Zoning to Unzone

President Goodluck Jonathan

The North, out-manoeuvred in the current brickbats over the issue of zoning, lays fresh cards on the table as an exit strategy in the current face-off, but with a long-time aim to dominate political power thereafter
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
The world is in constant state of flux. That perhaps explains why sometimes in the course of human strivings, myths are shattered, jinx broken and histories made.
The above postulation, it does appear, is rapidly finding expression in Nigeria’s current political firmament, in the run-up to next year’s general elections. And it is all about President Goodluck Jonathan. His emergence in May as the first Nigeria President of South south extraction, following the death of his principal, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, broke a jinx and marked a history.
President Jonathan’s participation in next year’s general election as the presidential flagbearer of his People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is thus seemingly a fait accompli. But that is beside the point. The fact that his ambition has dislocated Nigeria’s delicate power equation and shattered an over 50-year myth, confounds political observers and keen followers of the unfolding zoning debate.
The shattered myth is that of the often-touted elasticity and invincibility of the North as regards covert schemes for political power. Essentially, the North of Nigeria has over the years, even before independence in 1960, evolved an uncanny knack to knit together, irrespective of ideology and party affiliation, when it comes to power grab or to ensure that power is retained in the region. In fact, this ethnocentric tendencies found huge expression in the motto of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), the dominant party in the North in the First Republic: “One North, One People, One Destiny.”
All that however now belongs to the past. President Jonathan’s irrevocable decision to participate in next year’s general election has severely decimated the North and polarised it. At no time in the region’s history has its people been so divided over its political direction and future than is being currently witnessed in the zoning debate.
Going by the unwritten agreement in the PDP, the North was to enjoy eight years of uninterrupted hold on the presidency after the South, as represented by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight-year reign (1999-2007) had had its turn. But the death of Yar’Adua on May 5, this year threw up Jonathan, another Southerner and abbreviated the North’s slot. No sooner was Jonathan sworn-in as Nigeria’s substantive president than the North began what initially appeared to be an all-out battle to stop him from running in next year’s election.
But the President appears to be resolute. Though he has not emphatically declared his intention to run, he has also neither said he was not running. The tale-tell signs of his unwavering intention to grab the PDP’s presidential ticket for next year's election are all too visible for even the blind not to see.
Essentially, Jonathan's tenacity of purpose as regards his participation in next year’s polls, The Source was reliably informed, was not envisaged by the Northern political establishment, which had apparently regarded the President as spineless, a politically weakling who would be too timid to upturn the apple cart. But having now come to the painful realisation that Jonathan cannot be brow-beaten out of the race, the North, The Source can authoritatively reveal, has now accepted its fate –but is at the same time rejiging its strategy to grap power in the nearest future.
One of the strategies, The Source gathered, is to drop all oppositions towards Jonathan’s ambition and support him with a caveat: That he would be a one-term president. That is to say, his reign will terminate in 2015 to pave the way for the North to enjoy a fresh eight year slot starting from 2015 and ending in 2023.
Though some Northern political eggheads pushing for this option believe it is the most viable leeway out of the logjam the region has found itself in the current circumstances, it is nonetheless fraught with gapping holes. For one, by 2015, Jonathan as President would have built a formidable structure and firmly entrenched himself in the polity, so much so that he may dismiss, with the wave of the hand, any suggestion that he should not seek a second term, since he is constitutionally empowered to do so.
Secondly, it is quite unlikely that Jonathan would commit himself to such understanding with the North, and even if he does, borrowing from Obasanjo’s example, the heavens will not fall if he later consigns such agreement to the dustbin in 2015 and seek re-election. The former President had allegedly given his words to his Northern sponsors in 1999 that he would only do one term and leave the stage for the North to continue to play pun with political power at the centre. But Obasanjo did not only seek for and got re-elected for a second term in 2003, he attempted to amend the constitution in order to guarantee him self a third term in office.
Determined not to mortgage the long-term political interest of the South on the altar of appeasing the North, some fore-sighted Southern politicians, The Source was told, are clever enough to notice the booby trap proponents of the Jonathan-for-one-term presidency want to set for the South. This, The Source gathered, accounts for why President Jonathan may not apply himself to the North’s proposal.
The game plan, impeccable sources told The Source, is for the North to regain power in 2015, hold it for eight years, and then advance the argument in 2023 that zoning or power rotation between the North and South was dead– in which case the outgoing President, using the instrumentality of incumbency, would easily manipulate another Northerner into Aso Rock. And the cycle will continue, thus plunging Nigeria back to the dark era of Northern political hegemony over the rest of the country. The Northern political Leaders Forum, a group in the region opposed to Jonathan running in next year’s presidential election recently issued a veiled threat to the effect that should Jonathan insist on continuing beyond 2011, the North will not let go political power the next time it graps it.
The Forum: “We must be certain that we are ready as a nation, to jettison the practice (zoning) at all levels before we throw it overboard… we must make sure that we will not return to the regime of allegations of political domination by one section of the country.” Former self-styled military President, General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd), who has since declared intention to run in next year’s presidential polls is an active member of the Northern Political Leaders Forum. Babangida, The Source learnt, has vowed to, using any means possible, ensure that Jonathan does not contest and win the presidential election next year.
Other prominent members of the Forum include former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, former PDP National Chairman, Audu Ogbeh, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, M.D Yusuf and former Senate President, Iyorchia Ayu.
While the Babangida group are daily sharpening and oiling their arsenal in readiness for a major showdown with President Jonathan nay the South over the 2011 presidency, another Northern group led by Professor Jerry Gana and former Governor of old Plateau state, Chief Solomon Lar has thrown its weight behind Jonathan, further underscoring the division in the region as far as zoning and Jonathan’s ambition is concerned.
Rising from a one-day Summit in Kaduna penultimate week, the Gana/Lar group under the auspices of “Northern Political Summit,” averred that what “the region needed now was good governance irrespective of where the president come from.”
The communiqué issued by the organisers of the Summit stated that “the Summit considered various positions, viewpoints and options together with the related implication to the peace and stability of the country. It resolved that the zoning which produced the presidency of Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and President Goodluck Jonathan was an inseparable ticket, therefore, the demise of one did not invalidate the privileges of the remaining beneficiary of that zoning.”
Kaduna State Governor Patrick Yakowa who is the first governor from the Christian-dominated South of the state had set the tone of the summit when he maintained in his welcome address that “whatever we would do should be in the context of the Nigerian constitution which is supreme over all other arrangements that would be made or might have been made at some point.”
Besides a handful of old breed politicians, the Lar/Gana group parades an avalanche of young and vibrant northern politicians of the new order. They include Dr. Idi Hong, Humprey Abba, Joshua Dariye, Senator Isiah Balat, Bala Kaoje, Senator George Akume, form Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Babangida Nguroje and his successor, Bayero Nafada among others.
Young Northern politicians, an insider who attended the Summit told The Source, are irrevocably primed at recreating the region politically, with the view of weaning it of its feudalistic tendencies. This, they believe, is one of the viable ways to tackle the region's desperate poverty and backwardness in virtually every sector. The young Northern Turks, The Source gathered, are resolute in achieving their aim, even if it means sacrificing political power for some years and openly opposing their elders, the old breed politicians from the region.
In any case, they are of the view that the North as a region benefits more when a non-Northerner is at the helm than when one of their own holds sway. They wantonly accuse past Nigerian leaders of Northern extraction of self-aggrandisement while in office but cited the example of Obasanjo both as Military Head of state and civilian president, who ensured that the region got its fair share of the national cake in the mode of citing of key industries in the region