Power rotation has worked for Nigerian politicians since the birth of the Fourth Republic in 1999. It has helped to ensure a balance of power or a semblance of it, in the obviously tenuous relationship between the North and the South.
Now, on the eve of the 2023 presidential election, there are forces that want rotation abrogated, for some reasons best known to them. It is, as the late indefatigable Chief Gani Fawahenmi once said, removing the goalpost in the course of a football match because a team has scored a goal; or, in this case, a team is within the opponents’ 18-yard box poised to score.
With President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, having served two terms, the second of which is expected to end in about a year, there would ordinarily be no struggle over where the next president would come from.
But that is not the case, and those who are bent on removing the Rotation Goal Post now obviously have an agenda. The South is not silent over the push coming from the North.
Rather than align themselves with what should by now pass as an established convention in both the APC and the People’s Democratic Party, some northern elements are insisting that the choice of the presidential candidates in both parties should be thrown open now. In other words, the North in effect is telling the South that: “Heads we win; tails you lose”.
But the South and even the Middle Belt, are in agreement in their opposition to this move. They are saying, in the words of a popular Nigerian artiste, that “Agreement is Agreement”.
“It is the turn of the Southern part of the country to produce the next President. The party leadership should have no difficulty in making pronouncements on this very important issue, just as it has fixed various fees for the purchase of forms. This must be done without delay. The principle of Federal Character is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, as amended. It will be disingenuous for anyone to argue against rotation at this period,” Rotimi Akeredolu, the governor of Ondo State, said in a statement he issued on Tuesday.
Akeredolu, a staunch member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, warned that giving the party’s presidential ticket to the northern could plunge APC into a crisis.
His statement was appropriately titled “Our party, APC must tread the Path of Equity”.
According to him, “The party (APC) leadership should have no difficulty in making a pronouncement on this very important issue, just as it has fixed various fees for the purchase of forms.
Last week, the Chairman of the party, Adamu Abdullahi, declared that APC had not yet zoned the 2023 presidency, which many interpreted as a tacit admission of the challenges the party is having in taking the decision.
“The current democratic dispensation is anchored on the unwritten convention driven by a principle of equity. Political expediency dictates, more appealingly, that while adhering to the spirit and letters of the laws guiding the conduct of elections and succession to political offices, we must do nothing which is capable of tilting the delicate balance against the established arrangement which guarantees peace and promotes trust,” Akeredolu said.
“Our party just elected officers on the established principle of giving every part of the country an important stake in the political calculus. The focus has now shifted to the process which will culminate in the participation of our party in the general elections scheduled for next year. All lovers of peace and freedom must do everything to eschew tendencies that may predispose them to taking decisions which promote distrust and lead to a crisis, the end of which nobody may be able to predict.
“The leadership of the party ensured that the principle of rotational representation guided its decision at the just-concluded convention. The party chairmanship position has gone to the North. All other offices have been filled on this understanding. This is the time the leaders of the party must make a categorical statement, devoid of equivocation, on the pattern of succession.
“The party executive committee has fixed a fee for the purchase of the nomination form for the office. It is expected, fervently, that it will proceed to complete the process by limiting the propensities for disagreement to a region for possible micro-management. It is very expedient that we avoid self-inflicted crises before the general elections,” Akeredolu said.
He is the Chairman of the Southern Governors’ Forum, a group that has insisted that power should shift to the South now, in the spirit of fairness, equity, and justice.
Even from within the APC and the North, voices are arising in support of Southern Presidency. These include Senator Ali Ndume of the APC, who has said it would be unfair, unjust and a betrayal of trust for APC to zone the Presidency to the north.
“That will be unfair, injustice, and almost a betrayal of trust of a gentleman man agreement.
“We had an agreement, though not written in 2015 that the North should produce the President. That was why all the presidential aspirants were from the North: Atiku, Nda Isaiah, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Muhammadu Buhari, all contested.
“Only Rochas Okorocha just participated because he already had the governorship ticket in his pocket. He just participated for the sake of it because Buhari even won in Imo State.
“That was why no aspirants contested from south-west, south, and south-east. I believe in justice; I am not against anybody from the North contesting, it is their constitutional right,” Ndume pointed out.
Support for a Southern Presidency is also swelling up even beyond the precincts of the two leading political parties.
“My idea of zoning the Presidency to the South-East is well-known. No Nigerian will like to live in a country where certain people believe that they have the only right to lead. The APC believes the 12 million votes of President Muhammadu Buhari might be eroded if it is zoned to the South. The PDP is also considering zoning to the North. This is unfair,” elder statesman and leader of the Pan Niger Delta Forum Edwin Clark, said on Arise TV on Tuesday.
Clark is not just championing a Southern presidency, he has been insistent on the presidency going to the Southeast, for equity, fairness, and justice.
“Nigeria stood on three legs, and it has never been steady since one of the legs was destroyed during the Civil War. I unpacked all these facts in my forthcoming memoir ‘Brutally Frank’,” Clark stated.
“Gowon should have allowed the Igbo to go if they are to be treated as second-class citizens. If zoning, which will heal the wounds, is not done, there will be no Nigeria. Nobody will remain in this country as a second-class citizen.
“The North believes their population can be used to oppress other Nigerians. This is not acceptable. The era of that has gone. There are many good northerners but the Fulani-oriented ones want to dominate everywhere.”
Also consistent in his support for a Southeast presidency is Elder Ayo Adebanjo, the leader of the Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere. The 94-year-old leader says he wants southerners to support the Igbo presidency because it is clear that the North does not want to give up power.
Adebanjo is supporting an Igbo presidency despite the emergency of two bigwigs from the Southwest who are contesting for the top seat in the land. These are Bola Tinubu, the National Leader of the APC, and Prof Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice-President.
