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CHIDI OKORONKWO discusses the contrasting approaches of David Mark and

 Uba Sani to governance in the north

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Governor Uba Sani is a son of the north. Former governor and senate president David Mark is also a son of the north. They do not belong to the same part of the region. Both, however, have taken positions to speak for their part of Nigeria.

Both have spoken with fervour about the privations and turbulence of their people. They have, though, evinced contradictory attitudes to that sometimes fraught north.

To understand both men, we must look at their biographies.

One is a former soldier, that is Mark. The other is a former activist, that is Sani. Sani was an activist when Mark was an atavist and part of a tyranny. Mark, our former soldier whose cap had a special tuft as though to make his soldiery more militant. Sani was the people’s militant, while Mark was the army’s. Sani almost died because of soldiers loyal to men of Mark’s shrubbery. Mark had boasted, even if as bluster, that he would not tolerate an Abiola as President if he was made president. Unlike Buhari who declared a road to Damascus and renounced his days as a bully in uniform, Mark has not shown a remorseful face.

Yet, as though a defiance against the democrats, he became a leader in a democracy. Sani became a senator and now a governor.

Recently, Mark spoke as an exponent of the north at a Northern Political Consultative Group event. If you did not know him, you would think this former soldier has been a great man for the region.

He said some of the right things. He noted that, “Over the last decade, banditry, terrorism, insurgency, and communal clashes have turned our villages into battlegrounds, displacing millions and crippling our economy”. He also waxed lyrical with perhaps his best and curious line: “This is not the North that we inherited.”

He also turned to history. “Sardauna did not see Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Igala, Tiv, Idoma, Nupe, Okun and others. The only citizens he saw were Northerners. He invested in education, agriculture, and infrastructure — not for one group, but for the collective,” he said.

Governor Sani had since he became Governor of Kaduna State focused on the north’s historical woes. He spoke with statistics, with rigour, about the poverty, the welts of education, unemployment, and he, like Mark, blamed it on all northerners. Mark did not blame it on the leaders of the past decades. Why? Because he was one of them. He is inheriting the north he unmade. He had been governor and minister. He was in what you can call the IBB trust or vortex of power. We can call him an intern, errand boy and whisperer of the leader.

When men like Col. Abubakar Umar reflected democratic streaks, Mark looked the other way. In his recent remarks, he did not show what he did for the north all the years he was up there. He is a born-again advocate because he has been resurrected out of oblivion as the chief squatter of a political party called the African Democratic Congress (ADC). He, familiar with coups, thinks it is right to take over a party without any sense of decorum, protocol or the abused phrase “due process.” He sees nothing wrong that he and his cohorts have become an army of occupation.

But unlike him, Governor Sani, who had spearheaded laws as senator for the region, has taken responsibility as a northern leader for its situation, which is humble since he fought with blood and treasure to save his people. Mark cannot say that other than cosmetic avowals.

As governor he has set to work to bark his claims, and the evidence is there more than empty rhetoric. Is it in working with the centre to make Kaduna the safest in a decade? Or is it stimulating commerce, or making peace in a divisive era such that southern Kaduna feels part of the state again? Or is it revival of education, or financial discipline having inherited a chaos of financing from El-Rufai, one of Mark’s co-squatters?

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It was in that spirit he hosted northern bigwigs in Abuja to showcase how the north, under President Tinubu, is reworking the north for progress. It was the sort of meeting this essayist has long called for. But this is a start. Enter Vice president Kashim Shettima. Enter ministers. Enter Nuhu Ribadu and the service chiefs from the north, including chief of defence staff General Christopher Musa. Enter fellow governors, advisers, political wheel horses.

The event demonstrated a platform for Governor Sani to dramatize the force of his rhetoric. All spoke about the power of the north. But for good measure, many who watched and saw the event made a mistake when they, like one of the speakers, spoke of the 5.6 million votes that helped make Tinubu president.

Some think it is Kano or Katsina or Bauchi or Sokoto or Kaduna or Maiduguri votes alone. It is all the potpourri of the north. It is also from Nasarawa, and Benue or Kogi and Kwara. The north is not monolithic, and it encompasses a vast swath of multi-ethnic sweep. That was what Mark tried to show, half as an analyst, part to assuage his guilt. Some places have more votes than others, but as a philosopher noted in defining federalism, the biggest of a country should not be better than the smallest part of it. it is an equality of sentiment, not of size. That is why Buhari, for all his numbers, could not win until the APC coalition. It is how federalism humbles the misinformed swagger of men like Boss Mustapha. It is an irony that Mustapha knew this when he joined Action Congress as a smaller party. But when the graces of the same AC made him secretary of the federation, he suddenly thought himself immense and forgot what Leopold Kohr described as “small is beautiful.”

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Okoronkwo writes from Jos

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