Struggling for seats in a sinking boat (3)

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By Edwin Madunagu

As if in direct response to Maiyaki Idris (see last Thursday’s column), Alhaji Usman Farouk who is a retired Commissioner of Police and former governor of pre-1975 Northwestern state, urged his Northern compatriots to engage the pacification of the North, including ending of the Boko Haram insurgency, before turning to the struggle for the country’s presidency. 

He was reported by The Guardian of January 8, 2013, to have said this in a press conference in Kaduna. His exact words: “I don’t share the view of these people (Northern politicians) converging to discuss the 2015 election and politics. Where is the country they want to govern? Is it the one bedeviled with insecurity? Where is the country that you are going to lead as president? We have to save the country first before you talk of running for the presidency.” (emphasis mine).

It was this statement, in particular  the rhetorical questions, that inspired my  present piece and the  title it carries. Usman Farouk announced, in the press conference, that his organisation, the Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI), planned to call a meeting of elders and statesmen (and women) of Northern extraction – including former heads of state, Generals Yakubu Gowon, Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida – “to draw up recommendations for the Federal Government on how to end the current security menace in the North”.  For, in Farouk’s view, if the Boko Haram insurgency continues there will be no country by 2015.

Farouk alleged that government activities had ceased in some Northern states for fear of Boko Haram; that some northern governors were holding their executive council meetings outside their states; that, “they don’t meet in Maduiguri or  Yobe”. What type of government do they think they are running? He asked: “How do you call yourself a governor if the executive council meetings are no longer held within your state, when governors even no longer slept in their states? The governor will show up in the morning and stay at work till 12:00 noon. But in the night he will relocate to 10 different places before the day breaks”.

The day after the Maiyaki story appeared, The Nation newspaper carried the story, 2015: Babangida, Buhari, others begin consultations (Sunday, January 6, 2013).  The story had the same thrust although the language of the January 6 story was not as sharp as the one preceding it.  That essence was that political and community leaders of the North had started “coming together” to fight for Nigeria’s presidency in the next presidential election. The story mentions Generals Babangida and Buhari and a “respected former Minister of Defence” as among the  “arrow-heads” of this new effort.

Five reasons were uncovered by the reporter for the renewed “push” for the presidency by Northern politicians: “alleged alienation of the North by the presidency in appointment and policy matters”; “unprecedented polarization (and division) of the region along religious and ethnic lines”; “the worsening security situation in the region”; “alleged under-development of the North and the yawning gap between the North and the South”, and “the manner in which the Southsouth has allegedly divided the nation  and what is seen in the North as its desperate plot to retain the presidency in 2015”.

On the same page 2 the newspaper carried another report, which, when combined with the first, could have raised the political temperature of the Jonathan camp. Titled OBJ’s Kaduna visit stirs Jonathan, Sambo tension, the story speculated: “In what could become a replay of what transpired between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his then deputy, Atiku Abubakar, between 2003 and 2007, culminating in a sharp division within the presidency, there are growing indications that the cordial relationship between President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice-President Namadi Sambo may have turned frosty”.  The speculation arose from the visit of former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, to Kaduna – a visit officially explained as a condolence visit to “commiserate with the people and government of the state on the death of former governor Patrick Yakowa.”

The newspaper, however, discovered, through the state security services, that “Obasanjo’s sympathy visit was a decoy to achieve another objective”, and that was “to mobilise influential traditional rulers in the state against the alleged second term ambition of the president and canvass support for the return of power to the North”. The paper quoted “sources” as saying that what particularly “peeved” President Jonathan was the role his deputy was alleged to have played in facilitating the meeting between the former president and some (Northern) emirs.

The Vice-President, as expected, immediately issued a statement strongly denying the report (The Nation, Monday, January 7, 2013). His words: “The visit of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was merely to commiserate and console with the Vice-President and the good people of Kaduna State.  The visit with his entourage was witnessed by journalists”. Since Northern traditional rulers were also meeting at the same venue, the Vice-President further explained, Obasanjo decided to go over and greet them – as a gesture of respect.

This explanation sounds plausible and should, in normal circumstances, be the end of the misinterpretation.  But, then, this is Nigeria and we are dealing with a personage whose antecedents we all know: General Olusegun Obasanjo.  I am inclined to believe the Vice-President, but I also believe that Obasanjo went to Kaduna to “drum up” support for his choice for 2015 – whatever belief the Vice-President held. However, my reading of Obasanjo’s body-language at the moment is that he is committed to the agreement on North-South presidential rotation in the original PDP power-sharing formula (or zoning formula) and that simultaneously he believes President Jonathan is currently in his second, and therefore, final term in office; Or that the former president is as vindictive and unforgiving as he is reputed to be – this time against Jonathan; Or that he is more opportunistic than he is widely believed to be; Or that he believes he is the ultimate god-father and king-maker in the party.

An explanatory note: It will be recalled that General Obasanjo (from the South, specifically Southwest) was president for two terms (from 1999 to 2007) and handed over power to Umaru Yar’Adua (from the North, specifically Northwest) who unfortunately died in May 2010, about two-thirds into the first term of his presidency. Dr. Goodluck became president and completed Yar’Adua’s first term in May 2011. He thereafter began a fresh term having won the 2011 presidential election.  It is known that General Obasanjo has “fallen out” with President Goodluck whom he assisted to win the presidency.

The struggle by the Igbo segment of Nigeria’s ruling classes for  “Igbo presidency” – which, if not exclusive to, is at least strongest in, the ruling PDP – makes sense to me only in the context of the tripod: Hausa – Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. But, then, that tripod perished in the civil war (July 1967 - January 1970). In its place we now have what I have called (for about 20 years now) Nigeria’s power blocs. There are only two of them, as I have also insisted: Northern power bloc and Western power bloc.  Beyond these two power blocs we have the geopolitical zones, the states, the local government areas and the more than 250 ethnic groups (or nationalities) that constitute this country.

My proposition on Igbo presidency is a re-statement of the central position of this column, and that is the adoption of Collective presidency with rotational Chair and Deputy Chair. This is a segment of the five-tier popular-democratic restructuring of the country. The specific political call here is that all those groups and individuals – be they social classes, social groups, ethnic nationalities or de-classed masses – who are, or feel oppressed, marginalised or dispossessed in this nation should adopt this structure in which is embedded a genuine social transformation, and struggle for it.

I would now like to bring these series of series of articles to an end. I have deliberately built the discussion around the question of geopolitical restructuring. The core of my proposal is collective presidency and grassroots development with popular participation. In the course of the series I have received a number of private responses, some written and others verbal.  They have been helpful to me in several ways, but I have so far refrained from responding to them because I do not want to be defensive on this matter for one central reason: the entire exercise is exploratory, by which I mean that some of the suggestions would require further clarifications and amendments. This is obvious even to me. However, in considering my propositions, it is only fair to keep in mind the specific national problems (immediate and medium-term) that we wish to solve, and the fact that, as far as I know, my propositions are unique. I shall, in future, when reviewing these series, bring out the responses and comments I have received.

• Concluded.

Read 1 & 2 below

• Struggling for seats in a sinking boat
• Struggling for seats in a sinking boat (2)