Editor
By Victor Anosa
The amalgamation of Southern and Northern Nigeria engineered by Lord Lugard In 1914 was a means of establishing a large market for the British Empire and presumably to give Northern Nigeria unlimited access to the Atlantic Ocean.
If our leaders had exercised enough wisdom by building bridges of love and accommodation between the peoples of this country, we would have prospered and shared the benefits of the large market that Nigeria makes possible for all of us. Unfortunately our leaders, rather than work to emphasize things that bind us together as the largest collection of black people in the world, have chosen to harp on those things that divide us. We find ourselves today in a miserable situation marked by suffering we never experienced before except for the Civil War period – due to insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, and poverty.
Since Nigeria gained independence in 1960, Southerners have ruled Nigeria for sixteen years and nine months (Obasanjo: 11 years, Jonathan: 5 years, Ironsi: 9 months), while Northerners ruled for forty five years and three months.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelIn a speech to the Arewa Forum in Kaduna this October, one of the candidates Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, told his audience that I think what the average Northerner needs is somebody who is from the NorthHe doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate, or an Igbo candidate”. He had in the same month at Enugu promised the Igbos that they will get the presidency after he had held the position. Some un-confirmed reports claim that he made the same promise to Governor Wike. Assuming that “President” Atiku wants to install an Igbo man as President after his eight years in office, how does he ensure that Northerners would by then want an Igbo President? How does he ensure that other Nigerians would not reject his Igbo candidate and vote in another person since we are running a democracy, and he is not a General running a military government? What gives him the right to assume that his personal desire to be President is more deserving than the rights of Igbos, some forty or more millions of them, to produce the next President? I disagree with Alhaji Atiku politely, and I give ten reasons why Northerners also need a Southern President.
First, since Northerners have ruled Nigeria for73% of post-independence Nigeria, is it not right and fair that Southerners should be given the right to produce the next President? The two religions in Nigeria and even the traditional religions emphasize fairness and equity. If Southerners have accepted Northern Presidents for almost three quarters of our nationhood, it appears unfair and inconsiderate for Atiku to say that the North does not need a Southern President so that the North will succeed the North in 2023. Second, Atiku wants to succeed President Buhari, a fellow Fulani man. Supposing that the retiring President was a Yoruba man that served eight years, would Atiku and other Northerners who may think like him accept another Yoruba President for eight years? Certainly not. An adage says that when two dogs play, each dog falls to the ground in succession. Where one dog insists that it stands while the other always falls, a fight will ensue. Even dogs recognize equity and fairness in relationships.
Thirdly, the Constitution of Nigeria recognizes federal character in which positions are distributed to all parts of the country in respect of our diversity. The Presidency should be rotated between the zones to recognize our diversity in order to give every zone a sense of belonging.
Fourthly, Northerners have ruled Nigeria for 73% of Nigerias life. Yet the indices of lack of progress such as poverty levels, insurgency, children out of school, banditry, etc are highest in the North. And they are getting worse. Southerners who have had less opportunity to rule Nigeria have achieved more progress. Does that not indicate that Nigeria would fare better under a Southern Presidency?
Fifth, the North has some of the richest Nigerians today, and also the largest population of poor people not only in the Nigeria but in the world. That indicates that the social system practiced in the North creates a small group of rich elites with unimaginable wealth, and a large mass of talakawas wallowing in poverty and ignorance.
Equally important, it seems that there are rigid barriers to social mobility in which the rich remain rich and often intermarry, and the poor and their children remain poor and are cocooned in their social class. In my southern part of the country, the reverse is the case as the children of the poor get access to education and some become rich by dint of hard work in the next generation and marry the children of the rich. A Southern President will address some of these social anomalies in the North. Jonathan, for instance, built Almajiri schools and created seven federal universities in the North in order to address some of these oddities. Allowing 20 or more million children to remain out of school is gross child abuse by the leaders and a crime against humanity. Education is a right of every child, and gives the poor mans child the right and power to become anything including doctors, lawyers, generals, professors, engineers. In my hometown, most children start school at two years, and a man who does not send his children to school is demonized as irresponsible. There must be up to several thousands of unrealized potential geniuses, and tens of thousands of unrealized successful sportsmen, professors, engineers, etc, in the twenty million children that are kept out of school in the North and so wasted.
Meanwhile, the ex-Governor of Zamfara State was recently angry because his monthly pension of ten million naira was not paid. (My professorial pension after 38 years service is N200,000 monthly!). Ten million naira can build a block of twelve classrooms for children in Zamfara. A Southern President will take actions to reduce drastically the number of children out of school and, in consultation with the religious authorities in the North, should compulsorily integrate the almajiri system into western educational system. I imagine that there are no almajiris in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Dubai.
Sixth, it appears that the leaders in the North have two sets of rules in place: one set for the poor and another for the rich. Some of the Northern leaders we know have only one wife, maybe two, despite their humongous wealth, while they encourage the common people to have four wives each. The leaders have fewer children who they educate to university level, while the poor breed too many children they cannot care for, with many of the boys becoming almajiris and the girls becoming child-wives. An illiterate man from the North who works as a security guard told me that his ambition is to marry three wives. The leaders promote the wearing of hijab in public places and almajiri system for the poor, but I see their children in normal schools and universities dressed in public without hijab.
Seventh, it is only in a colonial master/colonized people or slave master/slave relationships that the colonizer or slave master insists on being in power all the time while the colonized and the slaves are expected to know their place and accept the masters/colonizers’ perpetual right to rulership. Slave masters and colonialists are absurd in 2022, and Northerners who have such ideas should expunge them from their thoughts if they want peace in Nigeria.
Eight, rotating the Presidency between the South and the North, and between the six zones, has advantages. It engenders a sense of belonging, nationalism, mutual respect and national unity amongst the different peoples of Nigeria. It will abolish feelings of exclusion which in recent times have led to separatist agitations such as IPOB and Oduduwa Republic. When a President is in power, he will not discriminate so brazingly against any other zones in part because he knows that power goes round and one day the zone discriminated against will also have a President in power and could seek revenge. Ninth, the Northerners like Atiku, if they genuinely love Nigeria, should learn that peace, prosperity and security can only return to Nigeria when the components parts see that they have equal stakes in the nation, and one simple way to achieve these is to share power equitably between the zones of Nigeria. To insist on lopsided distribution of power is to increase agitations for self determination. And when this expands and gathers force, no one can stop disintegration. If this occurs, we shall all be losers, and in our quiet times will regret that we were not more thoughtful and considerate.
Lastly, which Northerners is Atiku speaking to? Northerners are quite diverse and some are already openly committed to a Southern President come 2023. The 10 Northern APC Governors as well as Shetima have already pitched their camps with candidate Tinubu, while other Northerners such as the Middle Belt Forum and Senator Dr. Datti Ahmed are committed to candidate Obi. Can Atiku decide for them against Southern Presidency when they are already committed to the same cause?
In conclusion, Alhaji Atiku has been claiming that he is a unifier of Nigeria because he has travelled to all over Nigeria, and has married women from other parts of Nigeria. Love for a woman does not tally with love for her tribe. If indeed he has been to all the parts of Nigeria, he certainly did not correctly discern the true feelings of the real peoples in the places he visited. Apparently he met only selfish politicians some of who were willing to betray their people and sell their delegate votes to him for his dollars during the party conventions.
The real people in the South want the presidency to return to the South because the North has had their lion’s share of that office, and Southerners find the idea of one Fulani man who served eight years handing over directly to another Fulani man for another eight years in a country with 250 ethnic groups very unjust and repugnant. Should Southerners be slaves and strangers in the land of their birth? The genuine unifier should in all matters treat the component parts of Nigeria equitably and justly.
