The cabal has no comprehension of the public good except how to use power for the benefit of a select few. With the completion of the various party primaries and the attendant obnoxious display of the corrupting influence of money, any expected transformational political change appears to have been an illusion.
By Nnanna Ijomah
For many years now, Nigerians have been told about the existence of a Northern cabal that has basically been running the country irrespective of who occupies Aso Rock. While many believe the cabal has gained greater notoriety and influence during the Buhari years, others opine that their power has been ascendant all through the military regimes.
Being a very secretive group, not much is known about them as they rarely make their views public. However this much is known. It is a group made up of past military heads of state, ministers, emirs, Moslem clergymen, and university professors of the Fulani/Hausa/Kanuri stock. It is even rumoured to be headed by the Sultan of Sokoto himself.
That this cabal exists as a loose group to the extent that some of its members leave or lose influence and are replaced by others is not in doubt but what cannot be left to conjecture is the fact that its inner circle is tight-knit and that its mandates are universally obeyed by a majority in the north. In his 2021 essay titled, “The Kaduna Mafia and the 2023 Presidency” veteran journalist Lasisi Olagunju, boldly and with authoritative gusto described the cabal “as the unseen persons ruling us”.
He went further to describe Mamman Daura, a close relative of the president, as the mouthpiece of this mysterious clan of northern electoral deciders. Mark those words, “electoral deciders” because it aptly describes the inordinate amount of power these individuals have on who runs the country and how that person is elected.
The cabal has been described as the power behind the throne, basically having the ear of whoever is president, especially this president. It is said they propose policy and enact policy not to mention recommending and approving those who get appointed to politically sensitive positions important to the north, hence even when such appointees fall victim to the law we have found this president reluctant to relieve them of their positions.
Every president since 1999 is said to have operated as the “messenger servant” of the cabal. They have been described as proud, imperious, and vindictive and have no problem bruising the sensibilities of any other ethnic group. As the nation approaches the 2023 elections the cabal in their infinite selfishness and unbridled arrogance announced before the primaries that zoning was dead but as we’ve come to find out it was just a ploy to clear the way for Atiku to emerge as the PDP presidential flag bearer and if that failed, to pave the way for the APC to reverse course in its plan to zone the presidency to the South. As we can see from the result of the primaries, their plan has worked out to perfection.
Anyone who thinks that the emergence of Atiku and Tinubu as presidential flag bearers for both the APC and PDP was left to chance does not know how the cabal operates. They are the masters of the Nigerian political game with guile and strategic astuteness that is unmatched by our southern professors in the game of politics. The cabal plans ahead and they leave nothing to chance.
The APC colluded with INEC and got an extension to hold their primaries because they wanted to know how that of the PDP will pan out hence no one should confuse the sudden quest for a southern presidential candidate by northern APC Governors before their primaries as one born out of a love for fairness, justice and equity. This has been the game plan all along. Now that Tinubu has been compensated with his prized ticket, let’s watch notable northern members of the APC begin to decamp to the PDP in support of Atiku. Simply said, Tinubu is destined to get the Jonathan treatment when in 2015, Atiku and others fled the PDP to the APC. What many people do not realize or chose to ignore is the fact that party loyalty means nothing to Northern politicians and that the one motivating factor and glue that holds them and especially the cabal together is the quest, attainment, and the hold on power.
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To them, the presidency is the Holy Grail they must in the words of Olagunju “win or destroy whoever stands in their way.” Given a choice between country and power the hold on power has always been their preferred choice. Having benefitted immensely from the Buhari administration by way of political patronages, it was no surprise when a spokesperson for the Northern Elders Forum not very long ago during a press conference confidently boasted on television when he said, “We have led Nigeria and will continue to lead Nigeria”.
While Nigerians were pre-occupied with the open display of political intrigue and corruption that took place during the just concluded primaries, another was going on – the one unseen and unspoken. A battleground of shades and gray played out in deception and bad faith, the participants secretive, some anonymous, operating in an environment where fiction and truth readily blur and where the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies.
The APC has handed Tinubu a hot potato for which he will need all his political skills to handle. Any discerning mind who has been following Nigeria Politics will remember that the North ie the cabal never forgave Obasanjo for picking a northern successor in the person of Shehu Yar’Adua who was known to have a terminal ailment hence he lasted only a few years in the presidency after which the Presidency reverted back to the south. They bemoaned the fact that the north was denied 5 years at the helm because of this trick Obasanjo played on them.
Today they have handed the Yoruba nation a sickly, feeble, infirm, frail, and an enfeebled man who if he wins may spend more time in a London hospital than Buhari did and who may or may not serve out his first four years in office let alone run for a second term. My earlier reference to Tinubu being handed a hot potato has to do with his choice for a running mate. As a Presidential candidate of the Moslem faith from the South West, he is expected as precedence requires to choose someone from the north presumably a Christian. Here comes the dilemma- will he go with a Moslem-Moslem ticket or pick a northern Christian which will not be universally accepted in the north and if he does pick another Moslem, how will that choice be received by southern Christians?
For the plan of the cabal to work as planned they will need him to pick a northern Moslem running mate hence should Tinubu be unable to complete his term, the Presidency will not be handed over to another Christian like Jonathan. The cabal as it seems has succeeded by the choice of Tinubu and Atiku, two Moslem presidential candidates have their eggs in two baskets, head-tail they win. In saying this we must strive to leave room for other outcomes as it is only God that gives power.
All the foregoing notwithstanding, I am like many Nigerians who have been flabbergasted by the North’s obsession with power at the center. It remains the one principle element that has guided or informed their position on many issues of national importance such as the call for restructuring not to mention the need for resource control, especially oil. During the 7 plus years of Buhari’s presidency, the northern oil oligarchs have been busy exercising what can be best described as predatory capitalism. The view that the Presidency is their birthright is one that has gained considerable ascendancy or has become mainstream in the North even amongst the uneducated poor despite being disadvantaged and pauperized to the point of abject destitution.
The reality is that the northern political elite does their utmost to get their electorate bursting with political impulses while offering them nothing irrespective of how many years they’ve had one of their own at the helm of affairs. They’ve over the years been able to build their campaigns around an implicit hypothesis on how to appeal to the religious and ethnic sentiments of the northern poor.
The cabal has no comprehension of the public good except how to use power for the benefit of a select few. With the completion of the various party primaries and the attendant obnoxious display of the corrupting influence of money, any expected transformational political change appears to have been an illusion. I’ve learned over the years that as a nation we have a deep capacity for change but a shallow desire for it.
But I worry about our young people in all this, the teeming millions of youths all over the country. It is their faith in our democracy that is most vulnerable to damage. They are the ones who mostly believed change was not only possible but imminent only to have our old-time politicians revert to their old tricks. During the primaries, the “great bribery” was underway and on display.
It was not so much the bundles of Dollar or Naira bills that greased the palms of party delegates but the impunity of it all. The 2023 elections will be a test for this country’s youths to save their country and its democracy. Peter Obi’s candidacy may yet offer them a way to get their country back. We live to see.
- Nnanna Ijomah is a New York-based political science lecturer. Nna2ijomah@aol.com
