As products of our different environments, we are Hausa/Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba, Muslims or Christians by accident. No one should therefore have apologies for loyalty to his or her primary constituencies and faith.

Charity must begin at home – to paraphrase Edmund Burke philosophy. Or as Chief Obafemi Awolowo puts it, you cannot be a good Nigerian if you are not first a good representative of your people.

In spite of widely advertised commitment of President Buhari to his Fulani ethnic group and his Islamic faith, his commitment to Nigeria has never been in doubt.

He fought a civil war. He was unjustly imprisoned for over three years for fighting corruption, enforcing discipline and for admonishing Nigerians to eat what they produce or starve. He fought and lost three presidential elections until he succeeded the fourth time at over 70 years of age.

President Buhari on whose table the buck stops therefore clearly understands why he is in government. The choice as to whether he wants to be remembered as a Nigerian statesman or a Fulani irredentist, the image into which he has been cast by his Fulani kinsmen using his name to pursue what other federating ethnic groups regard as Fulani agenda to build on their 1904 conquest of Hausa states.

The president cannot pretend not to have been warned, first by Pa Bisi Akande, the interim chairman of APC and later, Aishat Buhari, the president’s wife. They both said those who hijacked his government love neither Buhari nor Nigeria.

For keen observers, Malami’s current unproductive war with southwest and its governors amidst a siege by cross border Fulani herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers has parallel in the blaming of victims of cross-border herdsmen’s killings in the middle belt region by the president’s Minister of Defence not long ago.

It is also not different from the burden placed on the president by his senior media adviser who claimed his daughter was entitled to the use of presidential jet for photo-shoot.

Now what people remember is not a president who insists his wife travels by commercial airlines but the contradiction between a candidate Buhari who once took his war with ex- President Jonathan over the misuse of presidential fleet to London and a President Buhari who now places a presidential jet at the service of his daughter.

And while Malami’s current war with the Yoruba and her governors’ security initiative is intensified, the picture Nigerians see is that of Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano surrounded by Hisbah police that arrest and prosecute Muslim offenders, by virtue of our federal arrangement while the same emir is openly inciting herdsmen located in Benue to disobey laws of their host state.

The Southwest governors insisted they reached out to Police Inspector-General Adamu Mohammed and the Director-General of the Department of State Security Services (DSS), Mallam Yusuf Magaji Bichi informing them that Operation Amotekun is not different from a neighborhood watch security organization.

Indeed the police commissioners in the affected states were present at the launching of the governors’ security initiative. But in character with the president kinsmen, these facts did not stop Malami from declaring:

“The setting up of paramilitary organisation called Amotekun is illegal and contrary to the provisions of Nigerian law”, contemptuously adding, “the governors are aware that there are 67 items on the Exclusive Legislative List and they should have pushed for constitutional amendment to move policing to the Concurrent Legislative List.”

That Malami is serving other tendencies or has a mindset is apparent as nearly all accomplished law scholars and eminent lawyers and the NBA faulted his position. For the NBA: ‘The law allows a person or group of persons to protect themselves within the framework of the law and/or report untoward activities to the police’.

As for Afe Babalola, “All that the AGF said is that Article 45 of the constitution, second schedule gives to the federal government the exclusive power to manage the police, he did not say that sections 20, 40 and 45 which are superior to the schedule are abrogated”.

And finally, for Itse Sagay “there is nothing in the constitution that precludes either states or association of states from taking care of their security.”

Unfortunately, the colour of those who lined up behind Malami’s flawed legal position only strengthened the position of peddlers of conspiracy theories.

First was Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a Second Republic lawmaker, who describes the security outfit Amotekun, as “nothing but a tribal militia to prosecute the region’s agenda of transforming into a separate nation through the backdoor”.

Also lining up behind Malami was a Miyyeti Allah chieftain who said the “Amotekun scheme is political and is not the solution to the problem of insecurity. He wants the Southwest governors to continue to push for state police, (probably through the legislature); offensively adding “It is best they give up on this idea because it may affect the chances of the Southwest to produce the President in 2023”.

Read Also: Malami stirs up hornet’s nest over Amotekun

And finally, there was the former governor of old Kaduna State and elder statesman, Balarabe Musa, who declared “First of all, taking into account what happened in the history of Nigeria, this Amotekun will lead to a declaration of Oduduwa Republic.”

But when has a regional agenda in a federation become a crime and why is Balarabe Musa afraid of history? We will come to that shortly.

It is not lost on Nigerians that the common refrain from all those who lined up behind Malami are repudiation of restructuring, devolution of powers and fiscal federalism.

It is their position that those seeking solution to our national question must go through the National Assembly where experience from 1999 has shown, it will take a camel to pass through a needle’s eye to get the above changes which are at the core of our crisis of nation-building, through.

Now Let us return to why those who are opposed to regional agenda in a federation are afraid of history. Chief Awolowo was a torn in the flesh of coalition partners (Hausa Fulani and Igbo) for preaching ‘one man one vote’ among minorities in the north and east as the shortest route to their freedom from hegemonic powers that treated them as slaves.

After independence, he was framed up and imprisoned for 10 years by the federal government. They openly boasted: by the time he returned if he ever did, he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria.

With Western Region and its leadership decimated, Igbo and Hausa Fulani warring politicians confronted themselves over disputed 1962/63 census figures finally settled in favour of the north by the Nigerian judiciary. The rivalry of the two estranged coalition partners over the soul of Nigeria led to the civil war.

The victorious cornered the loot of war. Military social engineering methods have since been applied to ensure more states and LGAs for the north, federal take-over of state-owned institutions, establishment of federal unity schools and JAMB, and quota system of admission and recruitment into federal schools and federal bureaucracy to prevent a return to pre-1966 Nigeria where meritocracy allowed people to develop at their own pace without interference from a dysfunctional centre.

The current war by Malami and the tendency he represents seems to confirm the fears of the people of southwest that the flooding of their territory by cross-border herdsmen, bandits and poor jobless street urchins is a continuation of war against a people whose only sin is to desire what they want for themselves for others.

Unfortunately, except President Buhari who critics believe lives in denial, most Yoruba who are today no more safe in their homes, roads and farms believe the war has become intensified under Buhari presidency they helped install.

By Dr. Jide Oluwajuyitan