After a critical analysis of power and its sojourning across the
nation, particularly since 1999, Robinson submitted that power could be
attained in this country by negotiation, deceit or subterfuge and if need be,
by force. All of these strategies are equally applicable in war and reminded me
of Carl von Clausewitz’s submission that “politics is the continuation of war
by other means”.
Looking back years after, it is clear that the strategy of
President Buhari’s rise to power at any time in the history of Nigeria has been
an intricately interwoven combination of all of these factors. At his first
coming in 1983, the impression was deliberately created that he did not know
about the coup and that he was only called upon, by virtue of his rank, to lead
the government. Those who erroneously claim that Buhari’s current modus
operandi in government is borne out of age and health issues only need to open the
books and they will find out that Buhari of today is not different from who he
was in 1983 when, at 41, his group toppled the civilian government of President
Shehu Shagari.
He was dark goggled like Idiagbon, his deputy and Chief of Staff
Supreme Headquarters, who was rightly dubbed the Prime Minister by the
ever-sensitive Nigerian press which saw him at the seat of power on a
day-to-day basis. Buhari quietly appropriated the Idiagbon efforts and energy
which kept him in the psyche of Nigerians as a no-nonsense leader. So when it
was time again that Nigerians felt the need for a spartan General, Buhari
needed not much introduction to them.
It needs to be emphasised that force and violence were not
spared on the way to democratic power, no thanks to extremist views which
equated those perceived to be responsible for electoral malpractices with
baboons, monkeys and cockroaches who must be crushed. It was not by accident
that 12 corps members lost their lives to reactive mob actions in Bauchi. Of
course, it was also an era when any military action against Boko Haram
insurgents has been termed an attempt to tamper with the demographic, thus
electoral advantage of the North.
Pray, what is the difference between Kanu’s allusion to Nigeria
being a zoo and a dwelling place of baboons and monkeys? The difference is only
found in George Orwell’s own allegory of Animal Farm where the statement that
took one to the palace landed the other in prison. It is pathetically amusing
(oro buruku t’on t’erin ) that Mr. President couldn’t put the alleged offences
of Kanu in perspective beyond the fact that ‘he was safely abroad abusing us’
as a mere verbal altercation between Kanu and the dramatis personae of Buhari’s
government.
The President would not contemplate releasing Nnamdi Kanu
particularly now that he has been brought back to defend himself for calling
his fatherland a jungle. We insist that if that is the qualification for trial
without the amnesty, the terminology was not authored by Kanu who only surfaced
in 2015.
Nigeria has been so euphemistically pronounced as the abode of
baboons and monkeys requiring lions and tigers to neutralise. It is the parable
of the jungle where the ongoing trials of Kanu and Igboho are the only
treatment for the underprivileged.
Of course, all those failed to yield results until the Jagaban
hit a deal with Buhari. Each of them had what the other needed. The 12 million
Buhari consistent votes were most attractive to the Lagos tactician who already
had the South West, except the ever naughty Ondo. The negotiations and
permutations worked so much that elections were even most peaceful and churned
out the largest number of voters in the most violent North East.
The press was undaunted in its resolve to see to the end of
Jonathan who was deliberately and most unkindly soiled with the image of
cluelessness. Today is no day for comparison.
The race for 2023 has begun in earnest, with its inherent
contradictions and amusements. The APC is still grappling with the legality of
the management of its structure which either puts its convention on hold or is
bedevilled with such problems that make the gathering at a convention
intractable. In such hullabaloo, there is surprisingly and admirably the
consensus on which side of the Nigerian North/South divide would produce the
next President. It seems settled that the pendulum has swung to the South.
On the other hand, the PDP which has admirably put its
convention behind it, even before the National Assembly’s regimented direct
primary, is locked in the prism of the morality of the zoning of its
presidential ticket. The moral burden has left all presidential hopefuls in the
lurk, unable to announce their aspirations to the nation. The closest to it is
the statement credited to the new National Chairman, amiable former Senator
Iyorchia Ayu that he would resign his position should the presidential candidate of
the party emerge from the North.
Such comment from Ayu who was former Senate president and the
co-chairman of the Electoral and Political Committee of the 2014 National
Conference, with his counterpart, also former Senate President Ken
Nnamani, could mean so many things which nevertheless confirmed ambivalence on
the part of the party on zoning the president.
By the way, I served in that same Committee with both Ayu
and Nnamani and still wondering where the likes of Ken are in the quest of
Ndigbo for Nigeria’s president. If the position of the ethnic nationality
groups mean much in the equation of where the President would be voted, four of
them, representing the four geopolitical zones of the South West (Afenifere),
South East (Ohaneze Ndigbo), South-South (PANDEF) North West and several parts
of North West and North East (Middle Belt Forum) have pitched their tents with
the South producing the next president as an interim arrangement which will
ensure equity pending restructuring of the country when the location of the
President may not matter.
The Arewa Consultative Forum and its Northern Elders Forum
variant are, not unexpectedly, singing a new song from the one they sang at the
National Conference in 2014 where the ACF was presented as an organisation and
its top echelons not only in attendance but with its equals and peers from
different parts of the country- Afenifere, Ohaneze, South-South and Middle Belt
leaders- forming an official group of 50 wise men and women who ensured
consensus after or before heated plenary debates and exchanges.
One of the key issues in the consensual resolutions of the
conference was the adoption of the North/South zoning of Nigeria presidency at
the end of a maximum tenure of eight years. The desire for a continuous bite at
the cherry is the cause of the dilemma. It is a matter of honour.
Nigeria, we hail thee.
*Ebiseni is a commentator on public issues
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