Disowning The Political Jobbers …You Are On Your Own – Arewa Youths

In spite of the varying views on the now contentious zoning arrangement allegedly foisted on the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), moments before the 1999 Presidential elections and its obviously unpopular appeal to a good many Nigerians, arrow-heads of the project are reluctant to give it up.

Instead, they have been putting in every thing including the kitchen sink, as American politicians often muse, in hope that their view would miraculously create a united North that would, at once, hypnotise many gullible Southerners into their ranks. Emerging from one nocturnal meeting, after another the likes of General Ibrahim Babangida, a former military President who ruled Nigeria for nearly a decade, Malam Adamu Ciroma, former minister of finance for very many years and several times Presidential aspirant and their cohorts, have continued to insist that the Presidency should return to the North, as of right because they willed it so.

So vitriolic are their vituperations against the likelihood of President Goodluck Jonathan’s joining the electoral fray in 2011, that even the most progressive of minds are forced to ignore the history of the Nigerian Presidency and the number of years Northern elements ruled Nigeria. Not only that, the assembly of strange political bed-fellows, has in every turn created the impression that theirs was representative of the general North’s opinion.

With that misleading identity, they have remained disagreeable to reason, tactless in debate and threatening in summations, as if the so called PDP zoning arrangement, which as they say, allows the South eight years and then the North, its eight, was ever discussed and agreed upon by either the PDP National Convention where, the party’s laws are often made or by the National Executive Committee (NEC).

Infact, until last week, many, including this writer were forced to think that the zoning enjoys the support of all Northerners, since they were presumed to have been part of it from onset.

But in a strange twist of sorts, the Arewa Youth Forum, the umbrella body of politically proactive youths last week lambasted the PDP for even mooting a zoning arrangement, if it truly did.

Condemning the concept of zoning, as propounded by the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, ostensibly before the Obasanjo Presidency, (if it did) the Arewa Youth Forum said, “we are not in support of zoning and therefore appeal to all advocates of zoning that they should be guided by the letters of the constitution and jettison any unconstitutional methods in their quest to grab power … they should apologise to Nigerians for criminally decentralising our Presidency in their own concept of reform and class consideration”.

Even so, the randomly recycled set of self-seeking politicians largely responsible for the shameful under development of not just Nigeria and the Niger Delta region in particular, but indeed the entire North, which they pretend to love and represent, are determined to reclaim the Presidency and keep it till 2015.

In what I consider their gushing groans of greed, they repeatedly hide under protecting Northern interest while, infact, what they seek are political relevance necessary to secure a stronger voice in days to come; another opportunity to enlarge their already amazing personal estates and more importantly, to increase the level of charity between the affluent few and the very worrisome Northern poor, up to their fourth, even fifth generations.

Judging by, the manner of the gang-up, the desperation in their drive and their lack of respect for history, a political history that has frequently found the South-South region on the side of the North, it is very clear that the arrow heads of the zoning arrangement are driven not by their intellect or reason but, I do suspect, by their individual desires and appetites.

That is why, I am tempted to agree with Alabo Tonye Graham-Douglas who on behalf of South-South political leaders last week in Abuja said, the North (meaning, the self-seeking Northern leaders) “have been taking us for a ride”. Douglas, did add that the North alone would never have been able to produce a single elected president without the South-South since independence. Infact, at the start of the Second Republic in 1979 when, the so called three big tribes, in an ethno-political clash floated the United Party of Nigeria (UPN); by the West, the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), it took the support of the Niger Delta region for the NPN to wear the national outlook which that party eventually earned and later abused.

Sadly, arrow-heads of the South-South support, Chief Melford Okilo and others were virtually forced on their knees in relentless appeals for an upward review of the Derivation principle. Typical of the annoying arrogance, insensitivity and greed of most self-seeking politicians, then Transport minister, Umaru Dikko boastfully said that since all Nigerians were not scavenging for food from public bins, the poverty of the people, particularly Niger Deltans was over-exaggerated.

But that mess, which eventually gave birth to the armed militancy that the Yar’Adua/Jonathan joint Presidential ticket has been battling to clean-up, is without doubt, by – product of the greed of the same crop of politicians now clamouring for a return of the Presidency to the North, denial of the South, discrimination against the East and only occasional compromise with the South West, notwithstanding.

This scenario clearly presents them as a bunch of Generals Without Loyal Troops, as confirmed by the Arewa Youth Forum and countless other voices of protest among Nigerians both at home and diaspora.

That was the exact point made in far away United Kingdom, when, well-meaning Nigerians from all tongues and tribes, diverse in unity, launched what was largely viewed as the true foundation of a new Nigeria, where, the interest of the peoples, all the peoples of Nigeria take precedence over the selfish needs of a select few , who would device several means of rotating political power among themselves. And with unbelievable arrogance.

Together, those Nigerians in Diaspora, most of them Northerners, sounded a wake-up call for, and invitation of President Goodluck Jonathan to heed the voice of wisdom and accept the challenges posed by the emerging new Nigeria, by contesting the 2011 Presidential elections.

To do otherwise, these Nigerians warned, is to undermine the spirit and letters of the Nigerian National Anthem

“Arise O! Compatriots

Nigeria’s call obey

To serve our fatherland

With love and strength and faith

Surely, if the labour of our heroes past is not to be in vain, then, Jonathan must not allow himself to be cowed into cowardice or submission. Instead, he should realise that Nigeria needs stability, unity, mutual respect, an egalitarian society, where, every Nigerian, not only ethno-political bigots, enjoy a sense of belonging and safety but indeed one that addresses the core needs of a rich country with very poor people and resolve today not later, that nothing constitutionally bars him from obeying, Nigeria’s call.

President Goodluck Jonathan has left many guessing for too long, even if I must concede that the element of surprise is a potent weapon in combat, ask IBB, but time is still of essence. He should step forward soon as a well-prepared competent, free, reformist, proactive, nationalistic, patriotic and indeed selfless leader that Nigeria needs at this time.

But I have a worry. Who would tell them that the Presidency of any free country is never decided upon in the dingy chambers of a political tin-god, by self-styled tin- gods in the dead of night?  But by the people.

My Agony is that seeing and painfully feeling decades of deprivation, depression and degradation, some politicians from the Niger Delta region are still making clandestine moves to truncate a Niger Delta Presidency, through unguarded public comments forcing: “Jonathan should wait till 2015, and then vie for the presidency”, using pseudo names, not because they think it’s the right thing to do, but because the hope that it will afford them an arrival at the familiar self-seeking political corridor, as made men.

Truth however, is that apart from the constitutional guarantees, his political charisma and his popularity, here and abroad, Jonathan hails from the Niger Delta region whose oil and gas resources account for the economic mainstay of the nation, but sadly has been denied the required political space in about 50 years.

Now therefore, is the appointed time and no general without  troops should attempt to change that, if for nothing else for the better future of Nigeria and her peoples. That’s the peoples’ stand.