IPOB: NO JUSTIFICATION FOR SECESSION -Tanko Yakasai

The agitation for secession is clearly coming from one section of the country. Those who are agitating, from my view are younger people, Master’s Degree, PhD holders and so on without jobs and they are annoyed – to them, the country can go to blazes because they are suffering. They don’t even realize that everybody is suffering. It is not from every part of the country.

No, you can’t talk about that of the South-west. You know the Action Group was a product of the Oduduwa movement that was formed in 1938 or thereabout, so it is not a new thing. Do you have anybody from the South-south agitating for secession? Do you have anybody from the three zones in the North agitating for secession? Do you know anybody even from the South-east apart from the Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB agitating from secession? Can you give me three of five senior, highly responsible people who are agitating for secession from the South-east? No sensible person from the South-east will agitate for secession for so many reasons but I can give you two. One, South-east is like in the middle of Nigeria, it is blocked, with no access to the sea. That is number one. Number two, Igbo people are everywhere in Nigeria, you can even say everywhere in West Africa for the simple reason that their area, territory is not enough for them. The space, compared to the population is too small. Secondly, they are hard-working more than any other Nigerian, no doubt about that. So, if you get hardworking people and camp them in a small place, anything can happen. There is no significant place or village in Northern Nigeria that you wouldn’t see an Igbo man and nobody is asking any Igbo man to leave, at least in the North. In fact, nobody is competing with Igbo people in the area of business – spare parts, building materials, drugs, medicine and the rest of them – you will find them there. If they are there, nobody can compete with them. Even, the Yorubas cannot compete with the Igbos. The richest area in Nigeria is in Yorubaland, but despite their prosperity, the Yoruba people are not competing with the Igbo. You will be surprised that if you go to Balogun, Tejuosho, Idumota, Oyingbo – cross any of the three bridges in Lagos – they are Yoruba dominated areas, but go to the market, you will find out that the Yoruba are not the dominant people in that market, except where they sell food item and spices for soup and so on. But when you are talking of other businesses, the Yoruba people are not the dominant people there. And this is because the Yoruba and Hausa people are the people who like to enjoy themselves. My assessment is that if an Igbo man can get Central Bank as his own, at best, he can have one wife, but if you give Central Bank to the Yoruba man or the Hausa man – the Yoruba man marry 10 or 20 wives, the Hausa man may not marry more than four because he may be afraid of public opinion, but he may find other ways to do his thing, that is their way. The Hausa and Yoruba people like to enjoy themselves, but the Igbo man will work hard to make money, but the money is for bringing more money.

I did not listen to the broadcast of the President. But I understand that the President said he is going to deal with agitators from the South-east.

To me, I expected him to say this a long time ago. He should have said that a long time ago and he should have acted.

Then, tomorrow, you will get somebody from Borno also making trouble; you will get somebody from Benin making trouble because they will realize that making trouble pays. Yes, there was a precedent – for instance, when Umaru Yar’Adua was president and Niger Delta militants were doing their trouble, he saw reason in their agitations and he was advised, ‘you better talk to these people because they have a case’ and he agreed. And he said they should lay down their arms and they agreed. But I’m sure so many waters passed under the bridge before they arrived at that decision. But what are the complaints of Nnamdi Kanu?

He didn’t make any complaint. He didn’t say Igbo are oppressed, he didn’t say they are being intimidated, he didn’t say that they are not being allowed to do their business anywhere in the country.

How? This marginalization issue, I don’t know. I believe my friends there one day will tell me- people of my age are virtually gone now, even those who are still available are not talking as I am doing. But the other time a former governor of Anambra State, Ezeife threatened (about 2023) but I advised him that look, in politics, threats will not win the votes. It is persuasion that wins votes. The question about marginalization is getting the presidency. The Igbo people want to produce the president, but anybody who is advising the Igbo should advise them to persuade Nigerians to vote for them. They cannot win by threats because you must work out the number of Igbo in the totality of the population of Nigeria. On their own, they cannot win the presidency; they have to work with other people. And those people will agree to support them only if they try to persuade them. They will persuade them and tell them what they are going to do for them if they get there. It is not just by threatening. You can issue threats, but you will not get what you want. But if you can persuade me now, I can change my mind. Persuasion is the answer, not threats. Politics is about persuasion.

I don’t know if that’s what he said. But the President as a retired military person should know that only people in control of the armed forces or security operatives will be able to deal with the security problems. I don’t know why he will say that. I know that some people in Nigeria have said that to deal with the insecurity problem in Nigeria, we need state police. But I think that will create more problems for us. The trouble that we are going to have in Nigeria is that most of the unemployed people now when you are looking for police, you look at the qualifications – Bachelor degrees, Master’s, PhDs – they are everywhere- they will come and they are qualified. I know that there are several states where two, three months, they can’t pay the salaries of their civil servants. When you have state police, they are going to deal with the insurgency in the country and you know that most of the insurgents now have better weapons than the security operatives. Therefore, for the state police, you must be prepared to provide a first-class weapon for them to be able to cope with the situation. Do you think state police with 774 units – let’s say one unit per local government will tolerate any government that will not pay them for three months? That is number one. Two, you can count on your fingertips the number of states that are promptly paying their civil servants at the end of the month. That means they don’t have money. To create state police will require money, much more money than we are now budgeting for the Nigerian Police. If we can afford it, I will advise that let’s double the number of Nigerian Police because the problem now is that the population is increasing rapidly, but the number of policemen is not keeping pace with the increase in the population of the country. So, a sensible thing is to let us give more money to security – more money to the police, the DSS, the military and so on. And if we can double their number of police, the DSS and so on, work out how much they are being paid every month, look for that kind of money to double the capacity of the federal security agencies in the country, I can bet you that within one year you will see a difference. Our problem is that we are not funding our establishments – you don’t need to hire any research officer to know that. Take the budget, see how much we are spending for various ministries, put them together and see how much we are spending for the security establishments. So, the sensible thing is to increase our financial allocations to security establishments across the country.

No state police, you will be creating more problems than you have now. When you create state police, the day you are not able to pay them, they will go round and sack everybody. It will be impossible for you to disband them. We have 774 local governments and each local government has a minimum of 12 wards – multiply 774 by 12 – to disband that number of police people will be difficult.

It may not even be a war. It will be a walkover for them – they will remove every governor, every local government chairman, every traditional ruler, everybody and all the billionaires in Nigeria will run away. It will be only you and I who have no money to pay for (flight) ticket that will remain.