CONSENSUS: A SAD RETURN TO ETHNIC POLITICS

CONSENSUS: A SAD RETURN TO ETHNIC POLITICS

A sad day it was on the 22nd of November, 2010, when Mallam Adamu Ciroma and 8 others against wise counsel and all entreaties and appeal to the better angels of their nature endorsed a Northern consensus candidate to vie for the presidential ticket of the PDP against the incumbent President, Dr. Jonathan Ebele Goodluck of the minority Ijaw stock of the South - South region supposedly to maintain a nebulous power rotation or zoning within the ruling PDP which delusionally refers to itself as the largest political party in Africa.

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the man so endorsed has accepted the challenge and the three other major contestants, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Aliyu Gusau and Abubakar Bukola Saraki have since congratulated and pledged to work with him. On the other hand, Presidential spokesperson, Ima Niboro has welcomed the choice of the Nine ‘wisemen’ boasting that the choice of Atiku Abubakar has further cleared the coast for his principal to coast to victory at the PDP presidential primaries. Dr. Balarabe Musa believes that Atiku’s choice is an opportunity for the opposition parties to dislodge the PDP from power as he reckons General Ibrahim Babangida would have being a more formidable choice even more so than President Jonathan Ebele Goodluck.

For whatever it is worth, the 2011 elections will come and go and we will still be here but the implications and the resonance of what Mallam Adamu Ciroma and his cohorts have done will live with us for decades. I pray they will live many more years to be haunted by the inevitable ethnic backlash that will follow this endorsement every general election year. IBB is obviously already worried; he has cautioned that the aspirants from the North should not be seen as candidates of the North, but as national aspirants. He said the position of the North on zoning had been misconstrued. Pray how else are we to see candidates who insisted that a Northerner must emerge president and who willingly submitted themselves to the Ciroma group for possible selection as the Northern consensus candidate? Atiku Abubakar is a Northern candidate pure and simple.

The sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’aad Abubakar, Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Generals Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma and Domkat Bali and many other influential Northerners endorsed Atiku’s candidature as reported in the Guardian of Tuesday, November 23, 2010. If it is about Nigeria, these experienced men sure could have counseled other subtle ways of achieving the same purpose without such an open endorsement that will surely divide Nigerians more than it will unite them.

Wise counsel suggests that the Jonathan Ebele Goodluck presidency is a tide of history that we should all do well to live with. The conventional wisdom should be that there is nothing any one can do about it considering the humble man’s trajectory to power but not so with these rapacious and perfidious political elites and their collaborators who must be relevant at all cost. These same men have held power for 38 years of Nigeria’s political independence and did nothing for their people yet they will in the name of these same people demand power rotation at all cost in 2011 when a Southern minority was having a shot at power for the first time in Nigeria’s political history, something that may not happen again in One hundred years and yet these people will not see it as an opportunity to heal the nation and foster a sense of belonging, enthrone equity and justice and engender a sense of joint ownership of the Nigerian project amongst the minority ethnic groups.

Now the damage is done. How shall we counsel the Ibo man in 2015 if he insists on a Consensus Eastern candidate? How about our brothers to the West of the Niger river who will sooner than later insist on a Yoruba president and a very clear and present danger, how do you explain these to the South - South, the region which believes that without its vast oil wealth, there will be no Nigeria. It is no longer whether Atiku wins the Presidency or not. It is that from now on, every one will be justified to insist on ethnocentricity and resort to ethnic jingoism whenever and wherever the question of political office rears its head in Nigeria.

But for one or two persons amongst the ‘Nine wisemen’, and the four candidates, they have between them held all the most important offices with enormous opportunity to make Nigeria but they did not. Their arrowhead, Mallam Adamu Ciroma was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, three times Minister of Industries, Agriculture and Finance. He was a powerful chieftain of the NPN and infact a former Presidential aspirant of that era that brought Nigeria to its knees. He is also a founding member of the PDP, a party that is destroying Nigeria today. Another prominent member of that panel is three times Minister of Establishment, Minister of State for Education and Minister of Labour, Alhaji Bello Kirfi. Chief Audu Ogbeh was a former Minister of Communications and he was National Chairman of the PDP. Major General David Jemibewon was Military Governor of Western State, First Governor of Old Oyo State and Minister of Police Affairs. He was also a founding member of the PDP. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Turakin Adamawa, rose to be Customs boss, he was elected Governor of Adamawa State and He was Vice President of Nigeria for Eight years. No one will forget the unspeakable shame the then Vice President and President Olusegun Obasanjo brought Nigeria in a war of attrition where accusations of corruption and counter corruption were bandied around to the chagrin of utterly disconsolate Nigerians. He was also a founding member of the PDP. General Aliyu Gusau has been National Security Adviser now for as long as anyone can remember. How secure is our nation today? He was also a founding member of the PDP. Everything has been said and written about General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who is fondly called IBB and he has been accused of everything and anything under the sun. He has been accused of elevating corruption to a statecraft. He has been accused of murder and above all he annulled an election that could have set Nigeria free and flying again in 1993. The agitations that followed the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections brought Nigeria to the edge of the precipice and the albatross of that misadventure remains wrapped around IBB’s neck like an albatross. A Gordian knot from which he will never be able to extricate himself even if he had two lifetimes.

These men without fail failed our country. These men should hide their heads in shame for the role they played in the destruction of Nigeria. They should worry that a country they midwifed turned out this awry and leave us to sort out the mess with new ideas. There is no magic wand they have now to exorcise the evil with Nigeria that was not available to them all along – since Nigeria’s political independence these men and their ilk have held sway. These men by their antecedents cannot be trusted to lead us right or choose leaders for us.

Turaki is meanwhile prancing about the place, talking to a people whose flirtations with dementia are well known. His predilection to sound the gong of zoning from the rooftop deceives no one. So there was no zoning when he held Olusegun Obasanjo to ransom in 2003 on the eve of the Presidentail primaries of the PDP. He could well have been President or swing the support Alex Ekwueme’s way and this much he agreed were two of the three options available to him until the last minute when Obasanjo went to him cap in hand begging at the time. If Obasanjo had died in 2001, Atiku wants us to believe he would have respected any nebulous zoning or power rotation concept eh… Let the former Vice President tell that story to the marines!!!

I am bitterly disappointed because by this consensus candidate thing, we have again introduced another dangerous dimension to our politicking and one that is not easily reversed at that all in the name of ‘self interest’ is the name of the game. Just when you think it can not possibly get worse than this, it actually does get worse in Nigeria.

Resignedly, we wait with berthed breath and see where this all leads us in 2011 and beyond.

STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.