The cycle of premature electioneering politics is here again unfortunately, as it has been since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999, when the year preceding a new election is dominated by politicking rather than governance. We are in that season again even though the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari has over a year on his mandate. The political scene got a major jolt when former Lagos governor and APC national leader, Bola Tinubu announced his intention to contest the 2023 presidential election on the ruling APC platform. Since then, many other candidates have also signified their intention to contest the elections. Some of the aspirants are scoundrels with a baggage of criminal antecedents, who by their actions or inactions, failed Nigeria woefully and are undeserving of voters’ trust. The electorate should therefore be more discerning in choosing the next president who will save Nigeria from total collapse.
Nigerians are looking forward to a fresh start in 2023, but it seems members of the political class, including chips of the old block are hell-bent on torpedoing the electoral process by reopening political fault lines and inflaming primordial sentiments. The key driver of this divisive clamor is the vexatious and contentious power rotation pact; so-called “gentleman’s agreement” allegedly signed in 1999, that the presidency should be rotated between the North and the South. In furtherance of this gentleman’s agreement, the ruling APC equivocally zoned its presidential ticket to the “South” as if there is a monolithic “South” whereas, there is the Southeast, Southwest, and South-south. This has left the door open for aspirants like Tinubu to because the party refused to categorically zone the ticket to the Southeast. The PDP, on its part has inaugurated a 37-member committee on zoning, saddled with the task of allocating all leadership positions among the six geopolitical zones.
There are well over half a dozen issues of trans-ethnic and national import that may engage patriots from the north, south, east and west of Nigeria; but the most volatile and vexatious 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. 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.
The national prescription for rotation, though not in the 1999 Constitution or the extant electoral law is commonly shared by the APC and PDP as a stabilizing pillar of national unity. Going by the unwritten but well-heeled practice of rotating the presidency among the various geo-political zones since 1999, it will therefore be invidious and unfair to jettison zoning as some self-seeking politicians have been clamoring. The Southeast zone is the only zone in the country that has yet to produce a president. The numbers underlining equity in the zoning of the Presidency don’t lie. To begin with, the data shows that the north has ruled for 45 out of 63.5 years (71%) of the country’s existence. The south has ruled for 18.5 years (29%). The breakdown shows that of the 45 years power has been held by the north, the Northwest has had the lion’s share with Muhammadu Buhari, Murtala Muhammed, Umaru Yar’Adua, Shehu Shagari and Sani Abacha holding power for a combined 21 years. The North-central with Yakubu Gowon, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Ibrahim Babangida has held power for 18 years; followed by the Northeast with Tafawa Balewa, who held power for six years.
In the south which has held power for 18 ½ years, the Southwest has virtually monopolized power with Olusegun Obasanjo and Ernest Shonekan (12 years); the South-south with Goodluck Jonathan (six years); and the Southeast with Aguiyi Ironsi (six months). Anyone not blinded by prejudice or self-interest will agree that, of all the six geo-political zones, the Southeast has been shortchanged, having held power only for six months in 1966. A lot has been said about the marginalization of the Igbo in the leadership of Nigeria despite their sheer numbers and overwhelming intellectual, technological and business acumen. The 2023 general election presents the most auspicious opportunity for patriotic Nigerians to play the Igbo trump card and get Nigeria back on track. Clearly, a country in an age of turmoil and existential doom needs to look beyond the tragic purveyors of its decadence.
It is, therefore, no profound clairvoyance in saying that the next president should come from the southeast. In his poignant treatise, The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe stated that: “The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.” The question is: where are such Igbo personalities that can be acceptable to most Nigerians, irrespective of age-long biases against Igbos? Where are those Igbos that are enamored with sound principles and integrity? Nigeria needs them more as replacements for those that only mouth integrity but never live up to any standard. The nation is currently in the throes of every man-made disaster and leadership failure shows in the woeful and untold poverty among the people.
