Sustaining the Hegemony
T
he creation of the first and original veto that was part
of the foundation of the Nigeria State before its
Independence has been well-documented.
Sharwood Smith’s book, particularly pages 216-221, dealt
exhaustively with how the foundation was laid in 1947 to
ensure that the North always held its veto. The debate also
featured in Do Not Die in their War and in the earlier part of
the current effort. But whilst it is rather easy to provide
evidence of the existence of the original veto, it is not as
apparent because of the opaque nature of the evolution of
the feudal system that came after the death of Sardauna.
It is therefore necessary to trace the origin, character and
metamorphoses of the feudal hegemony that has held sway
over Nigeria from the inception.
I have relied extensively on several historical accounts of
the period, particularly, the works of Sharwood Smith and
other colonial officials, works of contemporary writers such
as Akin Osuntokun and; of course, the scholarship of several
Nigerian commentators and writers who were around at the
time. But in seeking to understand the character of the
Nigeria State, the tendencies and hegemonies that attended
its birth, I have also taken care to listen to the disputations
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north, which had lost not only political leadership but also
prominence in the army.
The original celebration that greeted the first coup,
particularly in Kaduna and in most parts of north, was soon
replaced by a deep resentment for what was soon rebranded
as an ‘Igbo coup’. This was the ferment that was rendered
even more volatile by Ironsi’s indecisiveness.
Had Ironsi moved to punish the original coup plotters,
perhaps the excuses that were offered and provided to those
who instigated the second coup would have been
unavailable to them. But Ironsi by his indecisiveness, sealed
his own fate.
Every historical account of that season in the aftermath
of the second coup of 1966, would suggest that the band of
coup plotters had no intention of taking over the reign of
federal power. The primary motivation was to exert
vengeance against Ironsi and officers of Igbo extraction. The
secondary objective was the not too well- thoughtout
reaction to the first, which was secession of the northern part
of Nigeria.
These issues were later to be resolved with the British
High Commission and the American Consul in attendance
at Ikeja Cantonment in 1966, after the second coup. The
immediate cry was one of Arewa, which translates to let each
person go their way.
It took persuasion to create the second phase of the
Nigerian veto and to begin the real feudalisation of the
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hand of Ironsi, that they had not planned for when they
killed him since they had not thought beyond revenge and
at best secession until they were dissuaded by the British
envoy and the American consul.
“At the moment in the army, men in the fighting unit were
predominantly Northerners. Not Northern Muslims as in
the past, but pagans and Christianised pagans from Tiv,
Zuru and from the hills and valleys of Bauchi and
Adamawa. The technicians on the other hand and the men
in the supply and transport unit, came almost entirely
from the South. Equally, the Northern police, because of
superior educational standards were mostly recruited from
the non-Muslim middle belt provinces, while for different
reasons, a high proportion of the police in the South were
Igbo with officers. The position was largely reversed, there
were I thought, far too few northern officers. A situation
which under stress might have awkward consequences as
could imbalance amongst other ranks. Much as one might
dislike the thought, tribalism would be a potentially
explosive factor in Nigerian politics for some time to
come.”
– Sharwood Smith (Page 365 – 366)
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prosecution of the Nigerian civil war. But what one can see
clearly in the rear-view mirror of time is that even though
Gowon might have trumpeted “no victor, no vanquished,”
the reality was that the Igbo were thoroughly vanquished.
In the apportionment of rights and privileges in the new
Nigeria, there was an active policy that sought to
discriminate against the Igbo. But this policy was equally
balanced against one that sought to advantage the North.
The North this time being the new coalition of powers
between the old slaves and the old masters, in an alliance
that created a super class of citizens in their dealings with
the rest of Nigeria.
For this to work, the Yoruba were equally complicit in
the sense that they competed against the Igbo on an uneven
scale, but never on an equal scale with the Hausa-Fulani and
the remaining part of what was known as the North. The like
of Obasanjo recognised where the real power laid, and he
was the token that was favoured as a rebuke to other Yoruba
that would complain of marginalisation.
The infrastructure of inequality was strengthened in this
season, and the character of the hegemony and the broad
agreements and assumptions governing it were equally
established. In this season, the Fulani reserved for
themselves the positions of power and they also allotted to
trusted members of the Northern minorities, positions of
power.
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There was the emergence at this time, the fruit of the long
foresight of the Sardauna in his protestation of the One
North policy. Chris Ali in his account of how he sought
favours under the illusion of the one North policy, shows
clearly that even within the one North policy, there were
classes of membership.
But be that as it may, a class of Northern aristocrats had
been sent overseas in the 50s, and this group of intellectuals,
well-trained abroad, some of them went to the finest of Ivy
league colleges in America and Oxbridge Universities in the
UK, had returned to form part of what became known as the
Kaduna Mafia.
Other writers and historians have dissected the
phenomenon of what became known as the Kaduna Mafia.
But suffice to say that after the decapitation of the Northern
aristocracy in the political leadership of the North at the end
of the first coup, this crop of leaders emerged, and they were
mostly to be found in Kaduna, which was the administrative
headquarters of the old Northern Region. This
conglomeration of Northern intelligentsia, aristocrats,
politicians, bureaucrats, police and military officers, were
mostly people who had attended the famous Barewa
College. They were not exclusively of Hausa-Fulani stock,
but that was certain to gain one admission at that level.
There are several dissertations that have been written
concerning these gentlemen, but it should be understood
that the new power concentric after the civil war during the
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Gowon years, came fully into its own during the Murtala
Mohammed and Obasanjo years. These were men who were
of conservative Fulani stock, and they shaped the policies of
Nigeria from behind the scenes.
The north generally benefitted extensively from the new
power arrangement because it simply meant that the Fulani
who have now retained control of the veto only needed to
assuage the feelings of every one of the minority groups
(within the region) that truly mattered. The Yoruba were left
largely to their own devices, but they became complicit in
what became the Igbo marginalisation agenda. As I have
said before, every marginalisation agenda has beneficiaries,
the Yoruba were marginal beneficiaries of the systemic
wickedness towards Ndigbo.
The lessons imbibed by leaders of the North pre-
independence and particularly as revealed by the position
paper prepared for Abubakar Tafawa Balewa by Sharwood
Smith, had led them to a clear understanding of the need to
preserve the North, as though it were a single entity in all of
its dealings with Nigeria. This was in order to be able to
retain the veto that was conferred in 1947.
To keep this up, the new crop of leaders, who as
mentioned, were mostly centred around the Kaduna axis,
resourced mostly by the old NPC cadres and the younger
elements they had sent to schools abroad, well-trained but
nevertheless, extremely conservative in their view of the
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So, out goes Shagari and in comes Buhari. But with his
ascension to power, came a further evolution of the
hegemony that has governed Nigeria from birth.
The same reasons that rendered Buhari unsuitable for
consideration at the time of Shehu Musa Yar’Adua’s
ascension soon reared its heads; it became obvious at his first
coming. These were his inability to understand that he needs
to carry along other interests, his refusal to countenance the
need to build the coalition that accepts the illusion of a
homogeneous North. His prebendal instincts and nepotistic
posture became evident very quickly, and key officers of
Middle Belt extraction, including Babangida, who felt
themselves marginalised and threatened by his Fulani
irredentist posture, and his readiness to lend himself to the
worst of extreme religious instincts.
A combination of all these meant that his days were
quickly numbered. And the hegemony that had brought
him to power, in the understanding of the need for the
collegiate governance of Nigeria, quickly coalesced to evict
him from power. He was realised to have been a system
error, and was treated as one and removed in a palace coup.
He was promptly arrested and kept away.
Babangida had a profound effect on the shape of the
hegemony that was to follow, and it was shaped in his
character and likeness. He is the mother, or shall I say, one
of the fathers of modern Nigeria.
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“
On gaining his second term, an
internecine war began between
himself and Atiku. This was a civil war
with consequences, part of which was
that powers that might have been
restrained in their attack on Obasanjo
became emboldened in his second
term. The politics of his stay in office
and the second term as well, birthed
insanities such as of Boko Haram --
which found legitimacy on the streets
of Arewa – mostly because he was a
Southern Christian president who had
to deal with a problem rooted in
political Islam. He lacked the
legitimacy to deal decisively with the
problem.
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Chapter 7
The 4th Republic and
the Consequence of Hubris
T
he first of the parties was the People’s Democratic
Party, PDP, which by its make-up, ideology and later
persuasions was obviously the party that the
military under General Abdulsalami had decided it was
going to hand power over to.
The Afenifere realising this quickly, pulled out of the PDP
to go into the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, and from
there, into the Alliance for Democracy, AD. The fact of their
complicity, before or after Abiola’s murder is best reinforced
by the fact that they were registered for participation in the
Third Republic, although they were unqualified.
The new party, the PDP, had zoning as a major plank for
all its doings. All offices were duly zoned. Consensus was
rebuilt in this period.
Consensus was the basis for the exercise of the powers
and the primacy of the North as the next in line to what was
meant to be a single term for Obasanjo. It was the glue that
brought the PDP together, unified the entire north with
significant support in the East and South and; ensured that
Obasanjo, an orphan even from his own people – who lost
his own very polling booth – was the one that became the
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even the person who had any effective say over whether that
was going to be done. But in the lead up to the APC
primaries in 2014, the deciding vote was held by Bola
Ahmed Tinubu; and for reasons best known to him, he
decided or perhaps felt himself unable to support Atiku; he
supported the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari instead.
The adoption of Buhari as the APC candidate in 2014
effectively meant that the hegemony that had been in power
since the death of Abacha was finally being forced into
embracing the very tendency, and the same person that had
always been its arrowhead, whom it had been designed to
reject.
Muhammadu Buhari became the beneficiary of the very
system that had always worked to prevent him and his type
from holding power in Nigeria. The new hegemony thereby
constructed, left itself mostly in the hand of the ultra-
conservative element of the same system that had hitherto
been contained since Buhari’s ouster in power in 1985.
But even more important and relevant to the subject at
hand, a realignment of old forces that had been historically
linked in the 1960s found its foot again. The historical
parallels between the Sardauna of Sokoto and Muhammadu
Buhari, and between SL Akintola and Bola Ahmed Tinubu
played out: the west aligned with the conservative
oligarchy.
The forces of feudalism finally found legitimacy in what
was hitherto the most conscious part of Nigeria. It was
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I HAVE dealt with the issue of Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his
emergence extensively in other places, but the character of
the person he became, and the hegemony that he built, that
aligned with the CPC is important to an understanding of
the consequence of the realignment. This realignment
brought about Bola Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari, and
Obasanjo albeit reluctantly to an extent, at least in the
original project that birthed the Buhari presidency and the
consequences of this to the Nigeria State and what manner
of hegemony was built.
You already have a situation where the unconscionable
powers, the same that Obafemi Awolowo exercised with
prudence and discretion, and with temperance, is the same
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by far more corrupt than the PDP has ever been. The Tinubu
crew stole and privatised government institutions. Tinubu
is the modern-day sultan of the Yorubas, and the purse of
states in his franchise are his treasuries to spend at will. The
Yoruba have never had power personalised and exercised
solely by a man in modern time. Tinubu’s true genius was
the management of his succession, he has never been truly
challenged on his turf since the yet unsolved murder of
Funsho Williams.
Tinubu is so high on the narcotics of power that he has
hubristically lost the very quality that had carried him this
far: his street smarts. There are two rules that I have come to
believe define the ultimate survival of every street guy in the
Nigerian experience. The first is to always be aware of the
street; second is to always have an exit in view. In the new
hegemony created with Buhari’s ascension to power,
Tinubu was shown his place in the partnership; he was not
to be allowed his wings back until the time came to plan and
execute the Buhari re-election strategy. He was an asset to
be deployed; not an ally to be trusted. He has blocked his
exit to prove his loyalty, and he will pay a political price in
Yorubaland, in due course.
Power corrupts? No! It is power unaligned to purpose
that corrupts. Tinubu in another generation, perhaps in
Awolowo’s generation, with the spirituality and moral
rectitude of the age, a consciousness of the importance of a
man’s place in history, would have been a visionary leader.
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“
Every hegemony inflicts its character
on the people over whom it rules. The
defining instincts of the hegemons
within the hegemony shape the
trajectories of the nation or state. The
Nigeria State is not an exception, and
the ruling hegemonies have shaped
Nigeria and the Nigerians in their own
sordid images.
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Chapter 8
The new Hegemony
T
he trajectories of every hegemony are shaped by the
character of its arrowhead. As a man’s habits shape
his choices, and hence, his character, so does an
aggregation of characters of the hegemons determine the
trajectory of the nation or state controlled by the hegemony.
It is necessary to examine the character of Buhari, the
arrowhead of the hegemony that currently rules Nigeria,
and whose image, the State projects.
Muhammadu Buhari is a product of the hegemony that
was birthed to rule Nigeria. Muhammadu is a Fulani before
he is anything else. He sees himself and the entire world
through the prism of his Fulani nationalism. Whilst this is
not in itself either unique, or necessarily negative, the
unimaginative irredentism of his Fulani nationalism has
worked to narrow his perspectives and worldview to the
point, where he had been deemed unfit for leadership by the
other components of the traditional operators of the
Nigerian hegemony.
As a student of English Literature, I was taught critical
analysis and characterisation. The key methodology for
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“
The loss of critical voices in the human
rights community because of their
friendship with key political actors
which is further aggravated by the
deliberate appointment of such critical
voices into political offices, has
assured that the ones that used to
watch have stopped their watch, and
the ones that once wailed are either
hailing now, or have lost their voices.
Truth has been largely subjectivised, or
completely ignored. The same act,
when performed by different actors,
attracts disparate reviews.
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Chapter 9
The perfect Storm and
the inevitable Implosions
T
he Nigeria State has been described as a crime scene.
The persons who came up with this characterisation
are geniuses beyond their own comprehension. The
State has been hijacked; it does not exist for the benefit of the
citizens who have had their citizenship rights cruelly
snatched away from them, and have been reduced in station
to serfs, bondsmen, and slaves.
The Nigerian civil right groups have for long
mischaracterised the struggles that they have endured and
have thereby been engaged in what are essentially
distractive wars of attrition.
As the feudal system was emerging, the civil rights
movement, fresh from what it believed its finest hours in the
wake of the transition to civil rule at the dawn of this
republic, began to embrace the madness that was always
there, but mostly restrained by the exigencies of the pro-
democracy battles. The human rights community grew, but
the rights community went to sleep; believing that
democracy had been won.
The traditional human rights community became
subsumed beneath the umbrella of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and
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amongst the Igbo are mostly heard of but rarely seen. They
are victimised and marginalised by their own.
The Yoruba culture has always been quite adept at
tolerating diverse expressions of religiosity. Religious
syncretism is part of the Yoruba worldview. There are
families where brothers and sisters, uterine siblings and
cousins, husband and wife, worship God in different
manners. Among the Yoruba, religion is generally a relaxed
affair, but the people have not been spared the corrosive
effects of the politicisation of religion. Whilst it might be
tempting to situate the problem in the present, and present
it as though it is an unusual phenomenon in Yorubaland,
historical facts would suggest otherwise.
Those opposed to the politics of Obafemi Awolowo had
used religion, particularly Islam, to rally and mobilise
opposition to the Awoist philosophy and urgings. The Ede-
Iwo axis of current Osun State was primarily mobilised
against Awolowo and his ideology by the adoption of
Islamist arguments that sought to couch the ideas in
religious terms. It took active engagement of the like of
Senator Adeleke (father to the dancer that wants to be
governor), and Chief Bisi Akande to tamp down the
religious fervour that was being whipped up against
Awolowo.
On Bola Tinubu’s watch, Yoruba’s long-held religious
tolerance was gradually eroded, and overt Islamic influence
began to exert and assert a dominance over the affairs of
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for the rest of Nigeria. The failure and the refusal of the
Nigeria State to provide equitable citizenship to the people
have birthed the idiocy of secessionist struggles in the
entirety of the southern part. The phenomenon deserves
attention because of the distraction that it truly is.
********
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the Ijaws in this Biafran Republic? The Ikwere and other lost
tribes of the Igbo people nko? Where would the Orji
predators of Abia be? Would you be hosting annual New
Yam Festivals to beat the Ekweremadus of the Biafran
utopia? Those pesky Calabar people nko?
********
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204
Chapter 10
The Time is Now
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A scamdemic.
Everywhere in the world, lockdowns were preceded by
massive public health education campaigns, ramped up
efforts at building and increasing the operational efficiencies
of the healthcare delivery system, economic stimulus
packages and relief efforts. In Nigeria, the lockdown was
announced weeks after when it should have been in force; it
was incompetently enforced, totally ineffective and
ineffectual. The usual corrupt exemptions were made to
accommodate business and political interests, and as with
everything Nigerian, the discretion dictated by corrupt
interests were corruptly applied by the corrupt and
corrupted gatekeepers.
The rest of humanity ramped up their test and trace
capabilities, but as I write these final chapters in the third
week of June, the Nigeria State has conducted less than a
hundred thousand tests! It has stopped pretending to trace
and build healthcare capacity. It has continued pretending
as if we do not have rampant community spread, and the
rulers have continued to maintain the focus of governance
on the provision and assurance of their own personal
comforts and powers.
As its economy has continued to crumble in response to
the global financial collapse that has been
acknowledged by better placed nations and economies, the
Nigeria State and its ruling class have continued as though
we are immune to these realities, even as they have
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“
The Nigeria State is the only legal killer
in this space and given its manifest
and well-established reputation as a
serial killer, it is only the foolish or the
deranged that would engage with
such an entity at its own game. I am
neither deranged nor foolish, but I
seek a change in Nigeria. The Nigeria
State is killing the Nigeria nation, and
if the amoral State and its evil
governance systems are not killed, it is
all but certain that the Nigeria nation
will die.
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Chapter 11
The Pacifist Warrior
I
f I would be bothered, I am confident that I can pick out
the exact date of my entry into Fiditi Grammar School.
It was the second Sunday of September 1978. It was
most likely the 10th of the month. I had just turned 10 years
old in April of that year. I was a runt. We were assigned
Houses, and in the Houses, we were assigned rooms.
The bell was scratched at 5 AM, and barely tolled at 5:30
AM. I will save the beatings that cleared the fog of sleep;
today is not the day to recount the tales of the incubuses that
passed by the names of seniors or my own transition into
one. I intend to offer you a window into how I grew up to
embrace my pacifist ideology.
********
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My resolve
IT has become necessary and crucial that I define my
position in the public arena, and thereby make clear that in
pursuit of the systemic changes to which I have committed
my life, I do not seek the use of violence. I disavow it
unequivocally and will never consider it.
The Nigeria State is a criminal empire. It is happiest
when dissenters embrace the use of violence., And as it has
narrowed avenues for the ventilation of grievances, it has
deliberately forced violence on those who have sought to
engage with it. The State would then turn around to label
the ones that they had led to violence as terrorists, and
thereby kill, jail and criminalise genuine agitations. I have
no truck with violence.
The Nigeria State is the only legal killer in this space and
given its manifest and well-established reputation as a serial
killer, it is only the foolish or the deranged that would
engage with such an entity at its own game. I am neither
deranged nor foolish, but I seek a change in Nigeria. The
Nigeria State is killing the Nigeria nation, and if the amoral
State and its evil governance systems are not killed, it is all
but certain that the Nigeria nation will die.
I seek a new beginning for Nigeria. I seek a nation built
on citizenship, one in which everyone is treated the same
before the law. I seek a Nigeria nation. I seek a nation where
your religion is your business, where there is no use for the
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222
THE CHANGE
MANIFESTO
by Taiwo Wemimo Akinlami
“
The masses of our people seem to believe in the messianic
approach and they believe that an activist or group of activists is
coming to help them, and make everything work for them. The
Nigerian masses have perfected the act of waiting for a
messiah…The masses of our people must be made to understand
and accept that change does not happen except they take their
collective destiny into the hands and become their own messiah.
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THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
226
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227
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
228
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229
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
230
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THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
232
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233
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
234
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235
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
236
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237
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
238
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239
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
240
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241
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
242
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243
THE CHANGE MANIFESTO
244
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245
“
The Nigerian peoples, long denied
citizenship, have learnt to accept and
live with their derogation to indigenes,
but this has also meant that in the
absence of citizenship, the Nigerian
gave up on the Nigeria State. Denied
the benefits of citizenship, the
Nigerian lost the capacity to become
patriots; for true patriotism is found
and birthed in the souls of citizenship:
how do you demand patriotism from
the persons to whom you have denied
citizenship? The Nigerian peoples,
having little or no benefit of
citizenship, have become estranged
from the country that the Fulani, long
desirous of their own homeland, covet
and are pillaging to provoke a pretext
for war.
246
Epilogue
“
The Nigerian people have only one choice in the unfortunate situ-
ation in which we have found ourselves: we have to discover the
Nigerian identity and character in the furnace of these afflictions.
We have to desire Nigeria more than the Fulani Islamists. We
have to want Nigeria, and we have to want it more than we hate
the other Nigerian, who worships God differently, or speaks a dif-
ferent language from mine. Nigerians have to want Nigeria
enough to fight for it, and enough to die for it, if we must.
247
Epilogue
T
he Nigerian peoples are left with only two plausible
scenarios in the face of their sick realities. And
however much we might seek to sugarcoat things,
the painful truth remains unavoidable. Nigeria is already in
a slow burning civil war. That war has been escalating
steadily since the beginning of the Buhari regime, the
remarriage of unbridled Fulani irredentism and the
unconscionable powers of the Nigeria State. The second
option would be anything that might be done to yank
Nigeria off its current trajectories and reorientate it to restore
the citizenship rights of the peoples that have been rendered
indigenes, indigent, and impecunious by a governance
system that has guaranteed servitude to them.
The Nigeria State is already at war with itself. The
Nigerian, wherever he might live within Nigeria is already
living a nasty, short and brutish existence. He does not live
if the truth be told; he exists from day to day, and has been
generally stripped of hope. From Kankara to Kagara, from Ile-
Oluji to Orlu, from Otueke to Daura, Ibogun to Telubodo…
from the Benue trough to the Jos Plateau, the forests of
Akure to the marshes of Bayelsa; the indigenous peoples of
the Nigeria State are under the guns of the Fulani
herdsmen/militia.
The reality is that the Nigeria State is at war, even though
the enemies are being mollycoddled by the Buhari regime,
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Epilogue
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Trapped by Hope
HOPE renders a man cautious. But caution might become
cowardice when it restrains critically required interventions.
My generation grew up hopeful. We were impregnated with
the hopes invested in us by our parents, imbued with the
false hopes and vain promises of the Nigeria State, and
drunken on the fumes of the several heady perfumes of hope
that were peddled by the state as we became young adults.
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“
The Fulani hegemony has always been
masked behind entities larger than the
Fulani ethnic group. The Fulani are
done with the mask of Hausa-Fulani.
They have no more use for the lies of
Arewa; One North, and the time has
come to fulfill the larger ambition of
owning the Nigeria State and securing
it as a patrimony for the Fulani
peoples wherever they might come
from. Islam, the very excuse for the
colonisation of the Hausa peoples, the
reason why the Hausa peoples
rebelled against their kings and joined
the Uthman Dan Fodio Jihad of 1804,
is the new mask behind which the
Fulani agenda has found refuge.
262
Addendum
Nigeria, Nigerians, and Religiosity
I
had submitted the manuscript for this book to my
editor several weeks before the inescapable need to
return to the manuscript to write this section was
crystallised and my laziness caught up with me. I shall
explain.
As I have examined the land of my birth and spent time
in contemplation of the many woes besetting it, the
preeminent role of religion in shaping its trajectories,
blighting it, and killing it became more obvious to me; I
realised the need to spend some time considering the role of
religion in the retardation of my country in particular and
Sub-Saharan Africa in general.
The peoples of the different ethnicities that have been
lumped together and named Nigeria were not religious, but
deeply spiritual. They were largely pantheistic in their
outlooks, even though they largely had a God-figure, who
decreed the foundations of the earth. This God was so
powerful that He, in most of the traditions, could not be
approached directly, but there are pantheons of gods and
goddesses through whom he rules and could be
approached.
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Irrespective of religion?
THE history of Islam in Northern Nigeria is steeped in blood
and gore; slavery was a very important consideration in the
growth and trajectories of Islam in the north. The peoples of
the Benue trough and most of the parts that the southern
Nigerian would blithely refer to as the “Middle Belt”,
“Northern Christians” and such other descriptions were the
ones that either had enough natural defenses to resist Fulani
conquest and hegemonic exertions, or the ones that were left
deliberately unconquered as conquering them would mean
having to impose Islam on them which would consequently
render them unsuitable for enslavement under Islamic
traditions.
The parts of northern Nigeria where the ethnic groups
are Christians are the ones that were affected by either of the
above realities. The Beroms and several of the tribes on the
plateau were largely unconquerable because their terrain
neutralised the Fulani cavalry and its key military
advantage, rendering them unworthy of the risks, when
267
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268
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Irrespective of tribe?
TRIBE was and is still everything in northern Nigeria. It was
for a long time an indicator of religious choices and a tool of
ethnic nationalism. The tribe’s interactions with the Fulani
before the colonial times would usually be easy to glean
from the traditional rulership structure and the prevalent
religion in the tribe.
Islam was always part and parcel of the feudal construct
that has ruled northern Nigeria; while its influence has
grown exponentially over the years, the centrality of clergy
control has been largely lost, leading to serious
consequences for the Nigeria State.
The peoples of the north were simple men and women,
self-effacing and differential towards their rulers. The long
years of feudalism had established a rigid class structure
within which everyone generally knew their place and
stayed in their corner, order and peace maintained. The
peoples were largely farmers; there were established market
towns where rural dwellers bought and sold to each other.
The Emir’s word was law. The imams were clients of the
rulers; the Emirs were the rulers of the clergy class. The
Sultan of Sokoto remains the titular head of the Nigerian
Muslims in spite of the fact that Islam had been established
in Lagos, long before Uthman’s Jihad.
The powers that the traditional feudal system once had
over the Islamic clerics have been largely lost as the feudal
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Addendum
274
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Addendum
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Addendum
278
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Addendum
280
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Addendum
282
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286
Appendix
Proposed
Constitution
of the Federating States
of Nigeria
by Ralph Nwoke
287
“
We the peoples and tribes of the
amalgamated territories known and
geographically defined as Nigeria, in
our bid to build one united country
governed by law do declare, enact and
give to ourselves the following
Constitution:
288
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289
Appendix
290
Ralph Nwoke
291
Appendix
292
Ralph Nwoke
293
Appendix
294
Ralph Nwoke
295
Appendix
296
Ralph Nwoke
297
Appendix
14. (1) Every person has a right to life, and no one shall
be deprived intentionally of his life.
298
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Appendix
300
Ralph Nwoke
301
Appendix
302
Ralph Nwoke
303
Appendix
304
Ralph Nwoke
305
Appendix
306
Ralph Nwoke
307
Appendix
308
Ralph Nwoke
309
Appendix
310
Ralph Nwoke
311
Appendix
312
Ralph Nwoke
313
Appendix
314
Ralph Nwoke
315
Appendix
316
Ralph Nwoke
317
Appendix
318
Ralph Nwoke
319
Appendix
CHAPTER V: PARLIAMENT
Establishment of Parliament
33. There shall be a Parliament of the Federation,
which shall consist of the House of Elders and a House
of Representatives.
320
Ralph Nwoke
321
Appendix
322
Ralph Nwoke
323
Appendix
324
Ralph Nwoke
325
Appendix
Constituencies
41. (1) There shall be 10 constituencies in each
Region of Nigeria in accordance with boundaries
delineated by the Electoral Commission.
(2) No constituency shall form part of more than
one Region.
(3) The House of Representative may, on the
written advice of the Electoral Commission that
population increase necessitates the creation of new
constituencies, by resolution supported by two third of
all members of the House of Representatives create
more constituency in Nigeria. Provide that no
326
Ralph Nwoke
327
Appendix
Procedure in Parliament
Oaths to be taken by members of Parliament
44. (1) Every member of either House of
Parliament shall, before taking his seat in that House,
take and subscribe before the House the oath of
allegiance in the form set out in Schedule _ of this
Constitution. Provided that a member may before
taking that oath take part in the election of a Chairman
of the House of Elders or a Speaker of the House of
Representatives, as the case may be.
328
Ralph Nwoke
329
Appendix
Voting in Parliament
49. (1) Any question proposed for decision in a
House of Parliament shall be determined by the
required majority of the members present and voting;
and the person presiding shall cast a vote whenever
necessary to avoid an equality of votes but shall not
vote in any other case.
(2) Save as otherwise provided in this
Constitution, the required majority for the purposes of
determining any question shall be a simple majority.
(3) The rules of procedure of a House of
Parliament may provide that the vote of a member
330
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331
Appendix
(5) A bill shall not become law unless it has been duly
passed and assented to in accordance with this
Constitution.
332
Ralph Nwoke
333
Appendix
334
Ralph Nwoke
335
Appendix
336
Ralph Nwoke
337
Appendix
338
Ralph Nwoke
339
Appendix
340
Ralph Nwoke
341
Appendix
342
Ralph Nwoke
343
Appendix
Collective responsibility
68. (1) The Council of Ministers shall be collectively
responsible to Parliament for any advice given to the
President by or under the general authority of the
Council and for all things done by or under the
authority of any Minister of the Government of the
Federation in the execution of his office.
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Ralph Nwoke
345
Appendix
Permanent Secretaries
73. Where any Minister of the Government of the
Federation has been charged with responsibility for any
department of government, he shall exercise general
direction and control over that department; and,
subject to such direction and control, the department
shall be under the supervision of a permanent
secretary, whose office shall be an office in the public
service of the Federation: Provided that two or more
government departments may be placed under the
supervision of one permanent secretary.
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Prerogative of mercy
75. (1) The President may -
(a) grant to any person concerned in or convicted
of any offence created by or under an Act of Parliament
a pardon, either free or subject to lawful conditions;
(b) grant to any person a respite, either indefinite
or for a specified period, of the execution of any
punishment imposed on that person for such an
offence;
(c) substitute a less severe form of punishment for
any punishment imposed on that person for such an
offence; or(d) remit the whole or any part of any
punishment imposed on that person for such an
347
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Public prosecutions
76. (1) There shall be a Director of Public
Prosecutions for the Federation, whose office shall be
an office in the public service of the Federation and
shall serve in the office of Attorney General of the
Federation.
(2) The Director of Public Prosecutions of the
Federation shall, under the direction of Attorney
General have power in any case in which he considers
it desirable so to do -
(a) to institute and undertake criminal
proceedings against any person before any court of law
in Nigeria other than a court martial in respect of any
offence created by or under any Act of Parliament;
(b) to take over and continue any such criminal
proceedings that may have been instituted by any
other person or authority; and
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Appendix
Contingencies Fund
107. (1) The House of Representatives may provide
for the establishment of a Contingencies Fund for the
Federation and for authorising the Minister of the
Government of the Federation responsible for finance,
if satisfied that there has arisen an urgent and
unforeseen need for expenditure for which no other
provision exists, to make advances from the Fund to
meet that need.
(2) Where any advance is made in accordance with
subsection (1) of this section a supplementary estimate
shall be presented and a supplementary appropriation
bill shall be introduced as soon as possible for the
purpose of replacing the amount so advanced.
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Appendix
Public debt
110. (1) The public debt of the Federation shall be
secured on the revenues and assets of the Federation.
(2) In this section references to the public debt of the
Federation include references to the interest on that
debt, sinking fund payments in respect of that debt and
the costs, charges and expenses incidental to the
management of that debt.
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384
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The Court
133. Subject to Section of this Constitution, the
Federal Court of Appeal shall be the successor of the
Court of appeal under the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria
and all appeals already filed before the Court of Appeal
before the commencement of this Constitution shall
continue before the Court of Appeal and appeal
385
Appendix
Region of Origin
135. Every Nigerian shall be deemed an indigene of
the Region of his birth and shall be accorded every
right of an indigene of that Region. Provided that upon
the attainment of the age of 18, anyone may be
declaration sworn before a magistrate adopt of the
Region where is father was born as his Region of Origin.
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387
388
Index
Addis Ababa, 388 Adeleke, 325
Abacha, 94, 142, 158, 161, Ademola, 267, 272
172, 189, 190, 228, 231, 232, Adenije-Adele, 273
233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, Adeniji-Adele, 267, 268, 272,
239, 241, 242, 249, 263, 265, 273, 274
268, 272, 273, 289, 290, 301, Adesanya, 159
415, 448 Adesina, 291
Abadina, 74, 75 Adetoun, Ix
Abdulsalami, 158, 162, 238, Adewusi, 76
243, 249, 322 Adhere, 372
Abia, 113, 180, 340 Adjourn, 505
Abiodun, 304 Aeinstein, 379
Abiola, 68, 69, 93, 117, 159, Afenifere, 159, 160, 163, 242,
231, 238, 241, 243, 249, 265, 243, 269, 272, 273, 274, 284,
434, 448 293, 343
Abraham, 159 Affray, xlix
Abubakar, 168, 212, 238, 241, Afolabi, xii
246, 304, 353, 424 Afolarin, x
Abuja, 147, 258, 267, 271, 451 Africa, 64, 67, 77, 319, 335,
Aburi, 183, 184 388, 392, 417, 419
ACN, 70, 282, 302, 303, 304, African, 66, 140, 346, 386,
312 388, 402, 418, 419
Adagun, xlviii Africans, 82, 120
Adamawa, 137, 169, 199, 202, Afrobeat, xli
246, 432 Agbaje, 281, 284, 326
Adams, 116 Agbalumo, 237
Adamu, 222 Agege, xxxv, xlviii
Adanla, 362 Agenda, 117, 211, 220, 234,
Addendum, Viii, 416 260, 343, 345, 390, 400, 401,
Ade, lxi 403, 427, 437, 440, 442, 443,
Adebanjo, 278 449
Adedibu, 158 Agitation, 174, 234, 256, 336,
Adedun, 358 383
Adegboruwa, xxxvi Aguiyi, 183, 196, 201, 204
389
Index
390
Index
391
Index
Brutally, 69, 77, 81, 146, 220, Candidate, 138, 222, 224, 244,
233, 234, 235, 277 263, 268, 304, 306, 327
Bryan, 371 Cannibalised, 258
Buba, 154 Cannibalistic, 348
Buhari, 69, 70, 71, 95, 96, 104, Cantonment, 215
138, 143, 162, 164, 170, 171, Capital, 153, 470
181, 188, 217, 224, 225, 226, Caravanners, 419
234, 247, 259, 261, 262, 263, Cardinal, 335, 374
264, 265, 270, 275, 279, 283, Cards, 262
284, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, Cashcow, 235
291, 292, 301, 302, 303, 306, Casualties, 244
309, 328, 329, 350, 398, 399, Cataclysmic, 407
400, 403, 422, 426, 427, 433, Central, 117, 149, 153, 183,
439, 443, 444 238, 261, 342, 418, 423
Buharididirin, 70 Central Beneficiary, 238
Buharist, 70 Central Body, 153
Bukola, 302 Central Government, 183
Bulwark, 430 Central Hegemony, 149
Buratai, Lvi, Lvii Central Idea, xxv
Bureaucrats, 210 Central Proverbs, 117
Burgeoning, xxxviii, 355 Centrepiece, 295
Burma, 133 Centuries-Old, 202, 207
Bwari, 267 Chairman, 272, 290, 491, 492,
Bylaw, 469, 478 498, 568
Bypassing, 300 Chairmanship, 160
Cabinet, 300, 443 Charters, 385
Cable, Xx Cheated, 258
Cadres, 212, 390 Check, 105, 110, 152, 207
Cadreship, 390 Chicanery, 305
Calabar, 340 Chief, 179, 448, 519
Caliphate, 127, 319, 421 Chief Arranger, 448
Cameroon, 168, 319, 432 Chief Of Staff, 179
Campaign, 205, 221, 241 Chief Prosecutor, 519
Canaan, 396 Chief Protagonists, xvii
Cancer, 144 Chiefs, 115, 154, 340, 345
Candidacy, 224, 263, 305, 326 Child, 129, 137, 305
Childhood, 78, 80
392
Index
393
Index
394
Index
Ebele, 182, 252, 253, 254, 255, 253, 257, 279, 280, 281, 282,
258, 262, 263 283, 304, 305, 306, 392, 488,
Ebonyi, 340 494, 495, 497, 498, 503, 519
Ebun, xxxvi Elections, 67, 231, 239, 267,
Economic, 68, 106, 127, 275, 281, 284, 307, 329, 449, 500,
337, 351, 354, 355, 373, 380, 518
382, 385, 420, 431, 484 Electoral, 69, 76, 282, 283,
Economic Interests, 382 304, 305, 355
Economic Meltdown, 354 Electoral Process, 283
Economic Power, 127 Electoral Rights, 69
Economic Relief, 106 Electorate, 262
Economic Stimulus, 351 Elite, 298, 299
Ede-Iwo, 325 Emir, 141, 142
Education, Xix, 87, 91, 156, Emirate, 188
168, 194, 319, 322, 351, 382, Emirs, 138, 139, 141, 295
384, 385, 420, 432, 435, 438, Enactment, 575, 576
466, 467, 476, 477 Endsars, 407
Educational, 203, 377, 556 Enforcement, 482, 486, 532,
Educationally, 112, 220 533, 541, 553
EFCC, 401 Enforcement Officers, xl
Effect, 112, 118, 193, 227, 247, Engineer, 369, 387, 388, 389
259, 329, 346, 431, 432, 439, English, 121, 122, 287, 505
447 Enikan, 359
Efficiency, 335 Epe, xiv
Egalitarian, 371, 409 Episode, 76, 86, 190, 291, 444
Egalitarianism, 343, 355, 438 Equality, 68, 333, 334, 338,
Egemonies, 124 371, 422, 446, 506
Egotistic, 276 Equality Of Citizenship, 333,
Egungun, 418 335, 338
Einstein, 379 Establish, 291, 304, 337, 360,
Ejo, 100, 117 427, 456, 477, 552, 553, 555
Ekiti, 305, 401 Establishment, 132, 160, 161,
Ekweremadus, 340 455, 560
Elders, 116, 494 Esther, xi
Election, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, Ethiopia, 388
76, 92, 93, 94, 96, 117, 162, Ethnic, 68, 71, 171, 180, 198,
224, 230, 231, 232, 241, 246, 206, 207, 255, 256, 265, 297,
395
Index
301, 320, 326, 328, 334, 335, Federal, 96, 145, 147, 148, 149,
337, 341, 349, 400, 401, 402, 151, 152, 196, 276, 281, 411,
403, 411, 418, 423, 425, 427, 414, 443, 451, 516
431, 438, 442, 480, 481 Federal Capital, 147, 451
Ethnic Group, 206, 207, 255, Federal Government, 96, 148,
326, 334, 335, 341, 402, 403, 281, 516
418, 423, 438, 442, 480, 481 Federal Level, 149, 152
Ethnic Groups, 206, 255, 326, Federal Power, 196
334, 335, 341, 403, 423, 480, Federal Structure, 411
481 Federalism, 346, 347, 414
Ethnic Irredentist, 71, 265 Federation, 105, 107, 134, 135,
Ethnic Majorities, 335 136, 155, 173, 194, 206, 271,
Ethnic Minorities, 207, 297, 323, 332, 365, 470
337 Fela, 72, 73, 85
Ethnic Nationalism, 301, 425 Femi, 160, 271, 272
Ethnic Nationality, 180 FESTAC, 268
Expenditure, 353, 557, 558, Feudal, 115, 143, 151, 156,
559, 560, 566 158, 166, 178, 181, 183, 191,
Extremism, 296, 298, 299, 322, 219, 220, 229, 270, 275, 289,
326 294, 307, 308, 314, 315, 319,
Eyin, 413 321, 323, 331, 343, 350, 352,
Face, 218, 246, 270, 362, 369, 400, 412, 419, 420, 425, 426,
398, 407, 427, 444 428, 431
Face Of The Objective Feudal-Fascist, lix
Realities, 444 Feudalisation, 104, 118, 155,
Fajuyi, 201 157, 163, 196
Faleke, 304, 305 Feudalised, 123, 285, 322, 350,
Family, 128, 298, 354 365, 428
Fanatical, 265, 290, 301, 303 Feudalism, 109, 123, 141, 144,
Fashola, 270, 311 146, 156, 158, 159, 163, 164,
Fathi, 445 166, 176, 179, 181, 184, 185,
Fayemi, 305 249, 264, 275, 320, 328, 365,
Fayose, 305 425, 438, 444
Fear, 65, 66, 197, 198, 206, Feudalist, 221
233, 305, 358, 359, 409 Feyisayo, xii
Fischer, 373
Fragmented, 171, 412
396
Index
Franchise, 269, 276, 278, 280, 205, 208, 215, 218, 221, 222,
303, 307, 312 223, 225, 228, 229, 239, 245,
Fraternities, 108 253, 257, 260, 278, 280, 281,
Free, 64, 242, 296, 354, 363, 287, 292, 316, 339, 341, 343,
386, 410, 424, 441, 527 345, 353, 383, 388, 392, 455,
Freeborn, 327 456, 470, 471, 472, 480, 494
Freedom, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, Gowon, 136, 137, 138, 139,
146, 294, 377, 389, 392, 395, 140, 145, 172, 173, 183, 184,
476, 477, 485 204, 208, 211, 215, 221, 298
Freedom Fighter, xvi Gubernatorial, 267, 268, 305,
Fufu, 87 340
Fulani-Islamist, 400, 422, 427, Gusau, 288
442 Gwadabe, 229
Fulanis, 113 Haram, 404
Fulanisation, 400 Hassan, 167
Funmi, Hausa, 82, 110, 125, 145, 146,
Funsho, 278 169, 170, 194, 199, 200, 207,
Fusion, 157, 427 209, 210, 227, 229, 289, 291,
Future And Trajectory, 121 292, 298, 318, 402, 403, 419,
Gandhi, 64, 373, 374, 377 421, 426, 428, 429, 442
Ganiyu, 116 Hausa-Fulani, 145, 146, 194,
Garba, 213 199, 200, 207, 209, 211, 227,
Gateway, 436 229, 289, 292, 318, 403, 426,
Gazette, 576 442
GDP, 354 Headquarters, 210
GEJ, 253, 254, 259, 261 Hegemonies, 120, 121, 123,
Ghandi, 370 130, 144, 146, 153, 158, 182,
Gideon, 235 188, 192, 246, 258, 259, 265,
Global, 345, 352, 354 296, 302, 308, 341, 412, 426,
Global Citizen, 439
Goodluck, 95, 181, 252, 253, Hegemony, 120, 121, 122, 123,
255, 258, 262, 263 124, 127, 131, 132, 134, 136,
Gore, 422 138, 139, 140, 142, 146, 149,
Government, 64, 67, 96, 98, 151, 152, 161, 174, 185, 186,
100, 105, 106, 142, 143, 146, 190,
147, 148, 150, 171, 173, 178, Helen, x
183, 185, 186, 188, 193, 201, Herders, 405
397
Index
Herdsmen, 254, 291, 320, 342, Ibrahim, 80, 97, 98, 172, 216,
399, 401, 402, 404 224, 247, 288, 290, 311
Herdsmen Crises, 254 Idiocy, 86, 88, 331, 361
Herdsmen/Bandits, 399 Ife, 78, 79, 272, 361
Herdsmen/Militia, 399 Igbati, 80
Hierarchy, 136 Igbayilola, x, xi
Hijab, 441 Igbo, 82, 108, 110, 111, 112,
Historical, 129, 136, 170, 192, 113, 135, 145, 146, 150, 154,
194, 195, 215, 255, 264, 278, 170, 183, 184, 194, 195, 196,
304, 319, 325, 354, 400, 421, 197, 198, 201, 203, 206, 207,
428, 436, 437, 440 208, 209, 211, 220, 223, 234,
Historical Enslavers, 319 236, 324, 327, 330, 331, 337,
Historical Parallels, 264, 278 338, 340, 349, 383, 428
Historical Perspective, 194 Igboho, xvi, xvii
Historical Realities, 170, 215, Igbos, 145, 337
436 Ige, Ix, 76, 159
Historical Sociopolitical, 428 IGP, Xli
History, 65, 67, 92, 103, 108, Ija, 359
111, 113, 119, 120, 124, 125, Ijaw, 253, 337
131, 145, 152, 159, 164, 184, Ikeja, 196, 215
192, 193, 206, 207, 224, 227, Ikenne, 266, 277
231, 239, 266, 269, 279, 296, Ikire, 438, 446
300, 306, 308, 318, 319, 320, Ikirun, 438, 446
326, 337, 418, 421, 422, 447 Ikorodu, liv, 340
History Of Brutal, 296 Iku, 100
History Of Colonisation, 319 Ikwere, 340
History Of Feudalism, 320 Ilabe, xli
History Of Venal, xxxvii Ila-Orangun, 439
Hitler, 288 Ile-Ife, 77
Hoodlums, xxxvi Ile-Oluji, 399
Hostage-Takers, Li Ilorin, 337
Hubris, 247, 255, 260, 422, 426 Imams, 318, 321, 322, 426
Ibadan, 74, 75, 78, 180, 201, Immigrant, 463
208, 291, 339, 438 Immunities, xlii
IBB, 81, 103, 110 Incarcerated, 205, 371
Ibogun, 399 Independence, 134, 137, 138,
141, 151, 169, 212, 255, 322,
398
Index
399
Index
400
Index
401
Index
402
Index
138, 142, 143, 145, 152, 167, 287, 292, 293, 294, 296, 299,
168, 196, 197, 201, 203, 205, 302, 307, 315, 344, 346, 415,
207, 213, 224, 228, 239, 261, 434, 441, 448
262, 289, 293, 294, 297, 298, Obembe, 361
299, 301, 303, 318, 321, 322, Ode-Olo, 75
341, 354, 401, 419, 422, 423, Odili, 252
425, 429, 430, 431, 432, 434, Ogoni, 115, 235
436, 440 Ogun, 180, 291, 339
Northerner, 251 Ogundipe, 204
Northerners, 110, 112, 129, OIC, 440
136, 137, 298, 341 Oil, 280, 343, 349, 354, 565
Northernise, 199 Oil-Soaked, 343
Northwest, 342 Ojo, 82
North-West, 102 Ojoo, 74
NPC, 138, 145, 193, 201, 212, Ojota, 94, 95
218, 421, 424 Ojukwu, 183
N-PDP, 302 Okeho, 339
NPN, 77, 222, 224 Oke-Ogun, 180, 291, 339
NPN-Appointed, 77 Okokomaiko, xii
Nwoke, 413 Okomaiko, lii
Nzeogu, 65 Okun, 337
Nzeribe, 158 Okuntimo, 235
Oba, 184, 252, 253, 257 Okutimo, 115
Obafemi, 135, 156, 185, 205, Okuwobi, lvii, lviii
221, 223, 224, 249, 265, 266, Oladele, 359
275, 325 Olatunde, xii
Obama, 329 Olawale, 434
Obas, 340 Ole, 316
Obasanjo, 85, 94, 140, 149, Oleh, 166
162, 166, 172, 180, 190, 192, Oligarchy, 218, 222, 264
201, 209, 211, 216, 217, 218, Olooyi, 80
219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 228, Olorogun, 76
238, 239, 240, 241, 244, 245, Olufunmilayo, x
246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, Olufunmilola, x
252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, Olukole, Ix
258, 259, 260, 261, 269, 270, Olusegun, 192, 219
275, 276, 280, 281, 283, 284, Omisore, 306
403
Index
404
Index
405
Index
406
Index
407
Index
408
409