''In the military, there is a strategy called PRS or Problem Reaction Solution. This strategy works this way. Supposing you want something from any ...population of people and you do not get it, what you do is create a problem of monumental proportion which only you can solve because only you created it. Then you wait until this problem affects the whole populace and they get so disturbed that they are crying out for anybody with a solution. Then when the populace gets to this stage, you offer up your solution which is very easy for you because you caused the problem in the first place. And because you offered up the solution, you immediately become popular with the populace for 'solving' a problem so monumental that it affected the survival of the populace.
This PRS scenario is currently playing itself out in Nigeria. What do I mean? In mid 2010, faced with the possibility of power staying with Goodluck Jonathan who divinely emerged as president of Nigeria after the death on May 5, 2010 of his predecessor, Umaru Yar'adua, a group of principalities who had for the most part of their lived pretended to be nationalist came out in their true tribal and regional colours to form a group called Northern Elders Political Leaders Forum with the sole aim of prosecuting an agenda to ensure that political power at the federal level did not shift to the south and that a northerner emerges as not only the People's Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, but ultimately the next president.
To this end the began meeting all over the North with Northern irredentists who shared their pilosophy of a powerful North being at the control of Nigeria.
Sometime in October 2010, a paramount member of this Northern Elders Political Leaders Forum, one Alhaji Lawal Kaita, a former governor of Kaduna state and a close ally of former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, stated that the North would make Nigeria ungovernable for President Jonathan if he emerged victorious at the polls.
In fact, his exacts words were as follows "He said: “It is becoming apparent that the recent replacement of Service Chiefs is part of President Jonathan’s plan to use state apparatus to scale the 2011 presidential hurdle.
“Anything short of a Northern President is tantamount to stealing our Presidency. Jonathan has to go and he will go. Even if he uses the incumbency power to get his nomination on the platform of the PDP, he would be frustrated out.”
Kaita, founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and close ally of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, had at that time warned that the North should not be blamed for the calamity that will befall the country, if Jonathan emerges President next year.
"The North is determined, if that happens, to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan or any other Southerner who finds his way to the seat of power on the platform of the PDP against the principle of the party’s zoning policy.
“Feelers from the South-South clearly show that the North is not the only region that is outraged over the situation. The South-East is there grumbling and the South-South, his (Jonathan) geo-political zone, he is not sure of their support.”
Reacting to the general thinking that the minority and Christians in the North are backing Jonathan, Kaita said it was a wrong assumption.
He said: “What you may call Northern Christians are concentrated more in Benue State where they may constitute about 90 per cent. In Plateau State, if you study that carefully, the Christian/Muslim population is 60 per cent for Christians, 40 per cent Muslims, so Plateau State is not an entirely a Christian State. The only state in the North that is substantially a Christian community is Benue State.”
Now, if Nigerians had thought that Kaita was joking, his own principal, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, had come out openly on the 14th of December 2010 to say " Let me again send another message to the leadership of our great country, especially the political leadership that those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.”
Present when Atiku made this threat of violent change in Abuja were the following people; General Ibrahim Babangida, General Mohammed Aliyu Gusua, Atiku Abubakar, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu; Lawal Kaita; AVM Hamza Abdullahi; Alhaji Isa Ozi Salami, Professor A.T. Abubakar; Lawal Batagarawa; Saleh Hassan and Haruna Adamu.
Now amongst those listed above are some of the same people who met this past weekend in Abuja to deliberate on the current spate of insecurity in the nation. After threatening that this nation would not know peace if a Northerner does not emerge as president in 2011, this same set of people who threatened violent change are now meeting to find a solution to the insecurity they had told us was coming.
Now even the attendance of the meeting itself was a major cause for concern because though it was billed as a Northern meeting, it was heavily attended by only muslim Northerners with Senator Wash Pam being the only non Muslim who attended.
The meeting held at the Transcorp Hilton hotel on Saturday the 10th of March from around 11 am to 1 pm and had in attendance the following persons; former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Alhambra. Maitama Sule, Alhaji Sani Zango Daura, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Justice Mamman Nasir and Professor Ango Abdullahi.
It will be recalled that the caucusing of the North along religious lines has caused prominent Northerners to ask if being a Northerner means being a Muslim.
Catholic Bishop of Sokoto diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah had once asked the question if he term North applied to a region or a religion!
The Northern leaders who met on Saturday had two items on their agenda, politics and insecurity, and amongst other things raised concerns about the resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta and what they described as the conspiracy of ‘silence’ by security agencies.
It is however worthy of note that though they complained of a conspiracy of "silence" from the security agencies, most of them have been silent about the activities of Boko Haram which is the major source of insecurity in Nigeria.
Perhaps as Nigerians consider the information above, they may want to take into consideration the words spoken by the late Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, who said as follows ;
"The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the north as willing tools and the south as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future." Parrot Newspaper October 12, 1960. It is now certain that the Boko Haram issue is not by accident''.
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