A former
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Bisi Akande, has
stated that minority Fulani rulers are being perceived to be manipulating the
North to rule Nigeria since independence.
He said that
people understood minority Fulani rulers to be manipulating the North to rule
Nigeria through “Islamic emirate system since two centuries ago.”
Akande said
this while delivering a paper titled “Devolution of Powers and National
Restructuring” over the weekend at the APC-USA Second Annual Convention in
Washington DC.
The former
Governor of Osun State also said restructuring was a herculean task for all
Nigerians.
According to
Akande: “The North is a largely Hausa-speaking people traditionally mix-bred
and assimilated with and governed by minority Fulani rulers through Islamic
emirate system since two centuries ago.
” The North
has been amalgamated with the South in-law and in fact since a century ago.
And, presumably, the Fulani has been perceived to be manipulating the North to
rule Nigeria since independence.
“Even if one
does not like the minority Fulani rulers of the North for being hegemonic in
characteristics, can one separate them from the original majority Hausa-speaking
people of the same North?
“Unless one
was ready for another civil war, could one ostracise the whole North in the
political considerations of the country.”
Akande said
it was within that “context that some of them who were not ready to wait for
another civil war to effect a geo-political restructuring of the country
decided to go ahead with the APC arrangement, while our opponents are left
behind to assume a loud coarse noise on mere sloganeering-restructuring-
without any clear definition or a peaceful workable strategy.”
The former
APC chairman also said “constitutional amendments or not, Nigerians have begun
to see themselves as belonging to geo-political zones-North-western,
North-eastern, North-central, South-western, South-eastern and South-southern
zones.”
Akande
insisted that the “South-west, on its own, had moved further to create a
Development Agenda Commission for Western Nigeria, DAWN Commission, to conduct
research to generate pieces of advisory information for the benefit of the each
of the South-western state governments on integrated development programmes.”
He stressed
that as a “first step, the people of these South-western states are trying to
key into the APC to back up the possibility of their governments to speak with
one political voice, using one manifesto under one political party.”
The APC chieftain recommended this initiative to
other geo-political zones, saying it was an “experiment worthy of encouragement
and emulation for the strengthening of a federal political attitude towards
physical and social development within each zone.”
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