FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo has said, given the abysmal performance of Goodluck Jonathan at the Aso Rock Villa, it would be pretty difficult trusting another man from the South-south geo-political zone with the big task of managing the country. It sounds like an arrangement struck in political coven and Obasanjo, who is probably the spokesman, is only conveying the decision of the ‘witches’ and ‘wizards’ of national politics. Notice has been sufficiently served through Obasanjo and it shouldn’t trouble anybody if the South-south is lost on the appointment radar of the incumbent president.

Goodluck Jonathan is an Ijaw from Otueke in Ogbia local government area of Bayelsa State. Obasanjo was rather too general in his prohibition decree. If he had specified Otueke in drafting his Prohibition (of South-south Persons From Presidential Contest) Decree One of 2015, the effect would have been a lot more manageable. But as it is today, it is difficult for the region to produce a presidential participant except the decree is amended to exclude only persons from Otueke or even Bayelsa State. Let’s assume that Otueke being the hometown of Jonathan is the epicenter of misrule in Nigeria. And if impact is measured by distance to the source, it means the impact of bad governance will lessen as one moves farther from the Otueke.

In other words, there is a strong scientific basis for President Buhari to look far beyond Otueke in searching for a national participant in the ongoing dispensation from the South-south geo-political zone. He is also blameless in this matter, because he didn’t establish this basis; Obasanjo, who, we all agree is very patriotic, did.

I want to therefore use this platform to call on all the good people of the South-south to support the national commissioner representing the zone at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). He is Dr. Mohammed Mustafa Lecky, from Auchi, Edo State, which is about 350 kilometres from Otueke. This is far enough and the force of evil from the epicenter in Otueke would completely dissipate before it covers that distance to Auchi. And so Dr. Mustafa Lecky is insulated by distance from the evil of Otuoke.

And talking about INEC, it is too crucial an institution to be left in the hands of evil men to manage. I am happy that for once, the no-nonsense Buhari has lowered his guard and allowed himself to be guided by the good counsel of another wise man called Baba Obasanjo. Going by the same scientific principle of impact and distance and retaining Otueke as the epicenter of evil, the entire area South of Nigeria will have more evil emanating from Otueke than the North will have.

In fact, to be on a safer side, the surveyor-general of Nigeria should be detailed to create the coordinates to establish the distances of all major towns in Nigeria from Otueke. That way, President Buhari will even be better guided to identify areas where evil is concentrated and avoid appointing people from such locations into his government to dilute the agenda of change. In the final analysis, it is better to avoid trouble than to deliberately court it and then search for ways to manage it.

I am saying this because there were grumblings last week, especially across the Southern part of the country following the appointment of one Prof. Mahmood Yakubu who is from Bauchi in the Northeast geo-political zone as the substantive chairman of INEC. Specifically, Mr. Ayo Fayose, the governor of Ekiti State in Southwest Nigeria who, according to some account, sees nothing good in the Buhari administration was on hand again to comment on the appointment of the new INEC chairman. He said the appointment was a vindication of his long held position that Buhari is a sectional leader. He was trying to say that since President Buhari is from the North, it is not in the Nigerian spirit to have the grand umpire of the electoral body from the same North.

I can’t get what Governor is saying. Does he want Buhari to make the mistake of bringing into his government people who have been infested with the virus of bad governance? For goodness sake, the man has prayed to God to deliver him from evil and here is a Fayose pushing him towards evil. The Northeast, which is about 1000 kilometres from Otueke is undoubtedly a much more safe distance than elsewhere in the country to source a man who has not been tainted with the evil of misrule to impeccably run INEC.

Nobody can fault Buhari on that decision and I enjoin him to ignore Governor Fayose, who clearly does not wish him well. This is even one way of looking at the appointment of Prof. Yakubu. There is another way, which also supports the good decision of Buhari. As we all know, Nigeria is a turn-by-turn affair. It rotates on some zonal axis and when it is convenient with some people, the rotation is put on a different axis — the 36 states. I, for one, do not know of any Nigerian spirit that binds the three zones or the 19 states in the North into a political slot.

The Prof in question is first and foremost an indigene of Bauchi State and then Northeast zone before he is an indigene of the North. That is how Nigeria has been structured and that is how Buhari who is far wiser than many think is running his change agenda. Prof Yakubu’s share as a Bauchi or Northeast man does not in any way affect the ration of the man from Katsina or Northwest. It makes excellent political sense and less sensible folks should draw up good lessons instead of sulking.

If in his time as president, Goodluck Jonathan in his magnanimity (or is it cluelessness) decided to equate the tiny South-south with the entire South and allow the North to have all except the presidency in the dispensation of political benefits, it was his business. He would not be re-inventing the wheel if he had pushed the chairmanship of INEC to a Professor from Ondo or Abia State. But he didn’t because he thought Nigeria was a heritage between South on one end and North on the other end.

Ironically, the six-zone structure was the star contribution of Dr. Alex Ekwueme, an Igbo man from the Southeast at the 1995 Constituent Assembly, where much of the content of the operating 1999 Constitution was hammered. It was done in anticipation of a more robust political participation of all sides. That is, to democratize power beyond the hegemonic hold of the Hausa-Fulani.

And so, if power was returning from the North in 1999 after 20 years (since 1979), it was not too much to let it remain in the South for some time so that both the Southeast and South-south geo-political zones could also have a generous taste of eight years each after the Southwest.
It didn’t quite follow that way. Today, power is back to the North and one Senator Saidu Dansadau has reportedly equated this with the conquest of the rest of Nigeria by the North. If it is so, the rest of Nigeria should also note that liberation of a conquered territory takes even greater effort to achieve than its conquest.

In the main, Buhari is doing well to run the zonal structure beyond the rhetoric of Southern politicians, including Obasanjo and Jonathan. After the Northwest, the presidency under the new interpretation of the zonal arrangement can very well move Northeast and North-central before heading South and nothing will happen.

Already, the PDP has said it is zoning its ticket for the 2019 presidential election to the North and nobody has complained. If each of the three zones in the North takes eight years, it will be 24 years beginning from 2015 before the South can open bidding for the presidency of Nigeria and there are no guarantees that it will go Southeast when it manages to return South after the long northern sojourn.
And here was General Yakubu Gowon last week, re-stating the ‘no victor, no vanquished’ proclamation of January 1970 and that the Rising Sun of Biafra remains set forever. General sir, it doesn’t happen that way. What you are saying amounts to spanking a child and also preventing him from crying.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/10/backlash-the-epicentre-of-misrule/#