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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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I HAVE observed the contention over which of the six geo-political zones should produce the president come 2007 with some amusement. It is amazing how people dissipate energies over nothing. The truth is, as far as the presidency is concerned, for all practical purposes, there is effectively no zoning arrangement in the dominant and ruling party in Nigeria " the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Yet we find our brethren from the North and East at loggerheads over zoning. The northerners claim that the presidency has been zoned to them while easterners contend that it should be zoned to them.
The reality is, if ever a zoning arrangement existed in the PDP, it started and ended at the presidential primaries of 1999, and on a limited scale. What may pass for zoning in 1999 was the understanding among the northern elite that none of its own should vie for presidency. In other words, the North reached a consensus that a southerner must become president. As a matter of fact, this consensus was more of a geo-political affair of the entire North than a party matter because it was upheld not just in the PDP but also in the All Peoples Party (APP) presently known as ANPP.
The consensus took practical effect in the PDP when not a single northerner featured in the presidential primaries, while ab initio whatever primaries took place in the APP were rendered inconsequential by the fact that its northern wing had resolved to be the junior partner in a tactical pact with the Alliance for Democracy (AD), whereby they would produce the vice president from the North while the latter would field the presidential candidate from the South. The pact was concretised in the Falae/Shinkafi ticket.
So when we talk of zoning in respect of the office of president it was the northerners that gave it practical meaning in their collective wisdom in 1999 only. It was neither a PDP idea nor an APP idea. It was a northern idea. May I add that I am yet to find such consensus by the northerners being paralleled anywhere either in books or contemporary times since I was initiated to the study of political science 18 years ago. The nearest to it, if we must find similar cases, are a few countries where erstwhile ruling ethnic groups had been bombed to the negotiation table by insurgents of marginalised groups to play the second fiddle or some non-dominant roles in so-called governments of national unity, which often collapse after a period not exceeding five years. South Africa is an example.
Of course, I am familiar with the school of thought that submits that northerners were forced to relinquish power via their intra-group consensus owing to intense pressures attending the June 12 struggle. This school claims that power elite of the North were only being pragmatic by conceding the presidency to the South because failing to do so portended grave consequences to the existence of Nigeria as a sovereign entity.The Yoruba, whose illustrious son, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, had won the annulled election were the most aggrieved; and the idea of founding an Oodua republic was gaining ground in their fold. The submission of this school is plausible. The threat of balkanization too at that time was real.
The Exodus anthem of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) is instructive on this score. The translation goes thus: "Time to return home, Oodua descendants (2ce)/ We've been part of a purposeless journey/ Now we ought to return home/Washing our hands off this sour meal/ And hurry as one to make palatable meal". As the Yoruba saying goes, "when a matter is too weighty we couch it in proverbs", the Oodua anthem, handiwork of a master propagandist, was at inception meant for those with decoding ears. I digress to note that the vibrancy of Oodua, years after Abacha expired with his state terror against which it emerged as a bourgeoning counter force, is an earnest call for the re-invention of Nigeria as a country founded on freewill and consensus.
All said, the threat of national perdition as a springboard of power shift notwithstanding, the point should not be ignored that withdrawal from the presidential contest by northern politicians was a sacrifice on their part. While it is true that there had been a preponderance of northern leadership in the prolonged era of military rule, it should be borne in mind that northern politicians were as alienated from power as their southern homologues in that era. The Balarabe Musas, Umaru Shinkafis, Bamangar Tukurs etc had every right to vie for president in 1999. That they restrained themselves from doing so in the interest of unity while actively canvassing for a southerner to assume that highly coveted office is worthy of commendation by all right thinking Nigerians. And it is for this same reason that the North's claim to the presidency in 2007 should deserve the sympathy of southerners.
This is all the more so for Yoruba of the Southwest because apparently it was northerners that gave President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba son, the colossal winning edge when he was challenged at the primaries by two Igbo gentlemen in the persons of Dr. Alex Ekwueme and Chief Jim Nwobodo in 1999. He was similarly given the winning edge by northerners at the 2003 primaries when he was again seriously confronted by Dr. Ekwueme and to a lesser extent by the duo of Chief Barnabas Gemade and Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the last two being from the North, meaning even in 2003 the overwhelming majority of northerners, at least in the PDP, still stood for southern presidency. A point underscored by the fact that both Gemade and Rimi got just handful of votes out of cumulative figures exceeding 3,000.
Two inferences can be drawn from the foregoing. One, that there was nothing like zoning in the PDP in both the 1999 and 2003 presidential primaries. Otherwise the primaries would have been the exclusive preserve of the geo-political zone to which the presidency had been zoned. In 1999 both the Southwest and East zones vied while in 2003 the contest featured the South-West, East, North Central and North-West zones. The second inference is that, as already noted, an overwhelming majority of northerners in the PDP both in 1999 and 2003 voted for southern, or to be more exact, South-West presidency.
As the verbal duel between the North and East rages over whose turn it is to be president in 2007, if I, a Yoruba, were asked where I shall pitch my tent in all good conscience, my reply shall be: "with the North"! Why? Because justice and fairness demand it. I shall even add that I am also interested in becoming vice president in 2007. And if asked why I wouldn't concede that to the East, I shall say because it is the surest way of mobilising the traditional bloc votes of my geo-political zone to ensure that my northern choice wins in 2007. In any case, many of my Igbo brethren are again taking another shot at the presidency and not the vice presidency in 2007.
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