Re-arguing the case for Igbo Presidency

Going by the unwritten but well-heeled practice of rotating the presidency among the various geo-political zones in the country since 1999, it will appear to be invidious or unfair for the practice to be abandoned midway or before it runs its full or ordained course on the basis of certain gratuitous reasoning, chief among which is a phony merit criterion. The South-east zone is the only zone in the southern region that has yet to produce a president even as per the arrangement. The national prescription for rotation, though not a stipulation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 or of the extant electoral law is happily commonly shared by the country’s two major political parties even as it is envisioned as a stablising plank.

The many misguided statements that have ignored the salutary requirement to remain faithful to the necessity to preserve Nigeria have exposed the paradox of elective dictatorship, of a population census faux pas, and of an overbearing federal or central authority possessing near-absolute powers in theory but unable to exercise them in practice. An arrogant federal government possessing insufficient authority, bedevilled with a feeble or rubber stamp National Assembly and saddled with a fawning or sycophantic bureaucracy is a most unqualified institution to insist that a prescription that has stabilized an otherwise giddy contraption like Nigeria be not jettisoned. It has looked on in dubious amusement as if the matter of the threatened abuse of the rotational principle is not grave enough to break-up the fragile union into smithereens.

The general dissatisfaction with the way the Nigerian state is run is the reason for the expressed or muffled rumblings of many of her constituent parts to pull out of the Federation. They have shouted themselves hoarse for the enthronement of an enabling environment for relieving the country’s recurrent political, social and economic difficulties. But a profound understanding of the underpinnings of the circumstances inhibiting Nigeria’s progress or forward movement is evinced in the report of the 2014 National Conference, or to some extent the El-Rufai report on restructuring. Those reports have presented us with a working document that is development or people-oriented; that abjures regional or ethnic control or a sectarian ambush of the polity; that spreads general wellbeing; that is reflective of our desire to truthfully bear the name or appellation “Federal Republic of Nigeria”  – a truly

The adoption of many of the documents’ thrust is sure to relieve the present objective tension or the pervasive sense of angst. The attitude of the Buhari government to the 2014 National Conference report is however unhelpful, odious or detestable. It is responsible for our prolonged suffering in the wilderness of probable choices.

Certain observed foibles or failings in character of people of the South-east geo-political zone are being mischievously touted as valid reasons for denying or refusing the region its deserved slot for the presidency. Ndi-Igbo, as the people of the South-east zone prefer to be referred to in apparent deference to their proverbial communal spirit, unfortunately have yet to appreciate or recognise spiritual accoutrement as key to their ordination. The people set great store or value by material possessions. They immoderately rely on what we can see, feel or touch. This empirical attitude finds expression in many issues of social, inter-personal and spiritual implications respecting the people.

Some have even anchored their nuanced opposition to Igbo presidency on a feared recrudescence of an alleged character deficit in a forlorn period in our national history when Ndi-Igbo gratuitously dominated all spheres of Nigeria’s national life – the services, the bureaucracy, the educational institutions, railways, airways, the ports, the police, etc. A vote for Igbo presidency, they insist, will re-ignite Ndi-Igbo inherent impulse of self-love or self-affection which was allegedly displayed in those misty days. The proponents of this view-point will not brook a feared repeat performance thereof. What the nation has witnessed under the Buhari regime regarding brazen acts of nepotism or the invidious favouring of tribesmen, relatives or personal friends because of their relationship rather than because of their abilities will seem to have reinforced the objection to an envisaged back-to-back repetition of the malaise. An Ndi-Igbo probable retaliation is feared to unleash a cycle of mutual recriminations.

Under the arrangement for rotational or zoned presidency, the Yoruba of the South-west may be properly deemed to have had more than their fair slice of the cake. A 2-term Obasanjo presidency followed by an 8-year Osinbajo Vice presidential residency at Aso Rock Villa will appear to have sealed the chances of aspirants from the zone. Many such aspirants from the zone however appear not to be persuaded of the unfairness of their ambition. Happily, Afenifere (the undisputable socio-political ruling ethic in Yoruba land) has through its alter-ego leadership consistently drawn attention to the contrariness to the avowed sense of justice and fair play of the Yoruba people of the bid of persons of South-west extraction for the 2023 presidential race. Such a bid, Afenifere has clearly stated, is immoral, unfair and in oppositional relationship to Yoruba worldview in the light of a subsisting rotational arrangement. Afenifere has insisted that its position draws largely from the cherished values of the Yoruba regarding accommodation, fellow feeling and a profound sense of justice which is understood not in an abstract sense but as being in accordance with the common sentiment of mankind.

Some commentators will however not see morality in an institutional disenfranchisement “which constricts the exercise of constitutional rights”. To them, zoning is an aberration which they observe has limited applicability or is of doubtful binding-ness. They have vaingloriously cited a time in recent history when equity was in favour of atoning for the injustice of June 12 even as they noted that zoning was not binding. They disavow the argument that it is the turn of Ndi-Igbo insisting that such a position is unsustainable as Ndi-Igbo do not suffer any systemic disability and so have no right, or should not be conferred with any, to constrict other people’s rights.  As the presidency is agreed to be zoned to the South, all southern candidates should be free to contest, these eggheads have self-gratifyingly concluded.

This academicist critique of Afenifere position clearly ignores the palpable existential threat to our common weal even as it vainly raises a dialectical query. The abrupt invidious suspension of the rules of a football match in the midst of the game, for instance, neither presents the adjudged winner with the precision of cold steel nor the loser with a sense of affection. His is a sense of estrangement. We should have no difficulty in upholding our sense of fairness or justice enshrined in the reasoned establishment of the zoning template in the first place. It is impossible to overstate the complete danger with which the Nigerian nation state will be faced in the event of an indecorous repudiation of time-honoured values of propriety, fairness, civility, and good breeding. Only an awareness of the impending danger can explain the Manichean perception of opposition to the moves not to play by established rules. The complexities and contradictions in the abandonment of a policy that has steadied the Nigerian contraption have indubitably arisen from an attempt to deny the troubling spirit of the ghosts of the victims of wrong-headed official policies and programmes overtime. It is also positioned to accord undue recognition to infamy or ill repute.

The grim realities of Nigeria will seem to suggest that decorum, fair play and a disregard of mythic representation of history be the nation’s directive principles.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and public affairs commentator wrote vide lawgravitas@gmail.com