The north believes that the minority elements in the middle belt and the south south should be befriended when it is politically expedient and discarded when their usefulness is no longer required. From independence, till the end of the Second Republic in 1983, the south south zone was the political bride of the north. The zone ensured that the balance of power would always tilt favorably to the north. What did the area get in return for such massive support provided to the north? Nothing substantial! The area has been devastated by oil spillage, its aquatic lifestyle damaged in the process and poverty walks on four legs in the region. Infrastructural development was medieval at best and when leaders agitated for equitable distribution of resources that are extracted from the zone, the security forces were unleashed on the land, and shaken, the people retreated into their cocoon of deprivation. Whatever kind of development thrown to the area was not commensurate with the massive resources that are being extracted from the area. The agitation for equitable distribution of resources led by the militants finally convinced the powers that be, that the region should not be treated as a zone of plunder but an important zone that sustains the economic strength of the nation. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan- the then governor of Bayelsa State was nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate of the ruling party in 2007 presidential elections-essentially to assuage the zone’s demand for political relevance. It is a known fact and it has been written in many articles and op-ed pieces in the media that as Vice President, Jonathan was massively ill-treated by certain forces within the administration of the late President Umaru Yar’adua. To those people, a Niger-Deltan being a breathing distance away from becoming the president was an ill-omen and like the Republicans have done to Obama, Jonathan was mal-treated and his office disrespected. When the late President Yar’adua took ill and was away for months, these same elements afraid of a Niger- Deltan becoming the president, employed every outlandish and morally revolting machinations and subterfuge to derail a clearly defined constitutional path of succession which was to invest the vice- president with the responsibilities of an acting president in the event that the president could not perform his duties on account of ill -health or death. When national and international outcry finally forced the Senate to come up with the novel concept of Doctrine of Necessity that elevated then Vice President Jonathan to Acting President, the same elements from the north began a carefully orchestrated campaign to stop him from contesting the 2011 presidential elections as his own man. The same elements had threatened thunder and brimstone if Jonathan were to contest the election, insisting that the president had the constitutional responsibility of finishing President Yar’adua’s term and that he should return to Yenagoa and that, that power must be returned to the north. When President Jonathan eventually declared his desire to run, which he was constitutionally empowered to, the north bandied together and came up with the very obtuse and strategic blunder of presenting a ‘Northern Consensus Candidate’ in the person of the former Vice President –Abubakar Atiku. It was shocking that a region so well- versed in political strategy should make such a political blunder by openly presenting a candidate that was defined, furnaced and shaped to carry out the agenda of the north. If their candidate had won, whose interest would he have served-North or Nigerian? As expected, the Consensus Candidate idea was dead on arrival and President Jonathan went ahead to eviscerate Atiku Abubakar at the January 2011 primaries and went ahead to score a massive victory in the April 2011 presidential elections. As the Republicans did to Obama, since President Jonathan’s election, several manufactured crises have doted the national landscape. The promise to make the country ungovernable has been adroitly followed- the potency of a nascent terrorist organization-Boko Haram was sharpened and suicide bombing-hitherto considered an alien notion took hold of our collective consciousness. Even though President Jonathan has recorded some successes in some aspects of our national development, to a section of the country, the president’s efforts have been demonized and dismissed as abject failure. To these elements, like Obama is to the Republicans, President Jonathan’ presidency is an affront and an invasion of their hallowed political space. His rumored ambition to run for a second term has rankled them, and the president must be stopped at all cost. The manufactured crisis rocking the PDP is part of a carefully orchestrated plan to frustrate the president from running for a second term. But will they succeed? Like Obama, the Republicans did everything possible to defeat him last year; there was no sling, no mud that was not thrown at the president. But at the end of the day, the American people were the sole determinants as to who would lead them- they chose Obama over the Romney, They chose reason over region, they chose rationality over the claptrap of irrationality dressed in racist colors. They chose a United States represented by a coalition of colors and tongues over a homogeneity that was narrow minded. Will Nigeria in 2015 choose a leader who was shaped and ordained to carry out a regional agenda or a leader whose constituency is national? If I were to offer a strategic advice to the north, I would ask them to tone down the rhetoric of ethnicity, mouthing north this, north that, or what the north wants. This appraoch does not engender good feeling among other components units. The north must realize that it is a different time and space today. Even though there is nothing fundamentally wrong in a region seeking to advance its cause and agenda, the method and manner such demands are made may be capable of alienating that region from the rest of the country. There is nothing wrong about the north demanding that power returned to its zone, but such a demand must not be made at the detriment of other zones neither should an occupant of an office, in this case President Jonathan, be hounded out of office because of the who and where he comes from and not because he is not delivering on his campaign promises. Let Nigerians be the one to fire the president at the polls if they deemed him not fit to continue, but not through the machinations of an ethnic group as is presently being pushed by the north. The Republicans tried similar tactics on Obama, it backfired big time. The north’s over-bearing approach to reclaiming power in 2015 may suffer similar fate if they continue to couch their message strictly from a regional prism than national
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:04:39 +0000
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