You can tell it is political season
when zoning starts to rear its ugly head in the national discourse. 15
years on from the beginning of an invigorating democracy and we are still seem
determined as a people to hold ourselves back with this archaic and
unconstitutional convention.
It is a debate which we ought to have moved on
from. As we continue to aspire to the sort of democracy where MERIT overshadows MEDIOCRITY,
where experience trumps inexperience and where CREDIBILITY eclipses
cronyism, we cannot afford to allow an issue as trivial as a person’s tribe to
take precedence over their experience, track record and accountability.
Sadly the zoning debate is not
restricted to the Federal level alone. In Akwa Ibom, the jostling has already
started as to what local government’s ‘turn’ it is to produce a governor.
In
Lagos there appears to be an unspoken consensus that Epe must birth the next
governor. In Abia factions have begun forming between political groups over a
decision to zone to Abia South. In Ogun, the permutations are already in place
to split the vote of the incumbent who is from Ogun Central.
The list goes on in virtually every state where
power brokers are assessing criteria based on candidate’s birth records rather
than their capacity for the jobs in question. This abhorrent ideology only
serves to balkanize Nigerian politics at a time when what we need is UNITY.
Whereas zoning and indeed the idea
of geopolitical zones have no basis in Nigerian Law, what the Constitution advocates
are systems that promote national unity, not fragment it. Specifically,
Section Section 17 (2) of the Constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as Amended) provides as
follows –
“In
furtherance of the social order-
a. every
citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunitiesbefore
the law”
Section 15 (2) on
Political Objectives further provides that –
“Accordingly, national
integration shall be actively encouraged, whilstdiscrimination on the grounds
of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or
linguistic association or ties shall be prohibited.”
In the history of American politics,
the highest office in the land has never been ‘zoned’ to any specific part of
the country. When John. F. Kennedy successfully ran for office in 1960, he did
so against popular opinion that a Roman Catholic could never occupy the White
House.
When Barack Obama contested in 2008 it was said that a black man could
never be President. In 2016 Hillary Clinton, a woman, who ran him close in
2008, has emerged as an early frontrunner.
If these individuals were all able to surpass
perhaps even more contentious stereotypes – religion, race and gender – how
much less important then, the inconsequentiality of where they come from? In
each of these cases the conventions of the day have made way for a more
progressive type of politics.
The type of politics that formed an ideological
basis for the reason politics was invented in the first place – the best
person, according to public opinion, would get the job. When you disqualify
over 90% of an electorate from contesting, the people have been denied the
opportunity to vote for the best candidate who would GUARANTEE their aspiration.
When the Ancient Greeks declared that
democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people,
there is nothing immutable about how this was to be achieved. Aristotle,
perhaps the founding father of politics, said ‘The worst kind of inequality is
to make unequal things equal.’
Indeed when the Swahili sat as Ujamma or the
Igbo as Umunna declared consensus democracy, there was no footnote that allowed
preference from anyone from a particular house or village.
Elections are essentially competitions
to determine the best possible candidates to govern. Any competition that
disqualifies contestants on anything less than performance related grounds
cannot be regarded as a credible one.
Was Usain Bolt disqualified from
competing at the Olympics because he is a Jamaican and he and his compatriots had
dominated previous Games? Is the child who comes top of his or her class
prevented from writing future exams so as to give other less-than-brilliant
children a chance? As absurd as this sounds, zoning effectively restricts
potentially brilliant candidates from holding public office.
The other major problem with
zoning is that it pre-supposes that, if elected, the man from Region A
would not act in the best interests of Region B. Therefore Region B ought to be
given a chance in the future to rectify whatever untold damage is done by the
man from Region A.
It is a principle that is almost entirely founded on
paranoia. If you have elected the best person for the job why would he or she
be selective in governance? Worse still, why continue to perpetuate such a
distrust?
There is no evidence to suggest that
zoning has ever worked in Nigeria at any level. If anything, ethnic
tensions are currently as high as they have ever been, insurgency continues to
grow unchecked and the youth of the country are increasingly disconnected and
disillusioned.
The zoning system has produced a succession of poor leaders
because invariably only a handful of well-connected individuals get to the
front of the queue. The only rotational zoning that exists is between the
same crop of names that comes up every 4 years.
If these same group of
individuals have not successfully been able to move the country forward, is it
not time to introduce new names into the fray? It is foolhardy to keep doing
the same thing over and over and yet expect different results.
Signed
The Equal Opportunity Group
We The ….. are non-partisan. We are not
proponents for one party over the other. We are proponents for a Nigeria that
works. We are proponents of a Nigeria where being Nigerian assumes greater
significance than what part of the country you hail from. We are proponents of
a Nigeria where political office is synonymous with principle, character and
integrity. We are proponents of a New Nigeria, one where each and every one of
us has an equal stake irrespective of our religion, gender or tribe.
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