By Tunde Akinlade
The landmark judgement from the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt on whom to be collecting Value Added Tax (VAT) between Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and River State has reset the mentality of the northerners within the context of the contraption called Nigeria.
The North has positioned itself as the mightier group in Nigeria, bullying other ethnic nationalities around the country.
Unfortunately, the presidency has tacitly approved the dastardly acts and brigandage brought into our contemporary political landscape.
The north through the Fulani hegemony brought terrorism and introduced territorial expansionism into our sociopolitical lexicon.
Under President Muhammadu Buhari, ethnic chauvinism reaches its crescendo.
No number of complaints around the country seemed catchy enough to attract the ears of the President. All kinds and types of national appointments and assignments are specially reserved for the preferred tribe, Fulani.
From the Military to the Public and Civil Service and Public Corporations, the Fulanis hold the ace.
The original landowners of the north have been subjugated and traumatized that they unwittingly under little pressure, yielded to the demands of the plunderers from the Sultanate.
The tenants of 1804 are now claiming the lands of the aborigines even to the shores of the Atlantic. An absurdity of unidimensional proportion.
From the Bokoharamites to the killers, herders, kidnappers, and the terrorists mildly referred to as bandits, the nation remained under perpetual siege.
From the swamp of the Delta through the forest of the west and to the savannah of the middle belt and mountainous rocks of the northeast, the story is the same, endless killings, raping, maiming and pillage formed the new norm.
In the darkest of the nights of anguish and the intermittent voices of critics formed the clusters of freedom fighters like Sunday Igboho and Mazi Nnadi Kanu of West and East respectively.
These gentlemen formed a cluster of reactionaries against the pervading misnomer social order.
In all this, the northern governors and their Moslem brothers couldn’t find their voices to castigate their erring brothers and adherents. The Fulanis are jubilating for conquering the entire nation, while our President is engaged in capital flight to Maradi in Niger Republic.
More than 80% of the income into the national treasury comes from the south, but the docile north takes the chunk of the largesse.
Today, Governors Wike and Sanwoolu of Rivers and Lagos have turned the economic tide against the nonviable 19 northern states. Without lifting a single finger in war against the North, the courtroom VAT battle is heating the north that Gombe Governor is now begging and pleading brotherliness which he never thought of when the forest of Ondo was invaded by the northern marauders.
When Igangan town was ravaged by his kinsmen, not even the Sultan was able to identify with the agrarian inhabitants of the rustic town.
Yewa communities were sacked by these Fulanis that the landowners of yesterday ended up in IDP camps today, within the country while many became sojourners in the neighbouring country of Benin Republic, governors of the north kept mute except Ortom of Benue State.
South need no gunpowder or AK47 to conquer the Fulanis. The intellectual battle has just begun.
We will meet at the Abuja Court of Appeal on September 16, 2021 where the intellectual battle will be rekindled.
Advocates of “release your land or be killed” are changing gear.
*Tunde Akinlade sent this piece from Ogbomoso