Ali Ndume, His Northern Hounds And Limits Of Reckless Ethnic Politics

By Peter Claver Oparah

IN a multi-ethnic nation where some people court popularity by inflaming ethnic sentiments, harvesting ethnic passion and making huge political capital from pouring inflammable substances on all that set Nigerians apart, it is easy to understand the present efforts of some Northern irredentists and bigots to stoke an all-consuming fire over the recent decision of the federal government to move some departments of the Central Bank to Lagos where their functions are domiciled and also move a department of the aviation sector, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos where it had been operating from till recently when the immediate past Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika moved it to Abuja.

These Northern anarchists have been unsparing of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who, they accuse of plotting to relocate the federal capital to Lagos! Can you imagine this cheeky mischief? Relocating two departments among the thousands of federal departments to Lagos where their activities are based means relocating the federal capital to Lagos? For this, these blood-baying ghouls are threatening fire and brimstone, beating war drums, issuing moratoriums and invoking every known divisive mantra to pursue their nihilistic mission. You can’t beat the evil mischief, the dangerous blackmail and the divisive baiting encased in this clearly provocative end game.

Leading these hounds is Senator Ali Ndume, a clearly divisive fellow, notoriously fingered in the infamous mutation of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, a fellow with a pubic figure that begs for redemption and a man now courting an ethnic plaudit with such frantic fervour that he cares no hoot if he sets off a carnage that would turn self-consuming at the end of the day. Ndume can do anything to curry political capital from his Northern people and places so much in the political strength of the North that he can indulge in any prank and mischief to court it.

The summary of Ndume’s present fatwa against Tinubu and the South is his unbelievable recent comments on Channels Television that the said agencies could be relocated to Nasrawa, Kaduna, Niger, Kogi (read any state in the North) and not Lagos! Can you beat that? This sums up the agenda of the dangerous game which he is now playing with a coterie of Northern irredentists, the unconscionable rabble, the ethnic anarchists and the blood-soaked bigots he has mobilized for his present war! To them, the federal agencies and departments could be domiciled in any part of the North but not Lagos-and certainly not the South! That is why Ndume and his fellow anarchists are not raising any hue that the National Examination Council (NECO) has been headquartered in Minna, Niger State, the National Inland Waterways Authority has been headquartered in Lokoja, Kogi State, the National Teachers Institute has been headquartered in Kaduna, among tens of other parastatals and agencies with their head offices in several states of the North, outside Abuja! In fact, left to Ndume and his fellow blood-baying Northern anarchists, the said Central Bank department could be relocated to his native local government in Borno State to regulate banks that are headquartered in Lagos. No skin pain about it. No worries. FAAN could be relocated to Sambisa to regulate the Aviation sector, whose sixty percent of operations are in Lagos and where it has been domiciled since it was created till a few years ago. These will please Ndume and his hounds but not in the South and certainly not Lagos. Can you imagine such dark and seedy souls enchained in narrow ethnic gulags? A character like Ali Ndume typifies all that is wrong with Nigeria where ethnic midgets feast on the emotions of their people to constitute avoidable harm to the generality of Nigerians. Ndume knows he is playing a very selfish and dangerous politics with his clearly senseless allegation but he and his ilk thrive and bloom in Nigeria where failed politicians revert to their ethnic hoods and exploit every issue to manipulate the impressionable tribal sentiments of their people to curry political advantage. That is purely what Ndume and the sectional wild dogs he has mobilized for his present jihad are doing

It is assuring that from deep within the North, from a deep well of intellect and from the very aristocratic blue blood of the North, the strong and indomitable voice of former Emir of Kano and former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has risen so cadently to rebuke the sly and cheeky efforts of Ndume and his bigotry cohorts. The revered technocrat, not only threw his huge weight behind the decision to relocate the supervisory agency of the Central Bank to Lagos where our banks are domiciled but strongly denounced the jingoists who want to make an ethnic capital from that laudable move. With the deep and incisive opinion of the former CBN Governor on this issue, Ndume and his ethnic rabble-rousers are exposed in their embarrassing nudity as cheap, self-serving ethnic nabobs and sectional perverts neighing for every opportunity to ply their dirty political wares.

Such audacious display of selfishness and bigotry as shown by Ndume and his hounds should rouse the consciousness of the South to demand a just federation where such feelings of entitlement brazenly advertised by Ndume and his Northern anarchists are not allowed to thrive. In building a confederation as ours, the spirit of give and take dominates and this is enough to blight such ethnic sense of entitlement that rules Ndume and his culled ilk. It was such arrogant display of undeserved entitlement that woke the restiveness in the Niger Delta which we have not totally resolved today. If an Ndume can declare a fatwa demanding that an agency or parastatal should rather be moved to Northern states instead of Lagos, which houses requisite infrastructure to productively host those agencies, I think this serves as a critical red flag for Southerners to demand an equitable federation that will rubbish Ndume’s ultra-selfish ethnic agenda.

Above everything else, this obvious misbehaviour of Ndume and his Northern fiends opens an inquest into the real import of Abuja as a federal capital. Yes, Abuja has been the federal capital since it was moved from Lagos. It is the seat of power, hosting the central government; the Presidency, the National Assembly, the judiciary, the ministries and every other appurtenances of power. It is obvious that Ndume and his irredentist hecklers misconstrue Abuja as a heritage of the North hence their obdurate attempt to present themselves as its protectors against a plan to relocate the federal capital to Lagos, which is fangled, fed and grows in their mischievous minds. His selfish impression that any federal agency should only be relocated to Northern states exposes a mind blackened by ulterior sectional interests. With the exception of a few parastatals, every agency of government has its headquarters in Abuja! But then, not all agencies, departments and parastatals need to be headquartered in Abuja. Many of them have no businesses being in Abuja as they have nothing doing in Abuja, except to garner huge overheads that resonate negatively on our economy. They need to be rightly relocated to areas where their operations would be optimised. No law states that every federal agency must have its head office in Abuja. None. So let us do the right thing by relocating these agencies to areas where their operations and activities are majorly domiciled. I hope to see federal agencies domiciled in Owerri, Gusau, Umuahia, Akure, Markurdi, Damaturu and any other city in Nigeria and not only in Abuja. This rhymes with the sprint of true federalism and President Tinubu’s government should side-step the cheeky blackmail of Ndume and his Northern anarchists to see this through.

For Ndume and his Northern hounds, everything should be moved to Abuja or other Northern states. That is what they are flexing muscles to say. By this, they target at blackmailing President Tinubu and heckle him off from doing what is right in this matter. To them, if he moves any department of government to Lagos, even with the huge operational and infrastructural advantages Lagos has to the workings of these departments, he would be blackmailed as working to relocate the federal capital back to Lagos. That is the cheap game Ndume and his Northern anarchists are playing. That is the politics the types of Ndume understand so let’s oblige him and move everything to Abuja and other Northern states, I mean everything. Even the seaports, let’s move them to Abuja or other states in the North so as to quell the riotous minds and insidious mischief of Ali Ndume and his blood-thirsty northern ethnic ghouls.