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Babatunde Adenodi
Pharmacist
East Orange,
New Jersey
 USA

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Fairness in sharing political offices is not part of the northerners political equation. When they were in power and had to distribute political offices, they ensured that only minor office of government were given to non-northerners in their government. Until Obasanjo’s coming, no southerner was ever made Chief of Army Staff, or minister of Defence, minister of Federal Capital Territory, or Commanders of major army divisions. Even the post of minister of Internal Affairs was an exclusive preserve of northerners. This unearned privilege of the northern predatory feudal class must stop. Jonathan must continue as president beyond 2011.

Zoning: Only when we are not in power!
 by Tunde Adenodi.

 

 

Zoning of political offices in Nigeria has been part of political calculation for as long as the nation has been in existence. You can even call it “federal character”. It has not just crept into political lexicon. At independence, Tafawa Balewa (Hausa) was the Prime Minister of the Federation while the Speaker of the House of Representative was Nwafor Orizu (Igbo). Obafemi Awolowo was the leader of opposition. He was Yoruba. But while there is no question of northern** support for this political device for political offices, they refuse to allow for the office of the President of Nigeria to be zoned especially when and as long as they are in power! From Balewa to Ironsi to Gowon to Murtala to Obasanjo to Shagari to Buhari to Babangida to Abacha and to Abubakar! That is their concept of zoning! They have to occupy the office of President. Other offices can be zoned, but not the presidency. Remember the Sokoto State logo: “Born to Rule?” The logo fails to add: “Others are born to be ruled!” But for Ironsi for six months and Obasanjo for three and a half years, it would have been an unbroken chain of northern leaders passing the leadership baton from one to the other for a period of thirty-three years (1966 to 1999).

This chain was broken again in 1999 when Obasanjo was president until 2007 when he handed over to Yar’Adua. And despite his gross imcompetence while in office and because someone other than a northerner would become president if he were to resign as a result of publicly known serious ill-health, Yar’Adua decided that only death could take the presidency from him or from a northerner! All manner of manouvers were made to ensure that Jonathan could not take over despite the constitutional provisions that guaranteed his succession to the presidency. Stability of the polity was not a concern to them. The north as represented by a sick and dying president must be there regardless of the demerits of doing so. The constitution must be put aside to satisfy a political party’s internal administrative arrangement! But death, the final arbiter, the impartial justice intervened, no, supervened and snatched the president, thus putting an end to our national agony… for a while!

What was lost on those who made it impossible for Jonathan to assume the presidency was that God, the omnipotent, is the only one that can zone political offices! And when he decides to zone you in or out of something, there is nothing any mortal can do! Yar’Adua was effectively zoned out of the presidency on March 6, 2010! And if it must be facetiously stated, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was zoned in as president! Is it for nothing that Jonathan, an unknown politician a mere 10 years ago, was deputy to Alamiasegha, Governor of Bayelsa State, then Vice President to Yar’Adua and now, fortuitously, becomes President of Nigeria without in anyway lifting a finger? Does this not tell them that those whom God would make King, God would crown them without their effort! Should this not put the fear of God in their hearts?

A vice-president’s primary duty is to step into the presidency if and when the president is incapacitated. If Jonathan is now, for any reason, not able to function as president, the northerners will be in the vanguard of those calling for Vice President Namadi Sambo to take over immediately. And this is how it should be! Jonathan is now President, Let him be! He is the one to beat for Nigeria’s presidency in 2011 presidential elections. Let him run. Let him continue as president for the next four years. Let those who do not like him to run go home and sulk. The crown is on his head, let us see who would dare to remove it!

The reality of Nigeria’s political dynamics has now dawned on the northern political predatory class. They are the ones fighting for zoning! They have forgotten that they had once dumped zoning when Abiola was trying to contest the NPN’s nomination for the presidency for the 1983 federal elections against the incumbent, Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari. Umaru Dikko, in a very contemptuous manner told Abiola “the presidency is not for sale!” And Abiola was forced to declare an end to his political career in 1983.

Shagari had been president for 4 years. The nation’s economy had come to a halt. Our surplus had been turned into a deficit and we were owing the Paris Club of money lenders and the IMF more than 33 billion dollars. Our letters of credit could not be confirmed and for the first time in the history of Nigeria, we were queuing up for “essential commodities” like sugar, milk or rice! This is what informed Abiola’s challenge to the incumbent president at that time. He thought he could reverse this trend. But, not so!! The presidency had been zoned to the north! Not even the economic collapse of the nation on Shagari’s would make them consider another person for that office. The president must be in office for 8 years whether he performs or not! Only Buhari’s coup settled the matter!

Is it difficult to see this same scenario playing out in 2010? Yar’Adua was desperately ill and out of the country for 3 months. He could not function and he was even dying, yet he did not hand over to his deputy because of zoning! The ACF did not campaign to have Jonathan step in as President. Their silence was deafening. Only Yar’Adua’s death settled the matter! On what moral ground have they suddenly realized that zoning is sacrosanct?

MKO Abiola thought he had a friend in Babangida who assured him that Abiola had his support to run for president. He ran and he won. He won even in Tofa’s Kano ward. But Babangida would not let him be president. Abiola was not Nigerian enough, he was not muslim enough and most importantly, he was not from the right side of the ethnic divide. He had to be stopped. No reason had to be offered. Then, in order to put a permanency to the decision to stop him, Abiola had to die in the hands of his captors which included Abdulsalami Abubakar, Babangida’s neighbor and protégé in the army!

After MKO Abiola’s death, Nigerians were fed up with northerners running the affairs of the country. And the northerners knew this and there was consensus that they should stay away to give a semblance of fairness in the polity and in order to propitiate the angry Yoruba. But Alhaji Abubakar Rimi did not think so. He ran against Obasanjo, the anointed candidate of the predators. Not a single one of the predators told Rimi that the presidency had been zoned to the south! And in 2003 when Obasanjo’s first term was over, Abubakar Atiku, the most disloyal deputy we ever had, wanted to pull the rug from under Obasanjo’s feet by running against Obasanjo! He thought, erroneously that he was one of those who could make and unmake Obasanjo in his northern constituency; he bailed out of the PDP to run on the platform of AC and he is now back in PDP for the purpose of running against Goodluck Jonathan. And for some inexplicable reasons, he believes that he can be president even with the likes of his old boss, Obasanjo hovering around Jonathan like a B52 jet bomber! And not a single one of the northern political predators told Atiku the post of president was not vacant!

Why is this so?

The political philosophy of the northern political predatory class is this: Me, myself and I! The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF): Us, ourselves and we! Or to put it in a contemporary context: Zoning is allowed only when we are not in power! And whenever we are in power, the presidency has to be zoned to us…permanently! This has been and will continue to be their objective in Nigeria: To continue to bleed Nigeria to death until no more blood can be drawn from the patient! Until the petroleum is dry.

Fairness in sharing political offices is not part of the northerners political equation. When they were in power and had to distribute political offices, they ensured that only minor office of government were given to non-northerners in their government. Until Obasanjo’s coming, no southerner was ever made Chief of Army Staff, or minister of Defence, minister of Federal Capital Territory, or Commanders of major army divisions. Even the post of minister of Internal Affairs was an exclusive preserve of northerners. This unearned privilege of the northern predatory feudal class must stop. Jonathan must continue as president beyond 2011.

**In this article, north is defined as the Gideon Orkar excised parts of Northern Nigeria. The minority parts of the north are excluded.

 

 

 

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