1. For the last decade or so there has been strident calls for a national conference to redraw or redesign Nigeria politically, so the protagonists say. The proponents also say that if such conference results in Nigeria blowing up, well, so be it. All along however I have had some difficulty appreciating the urgency of such a national conference. Nigeria, although a wobbling entity, politically and economically, does have some structure and institutions on ground, at least nominally, on which we can build something sustainable and make more solid. The urgent issue to my mind is to address the practical problems with this structure and institutions, upgrade them, make them more efficient, make them responsible and accountable. Reviewing the 1999 Constitution for instance is a more effective and easier way of getting to where we need to be.
2. In today’s Nigeria the South-West, at least on a relative basis, has shown itself to be politically articulate. Barring isolated insurgent events such as Operation ‘wet ie’-(wet him) in the early nineteen sixties and General Obasanjo’s quixotic attempts to supplant Awoism in the region while running the country from 1999-2007, the region has been able to weather such shocks on a solid foundation progressivism.
3. To some extent the same can be said of the North although the advent of violent, fundamentalist Islamic militancy, from the Maitatsine days of the 1970s and ’80s to the violent Sharia riots at the turn of the millennium, to the rampant Boko Haram of today, is now compromising the integrity, and legitimacy of Northern political self determination within the Nigerian polity.
4. The South East and the South-South since the end of the civil war, has seemed to always seek accommodation within the political precedents set by the North and South-West. As autonomous political entities the South-East and South-South are way behind the North and the South-West in asserting their true political potential. But today also, 42 years after the Civil War two South-East states out of five, Anambra and Imo, are governed by APGA, having graduated from the PDP bandwagon. Also in the South-South, Edo state has broken away from PDP to join Awoist ACN. These are signs that with time the South-East and perhaps also the South-South might be more autonomous and independent in the making of their political choices and in asserting their own political identity, without necessarily cosying up to any other pre-eminent political group.
5. During the First Republic, there seemed to have been more equilibrium between the regions politically and otherwise. So it can be safely argued that the current set back of the South-South and South-East arose from the Civil War, whose aftermath relegated these regions strategically although not to the same degree. However, the social indices in the regions before the Civil War have changed fundamentally, and for good, to what is today. For one, the manpower gap i.e capacity, social and economic, between the North and the South is narrowing steadily. In the First Republic it seemed that the South was generally far ahead of the North for trained manpower in all sectors. That is no longer the case today.
6. Riding on the back of the relegation of South-East and the South-South some Nigerian leaders have sought to enthrone permanent ethnocentricity in the polity. General Babangida is one of such leaders. When General Babangida talked of his mastery of the management of Nigeria’s North-South dichotomy, what he really meant was that the balance of power after the Civil War which created disproportionate opportunities for men like him should be maintained and perpetuated with little regard for the need to create a real democracy in which all Nigerians or groups of Nigerians can have equal say. General Babangida’s addiction to the PDP zoning policy is not because he has reformed from dictator to a democrat, it is because he sees the zoning policy as the last straw he needs to clutch to enable him maneuver the polity to the post war status quo that seems to be slipping away from him. The reason for June 12th 1993 is because the country’s leaders at the time, notably IBB and Abacha could not possibly conceive the possibility that MKO Abiola would be President. The latter had the wrong ethnicity.
7. On the balance of available evidence it will not be possible to exclude the likes of General Muhammadu Buhari from this generation of leaders although he tends to be seen as more high minded than the rest because of his ascetic lifestyle and self discipline.
8. General Obasanjo is definitely one of the Nigerian leaders who made much of the political relegation of the South-East and South-South,as a result of the new balance of power following the Civil War. As President he brazenly and with no apparent justification closed Ibeto Cement. He gave pretty much the same treatment to Peter Okocha’s businesses and political ambitions. Both Peter Okocha and Dr. Cletus Ibeto hail from parts of Nigeria which were at the receiving end of the Civil War and which were consequently relegated politically. In the eyes or the subconscious of men like Obj people from such places had inferior citizenship. If Bakassi Local Government was a Yoruba enclave or a Northern Nigeria territory, I believe that General Obasanjo would have gone to war to keep it, if that became necessary.
9. One day in 1976 Nigerians woke up to find that General Obasanjo had changed the country’s national anthem. Till today no one knows why the national Anthem was changed. The change of the National Anthem was done in so much hurry that what came as replacement lacked originality. In terms of inspiration, it was way behind what it replaced. Also its lyrical rendering lacked the melody of the old one it replaced. In a way the fall of Nigeria from grace as a nation was symbolized by that accursed anthem. It will be interesting to find out from General Obasanjo why it did not occur to him to change the national flag too. After all blood had been shed for the unity of the country and it would have been okay to put a splash of red on that flag as a reminder to posterity that the Republic was founded, among other things, on the blood of patriots.
10. The reigning Bini monarch Omo no ba Nedo Umogun Uku,Akpolokpolo,Oba Erediauwa II, the Oba of Benin wrote in his autobiography that he was forced to retire from the federal public service in the late seventies by what he correctly saw as falling ethical standards in the service, occasioned by an irresponsible political elite in power. Beginning from the late seventies the political elite made it fashionable to favour one’s ethnic group in the public service of the federation. Favouritism in dispensing federal resources was seen as righteous ethnic empowerment. Not long after he took power as President, General Obasanjo’s Presidency was criticized in an audit report for misappropriation of public funds. What did he do? He had the author of the report, the deputy auditor general of the federation, Mr. Vincent Ajie summarily fired.
11. The case of Peter Okocha, Chief C M Ibeto, the change of the national anthem, Mr.Vincent Ajie and Bakassi are merely samples. Many of General Obasanjo’s actions and relationships were based on ethnic chauvinism occasioned by the fallout of the Civil War. To General Obasanjo and perhaps also Murtala Mohammed, General Gowon’s ‘no victor no vanquished’ policy and his three Rs-Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation- were nonsense. There were winners and there were losers.
12. General Obasanjo and his ex-Senator daughter Iyabo, have over the years tried ,in print and otherwise ,to inform their Yoruba kin that he worked hard for the Yoruba cause and for Yoruba emancipation, both as a military and as a civilian national leader. No doubt he empowered many Yoruba using the Indigenization decree he enacted in the late seventies as vehicle. He also as a civilian president handpicked a number Yoruba people for economic empowerment. But he failed to reckon with the fact that Yoruba as a people have emancipated and are already high minded enough, thanks to Chief Awolowo, to understand that their future in Nigeria lies, not in ethnocentricity or favouritism but in openness and probity in national politics. At the Oputa panel, the Yoruba delegations informed the panelist that as far as Yoruba was concerned, Nigeria had enough for everyone and there was therefore no need to empower any section of the country at the expense of the other.
13. Among the three pre Civil war regions-the North, the West (now South West) the East (now South –South and South East), the North to me has produced the most politically astute, upright and principled leaders. From Sir Ahmadu Bello and Sir Tafawa Balewa to Alahaji Maitama Yusuf Sule(the Dan Masani Kano)to the Right Hon Ghali Umar Na’Aba and Right Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, we have men who have stood up for the truth when everyone else balked at it or where interested only in their pockets. On this basis alone, I think Nigeria needs the North more than the other way round. At the end of the day what will save Nigeria is not its oil wealth or the money its citizens make individually by hook or crook, but the integrity, ethical and otherwise, of its leaders and the quality of that leadership.
14. Today in Nigeria we have a political leadership that is on the defensive rather than proactive in both ethical and political national issues. It is disheartening to me personally that the personification of that leadership hails from the part of the country that has historically borne the brunt of inequity in the system and which stands to gain most from a proper democracy.
15. From the Nigerian Civil War years till 1999 the balance of political power shifted to the North and the region produced all the national leaders. When a none Northern person was to take the mantle of leadership, as for instance Chief Ernest Shonekan was allowed to in 1993 and General Obasanjo in 1999, the person so favoured usually acted or was supposed to act as a proxy for the North. However Chief Obasanjo did not allow the North a free hand in controlling him as a President from 1999 to 2007. His refusal to accept dictation from Northern potentates such as General Ibrahim Babangida and in some ways from the likes of Atiku Abubakar brought him into collision with those elites from the North who had begun to take it for granted that the Post-Civil War status quo which gave the North pre-eminence in national politics, was a permanent condition even if undemocratic.
16. The main reason for the seeming crisis of confidence in Northern politics today is merely a reaction towards what seems, with the transfer of power from Chief Obasanjo to Dr. Jonathan, via a short lived Umaru Yar’adua Presidency in 2009,in defiance of the effective Northern Political will, like the loss of that pre-eminence. These developments are good for the country because a stable, secure and sustainably developing republic will come about, not via military dictatorships, but from robust and sincere civil democratic conversations. Developing the nation’s democracy in this way is the best hope, if not the only hope, of empowering the peoples of Nigeria with the virtues and opportunities for a brighter future for one and all. Credit must therefore be given to General Obasanjo, who ironically is not a democrat by any stretch of imagination, for facilitating this process of rebalancing political forces in the country, although he was not guided by any ideology but rather by the expediency of self preservation and personal survival. It is therefore quite regrettable that Dr. Jonathan who hails from the part of the country that has historically borne the brunt of inequity in the system for so long, is leading a government that is not in a hurry to proactively pursue policies that will entrench real democracy in the Nigerian system. Dr. Jonathan’s style and the direction his government is taking the country means that nothing sustainable and irreversible will be achieved in terms of democratic improvement at the end of his Presidency. Rather than upgrade and consolidate the broken system he inherited he appears to be walking the country steadily towards an abyss. Once there is a lack of high moral authority at the country’s pinnacle of power anarchy will result. Nigeria is already experiencing that anarchy. Unless there is a radical change of direction by the Presidency things can only get worse.
Lt. Col Peter Egbe Ulu(rtd)
Okokomaiko
Lagos
Tel: 08131940313, 07051912209
peter-egbe-ulu.blogspot.com
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