Peace Restored Investment Destination Once Again – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

 “No peace can last or ought to last which does not recognise and accept the principle that governments derive all their powers from the consent of the governed. – US President Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ p 185).

Kaduna State, until a few months ago, was grouped with Katsi­na, Niger, Benue and Zamfara as the most dangerous states in Nigeria, but something happened which has escaped the notice of most observers of the problems posed by bandits and kidnappers. Kaduna State has become relatively peaceful. From 2016 till the change of government in 2023, there was hardly a week when Kaduna was not in the news for the wrong reasons – mass murders, whole­sale abduction of people, communities being partially or totally destroyed. In addition to the ethnic cleansing and farmers-herdsmen clashes which were responsible for the mayhem elsewhere in the North, leadership had a signif­icant role to play in the losses of lives and properties in Kaduna. And, today, leadership is largely responsible for the restoration of peace in the state. The healing process has begun. The state, the Northern region and Nigeria will all benefit from the change.

I lived and worked in the state during my twelve years in the North and I had a farm along the Kaduna Birnin Gwari express road about nineteen kilometres from the airport. Even the backyard of my house on Zong Road, in the city, was a mini-farm. Almost the size of ten city plots and situated on the water mains, the place enjoyed water supply 24/7. That was all I needed to start doing business with the Kaduna State Agri­cultural Supply Company. I bought to­mato, maize, pepper, cucumber, lettuce, carrot seeds and also planted yams – in addition to raising chicken and some goats. My family spent very little buying food. That was in the old Kaduna.

OLD KADUNA – THE MOST CONGENIAL CITY IN NIGERIA

Ask anybody who ever lived in Kaduna until 2015 and who had lived elsewhere, especially before 2000, and most of them would agree that Kaduna was the most truly Nigerian capital in Nigeria apart from Lagos. I say this as a Lagos state indigene, brought up in the former Federal Capital. Like most La­gosians, I was reluctant to leave my city until my Sales/Marketing jobs forced me to go round the country. My first tour of the North took me to Kaduna in 1975; from where my staff and I were to travel to Jos, Bauchi, Gombe, Numan, Yola/Jimeta, Mubi, Bama, Maidugur, Damaturu, Potiskum, and Kano from where I flew back to Lagos. By then I had covered most of the Southern States. The most amazing thing was the size of the region and how Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only Premier, could have kept such a vast area united despite also having the largest ethnic and religious entities under his region. I later learnt the secret, which sadly has been lost even in most of our states today.

Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, was in my view the most egali­tarian leader whoever ruled at regional and Federal levels since 1914. Although a Fulani Muslim, his closest official was late Chief Sunday Awoniyi, an Okun/Yoruba man and a Christian from Mopa in now Kogi State, who was his Private Secretary (in today’s government. that would have been the Chief of Staff). All the offices of the Northern regional gov­ernment were evenly allocated across all the ethnic groups in a manner that enhanced consensus and solidarity.

Granted, as in all political and demo­cratic settings, there were dissidents in the Middle Belt areas, but, by and large, Ahmadu Bello was the fairest ruler Ni­geria ever had.

Bello demonstrated it in two ways. He was absolutely incorruptible, and was not a power grabber. Because my last working place was Sokoto, in what was then a modern rice mill, I was able to establish one fact. A week after re­suming, I asked one of my senior staff, born in Sokoto, to take me to Sardauna’s house. We got in the car, drove for a few minutes and stopped in front of a mod­est compound.

“This is his house,” he said. “It can’t be,” I said. It was his house.

Before that, the Sardauna was the only one of the three premiers, includ­ing Awolowo and Azikiwe, who could have chosen to be Prime Minister, but who passed the baton of national leadership to somebody else – Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The only other person who passed the baton to someone else was General Theophillus Danjuma, after Dimka’s coup, when Obasanjo went into hiding.

In all these episodes, Kaduna has always played a central role. Every person enrolled in the armed forces, in every service, must pass through Ka­duna at least two or three times during their careers on account of the training institutions in the state. It was indeed the greatest melting pot in the North; the place where everybody, not just the over 30 indigenous ethnic groups, felt at home.

SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENED FROM 2015 TO 2023.

“A week is a long time in politics.” – UK Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, 1916-1995.

I was a freshman in university when the British Prime Minister made that pronouncement which in our world to­day has turned out to be very profound.

When Nigerian voters, including the people of Kaduna State, succumbed to the CHANGE slogan of the All Pro­gressives Congress, APC, they were blissfully ignorant of the fact that not all changes are for the better. The gov­ernment in power in those eight years deliberately set aside the delicate bal­ancing political system which had kept the peace in the state. One ethnic group was elevated above the rest; one religion was openly favoured; one of the two fac­tions of Islam was declared illegal and foreign herdsmen were compensated for their losses after clashes with farm­ers in which crops were also destroyed. In December 2021, I published an article titled, KADUNA: NIGERIA’S HELL ON EARTH, after over 70 people in a con­voy of commercial vehicles escorted by armed police were abducted and taken to a forest a few kilometres from the Armed Forces Training Institution at Jaji. Then passengers in an Abuja train were kidnapped in Kaduna State – which quickly moved to the top of the chart as Nigeria’s most dangerous state in which to live and work. The body counts mounted as war raged on sever­al fronts – ethnic, religion, community, indigenes versus foreign invaders. The Kaduna-Birmin Gwari-Tegina highway became a slaughter slab.

By May 2023, the people of the state knew what was the cause of their prob­lem.

Fortunately, the Nigerian constitu­tion had set a two-term limit on the ten­ure of governors. They could not wait for the change of leadership.

THEN CAME GOVERNOR SANI

“Leadership is the ability to define issues without aggravating problems.” – Warren Bennis, VBQ p125.

I was afraid when Senator Sani was imposed on the party as the flag-bearer for APC. Nothing good could possibly come out of that choice was my thought.

Those wanting to pick their succes­sors always select clones of themselves in many ways. What Kaduna needed most was peace, which was absent. The last person they wanted was another combatant. Events since May 29, 2023 have proved that a good leader who reads the mood of his people can bring about a dramatic change in the lives and fortunes of the people.

Governor Sani is restoring peace to Kaduna and, with that, he is making Kaduna State an investment destina­tion once again. Read part of the 2021 article below and you will appreciate the wonderful work the man has done.

KADUNA: NIGERIA’S HELL ON EARTH

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral [and security] crisis, maintain their neutrality. Dante, 1265-1321, VBQ, VBQ p 89.

“Bandits kidnap over 70 Kano-bound traders, others in Kaduna.” – News Re­port, December 23, 2021.

What made the headline more chill­ing was the information provided by an eyewitness, Malam Umani, who said that “the traders were travelling in a convoy of over 20 vehicles with police escort”. Obviously, the person who said there is safety in numbers has never heard of Kaduna 2021. Here, any num­ber is imperilled if enough bandits gath­er together. A week before, passengers on the ever-busy Kaduna-Zaria Road, along which is the Military Training College, Jaii, were abducted and taken into a forest – which could not be too far from Jaji. During the same week, trav­ellers on the Kaduna-Abuja expressway were again seized and herded into an­other forest – on a road which only those on suicide mission will drive on.

There was hardly any month, during my ten years living and working in the North, when I did not visit Kaduna. It was the most congenial and most cosmopolitan of all Northern states. Non-indigenes wanted to invest in real estate there – even when they didn’t live or work there. I lived and worked there, and, for a while, had landed property for further development. It was a relatively peaceful state.

Suddenly, the place changed. My friends, still living there, have horrible tales to tell about the hell Kaduna State became in just a matter of six and a half years.

When historians of the future write about the descent of Kaduna State to Armageddon, they must start from 2015.

Follow me on Facebook @ J Israel Biola.