Air Vice Marshal Monday Morgan (retd.) headed the Defence Intelligence Agency of Nigeria from July 2015 to January 2016. An Idoma man by birth, he is the initiator of a pressure group known as the Benue Rebirth Movement, which is against the marginalisation of Zone C of the state (Idoma land). In this interview with JOHN CHARLES, he alleges that the Tiv people have been using their numerical strength to marginalise the Idoma since the creation of the state 46 years ago
You are the leader of a group known as the Benue Rebirth Movement; what is its mission?
The movement’s mission is to agitate and attend to the political isolation of the Benue South Senatorial District known as Zone C (the Idoma extraction). It is not a movement just targeted for election purposes. Benue State was created 46 years ago and has had five civilian governors. All were Tiv. Idoma people have yet to occupy the seat. What does this portend to the unity of the state?
The truth is that the two senatorial districts of Zone A and B are of the Tiv extraction. Like typical Nigeria, everybody wants to protect his tribe. The political leaders in Zone A and B believe that they should continue to rule since they are more populated. Democracy should not be seen as a perpetual marginalisation. If we are together in a commonwealth, shouldn’t they also give the minority the opportunity? That is the struggle and the point we are trying to make.
Can you blame the Tiv people for marginalisation? Anytime the Idoma are supposed to unite and fight a common cause, they are divided. A case study is the Peoples Democratic Party’s governorship primary, where delegates from most of the local government areas from the senatorial district did not vote for their only son, the deputy governor, Benson Abounu?
Yes, the governorship primaries of the two major political parties, the PDP and the APC, were manipulated to favour the Tiv.
Theoretically, suppose you look at it from the point of the submission of the so-called election. In that case, it looks like that, but the Benue Rebirth Movement is a movement looking for a stop to marginalisation. The grassroots has accepted it. Almost everybody has accepted it, including some in Zone A and B.
However, the political class is not ready because there is a lot of money to be made by very few elements who called themselves leaders in Zone C to compromise for their gain.
So, if you look at it carefully, even two weeks before the primaries, the movement raised the alarm that our political leaders were changing their tones, and then the political structure where they adopted people who would represent us (indirect primary) had a problem. It is not populist because the delegate system is very bad.
If you look at the list of delegates, politicians just went and recruited people who did not understand politics. They do not understand why the government should have a social contract with the people.
They brought farmers and made them delegates. You can imagine a farmer that for a year has never held N20,000 and is given N300,000 to ensure that the governor says nobody should vote for any other person except the person he anointed. And a few political leaders in Zone C who are not more than three sat together with the governor and made a list. Does that represent the voice of the people? So, what happened was allocation.
Even in the governorship primaries of the APC, you could see the way all the political giants were against it because there was no election. Still, somebody sat in one room and wrote out the result.
Because of this, we have initiated advocacy for the masses to let them know that they need to change, and the political class became scared due to the advocacy.
As the Idoma people are complaining of marginalisation by the Tiv, so also Tiv people are accusing the Idoma of cornering Federal Governments jobs and appointments?
The Vice-President is a Yoruba man, and the President is a Fulani man. No Idoma heads a federal ministry in this administration now, no Minister of Defense, and no service chief of Idoma extraction. So, anything the Idoma get at the federal level, it is by merit.
You look at it because of a trap of political power at home. In that case, many Idoma men who have businesses are not in Benue. They are immigrants in Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto, and other northern states. Their children attend good schools. Those boys who were given a good education through their parents’ hard work would always pass exams for those Federal Government jobs very well. During military entrance exams, they will pass more than the Tiv.
Moreover, the same thing they are accusing us of, for example, there was a time during the Obasanjo administration that all the ministers were of Tiv extraction. They have two senate seats while we have one senate seat, so who has more influence in that circumstance.
When Audu Ogbe was a minister, how many Idomas did he put there? When David Mark was there, check your record; the Idoma did not benefit as much because, at the federal level, he did not particularly favour any Idoma person.
So it is our hard work and dint of struggle. Whenever our children are sitting for such an exam, we are very sure that the Federal Government doesn’t look at the local government areas, but states and if a Tiv man and Idoma man sit for the exam. Idoma man passes. Will the Federal Government say that because Tiv is more in population, they should give it to somebody who has performed below the pass mark?
Talking of marginalisation, there is an ethnic group within, the Igede, who complain that the Idoma is marginalising them too. What do you think of this agitation?
It is politics at play because Idoma has been very democratic from the beginning as the paramount leader of the entire Idoma kingdom. In our enclaves, many dialects have their kings. Still, when the white man established the hierarchy of paramount chiefs, the first one was an Adoka person (Idoma in Otukpo LGA). The next person who came was an Igede man who ruled for 35 years before his demise.
In our system, the Idoma kingdom will never give a seat to a non-Idoma. Our history is very common. In Zone C, including some of our brothers in Zone A and B, i.e., the Jukuns, Bassas, Etulos, and others, we are of Kwararafa extraction, while Tiv people came from Congo.
So this distinct cultural ancestry is what is causing the problem majorly. The Igede speak a different dialect. The dialectic differences are a creation of a migration in which we came from Kwararafa to live here. The dialect changed depending on which track you follow because migration was not just a day. It happened over ten to fifty years or even more. When you are passing a location, you meet with some tribes. Language interference occurs over time, and you can lose your original language. That is how the Igede lost their real language, Utonkon and Akpa, but they are all Idoma.
However, because they (Tiv) are larger in number and stay together in one group, utilising the divide and rule system very well to make sure that we remain disunited. Tiv are the ones that gave the Igede that idea, and how did they go about it – They always give money to a group among us, and then you start hearing all manner of things.
Now, the question is, when you go to Zone B where there are the Etulo, in the new chieftaincy law the present government enacted, it excludes them (the Etulo, the Bassas) from ascent to the throne of Tor Tiv, the paramount ruler of the Tiv nation. Meanwhile, it doesn’t exclude Igede from being Ochidoma, the paramount ruler of the Idoma nation, because they know that the Igede are also Idoma. Tiv excluded Etulos and Bassas because they know they are from Kwararafa extraction.
Those Tiv people you are seeing are very crafty in terms of political marginalisation to ensure that they show up their tide against others, just like they are accusing the Fulani of the quest to remain leader. It is the same thing they (Tivs) are doing in Benue. So, the Tiv do not have any moral right to criticise the Fulanis because politics is about survival.
With the outcome of the APC and PDP primaries, it is sure that Idoma’s chance of becoming governor of the state in the next eight years is low, so, in your own opinion, how do you think Idoma will actualise its dream in the nearest future?
We are strategising, and one of the reasons this has happened is that serious Idoma people have left issues of politics in the hands of the unpatriotic Idoma. Many good people will soon participate in politics in the next few years.
Also, the issue of getting our state is not foreclosed because if you look at the map of Benue South from the North West axis, the children of Kwararafa are lined up on that axis. The Oweto bridge’s completion by the present government has linked us, the children from Kwararafa, together. In Nasarawa State, our cousins, the Alagos, have about five local governments in that state.
Even half of Laafia, the capital city of Nasarawa State, is our land. It was because there was no connecting route before that disconnected us. Now, it is easy to connect the children of the Kwararafa kingdom from that axis down to Cross River State. The Ogoja and Iyalla people are all of Kwararafa extraction.
So, in the next 50 years, and Idoma persistently makes a case, the federal government will understand that we have been marginalised for too long and will have our state.
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