By Kassim Afegbua
What we hear now in political discussion, hovers around Politics of Entitlement and of Monologues. It is now Politics of “Our North” and their Nigeria. Politics of sprawling poverty and weaponization of destitute rural folks; a tailored army for political thuggery drawn from the barracks of the Almajiris.
These people were the trump card for the Northern politicians, who out of season are our collective conundrum. If anyone took a tour from Gwagwalada to Kaduna, Kaduna through Zaria to Kano, Jigawa to Katsina, Abuja to Jos, to Bauchi through Damaturu to Maiduguri, the obvious would be the numberless able-bodied wastrels littered along those routes, aimless, jobless, with burnished voices for praise-singing.
They wake up from their homes on day X, and take to the highways, without undergoing the usual rituals of one who is hinge and its goodbye: unbathed, unclothed often times, with rags that have never known water, patched skins, as they clutch chewing sticks between their lips, enduring hunger and poverty, and not sure from whence the next meal would come. Their “ranka-dede” political demagogues continue to play on their intellect and intelligence; at the shout of “ranka-dede,” a pittance is shared amongst those present and they run off jubilant about the immediate spoil. It is political season again, and the discourse has now come full circle; “Our North” and their Nigeria.
When some Nigerian Leaders of Northern extraction speak for the collective, I often gnaw at their foolishness and political exploitation which they try to extrapolate in dealing with the South. They appropriate the North to themselves as if its collective destiny is rooted in their living rooms. Their North is ruthlessly wanting and wanton, steeped in corruption and poverty, and hunger is rife. Their area now a veritable recruitment ground for bandits and kidnappers
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