By Emma Nwosu
Left to the Northern Governors and Leaders Forum, the CNG and other members of the Northern establishment, the rotation of the Presidency, between the North and the South, should be dumped and a Southerner should never be in power as President of Nigeria again.
The Presidency must now be, strictly, a game of numbers so that they can continue ruling Nigeria the way they have been ruling it unto perdition – because they have been able to maintain the population advantage conferred on the Northern Region by the colonial master, are still polygamous with more children per capita than Southerners and have the herd population that vote to instruction. Northern borders are also open to influx (now facilitated by road and rail) from the proximate Sahel Region.
This wicked plan is antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution (behind which they seek to hide) and to the goodwill and concessions always enjoyed from their Southern counterparts.
Confiscation and centralization of essential powers, resources and revenues of federating units by the Federal Government; provision of separate laws and Courts for Moslems in a secular country and deprivation of citizens of healthy competition and the destiny for excellence, through the obnoxious and perverted quota system – all to prop up the North – point to the spirit of inclusiveness of the Constitution.
It is only in Nigeria that the most backward region could seize power and can scold the regions which generate the tax and the oil and gas resources on which the country thrives and which are more advanced in human resources, science and technology, commerce and industry, arts and culture, sports and everything that makes the society tick, for asking for the Presidency, for a chance to turn around the country.
The Northern establishment also insists that the structure, leadership and unity of the country are non-negotiable whereas it has been the greatest beneficiary of Nigeria’s negotiability. It would not hear of secession again whereas it was the inventor – by always making to secede if anything it stood for or asked for was not promptly conceded.
A few instances would suffice. In 1957, it threatened that the Northern Region would secede if national independence was not deferred until the Region was ready. It was obliged. In 1960, it threatened that the Northern Region would secede if the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) was not allowed to form the first independent federal government and was obliged.
Note that in the 1959 election (for that first independent government of 1960) the NPC polled, approximately, 1.6 million votes against AG’s 1.9 million and NCNC’s 2.6 million and could not have led that government had the NCNC not conceded it to them for peace to reign. But subsequently, each time the Eastern and the Western Regions complained about election and census manipulations and asked for re-run, they were damned to go to court.
The Northern Region would have also seceded (remember ARABA) when the interventionist regime of General Aguiyi Ironsi tampered with the autonomy of the regions (in the innocent bid to bring everyone nearer, to calm frayed nerves, after the coup d’etat of January 1966) but for the prompt advice of the colonial master. The emergent Northern military establishment then embarked on a series of coup d’etat to consolidate their region’s stranglehold on the country, starting with the revenge coup of July 1966, initially meant to herald the exit of the region.
The same regional autonomy for which the Northern Region would have seceded has become anathema to the Northern establishment!
In 1993, President Ibrahim Babangida refused to concede the Presidency to Chief Moshood Abiola. In 2006, with the imminent end of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s Presidency, the Northern Governors Forum issued an ultimatum that the Presidency must return to the North – without objection from their Southern counterparts who were rather in the forefront to frustrate the alleged Third Term agenda of President Obasanjo, with Ken. Nnamani as Senate President.
In 2014, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar collaborated with some Northern Governors to destabilize the PDP, to ensure that Dr Jonathan lost the 2015 election and power returned to the North. Before then, the candidate of the APC had issued the infamous threat that Nigeria would be soaked in blood if he lost again. That threat is associated with the deluge of mercenaries who have boosted their Nigerian kit and kin to wreak havoc in the land, in the name of herdsmen and bandits.
One could go on and on. The point is that, with all due respect, the Northern establishment is contemptuous, avaricious, impetuous and implacable when it comes to political control of Nigeria; is incapable of reciprocating gestures and is utterly lacking in conscience and moral authority against the demand by the Southern Governors Forum for true federalism and for the Presidency in 2023, after eight years of General Buhari.
The tactical errors of Southern and Middle-Belt leaders, in particular, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr Yakubu Gowon (who repudiated the 1967 Aburi Accord and levied a needless war on Biafra) which have fostered the suzerainty of the Northern establishment, must also be highlighted, to warn the blacklegs of today.
It was Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) who conceded the first independent Federal Government to Sir Ahmadu Bello and the NPC (who were least desirous of independence, contributed the least to the struggle and were least prepared, by all parameters, for quality leadership at the national level) instead of aligning with Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group (AG) to form that government, with their combined majority of parliamentary seats.
You can trace most of Nigeria’s upheavals to that concession. In place of good governance, the NPC-led Federal Government descended on the opposition, principally, the non-Moslem indigenous tribes of the Northern Region and the AG, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, resulting in the unbridled political crises of the Western Region, which prompted the January 15, 1966 coup d’etat, which, in turn, precipitated the July 29, 1966 revenge coup and the pogrom against Easterners throughout the Northern Region. It is the opportunism, distress and other aftermaths of those events that have been mutating and troubling Nigeria till today.
Then, even though it was the NPC-led Federal Government that orchestrated the political crisis of the AG and the Western Region, including his treasonable felony trial and imprisonment, Chief Obafemi Awolowo became the master-strategist to General Yakubu Gowon-led Federal Military Government – instead of mobilizing his followers to stand with the Eastern Region on the Aburi Accord, which met the essential needs of the South and the Middle-Belt and which could have averted secession by the Eastern Region – and the Civil War.
Awo, probably, hoped to be compensated with the Presidency upon return to civil rule, which was not to be. Instead, the Northern military establishment staged successive coups and ruled by Decrees, between 1976 and 1999, to fully dismantle the true federal system agreed by founding fathers and complete the diversion of Nigeria to the advantage of their region. In the process, the Nigerian system has been rendered utterly predatory.
Yet, like people under a spell, that trend of selfishness, myopia, naivety, distrust and betrayal continues among Southerners, whereas, the avarice of the Northern establishment towards Nigeria could only be curbed by the East and the West (which have greater equity in the Nigerian enterprise, in absolute terms of the struggle for independence, human and natural resources and everything that makes the society tick) boldly and transparently sticking together in resistance. Nigeria can only survive as a country of equity and equal citizenship or we part ways.
In this regard, the persistence of the Southern Governors Forum in calling the 2023 Presidency to the South and in calling for Constitutional and structural reconstruction of Nigeria, is highly commendable. Rotation of the Presidency could be dumped only when the quota system and religious laws are dumped, with essential powers and resources returned to federating units.
The black legs among the Southern Governors Forum and other groups had better learn that they could never be smarter than the great Zik and Awo or even Gowon (who were, nevertheless, out-manoeuvred) and could only hasten their eclipse and the enslavement of their people.
