When the Vanguard went to interview Tanko Yakassai, what did it's reporters expect? Any new facts or revelations pertaining to the issue at hand? I doubt it. Most of what he told them are available from other sources. Yakassai has been an avowed champion of northern interests, which in itself is not a bad thing.
The story of Northern Nigeria starting from the 1959 event in Borno land, as narrated by Yakassai, when the socalled Yoruba lawyers were harassed and illegally detained for trying to aid the non-Fulani people who indicated ambivalence about joining the NPC political machine up to this present day is one long nightmare. Yakassai's personal take of those events merely strengthen what is already known about him and his ilk. He is resolutely opposed to restructuring the polity and in the same breath stresses that things are so bad that they just can't remain the same. Those two positions are clearly incompatible. To make omelets, you must break some eggs!
A full-blooded Fulani is again president, after a virulent agitation akin to that of The Niger Delta Avengers. What have we now got? Stagnation, inflation, naira devaluation, disinvestment, unemployment, ignorance and disease. Another issue that few of us have been bold enough to broach is this. Must it be Buhari? I can count at least twenty politicians from the north who can make us a better president than the incumbent. I do not have to like them. Their most important qualification includes that they are better than the stiffnecked and clueless Buhari. Strange that the word "clueless" has again taken centrestage in our political discourse so soon after we saw off Goodluck Jonathan. Meanwhile some citizens are prayerfully reading Psalm 109 v8 with reference to President Buhari. Very sad.
On his part writer Simon Kolawole has used medical/pharmaceutical terminology to suggest that if we have used a drug for 16months without relief, then it is time to jettison the therapy and try another drug. These comments are not funny. Why on earth are we so blest?
I cannot understand how in the midst of this morass, people like Tanko Yakassai would posture to appropriate pariotism to themselves, while still working assiduously against whatever could rationally be called national interest. Yakassai, and people who think like him constitute the very personification of Nigeria's problems. General Gowon should target his unceasing prayers towards dislodging them from all positions of influence.
Contrary to what Yakassai may want us to believe, what he presented is sadly NOT a Yoruba problem. We are all carrying that cross, including the hapless northern masses.
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