AT the threshold of the Second Republic in 1978, attempts were made to replicate the political parties along the failed First Republic model. However, it was the antics of some young political actors from the eastern part of the country that actually amplified the ethnic bias of the emergent political parties.Shortly after the military government of General Olusegun Obasanjo lifted the ban on political activities, four major political parties came on the scene. While the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) led by the political sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, drew its bulk of support from what was then known as the LOOBO States (Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Bendel and Oyo), the leader of the Talakawa, Mallam Aminu Kano, promoted the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), with its enthusiastic supporters centred around Kano and Kaduna states.The other two parties, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) prided themselves as broad-based national parties, mainly because they boasted of young and old politicians from different geopolitical zones.Things remained in that shape until 1979 turned the corner and the elections timetable released by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO). The tempo of political activities rose and the calculations for elective offices, especially the presidency, began to affect the membership structure of the parties.The UPN and PRP, it must be noted, had their presidential tickets reserved for their leaders. Though the NPN surmounted the challenge of selecting a presidential flagbearer, the contrary was the case in the NPP.Some young politicians, who assisted Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri to found the NPP, reasoned that since Awolowo was running for the presidency, it would make for electoral good sense to draft in his First Republic peer, the Rt. Hon. (Dr.) Nnamdi Azikiwe. Though he did not publicly raise the concern, Alhaji Waziri, wondered how Zik could emerge from a section of the country that waged a 30-month civil war against and win a democratic election in a united Nigeria, barely nine years after the secessionist attempt.Somehow also, that fact might have crossed the minds of those championing Zik's adoption, but they seemed to be blinded by the possibility of climbing on his back to political positions, especially the governorship of their states. Surprised by their vehement insistence of fielding Zik for the presidential poll, Waziri and some of his supporters pulled away to form the Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP).During his electioneering campaigns, it was a very disturbed Zik that beheld the sharp division of the Igbo voting bloc, with some Igbo moneybags in the NPN denigrating him in an unimaginable manner. Piqued by the level of hate spewed forth by his political rivals and the sharp division in Igboland over his aspiration, the Owelle admonished his kith and kin against mudslinging in politics.Addressing a campaign rally in Enugu, Zik warned his Igbo antagonists: 'Do not throw mud; you may miss your target but you get soiled hands.' He described his Igbo brothers in the NPN as 'ten percent men and contractocrats,' and political misfits who, he said, were adept at selling their consciences to outsiders for contracts.In spite of his spirited campaigns, at the end of the 1979 polls, Zik came third, leaving NPN's Alhaji Shehu Shagari and UPN's Obafemi Awolowo to contest the political, and not arithmetic value of two-thirds of 19 States in a prolonged election petition.That was the closest an Igbo person came to becoming the president of Nigeria because though the 1983 presidential election was a waterloo for Zik and the NPP, the military threw their hats into the ring.Since that half-hearted contest for the presidency (by zik), it has been near misses all the way. Yet, the clamour for Igbo presidency has never abated. Unfortunately, while the demand is high, there is no semblance of a well-thought-out strategy or political mass mobilisation to actualise that aspiration.Added to that is the conspicuous alienation of the masses of the zone in the calculations, and thus, the talk of Igbo presidency remains a whisper in the wind. It has come to a stage that whenever the talk of an Igbo presidency echoes, most Igbo voters feel that opportunistic politicians are on the prowl for attention.SOME commentators say the laissez-faire attitude of most Igbo politicians and voters towards the idea of Igbo presidency stems from experiences of the past.At the return of the nation to the path of constitutional democracy in 1998, hopes that the Igbo could mount the presidency were high when the Second Republic Vice President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, led the G-34 political opinion minders to form the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But later events in the inchoate party were to reveal that Ekwueme could not survive the sort of intrigues that Zik complained about 20 years earlier.During the PDP convention in Jos, to choose the party presidential candidate, Ekwueme lost the ticket to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. His woe was compounded by the plethora of other Igbo contestants, some of whose interest was mainly to play the spoiler, perhaps, for some lucre.While Ekwueme's kinsfolk were helping former military rulers to deny him the PDP presidential ticket, next door, what looked like a compensatory victory by the former Governor of old Abia State, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, was also aborted. The All Peoples Party (APP), on which platform Onu clinched the presidential ticket, went into an alliance with the Alliance for Democracy (AD).If Ekwueme's defeat by Chief Obasanjo was unexpected, the decision of the APP with its superior number of states (nine) to play the second fiddle to the AD was astonishing. AD had just five States concentrated in one geopolitical zone ' the Southwest!Disregard the conspiracy theory that those who annulled the 1993 presidential election, adjudged to be free and fair, wanted to compensate the Southwest for the demise of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. What seemed to play out rather was Igbo politicians' lack of a strong political will to bind together for the zone's common interest. Had Onu been supported to run, the electorate, having to decide between two southern candidates, would have addressed the issue of zoning.Even then, while Obasanjo, who eventually won the 1999 presidential election, settled down to govern, he tampered with the principles of a smooth-running democracy. As such, Ekwueme could not undo the failures of 1998 in 2003 at the party presidential primaries held at the Eagles Square, Abuja. But before then, it was obvious to some perceptive Igbo politicians that the PDP could not allow an Igbo candidate to fly the party presidential flag.The formation of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was ostensibly to raise a vibrant platform to ventilate aspiration of the Igbo to produce the president of Nigeria. However, like the political wayfarers in the defunct NPP, the leaders of the APGA went for a historical figure to foist as presidential candidate.Though the late Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu had the charisma and carriage to be Nigeria's president, present day politics ensured that a new crop of irreverent young Igbo were empowered economically and politically to frustrate the emergence of tough Igbo aspirants. It is this crop of new political actors, bolstered by federal might, that make certain that elections do not count.And so, from the Zik era of throwing mud, these young men with connections throw money. They build political structures or estates of thugs, who rig elections for their principals. That was in part why, despite the good showing of the APGA in Southeast States of Anambra, Abia, Enugu and Imo, in 2003, the party could only reclaim Anambra after a major disagreement between the principals and their surrogates.With the success of the rigging machineries put in place by the members of the new easy-money class, politics has transformed into a mercantilist enterprise. At the approach of elections, these purveyors of rigging would purchase forms for their protgs even in different political parties. They ensured that these surrogates are rigged into public offices to the detriment of and in utter disdain for the wishes of the electorate.This culture of impunity further widened the gulf between politicians and the people in the Southeast, especially Anambra State. It is, therefore, not surprising that shortly after the 2003 elections, the APGA was engulfed in a destabilising internal leadership crisis.The development also put into serious question the ability of the politicians from the zone to cohere. For instance, when the PDP zoned the chairmanship of the party to the Southeast, many aspirants jostled for the position.THOUGH certain tendencies question the ability of the Igbo to select their leaders, it is noteworthy that the influence of money and narrow considerations that are antithetical to Igbo group interest continue to undermine the effort.Worse still, outside interests and entrenched political jobbers have always found a way of imposing representatives on the Igbo. The absence of a rallying leadership that can show direction makes it impossible that things will change positively in the near future.Warped value system ensures the elimination of clean and knowledgeable candidates to fly Igbo flag for a presidential contest. And, if what transpired during the recent PDP convention, where the zonal caucus selected none of the candidates from the Southeast, is anything guide, an Igbo presidency may be neither here nor there.Yet, optimists abound, as illustrated in separate interviews with The Guardian by Ambassador Ralph Uwechue and Chief Chekwas Okorie.Uwechue, president-general of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, declared that an Igbo presidency in 2015 was non-negotiable.He said: 'By the time President Jonathan completes his tenure, Southeast, the once hallowed political base of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, generally acknowledged as, perhaps, Nigeria's foremost founding father, the placidly intrepid Dr. Akanu Ibiam, the indomitable Dr. Michael Okpara, the indefatigable Igbo Union leader, Chief Zacheus Obi and lately our legendary Dim Odumegwu-Ojukwu, all of blessed memory, now sticking out in unenviable political solitude, will distinctly remain the only zone that has not held the top-most executive office in our country since Independence in 1960.'Producing the next president by the Southeast, a zone replete with outstandingly capable hands, is therefore, not a favour waiting to be granted, but a logically due and legitimate political right justly accruing to it within the Nigerian family in a true 'federal character' setting. Ndigbo worldwide fervently and fraternally urge all Nigerians and our various political parties to see the case of Southeast presidency in this clearly equity-generated light.'On how this could be realised, given past experience of every Igbo man wanting to be the person to wear the crown, Uwechue canvassed a 1998/99 political model to produce president of Igbo origin.'Politically active Igbo sons and daughters have diverse political affiliations,' he said. 'Our interest is that all the political parties in Nigeria should present Southeast presidential candidates, as was the case in 1999 when we had the battle of the two Olus ' Obasanjo and (Olu) Falae ' in a distinctly intra-Southwest presidential contest so that whoever is eventually elected has to be a Nigerian citizen of Southeast extraction.'But Okorie, founding chairman of the APGA and promoter of the embattled United Peoples Grand Alliance (UPGA), threw in a caveat in the midst of a possible lowering of guard.'I believe very strongly, as I have always believed, that the Igbo have the brightest prospects of producing the president of Nigeria in 2015,' he said. 'The Igbo have the outreach, the contact, the affiliation to produce the president of Nigeria in alliance, in collaboration and cooperation with the rest of Nigeria.'But the critical question is what you have just raised. The PDP can never provide that platform, has never provided that platform and will never provide that platform. The ANPP, I can say the same thing as I said of PDP. I will say the same thing of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) the CPC (Congress for Progressive Change) and, perhaps, the Labour Party.'He added that Igbo people have more problems than they know, pointing out that, 'they have the problem of finding a platform to contest like other Nigerians; they also have the problem of containing the internal saboteurs, who are easily available to sabotage their agenda in Nigeria.'If, as most people claim, none of the present Southeast governors inspires confidence, then it goes to buttress the apprehension among many interested parties that Igbo presidency in 2015 may be neither here nor there!
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