When Umaru Musa Yar’Adua visited us at a
newspaper, just before the 2007 general election, he
stressed that good leadership would emanate from
obedience to the rule of law. A president has no power
outside of the law, he said, and he hoped to do well as
president simply by following the law. How right the
then presidential candidate of the PDP was!

The Yar’Adua era now belongs to a distant past. But
we remember that, as president, he was a stickler for
the law and thus remained popular until sickness
seized him. Unlike his predecessor Obasanjo, he did
not disobey any court order or declare public holidays
just to obstruct the wheel of justice. He told the truth
starting from his inaugural address and did what was
right to the best of his ability. May his soul rest in
peace!

Lawlessness and lies have made Nigeria
ungovernable. And the situation has been worsened
now by the lack of an effective leader. Journalism
seems dead! Any person – whether a lunatic, a thug,
a frustrated housewife or a jobseeker disguising as a
politician – has become a source of “breaking news”.
Credibility is no longer important.

Only in a lawless country would some young men
claiming to represent a section of the country be
permitted to organise a “press conference” and soon
after get the attention of state governors and “elder
statesmen” as well as dominate discussions in beer
parlours, social media and elsewhere. It happened last
Tuesday when a sponsored group of young men went
to Arewa House in Kaduna to make a statement on
behalf of the “north”. Blaring headlines followed:
“Northern youths give Igbos 3 months to vacate”; “The
beginning of the end [of Nigeria]”; “Vacate the north, or
else…” Comments on the “vacation order” have
subsequently dominated headlines since then and
may continue to do so for the next month or two.
What has happened to Nigerian law all this while? In
the silence of the law, we might well regard the Kaduna
“press conference” as a declaration of Biafra from an
unlikely quarter. Otherwise, the young men of so-
called “Coalition of Northern Youth Groups” would have
been picked up right from Arewa House for
questioning, and no newspaper would have reported
on their poorly written statement. Whoever did would
be treated as one endangering state security. The
“northern youths” and their sponsors would be
charged for treason, for they acted like Major Gideon
Orkar of 1990.

But the reverse outcome was predictable in Nigeria’s
case: Governor A and Governor B would condemn the
youth (even though they could be among their
sponsors) and Governor C and D would order their
arrest. The police chief would also order their arrest.
Yet, nobody would be touched!

A dangerous cabal therefore seems to be holding this
country by the jugular, and it’s not ready to loosen its
grip until Nigeria goes up in flames. It was right to
imprison Nnamdi Kanu for 19 months but wrong to
arrest “northern youths” who rained invectives on the
Igbo and went ahead to sack them from Nigeria. On
Friday, Ango Abdullahi came out to support the youth
strongly, and many of his admirers have been
celebrating their “outspoken leader” on media
platforms.

The right judgement of professional editors would
have silenced charlatans that fill the Nigerian
landscape today. The danger brought by the Internet
to a lawless nation like ours is that felons may wake
up one morning to announce that a coup has ousted
an elected regime. Or that five new nations have been
created. A declaration might be reasonable but not
lawful.

If we were a nation of laws, and President
Muhammadu Buhari made that Kaduna declaration on
TV, he would have still been ignored because he has
no right to do so. The “Arewa youth” committed a
crime by giving an ultimatum that suggests an even
graver crime: the likelihood of murders, arson and
looting. By stoking tension and threatening to
dismember Nigeria, they and their sponsors have
committed treason. And the argument that the “north”
did it in return for Igbo elders’ failure to caution IPOB
and MASSOB is false: Many Igbo elders have
disagreed with pro-Biafra campaigners and cautioned
them openly. Besides, the “Biafran” groups have not
been violent like Boko Haram or the street urchins
continually murdering “unbelievers” in their midst.
I have always regarded those who are now in their 80s
as the country’s worst generation so far. They caused
and fought an unnecessary civil war that killed
3million innocent compatriots. They were corrupt
leaders. They destroyed the education system, the civil
service – everything good one can think of. They
were/are liars who abolished the study of History as a
subject in schools. As I stated last week in this space,
we should thank God that members of that generation
are dying out and we only have to ensure they are not
replaced by their children.

Sometime in 2013, “Boko Haram” gave all southerners
three weeks to vacate the north. And three weeks later
they started bombing churches and other public
places. Northern elders and consultative forums said
nothing until the lions started devouring their children
too. A similar ultimatum issued last Tuesday should
therefore not be disregarded. It’s the same
conspirators at work. And they are above Nigerian
law.

This time the targets are “Biafrans” or the Igbo of the
south-east alone. But they have not shown how they
would exclude the Igbo of the south-south or how
rioters would know the difference between an Igbo and
an Itsekiri or Urhobo living in the north.

Which north were they referring to anyway? Does it
include southern Kaduna or Benue or Plateau or Kogi
or FCT Abuja? Are the Igbo to vacate with their houses
or forfeit all their assets in the “north”? I thought
“immigrants” are allowed to own property in their host
country!

Through Ango Abdullahi we’ve learned that the Igbo
should forfeit their “N44trillion investments” [as
claimed by another shadowy group from the south-
east] because resources from the north had been used
to develop the south. That’s another clear distortion of
history: those who were lucky to study History before
it was banned in Nigerian schools know that the
reason the colonial authorities merged the Northern
Protectorate with the Southern Protectorate in 1914
was for “administrative convenience” – to use the
resources in the south to develop the north. At the time
oil was discovered, there existed regional governments
which controlled their own resources. The foreign oil
companies came with big investments. So how could
the “magnanimous” north have abandoned its own
region in order to “help” the more prosperous south?
There is no end to some wild claims: another
“northerner” has said that the oil in the Niger Delta and
south-east belongs to the north that has a larger land
mass.

One must admit, however, that those who sponsored
the Arewa House event have succeeded in no small
measure. Whether they did it to embarrass Acting
President Osinbajo or to divert attention from hunger in
the land, they have achieved their aim, thanks to the
Internet. One thing I fear, though, is the likely collateral
damage or aftereffects. It would be easier now to
mobilise starving street kids to cause riots and kill
innocent people. For the murderers have always gone
scot-free. This is a lawless country indeed.

The way forward for Nigeria is RESTRUCTURING. It’s
not by declaring that Nigerian unity is non-negotiable,
as the Senate did on Friday. Nigerian unity exists only
in the imaginations of treasury looters and their
accomplices who stand to lose more in the event of the
country’s break-up. Someday, someone will call for a
referendum, a thing the Nigerian constitution fails to
recognise. Meanwhile,tomorrow is June 12.

TheCable