By Wilfred Eya
In this interview, Dr. Umar Ardo, the Convener of the League of Northern Democrats (LND) and a former governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Adamawa State, speaks on the formation of the group, its aims and objectives and what Northern Nigeria stands to benefit from the group.
Tell us about this League of Northern Democrats and what sets it apart from the other already existing prominent Northern groups such as the Northern Elders Forum and Arewa Consultative Forum?
The League of Northern Democrats is a group of highly educated and well-placed Nigerians of Northern extraction and they come from two sides. One is those who by themselves have acquired status in the society. The second is those who by themselves have also acquired status in the society. They also come as a symbolic group that represents those who have fought, worked and sacrificed themselves for Northern Nigeria and by extension for Nigeria.
So, we went and got all of them and brought them together. If you get our list, you will see it. I can say that in terms of stature, the League of Northern Democrats is about the most formidable political platform in stature, maybe, not in delivering elections, which we hope one day it can do. Also, the difference between us and the Arewa Consultative Forum and Northern Elders Forum is very slight.
We intend and we want to mobilise and unite our people. But in addition, we also have political aspirations. That is, we would want to influence the politics of the North and the politics of the country. Before we formed this League of Northern Democrats, I went and looked up the aims and objectives of the two groups. And if you look at it, the Arewa Consultative Forum, came in June 2000.
That’s just barely one year after the Obasanjo administration. And virtually all its aspirations have not been met. They aspire to unite the country but the country is not as united as it used to be because if it takes you 24 years in a process, this is almost a lifetime.
The fact that you’re sitting where you are and knocking them for not achieving what they set out to achieve, isn’t that already showing divisions within the North which you are planning to unite?
Not at all because we met, we discussed with them, and in fact, we are going to have a meeting with them in order to form a coalition. Now, every organisation has its pluses and minuses. So, we looked at the minuses of these organisations and we said we were going to fill in the blanks.
What are you concerned about from the point of view of the Northern Region?
Our concern is that our society has virtually collapsed. Other than the examples of completely no security, no education, and endemic poverty, our people have moved from a state of poverty to a state of destitution. This is unacceptable. And who created it? It is the Northern elite and the national elite. So, our elite created it and nobody can resolve it other than the elite themselves. And as a historian, I have seen over time when societies get into big trouble and they are drifting.
Certain groups of the elite came together and changed the course of history. We’ve seen that in the United States, we’ve seen that in Europe, we’ve seen that in Africa and we’ve seen that all over. There are the good elite and there are the bad elite. Most of the time, the bad elite take over. So, when there is a change, the revolution you are talking about, the Bolsheviks in Russia, then the Jacobins in France, they are members of the elite themselves.
We have only one governor. I worked in the villa for eight years. I was an adviser in the villa, and I did what I could do in advisory capacity. The files are there. You look at this, whether it has been implemented or not, it’s another different case. So, just because you are a minister, I have seen frustrated ministers because the endemic problems within the system make good ministers unable to deliver.
So, that is the problem. So, for us here, I give you a little story. I’m sure you know Prof. Usman Yusuf. When we started this thing, I called him. He was in Germany and I said, Prof you’ve always been there, come let us come together and then effect the change. He said, no, everybody has been bought.
I said Prof, have you been bought? He said, no. I said I’ve also not been bought. Let us look at those that have not been bought and then bring them together and form an organisation of those that have not been bought. I said if we come together in whatever name, we are going to make an effect.
Our coming together has had a great effect on the system. It has gingered the Arewa Consultative Forum for example. In the inaugural meeting, we were there and we participated, we are together. So, these are the people that we selected. Now, when we were selecting the governor, there are 57 governors, and former governors within this dispensation. I think, there were 60.
We put all of them on the scale and we looked at the antecedents and we concluded that the best among them that we can put forth and trust and say, this is one among us that is of no blemish, is no other than Governor Ibrahim Shekarau. So, that was why we brought him and gave him the leadership and he’s leading very well.
In these circumstances, how influential is this group going to be in a country like Nigeria?
I’m a historian and in History, we have Philosophy of History. We have what is called causal causation, which is the relationship between cause and effect. It is in the sciences. But here, it’s an idea that one thing causes but it directly produces another event.
The first event is the cause and what it produces is the effect. It’s a dialectical process. So, if we can understand and master that, we can always, at all times, cause an event that will give a ripple effect until it gets to a predictable and identifiable cause.
Is this group focused on winning political power?
Certainly, because you cannot effect any change without having the authority to effect the change, I don’t think we have reached that point yet. Our objective is to organise ourselves to be a region of first influence in the politics of the country. Then, we will determine whether we go North or whether we go South but we are driven by the interests of the North within the Nigerian state.
First things first, our focus is dual, actually in whatever we do because in 2018, we formed what we call the Northern Elders and Stakeholders Assembly. It was convened by four critical northerners. Then Tanko Yakasai was the chairman and I was the secretary. We set up various technical committees for about five or six and they went to work, they brought back beautiful reports.
You look at the reports and we know that if these are implemented systematically, they will resolve the problems. But where would we take it? On June 19, 2021, or so, former President Olusegun Obasanjo convened what he called the Committee for the Goodness of Nigeria. It brought in former presidents and everybody was there and they set up a technical committee led by former Attorney General, Kanu Agabi, of which I was an adviser and we went into it and produced the most marvelous report.
Where did it go? So, unless you have a regime that is willing to implement all the good plans that you have, it’s not going to happen. So our objective is to see that we get a regime that is willing. We will, in the meantime, all we need to do is just to go to the shelves. All these reports are there on how to stop.
I think it was in November 1999 that I organised along with the Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, a cross-border crime conference in the North-East zone. We called the belt from Senegal to Bagarimi. This is a conflict belt from the time of Sundiata and most of the conflict is on religion.
How are you going to impress people in the North and win their confidence that you’re the kind of people who can be trusted to move into the highest sphere of political sort of engineering?
There is a saying in Hausa that a drowning man clutches a sword. Now, our situation is desperate. Any group that comes up with a very clear message that is resounding to the people, people tend to listen and follow because what they have on the ground is bad. Fifty-seven of us started this; now we have over 600 members. Virtually all of them have called or registered by themselves on the website because people are tired of the way things are drifting.
We are not opposed to government. We wrote when we came, we wrote to the president a letter explaining to him what we are going to do and how the government can help, so that we work together. We wrote to the Vice President; we wrote to the National Security Adviser, to set things clear. We are not anti-government but we are concerned with the pathetic situation of our people.
