“No, my brother; it was you people who voted him in. We gave
you Falae, but you people chose
Obasanjo”
The above was in response to a question I put to a Yoruba
socialite in Lagos in 2001. I had wanted to know why they thought Olusegun
Obasanjo was the best they could offer in 1999 for the presidency. The “you
people” in her response refers to South-easterners, specifically, Igbos. This
claim can only be true if one adds the South-south votes, because the total
Southeast vote for Obasanjo in 1999 was 2.3m out of a total 3.3m votes cast in
the region.
Let us review the political succession scenario of the PDP,
and how it was supposed to benefit the southeast; if Obasanjo and Atiku had a
good working relationship, Atiku would have succeeded his boss in 2007, and
would have picked someone from southeast or south-south as his vice-president.
If that scenario had played out, by 2015, whoever was the vice-president would
have become the president. Which means that a southerner would have been Nigeria’s
president today, though the likelihood of that president coming from the South-south
or the Southeast was a 50:50 coin toss. Of course, this did not happen as
envisioned, or even written.
As it turned out, Atiku was sidelined, Obasanjo picked Yar’Adua
to replace him, and the rest is well-documented. However, we will continue to
construct this scenario to determine, all things being equal, when Nigeria
could have had an Igbo president. With Yar’Adua’s emergence as president, the
vice-presidential lot fell on the South-south, instead of the southeast;
assuming that he was able to serve out his two terms, Goodluck Jonathan would
have taken over in 2019, and served till 2027 with a Muslim vice president of
the Southwest extraction, to balance the political equation. Obviously, with
the selection of a vice-president from the South-south, the Southeast was
effectively, eliminated from possibly ever producing a Nigerian president. Yet,
the Igbos never expressed any form of anger or frustration at this PDP succession
scenario. Maybe, they never read or accurately interpreted the tea leaves.
However, the Southwest was making its own calculations based
on the above scenario; realizing that with a continued PDP rotation system, the
earliest they could get back into the corridors of power at Aso Villa would be
in 2027, they decided to stage a coup. After the 2011 elections, and the dissatisfaction
of the northerners over the loss of their rightful turn to complete their two
terms, Tinubu saw an opportunity to form a coalition of strange bedfellows to
not only wrest power from the PDP, but to return the Southwest to the corridors
of power much earlier than projected and, in the process, inadvertently create
an opportunity for Igbos to have a shot at the presidency. That is, if the
coalition manages to last beyond two election cycles. Currently, things seem to
be falling apart. However, there is nothing wrong in evaluating the chances of
an Igbo presidency in an APC political arrangement.
To garner the votes of the northern electorate, the
newly-formed political coalition dubbed All Progressives Congress, with little
or nothing progressive about them, needed a popular northern candidate, and
they settled on Muhammadu Buhari. The South-south, with an incumbent president,
expectedly, stuck with their man. However, and surprisingly, the Southeast
elected to stick with Jonathan and the PDP, even though the region was devoid
of any form of evidence of Jonathan’s six-year presidency. Here, the southeast
opted to stay with the devil and the party they are comfortable with than join the one where, seemingly, their chances of producing
the president in the near future is much better.
So, how would have the Southeast fared if they had switched
political allegiance in the 2015 elections? All things being equal, if Buhari
serves out a second term by 2023, it is expected that one of two things will
happen: either Osinbajo will run for office, or an APC candidate of Igbo
extraction will be selected. The latter is more likely to happen than the
former, because the rest of the regions in Nigeria will demand it of the APC,
given that only the Southeast, of all the major tribes, would have been without
a president since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule. So, the question is, why
did the Igbos not imagine this scenario and support the APC, considering that
their route to attaining the highest elected office in the land is shortest
through the APC than the PDP? Was it a case of political non- or miscalculation?
More surprising is the fact that after three years during which the Igbos would
have realized the error of their ways and re-calculate their political
equations, they are still deeply entrenched in PDP and vehemently opposed to
the APC, continuously deriding their brothers and sisters who serve in that
government.
One might wonder why this is the case, given the current presidential
set up in the PDP where the 2019 candidate is to come from the North? The
expectation is that whoever the flag bearer of the PDP is will pick his vice
from the Southeast, and by 2027, after he would have served his 8 years, his
vice, an Igbo, will take over. So, the Igbos are willing to sacrifice four more
years before making it to Aso villa in 2027, instead of in 2023. Here is a wrinkle
to this scenario; by 2023, the Southwest would have been without the top
political post in Nigerian for 16 years, and may not be willing to wait for an
Igbo presidential candidate in 2027 who may, or may not, pick his running mate
from the Southwest. So, another palace coup involving a coalition of another
set of strange bedfellows, which will ensure the emergence of a Yoruba
president in 2027, will be effected. It will be like the 2015 arrangement, only
that the two top positions will be switched, with a northerner as vice-president.
Yes, these are all scenarios and calculations some of which
had already played out, and others still to, or may not, play out. What is
evident, and has been for a while, is that Igbos seem to lack the foresight and
the political calculating skills of the rest of the regions; dismissing that,
then, one might say they are comfortable playing second and third fiddle to
everyone else, and blaming their political misfortunes on some form of
marginalization scheme by the rest of the hundreds of tribes that make up the
Nigerian nation.
There is always the likelihood of a political earthquake in
either 2019 or 2023, which will make nonsense of all the scenarios and
calculations; now, if such were to be the case, where will the Igbos be, and
what role will they play in effecting that earthquake? What happened in 2015
was akin to a political earthquake, and it took deft political moves, negotiating
skills, and the offering of carrots for those involved to pull it through. Some
truths are evident in the Nigerian political scene: any candidate from either
the southwest or the Fulani north can win without the Igbo votes; MKO Abiola
proved that, and so did Buhari in 2015. Again, all it takes is knowing how to
balance the regional equation. Before the 2011 elections, a group of political
analysts successfully predicted the voting pattern of that election; the same
thing happened before the 2015 presidential elections, and, currently, a team
is analyzing the 2015 voting pattern and realigning the numbers to predict the
eventual winner in 2019. All of this work is important and politically beneficial
to all the regions interested in the presidency, because you can narrow your campaign
focus to those key areas and states.
A political
earthquake prior to 2023 might include a restructured Nigeria which will result
in regional autonomy, though, realistically, I do not see that happening any
time soon. No one, having attained the presidency of Nigeria, will dilute his
own power and influence. Another option might be a secession by one or more of
the regions, most likely the South-south and the Southeast. This, also, I do
not envision, except when oil becomes the 3rd largest revenue
earner for Nigeria. Finally, the earthquake could involve the return of the
military, in which case every region will be taken 20 years backwards.
Whatever the case may be, and however the projected
scenarios may play out, the Southeast needs to begin the process of creating
political alignments, building trust with more than just one region – the neighboring
south-south, and shedding the well-worn toga of a marginalized people; because,
believe it or not, the rest of Nigeria is losing interest in the Igbo man’s
plight, and are increasingly seeing them more as trouble makers than innocent
victims. Currently, the Southeast is politically irrelevant at the national
level; it must find a way to regain the relevance of the second republic by
being in the mainstream, and not on the sideline.
