President Bola Ahmed Tinubu promised Nigerians a government of national competence, whatever that meant. I sensed it was to quickly deflect calls for an inclusive government. Some people canvass that the sectarian and ethnic division in the land, which former president Buhari facilitated to atrocious levels in eight years, should be resolved by the new government.

They say there is division and Tinubu should heal the land. Their recommendation towards achieving that is enthronement of a coalition government drawn from different political parties and ideological persuasions, a Government of National Unity (GNU), sort of.

They cite the last elections, which exacerbated mutual distrust along ethnic and partisan lines, thus compounding anger and strife across the land, even among senior citizens, nay the intelligentsia. You need to encounter the level of bile served in social and news platforms where likeminded professionals mingle.

Before the elections, arguments and debates were dictated by facts and deep thought processes. Then, in the heat of the campaigns, persons began to drift and align majorly along ethnic lines. They have remained locked up in those narrow cells of tribes and tongues since the elections. The rancor among social media foot soldiers of the different sides is deafening. Indeed, Tinubu has work to do to heal the land and minds as well.

Whether it is government of national competence or a GNU or even that of Any Government in Power (AGIP), as the horde of visitors to the Presidency suggests, it is likely the President has no choice but to keep his doors open. But he doesn’t need to get carried away.

After a government is formed, many in opposition parties have no qualms dumping old alliances for new ones. It’s a feeling of triumph for the President to have a coalition of failed politicians clustering aroundhim. Former Senate President and presidential candidate in the last election, Anyim Pius Anyim; former spokesperson for PDP, Olisah Metuh, who confessed he had retired from politics after a grueling trial over unspent 2015 campaign funds; former governor Ayo Fayose and the roving G5 governors who worked against their party in the last elections have shown up.

Yesterday’s men are now cavorting the corridors of Aso rock, and recommending solutions to problems many of them engineered. Some of them are hiding behind the cloak of being former governors, persons whose cases with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have fossilized, because they have used all manner of technicalities to frustrate diligent prosecution.

The Class of 1999 governors visited Tinubu last Wednesday and promised to support the new government to move the country forward. Such bipartisan solidarity promises a way forward in the needed healing process across the country. If all the 1999 set of governors truly act as ambassadors of peace and development in their respective states on behalf of the government, a lot could be achieved. But if they are coming out of retirement to peddle political influence and disrupt the current political structures in their states that could be a recipe for more trouble.

Before their visit, former governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani Yerima, had paid a solo visit to Aso Rock, after which he embarked on a campaign to demand amnesty for terrorists operating in the Northwest. These terrorists have made life difficult for hapless villagers and farmers in the zone. They kill at will and capture defenceless civilians for ransom. They enforce taxes and exploit farmers, thus making the states ungovernable.

Yerima seems convinced that the only way to end the carnage is the offer of amnesty to the terrorists. He made reference to the offer of amnesty to former agitators in the Niger Delta by the late president UmaruYar’Adua to justify his proposal. He also offered to lead the talks with the outlaws.

A little bit about Yerima. He was the governor that introduced the full system of Sharia law among northern states in the fourth Republic. It was controversial then because it was feared to run contrary to the intendment of the 1999 Constitution, which provided on the one hand that the country is to run as a secular state, permitting individuals to practice a religion of their choice.

The reason being that the Nigerian state or a subset of it cannot proclaim a theocracy because at every point there is a mixed population of citizens subscribing to different religions as allowed by the Constitution. On the other hand the same Constitution provides for Islamic jurisprudence to cater to adherents of the faith, a provision which Yerima explored to expand the scope of Sharia practice.

It is one of the realities of the Nigerian state; that admits the full system of the Common Law that is thought to be compatible with the Christian religion. What Yerima did was go the whole hog. The main challenge was how the system was to apply to non-Muslims in Zamfara.

Beyond legalese, Yerima’s audacity was hailed by the Muslim faithful across the country, particularly in the North. It had a political connotation that was communicated into campaign materials by politicians. In Borno State, for instance, politicians of that era were said to have expropriated the Sharia revolution and promised to implement same if voted into office.

Modu Sheriff was reported to be a beneficiary of the movement and he got foot soldiers to spread the message. But after he won the election, legend has it that he was reluctant to fulfill the entire pact made with adherents who facilitated his victory. And that was said to be the immediate cause of Boko Haram. That part of Nigerian history is not well visited and the actors have not been invited to own up to the roles they played.

What we know for sure is that Boko Haram has killed more than 100,000 people, displaced two million and has cost the Federal Government about N3 trillion since 2009.
While the terrorists devastated the Northeast and inched towards Abuja, Yerima sat pretty in the Senate after his stint as governor for two terms. His face was expressionless each time the subject of Boko Haram was mentioned on the floor of the Senate. He neither condemned nor offered any solution to the carnage. He did not visit former President Goodluck Jonathan to discuss amnesty for Boko Haram fighters.

The only time he was in the news was for marrying a girl child whose pelvic bones were feared not strong enough to bear the weight of pregnancy, according to medical science. The thousands of Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) cases across many northern communities are traced medically to the pressure of pregnancy on fragile, yet unformed anatomy of young brides who are forced into early marriages. Many young girls have been ruined by ceaseless flow of urine after which they are abandoned by their husbands to charity homes. No education for many, unless they are privileged daughters of politicians.

It is curious as well, that in the eight years of former president Buhari, when insurgency reached alarming levels in the Northeast, Northwest and North-central, we did not see Yerima visit the former president to offer any idea on how to combat the insurgency, not to talk of proclaiming amnesty for the terrorists.

Today, swathes of Zamfara landscape are taken over by terrorists. Like they say, be careful what you wish for others. Politicians in the state have abandoned their communities. They hibernate in Abuja and suddenly, Yerima now talks of amnesty.

The piece of history is to remind President Tinubu where we’re coming from. If he is swayed by the pressure to offer of amnesty to terrorists in the Northwest, let him remember that the Federal Government has overspent itself in the bid to contain the terrorists in the Northeast. We need money to take care of the women and children in the Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs). We need money to send the girl child to school, so that she can get education and be set free from grandfathers who have no pity for her delicate and tender structure. She needs to be set free.

Let all the former governors of Zamfara raise the money to prosecute amnesty for terrorists in their states. They are the ones who robbed the outlaws of their future, not the Federal Government. Let the class of 1999 governors raise money to combat terrorism. Let them sell excess mansions they own in Maitama and other choice locations across the country as well as in UAE, UK and U.S. to fund amnesty for impoverished Nigerian masses. That is the help they can render to Tinubu, one of their own.

Another friend of Mr. President is Asari Dokubo. He visited Tinubu and used the occasion to address the nation. He promised to end crude oil theft after he accused the Military of being behind the criminal enterprise against the Nigerian state.

Once upon a time, Dokubo’s occupation was militancy in the oil rich Niger Delta. He was among the frontline operators who frustrated oil production in the guise of protecting the region from rapacious oil production and degradation of their environment.

When Yar’Adua proclaimed amnesty for the fighters in 2008, calling on the militants to surrender arms and get rehabilitated, Asari Dokubo did not surrender his arms to the government. He said he was not a militant. But he was identified as one of those who operated a militia group and owned a territory where he enforced authority.

Essentially, he was never demilitarized, acculturated back to civil society. Somehow, he has stayed away from trouble and successive governments have allowed him space to operate. But his current pastime of anti-Igbo rhetoric cannot help Tinubu’s government of national competence. Even his boastful promise to stop crude theft nearly failed last week. He should be put to proper use.