SHORT SIGHTED PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH IN THE WAKE OF THE NORTHERN NEXT LEVEL ~ SOREMEKUN

For the records,  I voted for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 but I did not vote for his re-election in 2019. The reason for this piece is not necessarily why I voted for him in 2015 but more on why I didn’t in 2019 especially as it borders on the shortsightedness of the southerners that did. 

I quite agree that the criteria by which the electorate align with candidates differ. Like they say; different strokes for different folks. However, the electorate should not compromise or negotiate the posterity criterion. All other strokes are secondary. In fact as appealing as that might be now, they are transient delusions. In time, and quiet frankly time and again, sentiments, prevailing political situations, religion, selfish political permutations all come to naught.

Election is more than a means of getting into positions of power and authority. Election is also about gazing and stepping into the future to secure the common good and well being of the general populace before tomorrow comes. It is as important as a means to seek the preservation and repositioning of a people as it is to satisfy present and urgent needs, If not even more. Election is for the future. 

Indeed, Election is about the future to the northerners. Majority of the northern politicians see it this way. It is about the survival of their race irrespective of their present personal ambitions. The electorate in the North see it in the same light, irrespective of their present challenges. They always move for their collective cause. Their present travails amount to nothing so long as their end justifies the means. And before our very tired eyes, their end is on a better course than ours, the southerners.

The average southern is short sighted.  Both the political class and the electorate. it would appear most of their politicians are more concerned with position, power, and affluence than the collective progress of their people. The people too, seem too carefree to know what is going on right under their noses. Ironically they are the most educated in the country, yet they are the least informed about the scheme of things especially as it is concerns the tsunami that is precariously waylaying their future freedom in the name of cattle colony (or National Livestock Transformation Plan as it has been renamed). The average southerner sees the election period as time to bargain for better living conditions. This in itself is not a problem. 

It however becomes a problem when the future of such conditions is not well defined. The average southern politician too doesn’t see election period beyond bringing down his fellow southerner in the pursuit of his own vain and egoistic political agenda The politicians simply do not see it as an avenue to work together within themselves and put their people (or reshuffle their politicians) in elective positions to actualize another stage of an articulated grand master plan for its people. Do they even have any grand plan for their people like their northern counterparts has consistently being throwing in their face. What vision did the Sarakis have for their people before their scion was defeated in the last election? Has Tinubu any vision for the Southwest? Does Afenifere? Or Ohanaeze indigbo? They are all jesters as compared with the brilliant strategists of the north.

The north is on a steady course to enslave the south. And their next level is the actualization of the cattle colony scheme. Buhari 2019 campaign theme, NEXT LEVEL, is more than meets the eye. It is a subliminal chest thumping. Next level of what? 

Next level of overreaching. Next level of advancement of a people’s course. The question is what people? Which people?

Ask yourself why cattle colony. Of what gain is cattle colony to the collective purse of the Nigerian people? What exceptional humanitarian needs make cattle colony for the Fulani herdsmen more worthy than fishing colony for the Niger Deltan whose waters and its fishing means of livelihood are endangered so to speak. Or farming colony for the same people whose backyard provides the whole nation's wealth; whose riches are not only beyond them but who has to live with the concomitant attendant troubles of cruel oil spillage and gas flaring. 

Next level of what? Agricultural colony to the Niger Deltans? True federalism to the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Or is next level of the nepotism we witnessed in Buhari first democratic regime?

There is nothing wrong with the Fulani leaders wanting a good deal for its people. Every responsible leaders should. It is one of the hallmark of good leadership. But where a people’s advancement is to the detriment or extinction of the freedom of it supposedly brothers, it is evil, wicked, inhumane and should be vehemently rejected in all oneness and accord. 

We the short sighted people of the south need to go back to the proverbial drawing board and rethink this cattle colony scheme being forced down our throats.

I posit that cattle businesses are private businesses. I posit that the business is not under any unusual threat beyond the normal everyday happenstance in the life of a business venture that cannot be resolve through less ultra vires means. I posit that the cattle business is far from extinction like the agriculture livelihood of the people of the Niger Delta is becoming. I posit cattle business doesn’t deserve the daylight robbery the Buhari government is engaging to grab our lands. Especially as Nigeria foreign earnings do not come from cattle vis a vis crude oil from the Niger Delta region of the country. I posit that like every astute businessman, Cattle Rearers should cut their loses and buy lands with their on proceeds to ranch their animal and grow their own businesses. And the very short sighted southern leaders should wake up from their petty politicking and refuse to be railroaded and bullied by the Buhari government into giving up their lands.

Whilst I am for one Nigeria, I refuse to be blindsided into thinking cattle colony is the way out of the seemingly well orchestrated northern herdsmen attack on farmers. Or worst still be confused that cattle colony is much like ranching. There is a big gulf between the two.

All hope is not lost. Just as the northern electorate aligned with the northern conservationist Buhari despite the Boko Haram destruction witnessed under his watch; despite its increasing almajiris situation and decreasing poverty lines,  despite being presented with a moderate/liberal option in the person of Atiku Abubakar. 

The southern electorate can also speak in one voice in states like Ebonyi, Edo and Oyo whose state governors lack complete understanding of what is at play in the cattle colony scheme as against ranching. In ranching a sizable portion of land is bought for cattle businesses while in colony a excess in hectares of lands is grabbed for cattle colony.

In ranching scheme as against cattle colony being championed by the Buhari administration, both the cattle dealers and the host community develop at their individual paces. This creates a healthy competitive development. While in cattle colony land grabbing, the future of the host community is mortgaged for the cattle dealers and the indigene of the host community now has limited land mass to contain his future population growth. Whereas the cattle dealers flourish across as many states as possible on grabbed lands. 

With ranching, the political powers of host community is secured. While in land grabbing cattle colony scheme the host communities powers are covertly (now) and overtly (in say 50 years from now) robbed. This is a certainty. In that time (50 years from now) the cattle dealer will experience population explosion as it common with their breeding culture. At that time, some form of governance will be deemed necessary to have some public order. They can kick the ball rolling with a councilor here, a Local Government Area there, a Senatorial presence. And finally with underground backings from the sultanate powers and largesse, they will take the governments of states in the middle belt. Perhaps some too in the south.

The time to act is now. Tell somebody to tell somebody; To ponder on these things too. Maybe Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Afenifere, Ohanaeze Indigbo or PANDEF will have a rethink and reinvent themselves. Maybe a new crop of influential politicians will rise to the challenge; shun gallery politics, be faceless and work underground to chart a better course for its people. 

I am me. A dissatisfied ordinary Nigerian who strongly believes two can play the game. I am a dissatisfied southern who believes the north are not to be blamed. After all, evil triumph when good men do nothing.