Low level insurgency in some parts of the country is reportedly tied to the insistence of the North to secure the presidency in 2015. Regional Editor (News), Olawale Rasheed X-rays the issues and the context of this blood-letting in presidential politics.Nigerian politics is intricatelywoven around ethnic andreligious affiliations and affinity, a quality that transforms struggle for political power into a game of blood-stained intrigue and a mixture of system destabilisation for targeted political aims and objectives. In this delicate era, presidential politics is increasingly perceived as the underlying factor in the ongoing insurgency.From independence politics of 1959 to the politics of the Jonathan presidency, the struggle has always been the fight of the South to even out with the North in gaining access to national power, symbolised by the presidency. The rightful resistance of sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, during and after the 1959 elections plunged the nation into protracted crisis that was only resolved with the unfortunate coup of 1966. Even then, the underlying issue of inequality of access to national power was not resolved.The circumstances of General Yakubu Gowon's emergence as head of state equally compounded the matter as the counter-coup of 1966 served to re-institute the imbalance foisted on the nation at independence. While General Gowon is today a symbol of national unity, his rule was also basically part of the national malaise. It was from that standpoint that the Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu revolt and the subsequent civil war counted as part of southern resistance to perceived northern domination. Today, the Igbo revolt is still openly manifested in the underground network of the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).From 1975 to 1979, the North resumed control, even under General Olusegun Obasanjo, a southern military officer.Records of that era revealed a system of triumphrate rulership involving Obasanjo, General Theophilus Danjuma and the late General Musa Yar'Adua.The Second Republic was a continuation of the Arewa rulership as the candidate that eventually emerged as the president then, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, was reportedly a reluctant nominee of the Kaduna Mafia, a shadowy group composed of remnants of the First Republic Northern People's Congress (NPC) and the top northern military officers of the Obasanjo-Murtala era.The 1983 coup by a group of northern officers, many argued later, was designed to prevent the political power from slipping away from the North due to the mistakes and errors of its civilian leadership. Many political analysts assert that the coup was more to save the North than to restore national sanity. This fact was later to manifest when feud emerged within the rank of the coup leadership with the idealistic cadre, led by General Muhammadu Buhari being swept away.The emergence of General Ibrahim Babangida as military president was to give a national face to the northern hold on power, a veil that was removed when the late Chief Moshood Abiola attempted to secure the presidency.When General Sani Abacha assumed the presidency, the nicety of Babangida was removed and replaced with crude deployment of power by northern elements. Just like Buhari was removed for his idealism, Abacha was removed for his transformation into a dreaded threat to northern interest. The late head of state had sufficiently demonised the North by his conduct in power that getting rid of him was primarily in northern interest before consideration for national exigencies.By the time General Abdulsalami Abubakar took over, the agenda was to stabilise the national polity, build national consensus and placate dissenting elements within the northern-controlled power elite. Close observers of the politics of the era were quick to note, with benefits of hindsight, that the North had moved faster, embracing rotational presidency and proceeding to sponsor an old ally of the North, Obasanjo. The goal was that the North can trust Obasanjo, a consideration that propelled the dramatic dumping of Dr Alex Ekwueme at that historic Jos presidential primary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).Looking back at that decision, maybe the North supported a wrong horse when it placed its card on Obasanjo, a man said to be nursing the wounds of several humiliation he was subjected to when he was serving as a military leader and at the hands of the late Abacha. While the North was placating the South-West, it ignored the South-East which was also nursing the bitterness of the civil war and the alleged exclusion of the zone from the mainstream of political power. If Ekwueme had emerged president in 1999, will the North be in this cul-de-sac today'Whatever calculation the northern power elite had in 1999, the Obasanjo presidency indeed shattered all such calculations. The Otta farmer, adept in the nation's power game, destroyed all the sacred points and joints of the power cabal has turned the power relation on its head in a way that many in the North could never fathom. Thirty-nine years of Arewa domination was assaulted, shaken and uprooted by the Obasanjo presidency.Instead of championing the interest of the cabal, Obasanjo embarked on building a new national elite, based more on a new pan-Nigerian interest that relegated regional and ethnic interest into the background. As the North was the dominant power for so long, the Obasanjo project hit the North most as it was disrobed of its many privileges of several decades. Areas of national lives, hitherto not presided over by any southerner, was opened up and the security establishment, which had for long been the preserve of the core North, was liberalised with southerners calling the shot in many traditional northern-dominated establishments.The Obasanjo presidency redraws the political map of the federation, reversed the injustices of 1960 and forced traditional politics lords into equal players in national politics. What is more, the affliction of disunity that was a disease of the South suddenly afflicted the North, with the zone losing its famed oneness of the Sardauna era. The revolutionary political awakening of the Middle Belt region shook the political firmament of the North, leading to its division into a splinter group with various political factions.For the first time, the North lost its famed ability to speak with one voice with its leadership falling into internecine fights, leaving the South with enormous political advantage.The situation was so bad for the Arewa that when it was time to decide on would succeed Obasanjo in 2007, it lost its magic of 1979 which saw the Kaduna Mafia anointing Shagari as Obasanjo's successor. What never happened to the North since the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates happened in 2007 when Obasanjo decided for them who to assume the presidency. The emergence of Yar'adua/Jonathan sealed the political fate of the North.From 2007 to date, the North has never been itself again. From Kano to Kaduna, the deep wound never healed. The dream in the Arewa House in Kaduna was to return to the era of northern pre-eminence over the rest of the country.There is a consistent effort to restore the old political map already torn into shreds by an officer it nurtured.While the North was angling for a national reversal, the South was more determined to maintain the status quo of equality in the polity. Even when Obasanjo was perceived to have failed to effect national socio-economic transformation, many power evaluators in the North are ever mindful of his main achievement for the South, namely the shattering of northern stranglehold on levers of power.The emergence of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua, while a disappointment to the North, was a bit of relief to those eager to reverse the power equation which was in favour of the North. A project already launched then would have witnessed a re-institution of Arewa hold but for the hand of fate in the presidential politics of the nation. A Goodluck Jonathan that was consigned to oblivion as a southerner was strategically placed by fate to take over and thereby putting on end to the reversal agenda already an stream under the Yar'Adua presidency.If the North suffered defeat at the hands of Obasanjo in the 2007 succession war, it again failed when fate snatched Yar'Adua in 2010, transferring the presidency to the South after less than three years of northern rulership. A constitutional democracy confers succession on the southerner who was the vice-president; a succession the North wanted to stop when the re-election politics heated up, but which failed in the face of national consensus and exigency.The Jonathan phenomenon was unusual within the nation's political history. Being the first southern minority from the oil-producing region of the nation, there was an overwhelming sympathy for him from the three southern zones and majority support from the North-Central zone with a medium level of support from both the North-East and the North-West. The bitterness however remained in the core North with many elite in the zone still nursing grudges.The presidency, in line with what it inherited, continued the policy of equity in national governance, a position that further angered the North. Coming from a region neglected for so long, the Jonathan presidency also had the responsibility to redress inequality and fatal neglect, thereby necessitating specific national projects never attended to since independence in 1960. Action on such projects by the administration is however seen by many leaders from the North as giving undue favouritism to the South-South. This has led some northern elite to make the allegation of Bayelsanisation of national governance, an accusation denounced by the presidency as mere blackmail.If there is any open demonstration of northern anger against the present administration, it is the ongoing insurgency by the Islamists in the northern parts of the country. The attacks, which have now become national security challenges, are considered by many analysts as a political response from aggrieved northern elements to make the nation ungovernable for the administration. While key northern leaders consistently condemned the insurgency, keen insiders described such as politics of double talk.Many insiders have, however, questioned the handling of some strategic national issue by the present administration.Such include perceived alienation of traditional supporters of the president, the widening rift between the state governors and the presidency, unwillingness of the president to wield a carrot and stick strategy, a prevalence of consensus-building at the detriment of political decisiveness and a worsening economic climate.Many analysts are however of the opinion that the preceding do not undermine the political position which the presidencyrepresents. Rather than weakening the political hold of the South in the face of the current challenges, there are entrenched viewpoints which increasingly isolate the core North in the nation's power equation. The more the blasts, the wider the belief of Middle Beltans and southerners in a national political system based on equality of race and secularity of national life. There is no sign of a southern surrender to northern intimidation and onslaught.If there is any opinion emerging at the national level, it is that the present administration is being sabotaged in the same way as the Republicans are sabotaging the US president, Barrack Obama. This portends a possibility of the administration gaining from a victim status, contrary to the expectations of those behind the destabilisation agenda.The current insurgency also has the dual effect of raising consciousness and political mobilisation among northern Christians, thereby raising further gang up against Hausa/Fulani domination in future electoral contest. Many key Christian leaders in the North are now re-committing themselves to political participation as a way of permanently throwing away the yoke of domination. What is more, a growing call for national conference is re-echoing across the country. Even if the current administration did not accede to such demands, the short term implication is the further alienation of the core North, a stigma that is not the best for an area hoping to assume the presidency in 2015.Nigeria has witnessed many national injuries since the amalgamation of 1914: the bitter suppression of the Yoruba from 1948 to 1999; the Igbo conquest after the civil war; the unjust treatment of Tivs and Middle Beltans generally and the criminal neglect of the Niger Delta, among many others. What is quite revealing, in the opinion of most analysts, was that the core North was responsible for most of the injuries from 1960 to date.If there is any injury against the North, it was probably the January 1966 coup which saw the brutal exit of key northern leaders. The counter-coup of July of the same year however avenged that unfortunate incident and returned governance to the core North. The second injury may probably be the alleged non-observance of zoning rule of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last presidential poll. Whether the North is right or wrong on this count has been overtaken by the decision of Nigerians in the last general election. The overwhelming support for Jonathan clearly erased any doubt as to whether he should or should not have run for the presidency.In the subsisting scenario, the core North faces about three options. The first is to continue the existing path of opposition to the Jonathan presidency which many alleged was responsible for the Boko Haram insurgency. This will led to a breaking point when the full weight of state power would be brought to bear on the shadowy supporters of the insurgency. As noted earlier, such path will thoroughly discredit the core North before the rest of the country and turned it lands and villages to a war zones.Such a possibility will further weaken the North which is presently far behind the South in education, health and general infrastructural indices. What is more, such option will finally split the North into pro and anti-supporters of the present administration, thereby widening the gulf of fictionalisation and dimming the hope of a northern political unity.In reality, the path of continuous opposition is an unwinnable challenge to state authority; the Igbos are living example. If insurgency persists, the presidency may reorganise the security apparatus and bring the hawks into the system, thereby adopting the Arewa strategy in tackling Arewa insurgency. Hence, the oppositional option is not a sustainable one for the North.Another possible option for the core North is to push for the crashing of the democratic system. This is not likely to be attractive to anybody as the world has moved well beyond such primitive option. More importantly is the fact that the present administration is street-wise, hence its stranglehold on key levers of coercive power in the polity. It is also instructive to note that the officers' corps of the nation's military are now dominated by intellectuals who value the basic features of liberal democracy and its preservation in the polity.The third option is for negotiation and cooperation with the Jonathan presidency. Some keen watchers of national event are quick to predict that the core North will, in 2015, not be in a position to dictate who takes the presidency. Their postulation is based on the reasoning that, at least, four out of the six zones are not with the core North on its insistence on returning Nigeria to the pre-1999 power equation. In the two remaining zones, there was also a suggestion that there are in existence many supporters of a post-1999 power arrangement.As democracy is about majority decision, a candidate presented by the core North in 2015 cannot make any headway without the support of the four other zones. The implication is that a candidate presented by the South from the North can make Aso Rock, even if the core North opposes him. This is the stark reality which, when considered, will make it imperative for the North to cooperate with the Jonathan presidency.Cooperation is already accepted by allies of the North in the South. This was responsible for the surreptitious campaign for presidency already launched by many pro-Abuja personalities from the North. For now, names being mentioned are essentially parts of northern elite who have accepted the imperative of new power equation in which the North is no longer the dominant factor. Governors Rabiu Kwankwaso, Sule Lamido, Aliyu Babangida and Isa Yuguda are all politicians of the new era who have come to accept the inevitability of the new order in which all zones have equal rights and access in the national political process. Vice President Namadi Sambo, a key player in the game is already on the side of the new team.Analysts well versed in the power game points at the fact that President Jonathan, as the sitting president, would have a voice in who succeeds him come 2015. If the North wants the presidency, it cannot be an enemy of the occupant of the seat, some analysts opined. The issue of whether Jonathan is firm enough to be such a potent factor or not was dismissed by these analysts who rather believed that Jonathan was just selectively firm, citing his many proactive actions taken over the leadership of the party, the decisiveness of his presidential campaign and the ongoing Bayelsa governorship politics. A smart option may therefore be a collaborative but concessional relationship with the Jonathan presidency ahead of 2015.Amidst the bloodletting, in lieu of politicking, many national figures from across the zones have advocated various solutions, bordering on building of a new national consensus. Even as they acknowledged the bold moves on the economy under Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and actions on power infrastructure, the following are constantly re-occurring as solutions in these hard times, namely attending to Yoruba's complaint of marginalisation, more deliberate efforts at balancing national appointments and national decisions, restructuring of the security apparatus to place merit above other considerations. Others include re-integration of alienated national leaders into the national power caucus, a more robust fight against corruption, an accelerated amendment of the constitution and a deliberate presidential support for true federalism, among others.In this era of insurgency in presidential politics, nothing works more than collaboration to secure political advantage. The North cannot regain the lost ground under insurgency.
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