S/Kaduna Elders: Buhari, el-Rufai Abandoned Southern Kaduna For 8 Years – Akau

File pix: Buhari | Dare Akau | Nadir el-Rufai

Interview By: BABA NEGEDU

 

“Look at the whole of Southern Kaduna, we don’t have a referral hospital. There are about four or five referral hospitals in Kaduna town alone. The next one is in Zaria, for us here in Southern Kaduna. If you are sick and cannot be taken care of by the hospitals here, you have to travel to Jos, Kaduna, Zaria or Abuja which makes health care for us three times more expensive to us than it is to other Nigerians.

We have asked for the establishment of a Medical Center here, it is not a religious matter. As Nigerians we are legitimately asking for those things. Even our schools, we produce how many students here, who write WAEC and JAMB, they don’t have higher institutions to go to. We are asking for a university here, Buhari has been donating universities to people. Don’t we deserve these things too?”

Chief Ishaya Dary Akau, is the Chairman of the Southern Kaduna Leadership Council (SKLC), the new Umbrella organization of all Southern Kaduna people. He was a one-time Chairman of the National Assembly Service Commission, and a few years ago the Chairman of SURE-P under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. In this interview with BABA NEGEDU in his country home in Kafanchan the headquarters of Southern Kaduna, Akau disclosed that the area has been the most peaceful place in Nigeria until some people came up with an agenda to take away the land from his people, the main reason behind the raging crisis and killings.

“For hundreds of years we have lived in peace: we have accommodated people who have lived with us in peace, whether Hausa, Igbo, Fulani, Yoruba, we have lived very peaceful with them. This place has been one of the most peaceful places on earth, until when someone developed an agenda to take away our land from us.”

Chief Dare Akau

What necessitated the establishment of the Southern Kaduna Leadership Council, because the main organisation known in Southern Kaduna is SOKAPU….

Let me say that SOKAPU is still there, the Leadership Council is made of leaders. We have a charter of engagement and the charter has SOKAPU, Southern Kaduna Consultative Forum, there is the Southern Kaduna Christian Leaders Forum. We have the Forum of Southern Kaduna Professors; Southern Kaduna Autonomous Community Development Associations, Southern Kaduna Military and Para Military Retired Association and the Southern Kaduna Lawyers Forum.

What we ran away from is too many voices speaking for the Southern Kaduna people, we want some coordination and like we have here in our charter, the leadership council by this charter seeks to present the holistic concerns of our people to guide our socio political, spiritual and traditional leaders in their engagement with persons, institutions towards the development of Southern Kaduna in particular and Kaduna State in general.

Our mission statement is fostering independence and cooperation towards achieving the growth and development of Southern Kaduna. Our vision is to achieve a virile, strong and self-sufficient, Southern Kaduna. We brought all the leadership of the groups representing Southern Kaduna under one umbrella, so that when the situation demands we can speak with one voice.

As it stands now the leadership council is the umbrella body of Southern Kaduna people?

Yes, it is an umbrella body, but it does not replace the others. Each of the organisations is still there and they are performing the functions for which they were put together in the first place. But when there is the need for us to sit together and speak with one voice, we will all come under the aegis of the Southern Kaduna Leadership Council.

You issued a statement recently where you said so many things about the immediate past administration in the state.

*What was the level of engagement towards solving some of these issues that you raised while the administration was in power?*

Let us start by saying someone came up with a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the first place. What did that tell you? It is telling us that those of us that are not Muslims did not belong, that is what that type of statement says and he went further to say that he has successfully excluded us from government that there were things that used to be done with us, but they no longer do.

By that statement and his activities he has proved that we were not carried along in his government. On the engagement yes, right from inception when the Nasir El-Rufai administration came in, our people, through various approaches sought to see him to engage with him as has been happening with previous governments, so that we can work together towards the success of the state, but it appeared he had his own agenda, and was not ready to listen to voices from here.

He said he was not going to speak to SOKAPU, he did not recognise SOKAPU and SOKAPU has been our voice for almost 40 years. We all subscribe to SOKAPU, supported SOKAPU. He came and said he would not speak with SOKAPU, neither would he grant them audience. That is one.

In his second term, he came out boldly to say that he was floating a Muslim-Muslim ticket and went to tell the world with some bogus statistics that our population was not up to 30 percent of the state and went ahead to enact policies, laws that were against our interest.

The way he treated our traditional institutions, demoted some, removed some and even went ahead to change the names of some of our chiefdoms, our God-given names. In the areas of development we were not carried along, even in the areas of appointment in government offices, what we are getting now was far short of what we got with previous administrations. Even in the areas of physical development we were hardly carried along.

Apart from SOKAPU which he refused to engage with, were there any other avenue of engagement through which he reached your people?

I am not aware whether he was speaking with any other group in Southern Kaduna, but perhaps members of our community who are in his party, but I don’t know how they were operating because I am not a member of their party. But like I said several groups made attempts to engage with him, but he was not available.

That is the truth. I was a member of the group that went there in November 2016, at the height of the crisis here, seeking to establish a platform where we could discuss with government, with the aim of seeing how we could overcome what had envelope this place. That was when the killings were going on all over our place.

Nobody said anything and we formed a group here under the leadership of Apostle Emmanuel Kure; we sought audience with the governor. What we wanted was to establish a platform for which we could seek to find solutions to our problems. The effort ended up a nullity because after we met with him the first time, we were never able to meet with him again.

The attacks in Southern Kaduna, you are on ground here, what do you think government should have done that they did not do to solve the problem?

The number one issue in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is why do we have a government. It is to secure whoever is in this country, that is the number one responsibility of government.

If we subscribe to Nigeria as a country, we are doing so with the hope that Nigeria will protect us; secure us and make this country livable for all of us. So the issue of who can do what, who is responsible rests with the government.

The government is to lead; it is the government that has the agencies that has the wherewithal to do anything, as individuals, groups what can we really do? We have neither a police force nor an army; we waited on government to do the right thing. So government is responsible for securing the peace and tranquility of this nation including Southern Kaduna.

What is your take on the proscription of the Atyap Development Association by Nasir El-Rufai?

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria allows us to associate, form associations as long as we operate within the law. I don’t know which law he used in proscribing them.

You also know that he had proscribed the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, but the Constitution allows freedom of worship, association, but somebody comes because he is in government and said ‘no you cannot do that.’

Can he abolish the Atyap peo ple? So abolishing the Atyap Association means that if he had his way, he might abolish the people, maybe he could do that. That action was meaningless; I don’t know where he was coming from. Has he engaged them to the point that it was impossible to talk to them? They were available for discussion.

Apart from government responsibility, the attacks in Southern Kaduna have been on ground for a long time now, what is responsible and how can it be stopped?

God created the people of Southern Kaduna and place us here. We have been here from time immemorial, this is our land, our heritage, but some people want to displace us from here. That is the issue. We have never left our homes to attack anybody elsewhere; we have never invaded any community outside Southern Kaduna.

For hundreds of years we have lived in peace: we have accommodated people who have lived with us in peace, whether Hausa, Igbo, Fulani, Yoruba, we have lived very peaceful with them. This place has been one of the most peaceful places on earth, until when someone developed an agenda to take away our land from us.

That is the nitty-gritty of it. We are the subject of an invasion, a well-planned invasion. I know you have never heard that we have left our land to go and attack someone, somewhere. We are always the subject of attacks, with people imported from outside here to come and attack us using sophisticated weapons.

They have attacked communities that know nothing about what is going on. In 2019, just like a kilometre from my house here, 11 people were killed. They have been attacking even few kilometers from here. They don’t allow our people to farm. Even when you have the courage to farm they will bring their cattle to graze through it.

Can I farm and then destroy my own farm? If someone comes and deliberately destroyed your crop, these are acts of provocations. It has never been established that we have gone out of our community to attack anyone. We have always been at the receiving end for all these years.

What is the solution going forward?

We were told; Governor Nasir El-Rufai himself said that Fulani from outside the country were responsible for some of these attacks. There have been so many narratives available, that some people imported these persons to help them do one thing or another.

They came to prevent Goodluck Jonathan from continuing as President, that even if Jonathan had won they were going to make this country ungovernable. So, somebody brought them and if that person is still alive he should be asked to withdraw them and government has the resources and the capacity to know who is responsible for these things and bring such people to order.

It is not for us. The other alternative is self-help which is not allowed in law. Even if we want to adopt self-help we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have access to the means to defend ourselves.

We are a brave people, we can defend ourselves given the opportunity, but in the circumstances of modern governance which allow only government to wield the weapons of coercion we are just sitting docks and when these people choose they descend on us kill as many people as they want and they go away. But the issue is that government has the responsibility to stop these people.

In spite of what you said, successive governments have not been able to stop this crisis, what will you tell the new administrations in Abuja and Kaduna on the way forward?

President Bola Tinubu is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces of Nigeria, commands the Police, Customs, Immigration, DSS, there is no secret that the DSS did not know or the police did not know. Even from colonial times, the Nigeria Police Department had been known to be very efficient in knowing about what is going on.

So let nobody deceive me, government has what it takes; government knows where this thing is coming from. We were told and I hope it is true that the late Sani Abacha said any riot that goes before 24 hours government must have a hand in it. If he actually said so, it is something we need to probe. But government has the apparatus; we don’t need tanks to remove these people, if it is done properly.

Sometimes these people come through a border, people see them at times. When they are moving towards here, at times we hear that they are moving towards Southern Kaduna and believe me before you know they are here.

If ordinary Nigerians can see and say these things; are you telling me that the security operatives cannot do that? It is not about who is there, but operating within the oath of office you have taken, if the President and the Army and all others have taken the oath to defend the integrity of Nigeria to defend us no matter who we are. Then I think we deserve something better. But I think the government knows what to do.

One of your own was recently appointed as one of the Chief of Defence Staff.

Will that have any effect on what is happening in Southern Kaduna?

We expect that the coming of a new government which might have a different perspective on security, protecting the Nigerian land and securing its people, within the context of that, I would say yes he could do something. He is not the Commander-in- Chief, the Minister of Defense; he is working within a group, but we believe that with people like him because he is a soldier who has proven to be a reliable officer, he has worked hard.

What he has done when he was in the North-East fighting Boko Haram, shows that he is an officer who, if given a job and allowed to do it, one thing is to be given a job and another is to be allowed to do it. We believe that if he and others are allowed to do their job, I don’t think these things are beyond them. We can see better days.

But we are pleased, because even this gesture by President Bola Tinubu is a very good step for us because for once in eight years we have been recognized. There was no time we were not a Minister in Abuja, but for eight years, we have not produced a Minister, Ambassador, Permanent Secretary in Abuja.

We have not been Chairman of any federal body, not that we don’t have brilliant sons and daughters. So now that President Tinubu recognizes that we are here, we have been excluded from everything, but for once in the last eight years he said you can come and do this. We don’t know what informed his decision, but whatever informed it we are grateful and we believed that if our son is allowed to do his job this insecurity will be dealt with all over the country not just southern Kaduna.

This is happening in Birnin-Gwari, Zamfara, Katsina, Benue, Plateau and here too. We are hoping and praying that a new strategy will be put in place to contain this thing.

You said you have been living in peace with everyone in your community here before now, but there is this allegation by Atyap leaders that some of the attackers reside with their peo- ple in the area before launching attacks. Have there been any discussions to stop that…?

During our annual prayer summit, Apostle Kure who is the Chairman of the Southern Kaduna Christian Leadership Association, said they have been discussing with all the Muslim leaders in Southern Kaduna for a peaceful coexistence. We have no problem living with them. Some of us are even Muslims and he made a charge to all of us.

If this land belongs to all of us, if they live here, it is not incumbent on them to protect the land. So we are calling on everybody that lives here, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, because if there is no peace, nobody will succeed in whatever he /she is doing. So for us peace here is non negotiable. We are asking for peace for everybody because if there is no peace, nobody will fulfill his destiny.

After all what brought the people here, what brought the development here is the peo- ple that we have accepted and come to leave with us. There are Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Igala and others. If you go round this vicinity you will be surprised the people that reside here, we have all lived in peace until this so- called religious differences were brought about. We had religious crisis along the line, the first one was in 1987.

Then in 1992 when hell broke loose in Kaduna and people were killed all over. Whenever there were such crisis and people hear that our people have been attacked at times some people will attempt reprisals, other than that frankly we have lived in peace here and we still seek to live in peace. That is why we have never gone to attack any- one.

Has anybody around here moved to go and attack a Fulani settlement? We don’t. Our people are peace loving and we will do anything to safeguard the peace. Most of us here are farmers and right now, there is a food crisis. What used to be available easily here is no longer available, ordinary foodstuff, because the harvest last year was not good and most of the farms here were devastated.

So the people did not get the harvest they expected. Really it is not for government or any- body to tell us about peace, we preach peace, because it is our life, without peace we shall not be comfortable and we wish to live peacefully with them.

Since the coming of the new administration, have they been any engagement with your people, especially since you advised that they should not follow the footsteps of the last administration?

The new government in Kaduna State has not made any statement. We have not seen any substantial difference from what was going on. He is yet perhaps, to deliver on his promises and for us nothing has changed. We are still waiting.

Even in those days when we were together with Katsina State, at least we produced the Speaker, but the Governor, Deputy Governor, Speaker of the House, Chief Judge, all these people are from one side of the state is that the inclusivity?

Until we see substantial changes, until we here a policy statement saying this or that. The Governor has said he wants to carry everyone along, but he is just barely getting started, so let us wait and see. He has not reached out to any one.

So we are waiting; we are ready to engage with anyone for the development of the state. We are interested in a harmonious relationship amongst us; we want to restore Kaduna State to the type of relationship that we used to have.

We are hoping that this government will treat us like citizens of the Federal government of Nigeria, as human beings, recognise our rights, in anything that government does. It should reflect the character of the territory that it governs, that is the Federal Character principle.

It does not only talk about appointment, it also talks about the sharing of projects, even development. Every part of the country should feel the impact of development. For a long time the rural areas have been neglected, let something be done.

Even though the top echelon of the administration in Kaduna is occupied by Muslims.

There are still some of your people in government?
Is there any meeting point between your council and those in government?

It will interest you to know that when we started the Southern Kaduna leadership Council, the first people we contacted were all the political parties. We launched this document and presented it to all the political parties and the Chairman of APC and his Secretary who represented the present governor there and we told them that we are neither tribalists nor religious bigots.

We are talking about what affects us as a people and we called on every one of our citizens, wherever you are to use our paper as the guide. Even the governor himself, this was presented to him. He appeared before a committee we put together that talked to all the aspirants. We did not choose any candidate. Even at the presidential level we presented this to Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.

The only person we did not present it to was the APC candidate then, now President Tinubu because he did not come here. But we expected that his party Chairman would make it available to him. Even the governor now, we told him that we shall engage on the basis of this document. We don’t mind the party.

We are only interested in the development of Southern Kaduna, what can you bring peace to Southern Kaduna. We want peace, development, self-reliance; we want to be on our own. We want our local government areas to be free; we want local government autonomy. We are very much interested in development.

Look at the whole of Southern Kaduna, we don’t have a referral hospital. There are about four or five referral hospitals in Kaduna town alone. The next one is in Zaria, for us here in Southern Kaduna. If you are sick and cannot be taken care of by the hospitals here, you have to travel to Jos, Kaduna, Zaria or Abuja which makes health care for us three times more expensive to us than it is to other Nigerians.

We have asked for the establishment of a medical center here, it is not a religious matter. As Nigerians we are legitimately asking for those things. Even our schools, we produce how many students here, who write WAEC and JAMB, they don’t have higher institutions to go to. We are asking for a university here, Buhari has been donating universities to people. Don’t we deserve these things too?

Source: NewTelegraph