The recent pronouncement by the pan-Yoruba socio-political organization, Afenifere; the Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum; the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo; and the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) that they have thrown their weight behind the demand by southern governors for the next president of Nigeria to come from the South, deserves a careful attention to substance and symbolism. Irrespective of their intention, such a bland and reckless demand unknown to the Nigerian constitution is irresponsible and divisive with no redeeming political value besides over-heating the polity and exacerbating existing religious, regional and ethnic fault lines. For relevance, the southern governors must retrace their steps and de-emphasize regional or ethnic identity politics and present a pan-Nigerian agenda and vision for the country and demonstrate capacity to manage conflicts of interest, especially amongst its ambitious members; who should temper their vaulting ambitions and overriding self-interest with public good. This inflammation of primordial sentiments by southern governors at a time the nation is at crossroads is unpatriotic and unacceptable and should worry all Nigerians. The southern governors should be told in clear terms that their kind of narrow-minded agitation for the 2023 presidency is not what Nigeria needs.
Rising from their second meeting at the Lagos State Government House in Ikeja yesterday, the southern governors resolved that the next President of Nigeria should come from the southern region. In a six-point communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, and signed by Ondo State Governor and chairman of the Southern Governors’ Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), the governors also set a deadline of Sept 1, 2021, for all southern states to promulgate anti-open grazing laws. They also rejected the 3% host community fund in the recently passed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and recommended that the fund be increased to 5%. The southern governors also rejected the removal of the electronic transmission of election results from the 2021 Electoral Act Amendment Bill; as well as the confirmation of exclusive jurisdiction in pre-election matters on Federal High Courts.
Although the 2023 general election is almost two years away, party chieftains from the ruling APC and main opposition PDP have been making inflammatory statements and spewing bile and vitriol in the public space, all in the name of political engagement. 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), and Miyetti Allah have accentuated the divisive clamor by their insistence that the presidency must remain in the North in 2023. They anchor their case on 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 remain in the North, because in respect of the rotational principle; the South already held power for 12 years between the Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan administration, while the north with Buhari would hold it for just eight years. Failure to which, the northerners have warned that: “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. Little surprise therefore, that southern socio-political groups like Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Afenifere and PANDEF have all rallied behind the call by southern governors for a southern president in 2023.
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 when President Jonathan’s Ijaw kinsmen boasted that if he was not allowed to continue in office in 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. For starters, Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election and Nigeria did not disintegrate.
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, including the southern governors; the following pertinent questions are just appropriate: who made them the leaders of Northern and Southern Nigeria? Secondly, being governor is an authority position; can governors truly lay claim to a mandate of the people to speak on their behalf? What are the service credentials of these governors? Above all, is there really anything like a monolithic north or south which they are purporting to represent? By the way, to which higher authority were the southern governors directing their call? Assuming arguendo that the demand for a southern president is somehow achievable through political machinations like zoning, will Southwest governors support an Igbo president in 2023; or they just want to use the Southeast as cannon fodder to foist one of their own like Bola Tinubu to power?
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 will be the next president of Nigeria is a matter well within the powers of the Nigerian people and not self-serving governors or organizations. The point must be stated and with emphasis that when it comes to the presidency, no section of the country has a veto over the rest of the country. The threat of confiscating or 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 agenda. It is the right of Nigerians to decide who should rule them at any point in time.
At a time the nation is tottering on the brink of implosion, it is indeed unfortunate that southern governors will join groups of political jobbers and rent-seekers, without any legitimate mandate of the people; to engage in public posturing and empty grand-standing. 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. The south is bedeviled by insecurity, kidnapping for ransom, ritualists and secessionist agitations in the Southeast. These should be the concern of governors and well-meaning individuals and organizations.
It does not require a special skill or intelligence to recognize that Nigeria is ailing. Although the Buhari administration may disagree, Nigeria’s problems are inextricably linked to poor leadership. Little wonder the nation’s fortune has continued to plummet just as she diminishes in stature and integrity. Of course, the quality of leadership cannot be divorced from the choices at the polls, if choices have ever been truly permitted. The consequences, is the election of wrong persons into public offices, who in turn appoint the wrong persons as aides. No country, after all, can rise above the level of its workforce, especially at the decision-making level, hence the state of the nation. 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 come 2023. Enough is enough.
