Notwithstanding the uncertainties and fears preceding the elections, and the divisive and hostile tones in the current campaigns, all patriotic Nigerians of goodwill must ensure the country remains united during and after the forthcoming polls regardless of the existing religious, regional and ethnic fault lines. For the second time, President Goodluck Jonathan; a Christian from the south and General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd); a Muslim from the north, will be facing Nigerian voters next February 14, but the elections will be as much about their parties and supporters than the two main candidates themselves. And despite agreements signed to conduct issues-based campaigns by all stakeholders, the rancor and bitterness on display portends to an uneasy calm before the storm. This inflammation of primordial sentiments is unpatriotic and unacceptable and should worry all Nigerians.
Party chieftains from the ruling PDP and main opposition APC have been making inflammatory statements and casting banal aspersions on their opponents, all in the name of campaigning. They have been joined in this perfidy by socio-cultural groups across the country. Northern organizations such as 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 accentuated the divisive clamor by their insistence that the presidency must return to the North in 2015.
They are up in arms against others in the south such as Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and political organization that has endorsed Jonathan as their candidate. The endorsement was sequel to the extraction of commitments from Jonathan to implement the recommendations of last year’s national conference where far-reaching decisions about the restructuring of Nigeria were taken.
Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola, took the absurdity a step further, the other day, when he interpreted a statement credited to President Jonathan to the effect that “the May 29 handover date is sacrosanct” to mean that the ruling PDP is already conceding defeat and getting ready to quit in May after the elections. In the same vein, Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Tony Anenih warned those who are threatening to break up Nigeria if the APC doesn’t win to perish the thought, saying Nigeria won’t disintegrate because Nigeria’s unity was non-negotiable.
All these individuals and organizations laying claim to the presidency are entitled to their opinions but they exercise their right to free speech to the detriment of the polity. This disturbing trend started in earnest with President Goodluck Jonathan’s Ijaw kinsmen who once boasted that if he was not allowed to continue in office come 2015, the peace in the Niger-Delta and the country for that matter would not be guaranteed. In one streak of insensitive outburst, the Leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, Asari Dokubo even said, “there will be no peace, not only in the Niger Delta, everywhere, if Goodluck Jonathan is not president again by 2015… (because) Jonathan has an uninterrupted eight years of two terms to be president according to the Nigerian Constitution”. On the heels of that outburst, a gathering of self-acclaimed Southern leaders also called on President Jonathan to contest the 2015 general election if he so wished.
Some Northerners have made the case that there was a “gentleman’s agreement” that power should be rotated between the North and the South, and in furtherance of the pact, though unknown to the Nigerian constitution, the presidency must return to the North, in respect of the rotational principle; failure to which, “the North on the basis of one man, one vote will keep power indefinitely in the present Nigerian State” since the grand north, according to them, has a larger chunk of the population.
These irresponsible claims and counter-claims may be dismissed as electioneering or 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 them the leaders of Northern and Southern Nigeria? Secondly, can they truly lay claim to a mandate of the people to speak on their behalf? What are the service credentials of these leaders? And is there a monolithic North or South which they are 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 being the extant basic law of the country is very clear on the procedure for the election of the president 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 only 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 organizations. The point must be clearly made 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 the country by anybody or 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.
These groups comprising rent-seekers, without the legitimate mandate of the people are only seeking attention for self-aggrandizement. If they truly cherish the interest of the North or South or any part of Nigeria as they openly claim, they ought to be pre-occupied with known problems of their regions. Today, the country, especially the North is ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency, insecurity, growing youth unemployment and high rate of illiteracy. These should be the concern of well-meaning individuals and organizations. The so-called leaders should be told in clear terms that their kind of narrow-minded agitation is not what Nigeria needs.
Nigeria needs a leader from the North, South, East or West, who has a pan-Nigerian vision and sees Nigeria as his or her constituency, not only part of it. The inevitable result of inept leadership, whether from the north or south, is underdevelopment and bad governance, and Nigeria has seen enough of these already. So let the people, to whom the government belongs, decide who will govern them in the next four years. Enough is enough.
