MIDDLE BELT military officers prominently participated in the 29th July 1966 counter military coup, and played a decisive role in containing the Biafran secession, and the restoration of national unity. But to the consternation of many, the Middle Belt has been transformed from the bulwark for the defence of national and Northern unity to its weakest link.
Rather than the 4th Republic contextualising a rapprochement between the estranged Northern brothers, the Christian Middle Belt is regretfully poised for a showdown and irreversible disengagement from the Northern project.
The Christian Middle Belt didn’t forsake the Islamic North when its political and military leaders were assassinated on 31st January 1966; and was pained by the Unification Decree as other Nigerians. Ironically, those were the days of minority fears of domination and persecution, but yet the Middle Belt was accommodative, resilient, supportive and tolerant of the core North.
What is responsible for the ruptured relations? Could it be a clash of what the Germans call Weltanschauung (world view) between the dominant Hausa, Fulbe and Kanuri Muslim inhabitants of the core North on one hand, and the minority Christian Middle Belters on the other, setting them apart in politics, culture and faith? Or, is it dictated by the nature of the economic relations bequeathed by the retreating colonial order, retained and sustained by the national elite?
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This piece contextualises the strained relations within the dynamics of the neoliberal economic order that reared its ugly head in the late ’70s and the transformation of the national question into a transactional affair.
With a landmass that is one-third Nigeria’s size, 628 ethnic groups, 440 clans and 40 million inhabitants professing different faiths, the Middle Belt is an overarching geographical, perceptual and political complex, transfixed by additive and subtractive clauses, transforming it into the Achilles heels of the Nigerian national question.
The Christian Middle Belt identity affirmation, and pull-out from the North advocacy, was rooted in the colonial policy of Indirect Rule, that barred Christian missionaries from venturing into the Muslim areas to spread the gospel; the hostile reactions of European Christian evangelism to that, reinforced by the calls of influential British citizens to create a non-Muslim region from the North.
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And the incorporation of the autochthonous non-Muslim communities under the Islamic Emirate system, and the political dominance of the Sir Ahmadu Bello-led NPC underscored localised perceptions of religious persecution and domination, that fuelled violent agitations to throw off the yoke of Emirate tyranny and NPC’s stranglehold.
Put off by the Indirect Rule’s impact on Christian evangelism in the Islamic North, Dr Karl Kumm, a German missionary and founder of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in 1907 called for the creation of a Benue region out of the North, and 4 years later, Mr E. D. Mirel, the editor of the British African Mail, an influential London paper, would follow suit, rationalising the creation of a central region out of the North due to what he termed the incompatibility of Christianity and Islam.
But despite the cries that echoed in the Middle Belt and beyond, the growth of a Christian Middle Belt consciousness, and a corresponding political movement, the relations between the two erstwhile Northern brothers didn’t degenerate to a level where the Middle Belters abandoned their Muslim brethren in the 1st Republic.
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The Christian Middle Belt didn’t forsake the Islamic North when its political and military leaders were assassinated on 31st January 1966; and was pained by the Unification Decree as other Nigerians. Ironically, those were the days of minority fears of domination and persecution, but yet the Middle Belt was accommodative, resilient, supportive and tolerant of the core North.
And since the 4th Republic fully expresses the neoliberal creed, the elites weaponize the national question for tickets to the neoliberal ship, to partake in the ongoing neoliberal scramble of the nation and the crude accumulation of capital. The pull-out Middle Belt elites weaponize the national question to blame and negatively profile others as responsible for their plight rather than the subnational neoliberal atrocities being perpetrated by their leaders.
The frontal attack on the national question – the breakup of the 4 regions into 12 states and the creation of additional 24 states and 774 LGAs – liberated the Middle Belt from its ‘oppressors’. The Gbong Gwom is no longer answerable to the Emir of Bauchi; the Aku Uka of the Jukun Kingdom is no longer answerable to the Lamido in Yola; the Tor Tiv is no more accountable to an Islamist Hausa, Fulbe or Kanuri than he is to a Tiv Governor in Makurdi.
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A Solomon Daushep Lar could win a gubernatorial election under a predominantly Igbo party in Plateau State, not in NPN, the political progeny of the NPC. And neither Nasrul Islam, any other Islamic group, political leader, nor Emir could prevent any Christian missionary from spreading the gospel in Sokoto or Gusau; Zaria or Makarfi; Maiduguri or Bama among other Northern Islamic strongholds.
The frontal attack on the national question, ironically created a fertile context for another round of minority agitations, and pull-out struggles from majority tyranny. Successive states and LG creation exercises have produced new ethnic and religious majorities, the victims of yesteryears transformed into today’s oppressors and persecutors, underscoring the immense difficulty of fully coming to grips with the national question in a multi-ethnic and religious capitalist oriented polity.
To justify the ruptures, hypotheses project the inevitability of the disengagement of the Christian Middle Belt from the Northern project. Over a century ago, Mr E. D. Mirel highlighted the incompatibility of Christianity and Islam as justification for the creation of an exclusive Christian region out of the North.
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The hypotheses reject the historical perspective that Nigerian ethnic nationalities and cultural groups are being transformed due to the intermeshing of cultures and objective economic exigencies.
Are the two faiths incompatible? Islam that predated Christianity by centuries, didn’t prevent the non-Muslim Middle Belters from embracing the new faith. Middle Belt’s religious architecture belies Mirel’s incompatibility hypothesis; mixed religious families aren’t exceptional in the Middle Belt.
At this juncture, there is need to interrogate why successive national restructurings and the intermeshing of cultures and ethnicities and their transformations, haven’t mellowed down and bottled the Middle Belt pull-out-from-the-North genie.
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The killings in Yelwata, Benue State; Jol, Mangu and Bassa in Plateau State; Chanchangi and Takum in Taraba State among other Middle Belt communities are scary, unacceptable and condemnable; as were the killings of Muslim travellers in Mangu and Jos; as are the localised killings among minority ethnic groups over land boundaries, fishing ponds, etc; as the Terwase Akwazas who killed and maimed; as Lydia Joseph, a Christian Tiv caught attempting to set ablaze St John’s Cathedral Bauchi on fire, for profiled Islamic Jihadists to be blamed, fitting into the inevitability of the incompatibility and disengagement from the North hypothesis.
The Middle Belt, ancestral home to the late Sunday Awoniyi, Prof Ishaya Audu, Generals Yakubu Gowon, T. Y. Danjuma, Michael Audu, Barr. Solomon Dalung, Senators Iyorchia and David Mark, Comrade Ntim Kwungai, the de-ethnicised friend of the poor among others, has been highjacked by incorrigible ethnic and religious chauvinists masquerading as political emancipators, retarding the liberation of the oppressed classes from the neoliberal onslaught of the ruling classes.
One might ask what has neoliberalism that began to make its mark in the ’70s, consolidated itself in the ’80s and became fully expressed in the ’90s got to do with the projection of the Middle Belt Christian consciousness, identity and the perpetual struggles to disengage the Middle Belt from the Northern project?
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Besides colonial rule, there is no phase of capitalist development typified by brazen plunder than the neoliberal phase. Rationalised and anchored on the market, the neoliberal context is miles apart from the idealised capitalist market. Public enterprises worth billions are stupendously undervalued to be sold for a pittance. Unbottled to remedy market distortions, neoliberalism is economic inefficiency personified, some of the acquired public enterprises are left to rot.
Set to free nations from massive debts, neoliberalism drowns them into mega debt obligations. Neoliberal greed can’t be extinguished by the capitalist market. From the flora and fauna, water systems, cattle routes, vegetation covers, debts, vulnerable families and budgets, there is nothing that isn’t for plunder under the neoliberal economic order. The acquisitive neoliberal language is grab as much as possible from the common patrimony.
And since the 4th Republic fully expresses the neoliberal creed, the elites weaponize the national question for tickets to the neoliberal ship, to partake in the ongoing neoliberal scramble of the nation and the crude accumulation of capital. The pull-out Middle Belt elites weaponize the national question to blame and negatively profile others as responsible for their plight rather than the subnational neoliberal atrocities being perpetrated by their leaders.
The Middle Belt, ancestral home to the late Sunday Awoniyi, Prof Ishaya Audu, Generals Yakubu Gowon, T. Y. Danjuma, Michael Audu, Barr. Solomon Dalung, Senators Iyorchia and David Mark, Comrade Ntim Kwungai, the de-ethnicised friend of the poor among others, has been highjacked by incorrigible ethnic and religious chauvinists masquerading as political emancipators, retarding the liberation of the oppressed classes from the neoliberal onslaught of the ruling classes.
Jahun writes from Dutse, Jigawa State. He can be reached on 07039038088.
