Prof. Uzodinma Nwala, President of Alaigbo Development Foundation (a body of the Igbo intelligentsia) says the Fulani tribe in Nigeria are running the country as a personal estate bequeathed to them by their father (Usman dan Fodio).
“And Nigeria has truly become the estate of the children of Usmanu dan Fodio. Nigeria has fully and truly become colonised. But can we blame the children of Usman dan Fodio alone? I doubt if we can. When in 2016, (Asiwaju) Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared that zoning and rotation were the affair of the PDP and had nothing to do with the All Progressives Congress, I knew we were in for a very cold winter,” he told Punch in an interview.
Speaking further he said, “When people say that basic principles that should keep a multi-national state together no longer matter and should no longer be operational, then it means that you have dissolved the federation. Thus, those that have seized the federation are telling us how they want to run the state.
“That is what Governor el-Rufai is telling us. What else do you want me to say? The Fulani have permanently taken over power. Fulani settlements have been established all over the place. (There are plans to have) RUGA, cattle grazing colonies and (there are) moves to take over all waterways, etc. They have taken over the executive, legislature, judiciary, security agencies and armed forces, bureaucracy, economy, foreign affairs, etc. El-Rufai is daring you to do your worst.”
According to Nwala, although the northern ‘political hawks’ used Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar to “torpedo the patriotic decisions of the 1994-95 Constitutional Conference, when we formed the Peoples Democratic Party, many of us who were leaders of the G-34 and who had worked hard to see if there could be a genuine post-military political dispensation, were still determined to uphold those key elements we had agreed on, and in fact, voted for”.
One of such decisions, he disclosed, was the implementation of the principle of rotation, zoning and Federal Character.
He, however, noted: “You can see what is happening today; the principle of quota is gone, the principle of rotation is gone, the principle of zoning is gone and the principle of Federal Character has been thrown into the dustbin. Thus, all the basic democratic ingredients that could hold the polity together have been completely eroded.”
