A fearless columnist, who is never afraid to speak his mind on any matter under the sun, his viewpoints are as constant as the Northern star whose position in the firmament remains unshaken. As Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Vanguard newspaper, Ochereome Nnanna remains one of the nation’s famous columnists whose views often stir the hornet’s nest for a rumbling national discourse. His views may sometimes ignite outrage, but his conviction is unflappable. In this interview with SIMON REEF, he exhibits his signature boldness and concludes that Nigerians should simply agree to go their separate ways, among other issues.
I encountered the ace political commentator in the last quarter of 1999, during my job hunt in Lagos. I had attempted to secure a job in some reputable newspapers, but to no avail. When my attention was drawn to a job vacancy advertisement in The Examiner, a newspaper founded by Chief Pini Jason, with Nnanna as its political editor, I decided to try my luck. who I was looking for. I told the security man that Rev Mathew Hassan Kukah had sent me to see Jason.
At the mention of Fr. Kukah, all impediments were cleared as I found myself in the office of the famous columnist and publisher, who was my weekly delight. After some questions, I was directed to see Nnanna, who was to decide my fate. My first meeting with him was not promising, as he simply directed me to the library to get him an analysis. After going through the newspapers, I settled on the title: ‘Why Speaker Buhari Won’t Go To Jail’.
When I returned to submit the script to him, a staff member told me he had gone out and might be a while before he returned. I pleaded with the staffer to help submit the analysis. I promised to return to the office on Monday to check if I was eligible for hire by the newspaper. I went straight to his office, and his unfriendly face made me afraid.
‘Have you seen a copy of the newspaper today?’
‘No… sir’, I stammered.
Go grab a copy from the library and go through it. Then, come back and meet me”, Nnanna dismissed me, more than telling me.
When I flipped through the copy, I saw my article published with the same title. I was overwhelmed with joy, but I was dumbfounded that he never looked cheerful as he shared the good news about my performance. At the end, I was employed as a newspaper correspondent posted to Abuja.
Recently, Nnanna, whom I considered one of the top shoulders I stood on in learning the art of political commentary, shared some of his thoughts on Nigeria and what drives his passion for writing during a recent media event in Katsina State. Just as he has many admirers, the Chairman of the Vanguard’s editorial board also attracts foes almost in an equal measure.
His views are informed by his childhood experience during the Nigerian civil war and the suffering unleashed on South-easterners. In his childhood eyes of the civil war, decades after that war, the Nigerian Federal Government is yet to end the system that has continued to unleash injustice on the Igbo, even after the ‘No Victor, No Vanquished’ verdict by the Gowon regime. To the columnist, the North and Gowon’s primary occupation in the war was to access the oil in the Niger Delta and had nothing to do with preventing the break-up of the country. The basis for using the war to avoid a break-up was to fight for the oil resources of the Niger Delta.
In his words: “The Igbo were the only people blocking Gowon and the North from possessing the Niger Delta oil. It is only when they remove the Igbo from the way that they will achieve the objective of getting the Niger Delta oil. Many years after the war, the Fulani caliphate achieved its objective and now controls the Federal Government. Between 1980 and 1990, these people began to realise that many herdsmen in the bush had never gone to school. They had many people across Africa, and now decided that if they could weaponise these people and invite them into Nigeria, they could eventually transform their minority status into a full-fledged majority by having more Fulani in Nigeria. They will now become the kind of majority that would forever stand on their own, rather than just perching on the back of Hausa people.
“The Hausa people, who are now sort of beginning to open their eyes, small, small, small, small. The number one objective of the Buhari-led administration was to take Nigerian lands and hand them over to the Fulani. The strategy is to force Nigerians to allow Fulani among them to come and change the demography of Nigeria to make the Fulani the majority. If they achieve such a feat, the Fulani will now be able to forever hold the Hausa and the rest of Nigeria”.
The current crisis is anchored on the mass invitation of Fulani all over Africa to come and launch a jihad in Nigeria to re-enact the conquest of Othman Dan Fodio. That explains, according to Nnanna, you have Lakurawa, ISWAP and even Boko Haram, among others, doing what they are doing to take over Nigeria and convert the rest of us to become their footstools through the instrumentality of Islamic jihad.
On the election of Peter Obi as president, with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso as his deputy, to change the trajectory, Nnanna disagrees:
“When I see people talking about Obi becoming president, and Kwankwaso succeeding him after four years, I just laugh. You are just holding the calf for them. When the presidency returns to the North, it’s still the same thing. Then they will finish what Buhari could not. And this time, it will be very intelligent, younger people who are not going to be sick anyhow. Very intelligent, younger people who will do it without looking back. Unless people wake up, and if you don’t wake up early, by the time you know what is happening, it will be too late.
On the separatist movement and the calls for the resurrection of the Biafran struggle, after over five decades since the end of the war, Nigerians, Nnanna argues, are not true to themselves. He says that he found it difficult to sing the national anthem, stressing that the country cannot be rescued:
“Nigeria cannot be rescued again. Unfortunately, Nigeria is beyond rescue. Is Tinubu supposed to rescue us? Somebody who said he doesn’t believe in the country. Even if you give Peter Obi the presidency today, these Northerners will not allow him to perform. With their entitlement mentality, they will not allow Obi to work. Within three months, they will begin to give him fire, and Peter Obi is not a fighting type. He has his own fighting style, which is not suited to Nigeria. His own style of fighting, which he used to fight in Anambra state, and he succeeded, if he deploys it in Nigeria, they will assassinate him.
“Well, I would have said Nigeria needs a tough president, but how long will that take us? Even the best president can only serve four or eight years, and then he will go. Even that good man, because he’s delaying them, they will look for ways of destabilising the country, because they don’t want anything good unless it is their own, what they call good.
“The only thing they call good is taking Nigeria from Nigerians, taking what belongs to you from you. They want to take it over. Structuring would not work because it would still be built on the same superstructure that controls the structure, and that superstructure has an agenda that is no longer Nigerian. It’s not an agenda that is rooted in the Nigerian constitution. It is a different kind of agenda outside the constitution. They want to write the constitution and own you and me. For me, the way to go is for us to sit down and agree to go our separate ways”.
On the possibility of allowing various states to control their resources and give a certain percentage to the centre, the writer responds: “If you control your resources, do you control the army? Do you control the police, the real police, because they say they are going to do state police? Okay, they will use the police, but the Nigerian police force will still be there. Do you have the kind of things that they put there? You know that resource control will remove their hands and allow people to be on their own. They can give you resource control, you do your roads, you do your education, whatever, you know, but the people they send to go and take the land from you are coming. These people are coming and now have an affiliation with ISWAP and other international terror groups.
“They are now collaborating to come and take over Nigeria. You are only holding the place for them, you are just holding the place for them to come and sweep you off, I don’t know, that is me, you know. If I’m wrong, let another person come and say so. To me, we should sit down and decide, because the Bible says two people cannot walk together unless they agree. If two people are walking together despite their disagreement, and one is forcing the other to come along, that is not how to build a country; that’s not a country. That is a gunpoint kind of situation, and I cannot sit down here and say that is the kind of situation I want to live under somebody’s gunpoint, because I want to be in Nigeria.
“Nigeria has betrayed me; Nigeria has shown itself no longer worthy of my patriotic investment. I have invested in Nigeria without any reward. Look at the Igbo nation since the war. In 1979, we voted for Shehu Shagari, but we also voted for Zik. In 1983, we voted more for Shagari because Zik was getting old. In 1999, when Alex Ekwueme was pushed out, we voted for Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2003, we voted for Obasanjo. Then, in 2007, we voted for Umaru Yar’Adua. We, the Igbo, voted for Yar’Adua. Then, in 2011, we voted for Goodluck Jonathan. Why were we doing that? We were doing it in the hope that, since we are operating a rotational presidency, when it’s our turn, others will also vote for us. Then, in 2015, when Jonathan was supposed to run for a second term, we voted for Jonathan, but Buhari and Tinubu came with their APC, pushed out Jonathan, and took over. We did not vote for Buhari because we knew he was incompetent. We knew he had an Islamisation agenda.
“I was one of the people who said that Buhari was coming with this Islamisation Agenda. I was the first writer to call Buhari’s agenda Janjaweed, and it lived up to that. In 2019, we supported Atiku. We even gave Atiku Peter Obi to be his running mate. To me, they won the election, but Buhari used the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary to hijack the election. He didn’t even campaign, as he was saying, “Vote for anybody you like”.
“Then, in 2023, when it was squarely the turn of the Igbo nation, Tinubu said it was the turn of the Yoruba. How could it be Yoruba’s turn when they had already ruled for eight years? They had been in office for eight years as vice president. We had nothing like that from Igbo. You say it’s your turn, and then he manipulated his way and took over the presidency. When will it ever be the turn of the Igbo? There’s nothing Igbo people can do that will make people feel happy, even when they know that if an Igbo man takes over, he will do better than the rest. They still don’t want an Igbo as president. So far, power is not in the hands of Igbo men; they don’t mind dying.
“What I’m saying is that this thing isn’t working, and it never will. It will never. This country is gone. It will never be a better country. Tinubu is now such a great patriot because he’s the president. Before he became president, Tinubu said he didn’t believe in Nigeria”.
