Those who have taken the Nigerian masses for a heartless ride for so long–on both ‘sides’ of the same coin–will get a rude shock when the people wake up from slumber and say ENOUGH! It will happen.
Heaven will not fall if by 2023 an Igbo candidate does not emerge as the Nigerian president. The earth, however, will bleed for a prolonged injustice that is capable of bringing a curse on the land. Anybody who sees justice and goes in the opposite direction should live with the consequences of their choice.
The real reason All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are wobbling and biting their tongues over who will bear their presidential flags in 2023 is that they know the truth and dictate of justice but may allow politicking to get in the way. We are going through this road endlessly in this country because Usman Dan Fodio’s warning that conscience is an open wound healed only by the truth is not often heeded. There is no more conscience in our politics.
The scriptures remind us that only truth sets people free. Intrigues, manipulations, lies, propaganda, criminal smartness, and injustice do not and cannot set anybody or country free. Nigeria knows this fact but continues to play hide and seek to the detriment of the one-nation, one destiny principle of the federal republic. Instead, fairness and injustice have taken a trashing on this land. This is evident and on the rooftop, for all to see. Yet, we go playing the ostrich as though all is well. The efforts to dodge the truth about the Igbo Catch-22 in Nigeria has even made Ndigbo become the country’s albatross. It is that Nigeria’s search for real peace, not that of the graveside, may remain a mirage unless and until Ndigbo are fairly placed in the political equation.
The big nut for Nigeria to crack in the buildup to 2023 is justice for Ndigbo and fairness to the South-East geopolitical zone. They have become the open wound of the country’s conscience. All the current headaches of nation-building, politically speaking, could be traceable to the South-East issue. How to go about tackling the justice and fairness issues regarding this region remains a major problem. The affairs of the country, remotely or otherwise, are still in the hands of civil war combatants, who are yet to end the war 51 years later.
Today’s elder statesmen, including the sitting president, are veterans of the civil war. They have continued to see the region as a conquered territory to be treated as such. To them, the no-victor, no-vanquished olive branch held out by General Yakubu Gowon at the cessation of hostilities in 1970 was a mere political gimmick to appease the international community. It was never to be implemented in word and deed.
The only time you see the other ethnic groups speak with one voice is when the topic is South-East or Ndigbo. The mutual desire is always to keep Ndigbo and the South-East region in political check. Each time events get closer to the South-East coming into the reckoning, some people will recoil as though there is an unwritten but effective accord targeted against the region. They wouldn’t want a repeat of the “mistake” of 1979 when Shehu Shagari chose Dr Alex Ekwueme as his running mate and Vice President just nine years after the civil war. It was when Shagari’s body language was showing an Igbo could succeed him after eight years that the military junta overthrew Shagari in 1984.
Members of that junta are still holding the polity by the jugular. How Ekwueme was treated after the coup, locked up in prison while Shagari and some top northerners were kept in guesthouses, says it all about the motive of the coup d’état.
In 1999, the then ruling military had taken a pressurized decision to quit political control of the country and had enabled the politicians to start the process of taking over. Dr Ekwueme had galvanized the politicians to intensify the pressure to force the military out. The politicians had formed political parties with two dominant ones being the All People’s Party, APP, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
The PDP had shown then to be more national in character and spread and looked good to win. Dr Ekwueme, the pioneer leader of the PDP was overwhelmingly primed to pick the ticket, being roundly qualified and an experienced vice president. Recall that Ekwueme had scaled the corruption probe of the overthrown civil rule, coming out of it unblemished.
Besides, he worked hard during the pro-democracy era and was a utility hand in the formation of the PDP. Everything was going for him until the civil war gladiators holding sway then emerged and went in search of one of their own, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been jailed by General Sani Abacha.
Obasanjo’s initial reluctance was broken as he was railroaded to run and pick the ticket and block Ekwueme. Obasanjo, the military head of state who handed over to Shagari, was not a member of PDP and contributed nothing to its formation when he was drafted to pick the ticket of the party.
Since then despite the unfair treatment of Ekwueme, the South-East has stayed glued to PDP, yet those who have not contributed both votes and resources are determining their fate. When Obasanjo emerged victorious in 1999, his people of the South-West did not vote for him.
In 2014, these men assembled again, ganging up against President Goodluck Jonathan to pave the way for General Muhammadu Buhari, another one of their own.
As the Buhari presidency ends in 2023, the game is up again. The gladiators have begun to regroup for their anti-Igbo strategy ahead of 2023. None of the elder statesmen has been bold enough to stand up for justice and fairness for Ndigbo. Privately, they talk about justice for Ndigbo but hardly are they willing to identify publicly with them.
If Nigerian leaders mean what they say and say what they mean in private for the sake of justice and fairness and stability, the South-East should be allowed to produce the next president of one Nigeria in 2023. This country won’t be where it is at the moment.
Where is the National Peacemaking Committee led by General Abdulsalami Abubakar? The best and shortest road to peace is justice and fairness. Why can’t they come out and boldly call a spade a spade? Where are the Olusegun Obasanjos and Ibrahim Babangidas and even the civil war leader General Gowon? Why can’t they strive to end the war in their lifetime by seeing an Igbo president? So long as Igbo is denied access to the highest position in the land so long the war remains. It doesn’t matter in what form.
Anybody thinking that there will be peace and harmony if Ndigbo are continuously denied access to the Presidency is lying to themselves. There may be no more civil war but there are always consequences for the injustice which may be far more agonizing than the shooting war. American clergyman, Hosea Ballou, was right when he said, “Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.” If you are in disagreement with that view, find out who the oppressors are in Nigeria, those who have held power in 42 of the country’s 61 years of independence and fact check the standard of living of the citizens in the area.
Injustice is as old as history, you may say, but pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Democritus has consoling words for those who suffer it: “If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.”
Now that the country is politically at the crossroads ahead of 2023, the leaders should look back at the history of nations of similar history and how they got off it through a fair-minded approach and compare with our history to see where we got it wrong and why? If a nation has entrenched unforgivingness such a country hardly gets it right. If indeed this country is interested in sincerely moving forward indeed, we have to consider zoning the presidency to the South-East and to do that the two main political parties, the APC and PDP, must design it for the peace and stability of this country. Imagine how all the political tensions in the land will evaporate instantaneously if the APC and PDP resolve today to field candidates from the South-East. If this fails to happen it would be like the animal sitting down and not knowing it is sitting on its hide.
May God help us.