Sanusi: A Boko Haram Misadventure
By Ken Tadaferua   Newsdiaryonline Mon Jan 30,2012

 
CBN Gov:Lamido

Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the CBN Governor, has offered what I consider an academic but controversial and definitely wrong perpective on the possible motive of the blood thirsty Boko Haram, a faceless group of murderous insurgents whose massive bombing and gun-fire power have laid to waste hundreds of innocent and defenceless lives in northern Nigeria.

Sanusi according to Thisday Newspapers, told the Financial Times of London that attempts to redress historic grievances in Nigeria's oil rich south may inadvertently have created the Islamic insurgency spreading from the impoverished north-east region of the country. His postulations were summed up thus: "A revenue sharing formula that gave 13 percent derivation to the oil-producing states was introduced after the military relinquished power in 1999 among a series of measures aimed at redressing historic grievances among those living closest to the oil and quelling a conflict that was jeopardising output.... There is clearly a direct link between the very uneven nature of distribution of resources and the rising level of violence."

Sanusi used compelling financial data to try substantiate his view point, noting that Rivers State, the leading oil producing state from the south received N1,053 billion between 1999 and 2008 in federal allocations whereas the north eastern states of Yobe and Borno, where the Boko Haram sect was created, received N175bn and N213bn respectively. In crunching these figures on a per capita basis, he sought to reveal an even wider gulf of contrasts.

His analysis indicates that in 2008 the 18.97m people who lived in the six states in the north-east received on average N1,156 per person, while Rivers state alone was allocated N3,965 per capita, and on average the oil producing South- South region received on average N3,332 per capita. The CBN Governor then stresses that the "imbalance is compounded when the cost of an amnesty programme for militants in the delta is included together with an additional 1 per cent for a special development body for the Niger Delta. To boot, the theft of oil by profiteers in the region diverts tens of millions more weekly from federal coffers."

With his statistics, Sanusi's arguments seem unassailable. But Sanusi is wrong. And for three reasons.

First. For years since Boko Haram's bloody intrusion into our collective psyche, the messages from the group has never been related to poverty nor federal allocation. Rather it has consistently harped on three very clear motives: One, to avenge the extra-judicial killing of  its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, by the police in 1979. Two, to stop Western education which it considers evil and which its name stands for. Three, to Islamize Nigeria. The Sanusi imposition is thus an uninvited and unsubstantiated fourth motive, which the insurgents had never sought to state in any form or manner. This is unlike the militants of the south south region whose motive, clearly stated by known leaders, was to war against the absolutely horrendous emasculation of the region that laid the proverbial egg for the nation.

Second. Poverty is the common denominator of the peoples of Nigeria, be it in the north, west, south or east of the country. It is not caused by resource allocation but the inordinate greed of the elite and rulership class. Nigeria is facing a humongous class war, not a resource allocation battle. How well can the elite from the north claim to have lifted their poor from grinding poverty, homelessness and hopelessness with allocations they received over the past decades.

If the same question is asked of their elite counterparts down south, the answer will dreadfully be the same: the ruthless pulverization of the masses by the thieving elite class. Go to Rivers State or Delta State and see slums, deep unemployment and  grinding poverty. Where is most of the money from allocations going to if not into the private pockets of the elites, fake contractors and politicians just as it is up north. It is therefore doubtful that Boko Haram is seriously concerned about the disparity in federal allocations except of course it is an elitist group merely posturing as defender of the impoverished in the north.

Third. The north east region does not receive the lowest federal allocation. Indeed the north east and north west receive more compared to the south east. Some of the states with the lowest allocations are Ebonyi, Ekiti, Kwara ,and Cross River State which borders a state with one of the highest allocations yet it is perhaps the most peaceful state in Nigeria. It is yet to raise crusaders that will slash throats and wreak mayhem. Most folks in Nigeria ignore government and go about their private businesses except when their meager lives are directly affected by government policies as in the recent petrol price hike crises. Nigerians know that federal allocations are, in the main, shared under trees or in hotels by public officials at all levels of governance from federal, state  to local councils. Mr. Sanusi is therefore baying at the wrong moon. 

He is not only wrong about the motives of Boko Haram, Sanusi's statistics is clearly jaundiced. He has conveniently neglected statistics that shows the disparity between the economic capacity of each of the nation's economic entities and what they actually earn. If Rivers State were an independent state with its huge oil resources, can it be truly said that it is optimizing earnings with a paltry N1,053 billion in revenues in a nine year period of 1999 and 2008? What is the total revenue it contributed to the federal pot compared with what Borno state contributed during the same period?

Sanusi may earn applause for his views in a poorly structured country like Nigeria where a unitary system of government masquerades as a federation, one in which all mineral resources is owned by the federal government, who like the proverbial godfather takes all and shares as he deems fit. The godfather resorts to "settling" crises and disquiet in his domain with crumbs from his table of largesse. A system where resources are expected to be shared equally and not equitably, a system where internally generated revenues and vision are neglected for monthly handouts from the federal government. A system where people can point to federal allocations as reason for poor governance. The militants of the Niger delta were "settled" and perhaps by Sanusi's arguments it's time to settle Boko Haram. That position has been bandied for a while now. After Boko Haram, who next? 

At any rate, this type of analysis is merely a distraction from the fact of the matter: that the Nigerian state is being badly managed and milked dry by a conniving and greedy elite who prance and posture on the stage of leadership with nothing to offer except exploiting religional, tribal and regional frictions to selfishly concretize their feudal overlordship and gobble up unearned rents. Since the military introduced a unitary system of government by which it seized our lands, our resources and our lives, vicious wolves garbed in the sheep skin of political leadership have held the nation by the jugular. Post the first republic era, our rulers have fixated on oil revenues, the symptom of escapism from reality and mental block to visionary thinking

If I may ask, how much federal allocations did the Sardauna get to establish the Bompai industrial estates of Kano that employed thousands? Or Awolowo of the Ikeja industrial estates or Azikiwe of the Aba industrial estates? Where are the groundnuts pyramids or the cocoa and timber boom businesses or the golden age of agriculture? Today we are paralyzed by a culture of political patronage and unearned rent mentality exacerbated by easy, free money from oil allocations. It is a crying shame.

Make no mistake about it, until the Nigerian masses refuse to be misled by religious and ethnic divisions so easily championed by our so called leaders, so long will Nigerians continue to live in hate, bloodletting and poverty. Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is a scion of the Sokoto Caliphate, a man whose ascendancy to the heights of the Nigerian banking industry, smack in the middle of the Islamic banking brouhaha, was propelled by Alhaji Umaru Mutallab CON, former chairman of First Bank and father of Umar Abdul Mutallab, the underwear bomber. Perhaps Sanusi knows a lot more than the statistics which the Central Bank affords him. He possibly knows the internal workings of the Boko Haram. Maybe if we listen to him with more attention and care, the terrors of Boko Haram may well become history.

Mr Tadaferua is a Lagos based public commentator