Why North should support Jonathan IN a recent article of the above title written by an analyst from Kano, one Mohammed Abdulkadir, he related compelling and mutually beneficial reasons why the North, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) elite in the north will support the re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan, and urged for a rapprochement between the Northern power elite and the present and future leaders of the South-South zone. The South-South welcomes this type of trust-building initiatives but is justifiably leery for some reasons. For many years in Nigerian politics, major role-players and political stakeholders from the South-South aligned with the different interests groups in the north in the hope that the close ties will help actualise the developmental potentials of the region. But the outcome was often condescending exploitation which came to a brazen zenith when elements of the northern political elite resisted the constitutional right of Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 election and ganged up through the Ciroma committee to produce a northern president at all cost; a project that they have now taken to the opposition party APC. The South-South has never experienced such condescension from the South-West, South East or North Central. Each of these zones have helped to forge mutually beneficial relationships with role players from other zones and embrace national fraternity and solidarity in politics and other spheres, hence the South-South is often flummoxed at the motivations for such unrelenting resistance in power sharing and affirmative zoning from the North-East and North-West. This is why the call by Abdulkadir is a desirable re-affirmation of national political solidarity. Mohammed Abdulkadir’s acknowledgment that “it was clearly best to share power affirmatively with the acquiescence of all parties, than from the pyrrhic victory of fractious regional political conquest”, is a very welcome departure from the Ciroma group’s belligerence. But while we accept in principle the benefits of zoning and power sharing as an important democratising device, especially in Africa where ethno-religious differences confound politics, the earnest desire of the people of the South-South is not desperate central power control. The desire of the South-South as well as other zones in the South has always been an agreement at the centre to devolve power for more effective participation from the ground up to the federal centre. The reasons for the zealous support of the South-South for regional devolution are obvious, especially when instantiated using the developmental pace of the zone. In the first republic when regions developed their key infrastructure, the South-South had several fast developing growth points, all its maritime assets were utilized fully, oil and gas was a complement and not a substitute for its other international commodities, and the aids of trade such as road and rail infrastructure were given prompt attention. As a result of these later facts, the vital human resources necessary for growth remained within the zone and helped develop themselves and their communities rapidly. Today, after years of centralised struggle for power in which the South-South was critically marginalised despite its huge contribution to the federal centre, most of our youths are economic refugees in the commercial capital of Lagos and the political capital of Abuja. However we are hopeful. The South-South is hopeful not because the President is from the zone, but because his transformation agenda has made these key issues of regional participation more salient, especially after the national conference. We are also hopeful because unlike others before him, the president coming from a marginalised background, saw reasons to end disparities in infrastructure development. He ensured the even spread of federal tertiary infrastructure by creating federal universities in previously neglected places like Oye Ekiti, Dutsi-ma, Okerenkoko, Kashere and Ndufe-Alike. Aviation infrastructure revival has seen similar inclusivity in spread. Also, knowing the limitations faced by the marginalised Nigerian, particularly in moving goods and individuals around the country, he has embarked on a rapid revival of the vital rail infrastructure that will bring back forgotten towns and cities which were dying of neglect back into the national economic mainstream, and thereby re-enabling participation. To underscore the devolving impact of the revival of rail by the president’s transformation agenda, it is germane to recall the words of the influential German economist Georg Friedrich List, who indicated that railways play the following vital roles for national development: For national defense, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army; for improving the culture of the nation, it brings talent...
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 15:08:54 +0000
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