I was still going over, for the umpteenth time, last week, Dan Brown’s classic “Angels & Demons” when some persons who identified themselves as speaking for the North released a statement to the press, saying the region was opposed to the CBN’s relocation of some key departments to Lagos. Before then, the Federal Airports Authority (FAAN) had said it was taking its operations back to Lagos, the hub of aviation business. The complainants saw in those two moves a grander plot to de-rob Abuja of its federal capital status. Of the CBN plan, in particular, they said it would harm the North’s economic fortunes. In what way(s), they did not say.
Angels & Demons is based on the titanic face-off between religion and science in the 1600s. The former, represented by the Catholic Church at the time, persecuted scientists who it accused of undermining faith in God. Scientists, driven underground, resurfaced after 400 years, to exact their vengeance. Within this major plot are subplots of personal cravings for power in both camps. Religion and science are used as covers in these personal battles.
The connection between the story of Angels & Demons and scaremongering in the North may not be too obvious to those who have not read the novel. Understandable. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to notice the common tactic of self serving crusaders of so called group or regional interest.They project their individual goal as that of the group – to gain traction and sympathy within the group and even outside it.
Before we go any further, let’s be sure of what the CBN management’s plan is. A statement that the Presidency gave out in the wake of the North’s complaint so called, explained what the noise was all about. “The movement of FAAN … to Lagos does not amount to moving the federal capital to Lagos,” it said. “Similarly, the movement of the Department of Banking Supervision of the CBN … deals with commercial banks, almost all of which have their headquarters in Lagos. It must be pointed out that these decisions are purely administrative (and) should not politicized by people of goodwill and those who love our country well.”
Goodwill or not, love or not, the fact remains that the CBN had no business moving out of Lagos, in the first place. This coastal city has been and will be the commercial nerve centre of the country for how long nobody can tell. The bank’s relocation to Abuja was a political decision, which time has proved to have been ill advised. It makes sound business and economic sense to leave things in their natural habitats where they thrive best. Even the most acrid North-phobes know that. This is why they don’t ask why parastatals like the National Maritime Authority have stayed back in Lagos and other places where they were first located.
So why the “sound and fury” over the CBN sending five of its supervisory departments “back west”? It couldn’t be that the action would hurt the North economically, as the alarmists wanted us to believe. In what ways? Zero. As Dr. Farooq Kperogi, a foremost Northern intellectual based in the United States write January 27, “The CBN has almost zero symbolic, political, cultural or economic significance to the North. Lagos is Nigeria’s de facto commercial capital and the headquarters of most banks. It makes sense that the core operational units of the CBN should be there.” I agree.
In any case, what is North? A geographical expression? Yes, just as there are East, West and South. But as a political or even ideological bloc, the North ceased to be one after the demise of Nigeria’s three regions. The days when a Sardauna would go to Aliade in now Benue State to seek out a brilliant secondary school student to send to study in the UK are gone. No Muslim state governor today would pick a Christian to be his personal secretary as did the late Sadaunan Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello or vice versa. That mutual trust and altruism are no longer there, eroded by the reality of history and ascendancy of hegemonic tendencies. The splitting of the region into states and lately geopolitical zones abolished the North as a powerful political bloc. Just as religiosity and ethnocentrism replaced northernization as an ideology, characterized by patriotism, industry and integrity, all encapsulated in Gamjism. Now nobody talks about this. Any mention of it is for personal convenience. If things don’t favour me I invoke the word North to curry sympathy far and wide, but when they do I let the water flow as it should. Again, Kperogi has this to say, “It’s true, of course, that the people who started and amplified news of the relocation of some departments of the CBN to Lagos are northern workers or benefactors of northern workers who do not want to move to Lagos. It is they who successfully elevated their personal discomfort to the status of regional slight.” They are the demons and deserve to be so called.
