By Olatunde Abatan
Since the Southern governors who met for the second time this year, penultimate week, reeled out their communique asking that the Presidency must come to the South in 2023 much comments have been made across the broad spectrum of our body polity.
The various comments both positive,negative and outright rage is not the bone of contention here but rather the need for such a demand in the first instance.
It is a generally accepted axiom that all over the world both in corporate governance and politics, power has never been served a la carte.it is taken either by sheer political brinkmanship or tactical boardroom manouvres but generally short of begging. For in begging, such powers if eventually given are with strings attached.
The amusing thing about such demand from the seventeen southern governors is the beggarly attitude which has never won anything in Nigeria taken into consideration the North- South power dichotomy.
Southern govs in group photograph after s closed door meeting in Lagos
Recalled that the dichotomy foisted on the nation after the Lord Luggard rule has its roots in the manipulation of the first census which actually jump started the lopsided arrangement which gave advantage to the North at independence.
That Harold Smith,one of the then colonial civil servants could repeatedly admit recently as he did in 1997, that British assisted in creating Northern hegemonic domination through the first Census in 1953 is enough lesson .
Though,the Southern governors first attempt at sinking their differences which the North has used to sustain the superiority position over the years,started in 2001,yet it was aborted by the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency.
This moves and decision till date remains why his southern brothers never for once trust his loyalty to their cause .
Besides,the North have always been meeting as a supposed monolithic block since after the first coup,even if it is for the sake of maintaining their stranglehold on power against the divided south.
Asking the North to give it the Presidency in 2023, is cowardice and contrary to the spirit of the June 12,1993 presidential annulment struggle which crisis grinded the country’s peace and stability for five years. It did until the North came crawling asking the South to take it’s turn.
But then,the North did not just did that,the military wing of the Northern political establishment then led by Abdulsalam Abubakar,made sure the Presidency was ‘awarded’ to their Southern choice in Obasanjo.
To compound and compromise any element of Southern tilting of control,they used the Niki Tobi constitution review commission to produce a 1999 constitution which today has compounded Nigerias political and social problem more than ever.
Even with Obasanjo as President,the lever of power remains with the North since the provisions of the obnoxious constitution vested all powers in the Presidency which Obasanjo,as usual, never attempted to redress while his eight years tenure lasted.
This explains why the demand of the Southern governors runs contrary not only to established principles of power but too cowardice.
Let the Southern governors do what the strong man of middle- belt cum Benue politics, Samuel Ortom, did in 2018.
Ortoms bravery in standing to defend his people against ravenous Fulani herdsmen who with gusto have been making attempt to disposes his people of their land and possibly annihilate them in their century old determination to revisit Uthman Dan- Fodios conquest.
Ortom did the unthinkable which none of today’s southern governors especially the five South West APC states could not do.
He left the APC on which platform he got elected,crossed over to PDP and defeated the APC candidate with all the layers backing by a raging federal government.
This shows that he has the following of his people.Can any of our South west APC governors defy the ruling APC and do so. Definitely no for their position was purchased not with followership but their deep pockets.
For the seventeen southern governors to think they could stop open grazing,redress Nigerias structural imbalance while avoiding to look straight into Buharis eye, is hiding behind one finger.
What is more,the volte- face of three southern governors of PDP, Cross River, Ebonyi and Imo in seeking shelter in crumbling APC towards retaining relevance in 2023, is a compromise of their fight against flagrant violation of the constitution they swore to protect.
Hence by standing with Buhari who is insisting on implementing ban on open grazing obviously to seize land for his Fulani herdsmen who he has shown he has bigger allegiance to than the Nigerian state both in his words,actions and deeds.
To show seriousness of purpose, let the seventeen southern governors form a strategic political alliance with the enstranged middle- belt now under the yoke of Fulani annihiliation and pull the rug from the feet of the Congress for Progressive Change,CPC,a tendency in the APC,which has hijacked the direction of the parties initial manifestoe in 2015.
That it has chosen to promote primordial ethno- centric interest as reflected in Buharis policy trusts is full of betrayal achieved with soap -box deceit.
Playing ‘political correctness’ for fear of godfathers in South West at this stage of the nations serious haemorrhage is akin to cowardice.
But then,the SW governors especially could only do so if they are really on the side of their people who are obviously growing restive by Buharis ethno -centric policies which has divided the nation and reverted it’s unity by 50 years.
The selective approach to justice,equity and fairness by Buharis federal government by the way of it’s clampdown on increasingly popular non- state actors like Nnamdi Kanu fof South East and Sunday Adeyemo,aka Igboho of the South West ,is enough tonic for any serious political re-engineering by the south desirious of taken power from a reluctant North .
The pronouncements of Arewa Consultative Forum,ACF leaders not to concede an inch of privilege they have cornered over the years-though with nothing to show for it through Dr Baba Ahmed is clearly evident that the struggle is not against Buhari alone but the established Northern political elite.
On this score, the onus is not only for the seventeen state assemblies to pass laws outlawing open grazing which is already an illegality, but displaying the political muzzle to reach compromise with middle belt zone thereby ostracizing the North.
Voting pattern over the years, has progressively shown only such understanding among four out of six geo political zone can wrest power from the reactionary axis of the North definitely not by issuing pronouncements that has no political muzzle to exert.
The clock is ticking fastly for the South to gather it’s loins and reverse the disagreement between the Action Group,AG and National Council of Nigeria Citizens,NC, in 1959 which robbed it of the leadership of the 1960 independence government from which it is yet to recover.
