Chief Audu Ogbe is a northern elder who has held various positions in the country that include minister of communications, minister of agriculture, minister of steel and PDP national chairman. He speaks with our correspondents on the fate of the North after Buhari, advising that northerners should play less of politics and concentrate more on building the region’s economy.

Before his death, Buhari was a factor in Nigerian politics. What will the political atmosphere in Nigeria look like after him?

Well, I think there are many lessons to learn. One that has come through is the capacity of the late former president to be patient and to be very watchful of the developments in and around Nigeria and even in Africa and the world.

Buhari was an interesting example of endurance. He came in through a coup, was overthrown a few months after and was detained for two years. Then he came out of that and still had enough prestige in the public eye to aspire to be president.

He tried it once, didn’t make it and the fourth time around, he succeeded. Looking behind, some of the decisions he did not take will appear to Nigerians now as very wise steps.

For instance, the simultaneous devaluation of the naira and the removal of the fuel subsidy have inflicted severe wounds on Nigerians. They may be, according to our partners abroad, the best way to run the country, but they’ve never really brought blessings to people wherever they’ve been applied. The cost of living, the mood of society has been so soured that one wished there was another way around it.

I have always been personally against excessive importation which depletes our foreign reserves and today, many Nigerians are going through quite some stress.

I hope that that stress will go away in good enough time. But sometimes the prescriptions from over there are not the best for us; there may be professors of economics from Harvard, from Yale, from Oxford.

This society is not the United States, it’s not the UK, it’s not Germany. So, people, future presidents have to learn from this, that terribly drastic measures are harmful and that in the end, the benefits may not be as fantastic as they were expected to be. That’s it.

And the other thing is the capacity to be extremely sensitive about the mood of others in the country. Because if you have a certain mood and you want to take certain actions, ask yourself what others will think of the actions you’re taking. So, Buhari has come, played his role and he’s gone.

Many were very critical of him when he was in office, when we were working with him. Other leaders too played their roles in this country and went. Yakubu Gowon unfortunately landed in a civil war. But he was an equally kind and gentle individual. And I hope that in his day, when the Lord says ‘come home,’ they will give him the same kind of respect.

I worked with Shagari for the longest period, two years in his cabinet. And I was in two cabinets, communications and then the steel industry. But I was in the latter for just 45 days before the coup of 84.

Shagari was another very kind person. And he too, tried to resist certain pressures. The devaluation of the naira, for instance.

He refused to devalue. People thought it was too weak on his side. But even Chief Awolowo warned us then that the devaluation was an invitation to walk into a trap. That once we got in, we would never get out. Awolowo said so. Professor Pius Okigbo said so. Professor Ekugiman, living in Abuja now, he was one of the economic advisors. And Edozien, they all warned that we shouldn’t devalue the naira. When we started it, it was three naira to $1.

I was in Hong Kong travelling at the time when I had to call Abu Obe, who was a secretary to government, head of service. And I told him, if it starts, one day, it will be N500 to one dollar. But he said, no, we don’t know the future.

When Sardauna died, there was this lamentation for several years that there was nobody in the north to fill the vacuum he left. But it will seem Buhari played that role to some extent. Now that he has gone, do you see anybody filing the gap?

I guess somebody will turn up. There will not be a permanent vacuum. We may not be able to identify such a person now, but somebody will come. The thing now is that anybody coming has others to learn from. Sardauna was a very open-minded person but died tragically in 1966. Buhari has played his part. In between, Gowon played his role.

People don’t know that the whole idea of Abuja was Yakubu Gowon’s and it is a city today. So, great things happen. The results may not be immediate, but I think many other people will learn from the examples of these elder statesmen and try to imitate them as time goes on.

Many northern political leaders are involved in the bid to change the current administration, who among them do you think has the qualities to be able to lead the North?

It’s extremely difficult to say until the person is on the seat. But the biggest challenge in the North is not political. It’s economic. The North is the weakest part of the Nigerian equation. We have no industries. Even the agriculture we’re famous for is in serious trouble because farmers can’t even go to the farm. And the economy is not on our side. Not too long ago, the former CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, came to see me here before his problems.

And he told me something which frightened me beyond imagination. He said 72 percent of Nigeria’s currency circulates in Lagos. Take note of that; leaving 28 percent for the rest of the country. The rest of the country means the South West, South South, South East. You can imagine how much of that 28% is in those parts, and how much or how little circulates in the North.

Unless and until northerners also pay attention to economic problems, the danger facing us, the violence today, the kidnapping, the brutal killings here and there. Politics should be the least important thing on our table, because the economy is not good. We are essentially peasant farmers.

And many of the peasants can’t produce much. There are hardly any industries surviving in the North. There used to be a lot of that in Kano. You don’t see them anymore. In many of the states, you don’t hear any governor talking about industrial growth in the North, especially. And you wonder, what are you governing? And then the local government system is a disaster.

Governors don’t allow the local government to function. And whether the Supreme Court ruled that they should send money to them or not, most of them are not observing that ruling. So, the villages are empty. The youths have turned into criminals. They all believe that by moving to Abuja, they will find a living and they arrive and find slum accommodation. That’s where the danger is.

That is what will compromise the capacity or suitability of any Northerner to participate in governance in future. Because there’ll be increasing anger and frustration in the other components of Nigeria, wondering why the North is dragging them down. This is the problem.

But I believe, among those mentioned, many of them will probably do a good job. I mean, I worked with Obasanjo and Atiku. Atiku is a good person.

And there are many of them with capacity who, if they get there, would probably be able to do a good job because they’ve had some experience. So many like that are there. We don’t know them yet until they turn up.

Would you say that the current administration has been a fair to the North in terms of projects, appointments?

I think the president is doing what he can. There will always be that accusation. At the height of Buhari’s own government, they thought it was all a Northern cabal, and they used expressions like that. I think that a lot more depends on the governors and the leaders in the North than the individuals that are appointed by the present government. The present government is governing according to what it considers the fairest way of running the country.

The present government is a Southern-based government which has exposure to economic prosperity, industries, banks, social services. Lagos alone is a huge economy of its own. So, whatever the government does that people think is not favourable to the North, it’s not necessarily because it’s a deliberate policy to keep the North down. As they say, if you want to feed a child, the child has to open his mouth.

So, the northerners themselves have to be more conscious of the risk we’re in by not industrialising. And appointments in government alone will not solve the problem.

You can have every minister from your village; you can have every director of every department from your village, as long as the economy in your environment is not growing, there is nothing those appointments and salaries can do for you. And that is what I think we, up North have to learn.

But it’s not easy. You take a bank loan today, it’s 37%. You can’t prosper with it. You talk of agriculture, you need equipment. The peasant can’t do much with the hoe and cutlass. But he can’t mechanise.

He can’t irrigate. He can’t.  A whole family in the North, average family cannot cultivate one hectare and one hectare is a football field. So, there are things you just aren’t prepared to do. And Northerners on their own should sit down and ask themselves questions. I asked this question many years ago at the Kaduna Trade Fair, when the Arewa Consultative Forum had a meeting; Adamu Ciroma, Awoniyi, Solomon Lar, myself and Buba Karimi.

I gave a talk, “The North and the Future of Nigeria,” and I warned that the only industry in the North is politics. And I said that it will create problems.

So, the North has to look at the two sides of the coin. The politics will come. And a good Northerner, younger than maybe most of those we named earlier, will emerge.

But the foundation has to be economic growth; it has to be. And I really wish and pray that among those coming behind, those in their 50s and 60s, that they begin to learn that we should go back to the villages and re-engineer the Northern agenda so that we can have respect and stability before we go and play politics.

I keep giving this quotation. In 1883, Karl Marx died and was taken to a London cemetery. Karl Marx, the famous Marxist. His close friend, a man called Friedrich Engels, went to his funeral ceremony and gave a speech. He said a man must first feed himself, clothe himself, and house himself before he turns his attention to philosophy and politics. The North has to learn this lesson.

The South is very solid, very strong. They need minimal governance. We need a lot of government here.

Number two, we must have a national conference soon on what to do about the failure of the local government system. The Supreme Court has ruled. Many of the governors have ignored the ruling.

When you go to your place, there isn’t even a grader to level a village road so the farmer can go to his farm and collect his yams. In many places, there is no maternity ward. A woman is in labour; they have to put her in a wheelbarrow and they have to cross rivers and alleys and she bleeds to death. You go to a place, children are on their bellies reading and writing because there’s no desk or chair. You go to some places, they are re-engaging retired teachers to come and teach on a salary of 5,000 Naira a month.

How do you grow in that circumstance? So my message is, first of all, condolence to the family of Muhammad Buhari. Number two, a message to the North: We’ve got to look at the economy more seriously than we’re doing. The politics will come.

The rotation is a good idea and let it flow. But while we’re waiting, the economy, the economy, the economy.