As the struggle for power in 2023 reaches fever-pitch, and all means are being deployed to influence which geo-political zone will produce the next president, those individuals and organizations who have started laying claim to the presidency even while the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari is yet to complete his tenure are entitled to their opinions, but they exercise that right to the detriment of the nation. Since it is fast becoming an epidemic of sorts, the phenomenon of self-seeking, self-appointed leaders angling for power for certain persons, ethnic groups or regions has become a political Covid-19 pandemic against which the Nigerian people need repeated immunization and booster shots. Too many examples abound in Nigeria’s recent history of the rascality of so-called elite groups of tribal bigots and ethnic jingoists being the tinderbox of destabilization. This inflammation of primordial sentiments is unpatriotic and unacceptable. Nigeria neither needs nor deserves this tribe of political opportunists.
The key driver accentuating this divisive clamor is the contentious power rotation pact allegedly signed in 1999; the so-called “gentleman’s agreement” though unknown to the Nigerian constitution, that the presidency should be rotated between the North and the South. In furtherance of this gentleman’s agreement, northern groups like Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Arewa Re-awakening Forum (ARF), Northern Union, Code Group (CG) and Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP) have taken turns to make the case for the north to retain the presidency after Buhari’s mandate ends in 2023. The central nexus of their argument is that by the end of Buhari’s tenure in 2023, the south would have held the presidency for 14 of the 24 years since the return to democracy in 1999. The northern groups supplied a caveat to the extent that if the rotational principle was not respected, they would claim the presidency by the sheer power of their numbers, since according to them, the north has a larger chunk of the country’s vote.
It is, of course, not only the remit of northern groups to flag off partisan political activities for Nigerians as their southern counterparts have made no secret of their ambition to see the presidency revert to the south after Buhari. Southern traditional rulers, politicians, most notably southern governors both in the ruling APC and main opposition PDP parties have missed no opportunity to remind the north of the “gentleman’s agreement; and the imperative for power to return to the south come 2023. There are well over half a dozen issues of trans-ethnic and national import that may engage patriots from south-east and south-south of Nigeria; but the most vexatious and volatile is the clamor for an Igbo president in 2023, given that power in the south has rotated between the southwest and south-south zones and the southeast has never produced a president under the 4th republic.
These irresponsible claims and counter-claims may be dismissed as the mere exercise of democratic rights by individuals and associations. But for keen observers of developments in the country, this has always been the trodden path to huge national crisis which consequence in the past had kept the country badly divided. Hence, to the self-acclaimed northern and southern leaders, the following pertinent questions are just appropriate: who made you the leaders of northern and southern Nigeria? Secondly, can you truly lay claim to a mandate of the people of the north and the south to speak on their behalf? What are the service credentials of some of these leaders? And is there a monolithic north and south or which north and south are they purporting to represent?
This descent into the morass of ethnic and regional passions by self-serving persons should have no place in Nigeria today. The 1999 Constitution as amended being the extant basic law of the country is very clear on the procedure for the election of the president of the federal republic of Nigeria and the corresponding tenure. A president can only emerge by virtue of polling a majority of votes cast in the federation regarded as a single constituency and has a four-year mandate renewable once by means of election. So the question of who becomes the president of Nigeria is a matter well within the powers of the Nigerian people and not self-serving tribal and ethnic groups. The point must be made, and with emphasis that, there is no section of the country that has a veto over the rest of the country. The threat of imposition of leadership on Nigerians by any group is therefore irresponsible and condemnable. It is not only reprehensible, divisive and disruptive, it is meant to railroad Nigerians to a destructive predetermined agenda. It is the right of Nigerians to decide who should rule them at any point in time.
Nigerians certainly have to worry about the behavior of these groups be they from the north or south. Their interpretation of national priority exemplified by their parochialism is not complimentary to the national interest. This is a shame. From these groups, whether of inherited, assumed or elected leadership, Nigeria demands a higher level of responsibility. The state of the nation requires that they bestow nobility on issues on their agenda and be seen to disdain the disgraceful attraction of gratifying themselves to the corridors of power. It is not in the public interest to inflame the polity and bring themselves into odium by joining the peculiarly Nigerian dubious, even if lucrative, industry, being created around certain people’s political ambitions.
It is regrettable that the dramatis personae in the unfolding drama appear to be poor students of history as they are using the same style that truncated Nigeria’s previous democratic experiments. And because scant regard is paid to history and its wrenching pain, and to avoid a repeat, it is pertinent to draw attention to that history. This will hopefully, nudge them in the direction of sobriety, and give some consideration for the nation’s well-being. If the lawlessness and political intrigues that brought the First Republic to its knees are too far and stale in memory, the events of 1982-83 which precipitated the collapse of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) government of Alhadji Shehu Shagari should still be fresh. The indices are the same as Nigerians have in their hands now. It is, therefore, no profound clairvoyance in saying that a disaster of the same proportion as 1983 stares Nigeria in the face, unless the dangerous trends and ominous signals are quickly nipped in the bud.
Nigerian leaders heat up the polity and create tension in the struggle for power and political ascendancy simply because they are not genuinely interested in the wellbeing of the people. The spread of militant groups in the country today has been traced to similar backroom arrangements: a pitiful pattern of elite impunity in which meetings are goaded and rented crowds or gangs are requisitioned to agitate and influence political direction in the name of some fantasy pact. This perverted kind of politics should be discarded everywhere. In the southeast and south-south, southwest or northeast, northwest or north-central, this irresponsibility must stop. The nation is currently in the throes of every man-made disaster. Poor governance in the north and south shows in the woeful and untold poverty among the people.
These groups made up of rent-seekers, without the legitimate mandate of the people are only in search of attention for self-aggrandizement. If they truly cherish the interest of any part of Nigeria as they openly claim, they ought to be pre-occupied with known problems of their zones. Today, the country, especially the north is ravaged by insecurity, youth unemployment and a high rate of illiteracy. The south is bedeviled by kidnapping, armed robbery and ritual killings. These should be the concern of well-meaning individuals and groups. The so-called leaders of northern and southern Nigeria should be told in clear terms that their kind of narrow-minded agitation is not what Nigeria needs. The country needs a leader from the north, south, east or west who sees Nigeria as his or her constituency, not any part of it. When a leadership is inept, whether from the north or south, the result is under development and a badly divided country. Nigeria has seen enough of poor leadership, recruited on the basis of considerations other than merit. Enough is enough.
