Presidency: It’s Yoruba Turn in 2003 and 2007
By
Banji
Ayiloge
A
common development in Nigeria these days is for politicians who are currently
benefiting from Obasanjo’s largess, to roll out the drumbeat among Yoruba to
vote for him this time around. The campaign is appealing to the primordial
feelings of this ethnic group that they must support General Obasanjo because
his is Yoruba. The politically astute Yoruba people are been deceived into
believing that their interests are better served by voting for Obasanjo come
2003. Of
course, we know this not true.
We shall explore why this is not so in this piece.
Another
obsession in the country at large is for those from other regions,
particularly the Igbos to clamor for their ethnic groups to produce the next
president of Nigeria. The wrong premise is that like the Yoruba, they must
produce the president to feel fulfilled and have a sense of belonging within
the comity of ethic groups that make up Nigeria. Somehow, I feel that they
know that this is a baseless argument. Their strongest point is that Obasanjo
became the president because it was conceded to the Yoruba as a result of the
June 12 debacle. If the presidency were conceded to the Yoruba, Olu Falae
would have been the president. The Yoruba people over whelming voted for him
in the last election.
We shall come to that point later.
The
North is another case defying all logical reasoning. This region has through
the perennial military incursion into power, ruled Nigeria for most of the
years after independence. Yet, the clamor for power shift seems to be loudest
from that region lately, particularly from some northern politicians who were
left out in the cold by the current administration. This group prefers power
to shift to their own geographical zone, not so much for any program to
develop the nation, but to partake in government patronage that they feel has
eluded them. To realize their objective, they must infuse in the nation, a
sense of crisis by boiling the political waters. Furthermore, Obasanjo’s
administration is being portrayed as inept, as if to say that we are not the
only people in the country capable of producing presidents or heads of state
without talents. To these people, Obasanjo’s ineptitude is portrayed as that
of the Yoruba. By so doing, these political jobbers hope to encourage, power
to shift to their own region hoping to have more access to power. The irony is
that Yoruba people did not help make Obasanjo president as they rejected him
during the 1999 elections.
The
final group in this analysis, and the group to which this writer belongs, is
the group of democrats who fought Abacha and the military on purely
ideological grounds. They believed the real TRANSITION TO CIVILIAN
ADMINISTRAION
began with the current Obasanjo transition government. 2003 must therefore
witness the return to civilian administration in Nigeria. For this reason,
many democrats sat out the Abubakar-inspired transition and the sham elections
that followed. The current administration is the transition administration. It
has all the traits of a transition administration.
The military handed over to a military general that would not rock the
boat, and who is known to defer to his military colleagues especially on the
need to maintain the status quo. Let us take the points above one by one with
a view to finding any merits in the general assumptions.
If
the Yoruba people vote overwhelmingly for Obasanjo this time around, history
will ask its leaders and the generality of the people what has changed?
We knew Obasanjo more than any other sections of the country and we
rejected him at the polls. True, Obasanjo hails from the same town as Moshood
Abiola, so was Earnest Sonekan.
The most powerful tribe in Nigeria – the military, yes it is the
military, imposed both Sonekan and Obasanjo.
To those who may still be in doubt, Was IBB not rumored to be
Obasanjo’s most ardent supporter in 1999?
The bond that Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida shared was not cemented on
the street of Abeokuta or at the Yoruba political capital of Ibadan. It was
noctured in the barracks. The military again, imposed General Obasanjo leaving
the Yoruba out. The Yoruba people must then be allowed to pick the next
president so as to compensate them for the persecution and exclusion of the
past. Yoruba
must then be given a free hand in picking its candidate and we must all vote
for that candidate. Do I sound like a tribal jingoist? Well, everyone else
sounds like that these days.
The
Yoruba Agenda that I have taken part in championing for almost a decade is
national in scope and pragmatic in design and conception. It is the best route
for moving the country forward.
A national conference of equal representation of all the nationalities
that make up Nigeria can hardly be called an ethnic agenda. Substantial
political and economic control of our immediate surrounding is a goal embraced
by all free people all over the world. A whittled down fashion of the current
bloated federal government would do everyone good by allowing the states and
local governments to receive a sizeable portion of the revenues. The Yoruba as
a group is in a hurry to develop. It feels that as long as substantive power
is concentrated in the hands of the federal government to the detriment of all
the federating units, its development will only be a mirage.
When a Yoruba leader talks of restructuring the country’s polity, He
or she is talking about the issues mentioned above.
When Obasanjo says States or Local governments police would happen over
his dead body, or that those who are advocating for a conference of all the
Nigerian nationalities wanted to break up this country, was the president, a
Yoruba, a product of the mainstream Yoruba political thought? Of course not.
How come that some people are claiming that he is using our slot? We are yet
to take our slot
The
fact that Yoruba rejected Sonekan and Obasanjo was commendable. Having become
president, Obasanjo selected a few of his friends in Yoruba land to be in
government with him. The rest of the Yoruba continue in the country as
underdogs. Our children can still win the presidency and their election
victory be annulled; we still continue to labor under an oppressive central
government that mops up all our resources only to return a pittance of it as
federal grants. We cannot maintain a secure environment for our children
because we must depend on Abuja to send a few ill-equipped, and ill- trained
police that extort funds from our people. The list goes on and on.
The next President, if we go by conventional wisdom in the country,
must then be a Yoruba and he should not be General Obasanjo.
This
will mean that the Igbos must fold their cannon and stop their clamour for
what they themselves have termed “Igbo President” It is not yet their
turn. The
Yoruba are yet to be pacified. So the Igbos should wait.
For the Igbos to appreciate what the Yoruba are saying, let us use the
Igbos political terrain as our point of reference. Suppose that the whole of
Nigeria decided to concede the presidency to the Igbos.
The Igbos have Ekwueme and Ojukwu in mind. Since they must choose one,
the Igbos back Ojukwu but powerful interests out of Igbo land such as General
Gowon decided that Arthur Nzeribe should be the president. Notwithstanding
that General Yakubu Gowon and his fellow coup plotters abruptly, and violently
ended the reign of General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo illustrious son. Would the
Igbo be happy? We all know the answer to that question. Let the Igbos meet
their Yoruba counterpart to back a credible, qualified and authentic Yoruba
presidential candidate for 2003. The rest of the country should do the same.
The
North as stated above continues to be a mystery. It continues to exhibit what
is known as cognitive dissonance. They wanted Obasanjo after their military
leaders persuaded them to support him, yet they still wonder if their lots
would not have been better served by supporting another candidate, preferably
one of their own. President Obasanjo was their candidate and they should learn
to live with it. Indeed, it can be said that General Obasanjo, with the
North’s blessing is occupying the Northern slot if there is anything like
that.
Finally
the country’s retinue of political activists during the Abacha regime was
divided as usual during the so-called transition in 1999. Those who wanted to
participate in politics at that time and those who insisted that the
country’s polity must be restructured for the nation to move forward.
Those who were in politics before the military regime, argued that
participation were the only way to move forward.
Without mincing words, I must accept that those of us, who abstained
from party politics on the principle that our society must address the crisis
of nationality that has been its bane since its inception, may have been too
principled in a society full of opportunists and charlatans. What our
abstentions did was to leave the coast clear for those who acquired large sum
of money under Abacha to commandeer the machinery of government. In the West,
the citadel of progressive politics, what we found is that our abstention
created a vacuum of leadership that reflected in the appalling quality of our
representation at all levels of government.
In the post 1999 politics of Nigeria, we can say that the military,
formed an unholy alliance with those who served Abacha to capture political
power. The response of these two groups to the cry for reformation of the
nation’s polity is an unconvincing appeal to patriotism. Only the Obasanjos
of Nigeria would rather emphasize superficial nationalism in the face of
glaring evidence that society progresses better when its component parts are
able to confront their fears - Be it that of magnetization, impartial revenue
formula, or political representation.
Some
have blamed the remnant of the democrats both at home and abroad for shirking
their responsibilities for not participating in party politics during the
Abubarkar transition. The argument is that some of us could have remained as
the voices of reason within a rogue system. These well-meaning people are
not impressed by the “we would rather preserve ourselves for the inevitable
collapse of the rouge system” to rescue it posture. What if, in the case
of Nigeria, it merely perpetuates itself? What if, rather than find a lasting
solution to the ills of our society, we merely postpone the evil days? How
many years would we continue to remain a potentially great country because
the brightest among our people view politics with scorn and prefer to be
mere critics?
There
is no doubt that the Obasanjo second ascension to power has provided a
well-deserved interlude to the mad years of military dictatorship, which
reached its most pervasive period during Abacha. If this second coming continues
until 2003 without resorting to any of the Abachaic tactics, then we can
just thank our stars and move beyond that by voting in a competent civilian
administration to deal with economic and socio-political issues. All
democrats must throw their hats in the ring for the benefit of our people.
It is a task that has to be done.
Banji
Ayiloge, a Journalist and Political Economist, was a Leader of the democratic
movement abroad. He has since returned home and he is running for a senate
seat from Ondo Central Senatorial District.