State of The Nation: How North has become Nigeria’s problem — Saror, ex-Senate Minority Leader

2026-03-09 - 04:27

•Insecurity diminishing prospects of national unity •Livestock husbandry has become politicised, militarised, weaponised •At 85, I’m afraid I won’t see a better Nigeria By Peter Duru Prof Daniel Saror, was the seventh Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. He was elected to the Senate representing Benue North East District between 1999 and 2007. He was also a Minority Leader of the Senate. In this interview, he spoke on insecurity in the North, his time in the Senate, how the third term bid of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was thwarted, the Akume/Alia feud in Benue State and lots more: You look strong amid troubles and spate of insecurity in the country. What to you make of the situation in the country today? I have been privileged to be in this state, and Nigeria. I’ve watched it for many years now. I will be 85 years this year. So I’ve watched Nigeria since independence closely because I was at the Tafawa Balewa Square in 1960 as a student from Northern Nigeria. We ran around Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos with the independence flag to mark our independence. Nigeria has indeed come a long way. But it is not the Nigeria that we thought we were getting at independence. What we are seeing today in Nigeria nobody expected it. Nobody anticipated it in 1960. A situation where insecurity has taken over the country to the extent that we are almost a failed state. That is not what we expected, because the purpose of government basically is to protect lives and property of its people. And in today’s Nigeria, we seem to have a government that is incapable or unwilling to protect lives and property. You see violence, especially in the North. In the North-West, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi; in the North-East, Borno, Yobe, Adamawa; in the North-Central, Benue, Taraba, Plateau, and Kwara. it’s a shame, and government seems to be incapable of addressing this problem. I want us to look back at the last 20 years. Around 2011, we saw an increase in the tempo of Fulani herdsmen activities in this part of the world. They were invading areas, destroying property, burning houses, taking over villages and literally intimidating everybody. I recall that in 2014 here in our state, the then Governor, Gabriel Suswam, set up a committee to look into the disturbances caused by Fulani herdsmen. I was a member of that committee. General Atom Kpera was the chairman. Late Abu King Shuuwa was a member, late JKN Waku was a member, and a number of others. And we went round the state, and what we saw was frightening. We saw Fulani militants. They were not carrying cattle with them, but they were heavily armed. They were destroying villages and putting up some Islamic flags in white and green. They destroyed the village of our paramount ruler at the time, he was still alive, and they took over that village till today. So the tempo of Fulani militia, Fulani militancy has increased almost exponentially over the years in the last two decades. So, today in Benue State, for example, vast areas of Agatu, areas of Gwer West, areas of Makurdi Local Government, areas of Guma Local Government, Logo Local Government, Kwande Local Government, Ukum have been taken over. And you begin to wonder, where were these people and what do they want? You don’t have your place in Nigeria, and you want to conquer people and take over their land and force them to come under your control. This is a big problem. I dare say that northern Nigeria has become the problem of Nigeria, because they have allowed this kind of situation to grow without any attempt to contain it or to reduce its impact. The northern leadership has paid little attention to the impact of ethnicity and religious intolerance in Nigeria. They have kept quiet and just simply watched while this thing goes on. I feel that if the Federal Government really wants to control this country, they should pay more attention to this issue of ethnicity and religion in northern Nigeria. You know, we did not see it early enough. The jihadists have had this in their mind for a long time, since the advent of Usman Dan Fodio in 1804. But even when the jihadists were defeated by Lord Lugard in March 1903, the structures were left intact, and they have continued to wage this war quietly. Nigerians didn’t pay enough attention. We probably would not have known the extent of this problem without the advent of social media, because now they come out openly and tell us that, “you are our slaves. This land belongs to us. We can kill you.” How do you build a country as diverse as Nigeria with over 300 tribes, many religions, and you say, ‘If you are not practicing my kind of religion, then I’m free to kill you. You are an infidel”? That cannot keep Nigeria one. That cannot build a strong Nigeria, and we cannot build a strong country by deceiving the people. We can only build a country when we are united, focused, and know that we have a stake in it, not when some people can wake up any time of the day and claim that it is their forefathers’ property. We didn’t know this at independence. So I pray that the President and his team will be able to get their act together before Nigeria disintegrates, because at this rate the prospects of national unity are increasingly diminished every day. Every day you see a group of people who wake up and say, “we want to control your life. We must control your life. If you don’t do what we want, we kill you.” That is not a country. The impression out there is that insecurity in the North is being fuelled by poverty and underdevelopment, if that is true who do we blame? It’s a complex problem. It’s a complicated problem, because like I said, if northern leaders had been honest with themselves and with us to let us know or for us to understand that there was an agenda, that they had their own agenda, that has nothing to do with development things would have been different. It has all to do with religion, control and dominance, regardless of whatever. That is the main theme of what the North has been doing. Take the issue of herdsmen. I’m a veterinarian, and I’ve lived in the North for a long time. The method of livestock husbandry in Nigeria has become politicized, militarized, and weaponized Why would you allow herdsmen to carry sophisticated arms like AK-47, provided by government during Buhari’s time, especially, and not allow any other Nigerian to carry arms? What is the idea? And every time that somebody says, ‘let us practice modern husbandry, let us practice ranching as the best means of rearing cattle,’ northerners will jump and kick against it purely on their own religious sentiments, not the reality or the fact that ranching is the best thing, the best way to raise cattle anywhere in the world. But anytime they introduce that topic in the National Assembly, you will see an uproar because they want to use the herdsmen as tools, as canon fodder. We have lived with Fulani here before. There was never a problem. I have lived among Fulani for years, for a long time. As a young man. I was a Livestock Assistant in Jos. I lived in Maide Taro, near Bukuru, with Fulani for months. No problem. But now, a Fulani man with arms sees you as an infidel. And you know that they carry out a very hostile practice, because what we saw here in Benue, when they kill, they kill mercilessly. They butcher people. They will rip a woman open, take the baby out, and just slaughter. Muslims don’t do that to their fellow Muslims. They have rules on how to kill animals. But when they come to Benue State, oh my God! It’s merciless. I think that the northern oligarchy needs to step up and make up their mind if they want to have a country called Nigeria, in which we can all live in peace, or they want a country where they will dominate, control everybody’s life, control what religion you want to worship. It’s up to them. Because I don’t see this country staying together for a very long time if this trend continues. I may not be alive. In fact, I know I will not be alive, but what it looks like to me is that they are on an offensive, a religious offensive, and this offensive is not based on any good intentions. It’s based on conquest and domination and control, and they don’t want this country to even break up. They want it to remain as Nigeria, where they will control, dominate, tell you which religion you have to follow, and if you don’t follow it, they should be free to kill you. If you recall the US came in on Christmas Day and bombed targets in the North-West. Do you think the Federal Government is doing enough to tackle the insecurity in the country? In a way, it’s a shame that the United States had to intervene in what was fast becoming an intolerable situation. You know we have been fighting Boko Haram for more than 20 years now. We have committed huge resources of Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. And what does Boko Haram want? They want to Islamize, simple. They want to take over the country, take over your land, and rule according to Islamic laws. But in the North-West, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, these are jihadists. They have become a criminal gang, more or less. We were told that during Jonathan’s administration, prior to his second election, these people were brought in from all over West Africa to ensure that Buhari won the election. They came, and they have not gone back, and they are well connected. There are people abroad, countries that are supplying them money and arms: Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan. So in the North-West, they have been busy killing people, partly because of the struggle for mineral wealth in that area. Gold, especially. The mining of gold, exploitation of Nigeria’s gold or mineral resources, has become a burden to Nigeria. And sadly, it is Nigeria’s rich, the oligarchs, the rich people, the highly connected people who are behind these things, because they are the beneficiaries. So now you have a complicated system where even in the North-West, where Islam is the dominant religion, there’s insecurity brought about by jihadists, militants who are not just even Nigerians, but they are brought in by some selfish people to exploit the resources of the land for their own benefit. They’re not even giving the gold to Nigeria’s coffers. It’s for themselves. So, there are more than one angle to this insecurity. There’s this economic issue, there’s the religious issue, and only God knows how it will end. Few days ago, America sent troops to the country to assist in the fight, to assist the government and Nigerian military, in the fight against insurgency and terrorism. Are you down with that idea? The Nigerian government, in my opinion, is complicit in the insecurity situation that we find ourselves in today. Even the military that is fighting Boko Haram, you hear some people in the army tell you that when they get there and have the opportunity to kill the insurgents they are told that they should not attack them. We heard this from army personnel. So the government is complicit. Here in Benue, for example, in Kwande LGA especially, there are Chinese people mining gold, and they’re just carting it away, and nobody seems to do anything. They are not doing it in secret. They have trailers carrying this thing. We see it on social media. Nothing happens. So I don’t know but we cannot continue like this, because all it does is to breed insecurity. It brings distrust, disharmony, and a population is traumatized. Nobody can invest in a situation like this. And part of the backwardness of northern Nigeria is traceable to insecurity. You can go from Sokoto to Adamawa by road and find no industry on the way. You go to the South-West, between Lagos and Ogun State, see how many industries you find by the road. Nothing like that in the North. All they want to talk about is religion, and they’re not even practicing it well. So the Americans, I don’t know to what extent they can help, but their presence has a salutary effect in the sense that it will bring about a little bit of hesitation in terms of the gravity, the ferocity of how they want to go about it. But they seem to be in a hurry to Islamize this country. Why? I don’t know. The world will not end tomorrow. We have lived with them for hundreds of years. Why can’t we continue to live in peace? Let everybody pursue his own religion based on our own constitution. They want the whole country to be Sharia-controlled. Is there Sharia in Saudi Arabia? I hear that there is non there. It is a religious law. Why do you want to impose it on everybody? It’s very disturbing. Let’s look at politics. At a point you were up there are you now retired? I retired, yes. Before going into retirement you had this cult-like following. Wherever your name was mentioned everybody wanted to come with you. How would you compare your active politics years to what you have today? No, I’m not impressed. I thank God for the enablement that allowed me to participate in politics between 1999 or 1998 to 2011. I retired from active partisan politics in February 2016. But that was because I was contesting for the stool of Tor Tiv and I felt it was necessary to disengage from partisan politics. But since that time, I have not been involved in anything to do with partisan politics. But while I was in politics, my idea was to improve the quality of life of the people. I participated in the National Assembly. I served in many committees, especially Appropriations and Finance. By 2003 I was chairman of the Telecommunications committee of the Senate, when GSM was introduced. And before I left the Senate in 2007 I served as the Minority Leader in the Senate. When Alhaji Waziri Tambuwal was the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives in ANPP. We were there and we worked against the then President Obasanjo’s third term plan, and we were able to defeat it. It died on the floor of Senate. Dalhatu Tafida was the Majority Leader in the Senate at the time Was there really a third term bid? Of course, there was. But President Obasanjo came out to say he never told anybody he .. He wanted to go for third term. He was talking politics.There was a third term agenda.A lot of money was expended. I myself was offered a lot of money by late Tony Anenih. He was the arrowhead of that project, and many Senators signed up for it, and they collected money in the millions. And there was a concerted effort in Nigeria by concerned Nigerians not to support third term. I played my part because on that afternoon in the Senate, when Dr. Dahiru Sarki Tafida, the Majority Leader in the Senate, moved the motion, it was on the order paper, to amend the constitution, that we provide for third term, I refused to second it. Ken Nnamani was the Senate President, and he asked Sarki Tafida to move the motion again, which he did, and I again refused to second it. It was when Tafida moved the motion for the third time, and for the third time, I refused to second it, that Ken Nnamani hit the gavel on the floor, and that’s how third term died. Nobody heard of it again after that. That is what happened. A Senator, (name withheld) is currently writing a book on the events of the quest for third term. When that book is out, Nigerians will know the extent to which the government of the day went to ensure that there was a third term. But you asked me a question: Did third term exist? Yes, as far as I know, it did. So from what I can deduce, you actually stopped the third term? Yes, if I had seconded, it would have passed. But because I refused to second it, it was dropped. Under parliamentary procedure, if the majority moves a motion it must be seconded by the Minority Leader. I consulted with George Akume who was the governor at the time and other senators in the house, we were all opposed to it and most of us were opposed to it, and many other politicians, I don’t want to mention their names. So you will not say you regretted it? No I don’t regret it, Nigeria would’ve been a different place. Once you go beyond third term, the chances of that person stepping down are almost zero. It’s happening in other African countries. So you were not influenced in any way to stop the third term? I was influenced by my own conscience, because I didn’t take one kobo from anybody that I will stop third term. Infact I can tell you for free that in my public life I have never asked for or demanded a bribe from anybody, dead or alive. I have not, and nobody came to me and said “oh, you’re a minority leader, we need you to do this and take this” no, I took nothing from anybody. If I was to take the money I was offered, I would be the richest person in Benue state, I refused. Fast forward, compare your time in the Senate to what we have now, there are so many complaints of the present National Assembly being a rubber stand. Our Senate was the first one in 1999 that I served and Obasanjo was the President. We started out on a salary of N13,000 a month, for 6 months that’s what we earned until the Federal Allocation and Fiscal Commission set the salary for senators, we would be receiving N67,000 a month until I left Senate In 2007, that was the salary we were paid. We had some allowances but they were not much. The Senate changed when David Mark became Senate President and what they were earning became very high, I do not know how they did it. And since then our National Assembly became the most lucrative job in the world. There’s no where on this earth where legislators take home the kind of money that our National Assembly members take, none whatsoever, not even the richest countries in the world. There is no job you can do on earth that will earn you that kind of money every month. Something is wrong with us, something is grossly wrong with us. But the body that controls wages and income, because National Assembly cannot set their own wages, it’s very scandalous. I hope one day they will see the need to consider the ordinary person. People are starving in Nigeria, today, Professors can’t feed themselves, retirees like us, whose wages cannot pay electricity for a month are there, yet people are taking home millions a month as their entitlement. Millions, for four years, that’s why elections have become a do-or-die affair, they want to continue with that life. Another thing that is coming close to this is the issue of abuse of local government funds. Since 1999 I was in the Senate and I was in the Appriopriation Committee for eight years and we saw that local governments were not getting their fair share, governors have never agreed. The National Assembly can pass the law but two thirds of the state must approve before you can change the constitution and they have never agreed because they have always seen local government money as their money, governors, they abuse this money, really abuse it and the effect is the poverty in the local government areas in Nigeria. So local government chairman cannot build a culvert in his local government on his own. Ideally, with a third tier of government and the money allocated for that, the local government should have its own development budget based on the development of the wards. Every ward should have a development project but nothing like that is happening in this country. So, there is a lot of poverty in the rural areas. And schools, roads, hospitals, clinics, none of them are being given the correct attention they need. The money is siphoned at the state level. It’s one of the worst things our politicians have been doing to Nigeria and making Nigerian poorer than it should be. If allocation of the local government is available to them, I believe that development at the rural areas will be much different to what it is now but no, the money simply doesn’t get there it is so sad. Recently, there was a Supreme Court ruling on that matter... They have not agreed, because it is a constitutional issue you have to amend that section of the law that says the money should come to the state and the state should contribute its own share to local government funds. Instead they commandeer it. President Tinubu has been threatening them that he has a knife but it cannot work unless the money goes directly to the account of the Local Government and that is not being done. The money goes to the state and then the state gives to the local government what it wants, not based on anything, it’s so arbitrary. What is your position on the demand by Nigerians to make mandatory the electronic transmission of election results in the Electoral Act? I served in the committee on INEC in the Senate, we went to Ghana, we went to finalize the review of the Electoral Act in our time. Central to the credibility of election results reporting is the ability to pass information directly to collation point, because before the advent of the GSM and before the country was really covered, you have election at a polling unit, it is taken to the ward collation centre, from there to the local and zonal collation centre and then the headquarters. These were areas where criminals were involved in election fraud. And so if Nigerian has advanced to a level where there is GSM everywhere why can’t you pass the result from the polling unit straight and bypass all these other steps that are vulnerable and subject to abuse? That is if you are interested in a credible election. No doubt Nigerians want credible elections but the political leadership of political parties, I cannot vouch for them because they feel they must manipulate elections to favour them at all costs. It is so bad that people have lost interest in elections because they know that it is not credible. And the Senate is failing to realise that it is not doing itself any good by refusing to adopt the mandatory transmission of election results. That is what will give us credible result and without it there will always be manipulation and politicians want to create avenues that it can be manipulated as they want so that those in power can control it, that is it. Nigerians are saying if the ruling APC can undertake the E-registration of its members, why is the Senate running away from the demands of Nigerians? I have no evidence but I cannot believe that the presidency is not involved, it must, because at some point even the Senate President listens to the President of Nigeria. It is that high up in the system, that’s my opinion. Was it same in your time? We have had many people serving as Senate President, some of them, when I was there, Ken Nnamani stood firm against a third term for example. I was a principal officer of the Senate. We had discussions as principal officers and you knew where he stood. But there were some unscrupulous people who were willing to bend the rules to get what they want. If the way of the Senate is not being carried forward as it should something is wrong somewhere and it must be between the Senate president and the president of Nigeria. Your advice to the Senate? The Senate should be on the side of the masses, the masses want a clean government, the masses want elections to have meaning, the masses want accountability and transparency in government because they know that if there is this transparency and accountability their welfare will be better, they know it, it’s this lack of transparency, lack of accountability that allows executives to abuse power hopelessly knowing that you can’t do anything. That is the problem. On the political dispute between Senator George Akume and Governor Hyacinth Alia Personally, I would advise our governor to make peace with Akume because Akume has been the leader of politics in Benue State for the last 24-25 years, he has a followership but it should not be a situation where he would sell our state to one person to control the resources that are meant for the common good of people. So Alia should take some steps to settle with Akume but he has to continue the development stride that he is making to the best of his ability and of course to improve the style of his administration too. I think these are things that are obvious.