The 2nd deceitful act of Tinubu on the north: General Danjuma staked his life in 1966, too great to foresake Arewa unity in 2026

By Ishaya Malgwi

Hanunka ka ba zai rube ba, ka yanke ka jafar

Let me begin with a confession. I am about to commit an act of sacrilege against the cult of political correctness that has paralysed Northern thinking. And before the usual chorus of “unity” merchants descends on me with their tired platitudes, permit me to take you back to 1987, to a small room in Lagos where a gate man asked me a question that has haunted me for four decades

“You come see your brother?”

That was the question. Simple. Innocent. Yet it contained the entire architecture of our national deceit. The gate man was not being malicious. He was being honest, brutally, refreshingly honest. In his mental map of Nigeria, a Northerner could only be in Lagos for one reason: to visit his brother, meaning another Northerner. He could not conceive that I had come for legitimate employment in the federal capital of my own country. To him, I was not a Nigerian seeking work. I was a Northern visitor seeking kin.

And he was right.

At the office of the head of administration, I found Alhaji Nasiru Yakasai, my brother. Not a brother in the rhetorical Nigerian sense that politicians invoke before elections and abandon after. A real brother. When I presented my letter of offer, he received me with the kind of warmth I have only ever experienced among Northerners. He asked his personal assistant to take me to the Chief Personnel Officer for documentation.

Then I met the Chief Personnel Officer. A Yoruba woman. I paid my compliments. I presented my credentials. I was polite. I was qualified. I was Nigerian.

Her response was cold, precise, and devastating: “I will not document you with a statement of results from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.” Then she ordered me out of her office.

Let me repeat that. I was refused employment documentation at a federal agency because my statement of results was from Ahmadu Bello University. ABU Zaria. A federal university. In my own country. By a fellow Nigerian. Who did not even attempt to disguise her contempt.

But the story gets more instructive. Outside, I met my course mate Yomi from Oyo State. He greeted me warmly. When I explained my predicament, he was genuinely confused. “But I was documented with the same statement of result from ABU, Zaria,” he said. Yomi, a Yoruba man, had been documented with exactly the same ABU statement of result that was rejected in my case. The document was identical. Only the bearer was different.

Yomi followed me to Alhaji Yakasai’s office and narrated the story. Alhaji Yakasai, as a senior officer, pleaded on my behalf. The Chief Personnel Officer was adamant. She refused.

It was Alhaji Yakasai who gave me 300 naira and instructed his driver to take me to the airport to catch the next flight to Kaduna to collect my original certificate. Do you understand the layers of this story? A senior officer had to fund my travel from his own pocket and dispatch his personal driver to the airport, because a fellow Nigerian at a federal agency refused to document a federal university’s statement of result for a Northerner.

Why am I narrating this 1987 story? Not to stir ancient grudges. Not to paint all Yorubas with one brush; Yomi was my friend, and I have known many like him. I narrate it because it taught me the truth we are now too polite to speak: We were one — the Northerners. Muslim or Christian, we saw ourselves as brothers. Alhaji Yakasai, a Muslim, stood for me, a Christian, against a shared contempt that did not distinguish between our religions. The gate man’s question was not an insult; it was a diagnosis of how Nigeria had already fractured. The North was not the problem. The North was the answer. And the South knew it.

Now, fast-forward to 2026.

Gen. T.Y. Danjuma, the man who staked his life in 1966 to defend the North, has led a delegation of Northern Christian leaders to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to pledge support for the president’s reelection.

Twenty twenty-six. Not 1966.

The same year. Different Danjuma.

Let me ask the General, and I ask this with the respect due to a man who once bled for Arewa, what changed between 1966 and 2026? What changed in the man? What changed in the North? What changed in Nigeria? And what changed in the transaction, for a transaction it is, that the General did not see when he laid his life on the line for the North, but now sees so clearly that he must deliver the Northern Christian into the embrace of a politician who, in 1997, declared — loudly and unapologetically — that he does not believe in one Nigeria?

The Muslim North brought Tinubu to power with the Muslim-Muslim ticket. The Christian North was sidelined. Then the Muslim North realised its mistake. When the political arithmetic no longer favoured the incumbent, when the winds changed, when the president needed a new bride — where did he turn? To the Northern Christians.

And the General — the General — led the delegation to hand over the Northern Christian as that bride.

Let me be clear about what I am saying. This is not about Tinubu’s Islam. This is not about his Yoruba identity. This is about the politics of transaction — the politics that treats the North not as a partner, not as a constituency, not as a people, but as a resource to be divided, harvested, and discarded. The Muslim North was harvested in 2023. Now the Christian North is to be harvested in 2026. Different ballot, same granary. The only thing that changed is the colour of the grain.

The Muslim North was promised relevance and got a ticket. What did it actually get? Now that the Muslim North has turned against Tinubu for reelection — realising, as some always knew, that the Muslim-Muslim ticket was not a partnership but a purchase — the president needs a substitute. And the substitute is the Northern Christian. A bride, not a partner. A vote bank, not a conscience. A cushion against the reckoning that is coming.

And what does the Northern Christian get? The honour of delivering votes to a man who does not believe in one Nigeria. The privilege of propping up a system that has already shown it will throw the North under the bus when it wants a reelection. The dignity of being the second choice — after the first choice tired of being short-changed.

Gen. Danjuma, with respect: Northern Christians do not need Tinubu to liberate them. They need the North. They need the kind of unity that made Alhaji Yakasai give 300 naira to an Ishaya to board a plane to Kaduna. They need what the General himself defended in 1966 — Arewa unity that is not transactional, not denominational, not bought and sold in presidential villas.

The General has the pedigree. The precedent. The resources. The influence. He can unite the North — Muslim and Christian — without involving politicians from the South who have never wished us well. Or have the politicians so convinced him that independently is a dirty word, and delegation is a badge of honour?

Do not mistake me. Gen. Danjuma is not the villain of this story. He is perhaps the most tragic figure on this stage — a man whose life’s blood was spent on Northern integrity, now being asked to spend his twilight on its dispersal. The question is not whether the General loves the North. The question is whether he understands that the North’s future cannot be secured by anyone outside the North — not by a president who does not believe in one Nigeria, not by a party whose lease on the North is renewed only when needed, not by a coalition whose only constant is the utility of Northern votes.

Religious politics will not build the North. It will not unite the North. It will destroy the North — because the moment the Northern Christian is made the bride of one faction, the Northern Muslim becomes the bride of another, and the North, which was once a people, becomes a battlefield of proxies. The South wins every round. The North loses every time.

Northerners can overcome their challenges with sincerity of purpose — without the southern politicians who do not wish us well. We have done it before. Alhaji Yakasai did it in 1987 with 300 naira and a driver to the airport. The General did it in 1966 with his life. The question for 2026 is not what Tinubu can offer the North. It is what the North will offer itself — and whether it will accept the second deceitful act, as it accepted the first.

Maganan kurciya jawabi ne, sai mai hankali ke ganewa.

The Northern Christian who votes a bride’s programme will reap a bride’s fate. And the General, who knows that fate, has no business delivering him to the altar.

The North must not fall for this. Not again. Not in 2026. Not after 1966.