30012018 - 2019: No alternative to Buhari, says el-Rufai

18 — Vanguard, TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2018
WHEN on 30 th September 2014
former President Olusegun
Obasanjo enrolled in the
National Open University of
Nigeria (NOUN) at the age of
77, not many people knew he
would pursue his chosen course,
Christian Theology, to the
ultimate level. But on Friday,
12 th January 2018, he
underwent a 163-minute grilling
by a six-man panel of professors
after which he bagged a Doctor
of Philosophy Degree (PhD) in
Christian Theology, thus
becoming the first person to
attain that feat from the NOUN
which he established as
President.
Obasanjo, who enrolled in the
university with Matriculation
Number 146058901, successfully
defended his thesis entitled:
Resolving the Unfinished
Agenda in Liberation Theology:
Leadership, Poverty and
Underdevelopment in North
Obasanjo, an academic icon
Eastern Nigeria. He was praised
by Dr Samaila Mande, the Dean
of Postgraduate School of
NOUN, for being a pace-setter
in the course which he manages.
After bagging his latest
achievement, this time in the
academia, the former two-time
president of Nigeria and author
of many books, insisted he
refused to be given any
preferential
treatment
throughout his sojourn at the
NOUN. He had, on the day he
enrolled for the course,
approached a prospective fellow
student young enough to be his
grandchild and said: “I am going
to start school, just like you.”
Former President Obasanjo
(PhD) has continued to fascinate
many of his countrymen and
people around the world (for
better and for worse) by dabbling
into ventures that raise
eyebrows. His boundless
energy, this time invested in
high academic pursuit of his
eventful life at an age when
most people no longer possess
the intellectual endowment to
cope with academic pursuits, is
a great example to the younger
generation.
At that age, most people no
longer see any point to prove in
going back to school. Dr
Olusegun Obasanjo has just
proved that age is not a barrier
to the pursuit of dreams;
learning never stops, except
when one is dead. Coming at an
age when many of our youths
have lost their bearing because
of the vain distractions of the
Internet Age and a society
fractured by corruption and the
quest for easy money, we
recommend the Obasanjo spirit
to everybody, both young and
old.
As a newspaper, Vanguard has
always been excited when the
feat Obasanjo has just achieved
takes place. That was why our
editors unanimously elected Pa
Tete Allen, a 90-year-old man
from Nembe in Bayelsa State
who enrolled in Primary One as
our Man of the Year 2011.
We congratulate Dr Olusegun
Obasanjo for this inspirational
laurel and wish him more
success in his endeavours.
BAATOUN, better known as
Bariba, is the only one of the
Gur languages found in Nigeria, the
western parts of Kwara and Niger
states.
These languages have, as their
nearest relatives, the Adamawa-
Ubangi languages, which now
extend from the Bauchi, Gombe,
Taraba and Adamawa states of
Nigeria, right down into Cameroons
and far into the countries of Central
Africa. The best known in Nigeria
are Chamba, Mumuye, Lunguda
and Waja, found nowadays in
Taraba, Gombe, Adamawa and
Benue states of Nigeria. According
to Kay Williamson, the linguistic
evidence would indicate that the
speakers of the Benue-Congo
languages migrated into the
Nigerian area, coming down the
river Niger, "from an earlier
homeland upstream on the Niger,"
to the North-West of Nigeria, settled
and linguistically predominated,
over the speakers of the protolanguages
of the Borgu, the
Chamba, the Mumuye, the Waja and
the Lunguda. What is significant is
that these Benue-Congo languages,
some of whose speakers today take
it for granted that they are the
autochtonous of the Nigeria area,
came after the speakers of the Gur
and the Adamawa-Ubangi
languages. These Benue-Congo
languages which according to Kay
Willimson had the homeland of their
proto-language and primary
dispersal centre in Nigeria,
somewhere in the area where the
present boundaries of Kogi, Kwara,
Ekiti, Ondo and Edo states meet.
These Benue-Congo languages
include, among the major ones, the
following.
1.Yoruboid - Yoruba, Itsekiri, Igala.
2. Nupoid -Nupe, Gbari, Gade and
Igbirra. 3. Edoid--Edo, Isoko,
A look at Bala Usman’s analysis of
communal conflicts in Nigeria (3)
Urhobo. 4. Idomoid—Idoma,
Igedde, Yala and Alago. 5. Igboid—
Igbo, Ika, Ndoni, Ikwerre, Ekpeye.
6.Platoid --Lelna (Dakarkari)
Kambari, Kamuku, Bassa, Atsam,
Jaba, Baju, Eggon, Ninzam, Berom,
Atyap, Tarok and Jukun. 7. Cross
River - Ibibio, Efik, Anang, Andoni,
Kana, Gokana, Ogoi, Eleme
(Ogoni). 8. Bantoid –Jarawan,
Bantu, and Tiv.
The Issue of Sovereignty
But, all of these violent communal
conflicts are generated and
sustained not over disputes about the
peopling of Nigeria, but over more
local disputes which derive their
credibility and legitimacy from this
view about the peopling of the
country. These local disputes are over
which ethnic, sub-ethnic group, or,
religious community owns an area
of Nigeria, the land, the titles and
the entitlements and the other assets
of the area. The claims and counterclaims
in these disputes are justified,
generally on the grounds that the
area was part of the territory and the
homeland of a particular ethnic, or,
religious community and that
colonial conquest, the attainment of
independence and all the
constitutions and the laws enacted
since then are said to have confirmed
this ownership, and where they are
said to have attempted to abrogate
it, are said to be simply unjust, and
therefore, unacceptable.
In the Jos Metropolis for example,
the dispute has virtually always been
over who "owns" Jos, the Berom or
the Jasawa? In most parts of Plateau,
Nassarawa, Taraba, Bauchi and
Of course, at the
beginning there was
no Nigeria; but when
was this beginning?
Was it 37,000 years
ago, when we have
the earliest evidence
of human activity in
the Nigerian area...
Benue states, the disputes leading to
these violent communal conflicts
have almost always centred around
claims and counter-claims over prior
rights in a particular area; between
the Jukun and the Tiv for example.
There is already widely peddled,
the view that all these disputes can
only be solved at a Sovereign
National Conference, where the
ethnic groups which are said to be
constituent units of the Nigerian
Federation will send their delegates
to deliberate upon the terms and
conditions on which they will
continue to live together in the
Federal Republic of Nigeria;' or, the
procedure to follow, to break-up this
federation and allow each ethnic
group establish its own sovereign
nation-state alone or with others.
There is no theoretical basis of not
only these claims of monolithic ethnic
groups and exclusive ethnic domains
within a federal democratic
republican polity, but also of the very
notion of how Nigeria has come to
be constituted, and by what entities
and the basis of the sovereignty all
its citizens exercise collectively over
all its territory and resources, which
is, under the present Constitution,
vested in a democratically-elected
Federal Government.
A lot of this seems to take us away
from the actual subject of this retreat
which is peace and conflict
resolution in some of the central
states of Nigeria. But, it actually does
not, because the violent communal
conflicts in these states are the
outcome of psychological,
ideological, political and economic
processes which are nation-wide,
continent-wide and even global.
The attack and the denigration of
the nation-state in Africa and of its
sovereignty and territorial integrity
by Africans, funded and encouraged
by countries which fiercely promote
and defend their sovereign rights,
their interests and even the borders
of their nation-states, generates, in
many parts of Nigerian atmosphere
which encourages violent ethnicity
and conflicts, in defiance of the
fundamental democratic principle
of peacefully resolving all conflicts;
even though these European and
North American countries and their
African proteges, campaigning
against the nation-state in Africa, are
very loud in their claims about their
love for democracy and peace.
We have, fortunately, for this
examination of the premises of this
campaign a lecture by Professor Itse
Sagay, who is widely promoted by
the media as an eminent scholar and
a jurist, with authority on
constitutional matters. In the Ibori
Vanguard Lecture, under the
auspices of an organisation of the
political goons and praise-singers of
James Ibori, Governor of Delta
State, at the Lagoon Restaurant,
Lagos, in May, 2001, Sagay brought
out in explicit terms one of the basic
premises on which this campaign is
being conducted. He stated that:
“In the beginning, there was no
Nigeria. There were Ijaws, Igbos,
Urhobos, Itsekiris, Yorubas, Hausas,
Fulanis, Nupes, Kanuris,Ogonis,
Gwaris, Katafs, Jukuns, Beroms,
Agnas (sic), Ogojas and so on. There
were kingdoms like Oyo, Lagos,
Calabar, Brass, Itsekiri, Benin, Tiv,
Borno, Sokoto Caliphate (with loose
control over Kana, Ilorin, Zaria, etc)
Bornu, Opobo, etc. Prior to the
British conquest of the different
nations making up the present day
Nigeria, these nations were
independent nation-states and
communities, independent of each
other and of Britain.”
These opening statements of his
lecture reveal a level of ignorance of
how peoples, nation-states came to
be which even a secondary school
pupil should be beyond. Of course,
at the beginning there was no
Nigeria. But when was this
beginning? Was it 37,000 years ago,
when we have the earliest evidence
of human activity in the Nigerian
area in the form of Stone Age tools
on the Jos Plateau?
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