Coming out from the British colonial rule and attaining independence in 1960, Nigeria naturally practiced the British-styled Westminster (parliamentary) system of government in 1960.
The Westminster. also called the responsible system of government allows parliamentarians, after election and inauguration, to install, supervise and remove a government.
From Nigeria’s maiden experiment in self-governance, a northerner, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa had emerged as the Prime Minister in the Westminster system, calling the political shots in Nigeria.
The discreet arrangement of the British government who had been contented with the way and manner the Shariah-driven government in the northern part of Nigeria had administered that part of the country with ease of taxation, made the British to have faith, trust and confidence in a general Nigeria arrangement headed by a northern Nigerian politician.
Apart from the primary and remote mistake of the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates of the Niger area in 1914 (a mistake that was also driven by the reason of ease of taxation and easy movements of industrial fiber which guaranteed that Nigeria’s first major train depots emerged in northern Nigeria, leading to the seaports down south), the emergence of a northern political leader as the Prime Minster after independence (with the background efforts and logistics support of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of Northern Nigeria and the Sardauna of Sokoto) was the immediate reason that installed and sustained the born-to-rule attitude of the northern political class in Nigeria which had been put together by the Fulani immigrants of 1804 and supervised by consecutive generations of the Sultans of Sokoto caliphate.
This arrangement not built on a level-playing ground of justice and equity was the beginning of the tests, temptations, trials and tribulations of Nigeria.
The woes and political uneasiness which came about as a result of the injustice and inequity in leadership of Nigeria has resulted in a civil war and several military coups in Nigeria’s efforts at a mis-adventured nationhood even with the introduction of the American type of the executive presidential system of government in the country in 1979.
In an effort to balance the recurring and stubborn unsolved political equation of leadership of Nigeria, political parties of the executive presidential system introduced zoning of political offices in Nigeria to reflect a Nigerian phrase and discovery called “federal character” which is meant to give sense of participation and belonging to both the northern and southern part of Nigeria.
Though the zoning formula only took cognizance of the “amorphous” north and the “amorphous” south with no consideration of the interest of the diverse northern and southern minorities, it has created more challenges than it was supposed to address, because, very often, it polarizes the country into two with one major ethnic nationality in the south being used as a pawn in the political zoning chess game that is staged every four years in Nigeria between the northern and southern Nigeria.
Another challenge of the zoning system is the periodical emergence of mediocrity leadership all in the quest to attain zoning of political offices.
Besides these challenges, self-appointed political Kingmakers in Nigeria always have a way to tamper with the zoning formula to suit their whims and caprices.
The zoning formula of political parties in Nigeria presently favours the south east as both a region and as a political bloc in 2023, and ceteris paribus (all things being equal), a candidate of south eastern Nigeria dominated by the Igbos will emerge in Nigeria in 2023 from any of the parties that may field an Igbo man as presidential candidate during the forthcoming presidential elections.
As a matter of fact, a south east presidential candidate for any political party will be the major winning ace of that party in the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria.
This work aims at looking beyond the general context of political party zoning system in 2023 without bias to the proverbial “turn” of an Igbo man to be the president of Nigeria.
My aim is to look at the merits and demerits of the zoning system at this moment in time, especially with the national need to observe one of the most urgent matters arising – the need to yield to the groundswell of opinion amongst the many ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, to restructure the country.
It is surprising to me that many Nigerian politicians have not shown love and patriotism to Nigeria by not considering this urgent need to restructure the country. For this reason, it is very clear today that many Nigerian politicians are cash-and-carry political wayfarers who ventured into politics not for any altruistic or nationalistic reasons, but for the allure and aggrandizement that go with political offices.
Consequently, there have been clamour’s from different quarters especially from some mercantilist and self-serving Igbo politicians and some members of the Ohaneze Ndigbo for a Nigerian president of the Igbo ethnic extraction in 2023, and these clamour’s seem to have found favor by the day across the rest population of the other two major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria (Hausa and Yoruba) including, most surprisingly, within the ranks of some elitists, irredentist, northern Nigeria politicians and elders.
Is Igbo presidency in Nigeria come 2023 a viable alternative, a one-stop solutions-provider to the problems of Nigeria? My quick and immediate answer to this question is “No!”. Not at all !!.
Both Part One and Part Two of this work will elaborate my non-affirmative stance to this question, and my belief that restructuring Nigeria now will be the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria.
To start with, only political simpletons will be hoodwinked and not be able to see through the dull glass wall that a new political permutation to save the sinking ship of Fulani political occupation of Nigeria by scuttling the common aspirations of Nigerians for the timely restructuring of the country with the temporal lullaby of an Igbo president in 2023, is being constructed.
I will explain why I think this way with an excursion down the history lane.
Historically, Igbos are Pan-Nigerian and have shown more patriotism to the Nigerian project than any other ethnic nationality in Nigeria.
So, why should one of theirs find it difficult to ascend the high office of Presidency in Nigeria? Why should there be so much unusual noise made about Igbo Presidency, in the manner of a slave suddenly appearing as the head of the house? Why?
Let us first prove that Igbos are Pan-Nigerian and more patriotic than any other ethnic nationality in the country, starting with the story of Zik of Africa and his exploits.
Right Hon. Dr. (Chief) Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe was one of the first true nationalist Nigeria had, with his compatriots such as Herbert Macaulay, and a few others,, before the advent of Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, and others in Awolowo’s class. Chief Awolowo actually confessed in his autobiography that his patriotic zeal was influenced by the publications of the West African Pilot stationed in the Gold Coast (Ghana) by Dr. Azikiwe.
Though done in the inequitable spirit of “federal character”, personally, I observe that it is wrong to publish the photograph of some first republic personalities, including that of the Premier of northern Nigeria who contributed nothing to the struggle for the country’s independence, alongside that of the great Zik of Africa as the pillars of Nigeria. Though they have expunged study of History in the academic curricula of Nigerian schools, we must still put history in correct perspective.
Zik’s patriotism did not start with him. It started with his father, a locomotive train driver who lived in northern Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, Zik was born in Zungeru, northern Nigeria, in one of those sprawling estates established by the Railway Corporation in Nigeria.
Zik was an Igbo man born in Hausa land (northern Nigeria), and he grew up in Yoruba land (Western Nigeria). Apart from Hope Waddel School, Calabar, he attended schools in Hausaland and Yorubaland and spoke the two languages fluently. He also spoke Efik.
Zik was so patriotic to Nigeria that all his children were given Yoruba names, excepting, may be, the children by his last wife, Professor Azikiwe of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
It is in the history books that Right Hon. Dr. (Chief) Nnamdi Azikiwe was at the forefront of explaining to Nigerians especially those from the north the need to stay together so that Nigeria would be built by all.
This was against the wish of northern Nigerians when the word “Araba” (separation) was being echoed in the north. Right Hon. (Chief) Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, the man who saw tomorrow and a great political mathematician lent quick support to the “Araba” game plan because it would have most probably given him the opportunity to realize his long-expected Oduduwa nation. But Zik, the Pan-Nigerian, botched this plan, and Nigeria not being able to manage Zik’s child of necessity, still suffers for it till date.
To crown it all, Zik was contented with being a mere Ceremonial President, a symbolic father of all Nigerians, while the more politically ambitious and less patriotic north went straight for the Prime Ministerial position.
Though contestable by a school of thought, the Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogu-led military coup was driven by patriotism. I belong to the opposite school of thought that believe that Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogu-led coup was organized by young Nigerian patriotic military officers.
General Johnson-Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, another Igbo patriot camp up with his unitary system, but was cut short by the same elements who insist that a skewed presidential system of government in the exact semblance of unitary system is best for Nigeria. What a double-speak!
The Nigerian civil war rounded up the efforts of the Igbos as true Nigerian patriots in fostering unity in Nigeria. The death of 3million Nigerians of Igbo ethnic nationality was the greatest price any ethnic nationality in Nigeria has ever paid for the Nigerian project.
I am not yet done: in spite of the fears put on the Igbos by the civil war, visit any Nigerian village and you must see an Igbo man there – unafraid, living in peace with the indigenous people there, and doing his legitimate business.
Give him a little time, and he begins to add value to his environment, building mansions and estates in the Igbo spirit of “ebe onye bi ka o na-awachi”. Shortly, these efforts will begin to reflect in the upward review of the value of the land in the town where he has just sojourned.
Though he visits his ancestral home every Christmas, him and his family are grounded in his hosts cultures and traditions. They speak their host’s language.
These efforts are supposed to earn him both recognition and respect, but ironically in Nigeria, it earns him enmity and hatred.
A former Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo once said, and I quote, “Nigeria has placed an embargo on any Igbo man becoming Nigerian President and Igbos understand this”.
The question is: why has the table suddenly turned in favour of Igbo presidency in 2023?
My answer is that Igbo presidency on 2023 is a desperate attempt by the collapsing northern Nigerian occupation of Nigeria which has held Nigeria down since independence.
Abraham Lincoln was quoted to have said that “you can deceive some people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you cannot deceive all the people all the time”.
Most probably, the northern Nigerian political elites are caught up in the web of this contradiction and riddle. They may have found out that they have exhausted all the pranks available in their storehouse of treachery to hoodwink the diverse ethnic nationalities of Nigeria into acrimonious relationships amongst themselves. These pranks included tribal, religious, ethnic, language and even class barriers all of which the emerging Nigerian SORO SOKE! (Speak Aloud, Courageously!).
This option of an Igbo president of Nigeria in 2023 is too cheap an option for the Igbos in comparison with the lost of more than 3 million of her people in the genocidal war of attrition against her and the subsequent abuse of her people through deliberate exclusion from the major development infrastructure across Nigeria since 1970.
It is a very cheap bargain and insult for the Igbos which future generations of Igbos will not take kindly, if we dare make this mistake with the viable signs and opportunities to press for the determination of the expired tenor of the ill-conceived contraption called Nigeria, through restructuring the country.
An Igbo president as an inadequate palliative to calm down the sprained nerves of a genuinely-aggrieved ethnic nationality in Nigeria who has taken half a century to convince other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria to see the injustice in the defective structure of Nigeria, would be drawing the Igbos sixty years back when the awareness of the injustice in Nigeria was first recognized by the Igbos.
To say the least, an Igbo president in 2023 championed by the northern politicians and Igbo politicians who will derive immediate benefit and visibility from the project, without recourse to the opinions of the Igbo people to either go for self-rule, or restructure Nigeria (one of which opinions I make some efforts to register here), is a bad bargain, hence unacceptable.
The present conspiracy to concede (after deliberate efforts over fifty years to thwart) the Nigerian presidency of Igbo extraction is to shut the Igbos up and initiate another round of oppression the end of which no one can fathom
I do not trust this “goodwill” gesture and gimmick of the northern Nigerian political class who believe that they can always twist the politics of Nigeria to suit their whims and caprices.
The sudden change of attitude by the northern politicians is more suspicious because no Igbo man has actually called the shots as Nigerian head of state with executive powers, unless by an accident of history as in the case of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (who, generally is regarded as having Igbo ancestry). Nigerians are conversant with “from rag to riches” story of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
Let us repeat that Zik served merely as a Ceremonial President in Nigeria with Lord Fredrick Lugard as the Governor General while Alhaji Tafawa Balewa called the shots when Nigeria practiced the Westminster system of government, as an “executive” Prime Minister.
The next Igbo man who almost succeeded under a military dictatorship (because being the most senior military officer coming after General Ogundipe who declined the offer by the coup plotters to head the government) was General Aguiyi-Ironsi, but he was cut short by the same forces that has always shoved the Igbos away from the leadership of Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, to confirm that Nigeria has been under siege by the northern political class since independence, the same thing can be said of the Yorubas as in the election annulment of Chief MKO Abiola, and the case of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who came to power twice by mere accidents of history.
The first “accident” of history that brought Chief Obasanjo to power happened when General Muritala Ramat Mohammed was killed in the February 13th 1979 coup d’ etat by Colonel Buka Suka Dimka.
The second “accident” of history that brought the Chief to power the second time happened when Nigeria almost got turn apart through the dogged expert political diplomacy of the Yorubas in the international scene which left Nigeria a pariah country in the view of the international community.
Through Chief Obasanjo, the Yorubas were compensated to make up for the loss of the opportunity of the June 12 election annulment of the result won by Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.
Is this how other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria should attain power? By accidents of history? It is provocative and unacceptable.
Let us not even talk about the case of a Nigerian patriot immensely qualified for the presidency, described by Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu as “the best President Nigerians never had”. That personality was no other than the visionary statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Why did Chief Obafemi Awolowo never became Nigeria’s president?
The pattern of from-prison-to-presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo ( what I call presidency by proxy), is actually what is about to repeat now in Nigeria.
An Igbo man who has actually ‘tested’ prison and ‘magnanimously’ granted a presidential pardon to show him that his pardon is actually at their beck and call is on his way to becoming president. Present activities in the political chess board of the people who have usurped the right of political kingmaking from the Nigerian electorates point to the emergence in 2023 of an Igbo President hoisted on Nigeria by the northern political elites.
A serving Igbo Senator and an unfortunate scapegoat imprisoned for the same offence all of them are guilty of , may have been chosen for this purpose, and this may be responsible for the presidential amnesty granted to him shortly after his imprisonment. To observers, the amnesty granted the man may be a pointer to a round-the-clock censorship of his presidency when it materializes. The man has been traversing northern Nigeria, possibly seeking endorsements from the personalities that he expects will give approval to his ambition.
Obviously, the self-appointed political kingmakers in Nigeria feel that if they do not allow an Igbo man to emerge in 2023 as the president of Nigeria, the country may know no peace especially as the other ethnic nationalities including the northern and southern minorities who have joined in the fight to secure their freedom from the northern political class, are also complaining.
No doubt, the permutation and game plan is to use the Igbo presidency in 2023 to restore normalcy to the traditional oppression and subjugation of Nigerians by the northern political elites.
On the basis of these historical facts, one understands the anxiety of the young generation of Igbos and very recently, the Yorubas, who yearn for separation from Nigeria. But as elders who have seen a possible consequence of forceful separation from Nigeria, we must advice them.
Why is it that fifty years after civil war and the limitations that trailed that defeat, the Igbo ethnic nationality who had assiduously worked towards self-rule now crave and jump for the Nigerian presidency in 2023, and seem to be contented with it in the same manner that a prisoner, wrongfully detained will feel after being granted freedom from a protracted and unwarranted incarceration?
The afore-suggested question is the public view created about Igbo presidency by some Igbo politicians. The truth is that more than ninety percent of the Igbos are interested in self-rule through the actualization of the Sovereign nation of Biafra, the blessed land of the rising sun. The remaining ten percent of the Igbos do not bear any opinion.
When we talk about restructuring Nigeria, it is simply a matter of the only last condition for which Igbos will be part of Nigeria. It is a matter of time and Igbos must get either of these two because the seed of the survival instinct in a country where the Igbo man is an endangered specie has already been sown and watered by the blood of millions of Igbos who cry for justice from their graves.
I see Igbo presidency in Nigeria in 2023 as an insufficient palliative to calm down the sprained nerves of a wounded and genuinely-aggrieved people who were, before now, not interested in a pseudo-imperialist control on behalf of a master.
Igbo presidency in 2023 is a diversionary salvo by the northern expert political chess players who will hype a propaganda of conceding the presidency because they ‘love’ Nigeria and are ‘working hard’ in the best interest of the country.
Igbo presidency in Nigeria in 2023 will inevitably shift the attention of Nigerians away from the core issue of restructuring the country and it is not unlikely that the ethnic nationalities of the south but especially of the north, will feel both abandoned and betrayed in a struggle for survival which they have recently given their tacit support hitherto withheld as a result of decades of brain-washing by the northern political elites.
To say the least, Igbo presidency in Nigeria in 2023 as an alternating for the immediate restructuring of Nigeria will be symbolic of using a lullaby to pacify an aggrieved and crying child that has been smacked by a remorseful parent who had in wrong discretion misapplied judgment.
For the audience of doubt, my case against Igbo presidency in Nigeria come 2023 is anchored on the major reason that it is an anti-climax in the struggle for liberation and retrogressive when considered from the perspective of the successes so far recorded in the general awareness of the indigenous people of Nigerian ethnic nationalities to liberate themselves from the weird contraption of the 1914 amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates of the Niger area.
But if you are still in doubt, ask the question again: is it possibly true that the ‘glass ceiling’ (observed by a former head of state, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and many progressive and highly respected northern technocrats including a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who is also a controversially-deposed eminent Emir of one of Nigerian’s most ancient cities, HRH Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II) which was placed to limit the political and economic opportunities and advantages that may be accruable to the Igbos for the last sixty years has just been lifted? Just like that? So suddenly? My one answer to all these questions is “No”.
The hyped drama for an Igbo president in Nigeria in 2023 is to hide under that guise to elongate the oppression of the Igbos, gain more time to tap the crude oil resources of the south south, and further encircle Nigeria for a dubious religious agenda.
Igbo presidency in 2023 can only be a cheap trap to deceive the innocence of some adult Igbo politicians who think like children.
The presence of the Asiwaju in the game is both ominous and deceptive. It is a decoy to give the Igbos both a pyrrhic and an euphoric sense of victory against the Yorubas whom the Igbos will believe that they have defeated to clinch the presidential ticket the same way Zik was set against Awo and Awo against Zik in a divided-and-rule manner reminiscent of the first republic era.
Do not be fooled. Though people think he nurses the ambition of being the president of Nigeria, a peep into his life history and character shows that he loves his money more than he loves to be the president of Nigeria. The Asiwaju as part of the game will prefer to weld his powers from behind the scenes, and make his money to control everybody.
The present game for an Igbo president in Nigeria is an attempt, a well-calculated attempt, to induce a detour in the almost successful 60 years battle of the Igbos to free themselves and the other indigenous ethnic nationalities of Nigeria from shackles of oppression.
I predict again that preliminary to 2023, the northern political class will play their usual game of pitching the Igbos against the Yorubas.
The Asiwaju presidential kite is already warming up, getting ready to be flown as the game kicks off.
I implore the true sons and daughters of the Igbo land and the patriotic descendants of Oduduwa like Aare Gani Adams and so many others in the political limelight of the great Oduduwa Kingdom, to observe this old and outdated trick generally employed since independence to conquer the Igbos and the Yorubas and effectively lord it over the other minor ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.