Neither Ijaw nor Northern president

When we highlight the many warts defacing our motherland, we do so, not because we love her less than the band of ‘patriotic’ pirates holding all of us to ransom in the name of partisan politics, but because we have no other country we can call our own. So warped is the thinking of these […]

When we highlight the many warts defacing our motherland, we do so, not because we love her less than the band of ‘patriotic’ pirates holding all of us to ransom in the name of partisan politics, but because we have no other country we can call our own. So warped is the thinking of these tenants of fleeting power that they equate their persons to the state. But we insist that they are not in General Charles De Gaulle’s France. We, the people, must continuously winnow the political grain so that the “labours of our heroes past” would not be in vain.
We have, of recent, been inundated with perhaps the most sterile arguments ever marshalled for political power. Broadly, two camps are discernible. There is the Ijaw group literally baying for blood in the event that their ‘brother’, our incumbent president, does not win a second term. Their argument is not predicated on any noble ideals – just that their Ijaw brother must be allowed to serve a second term whether he deserves it or not.
I ask myself, are these goons talking about the same Jonathan who received massive endorsements from the four directions of the compass in 2011? How come they have suddenly villagised the man’s victory and presidency? Does this indicate that there are no political long distance runners around the president to warn these characters that they are injuring the marketability of their political product next time around?
On the other side of the noise is the group which wants power to return to the ‘North’. This group itself cannot be accused of harbouring visionary ideals nor has it enunciated a pan-Nigerian development agenda. All it wants is power with a Northerner at the helm. But experience has shown us that the fact that a Nigerian of Northern extraction is president and commander-in-chief will not translate to life more abundant for the people of the geographical north. All the textile industries in the North which employed hundreds of thousands of people died under the watch of northern heads of state. The poor people of the North became poorer under governments led by their ‘brother’.
One would have thought that the real issue is leadership. Is Jonathan giving Nigeria the kind of leadership the nation deserves? Is he a competent president? Can he take Nigeria out of the depths of pandemic corruption? Is he the right man for these times? Would an additional four years of Jonathan presidency benefit Nigeria?
If the honest answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then let Jonathan carry on. The current attempt to persuade him otherwise is irritatingly otiose. Has any householder ever succeeded in perpetually keeping the goat away from a fateful salt lick? If the constitution does not bar Jonathan from contesting the 2015 elections, no one should waste time dissuading him from running again.
What those who don’t want Jonathan in office beyond 2015 ought to do is organise, not agonise. If the G7 Governors are so convinced that another four years of Jonathan presidency would spell doom for the nation, they should team up with the opposition so that they can give the president a run for his money. Believe it or not, the easiest candidate to beat is an under-performing incumbent.
Strategically speaking, it is unwise, as the G7 Group has reportedly done, to demand that the president ensure that members of the group are not prosecuted by the EFCC. That is self-serving and gives the impression that the governors are not morally better than the man they want to replace. If the governors present their vision as ‘six’ in contention with Jonathan’s ‘half-a-dozen’, then they might as well retire to their villages because that position is dead before arrival.  
I suspect that what Nigerians in all parts of the country desire is a truly Nigerian president, not one beholden to a section thereof. Majority of our people can’t be bothered by the ethnic origin of their president as long as he is adjudged to be doing a good job. Yes, they will support a president of northern extraction or Ijaw tribe, or Ibibio – but he has to demonstrably be a competent Nigerian president, not an ethnic champion. Our people are tired of rotational incompetence!
Some of the novel tricks being played out don’t faze the ordinary people for one moment. Example: Hamza Al-Mustapha’s disguised attempt at forming a coalition to campaign for the president’s re-election. What I tell those who have shown open anger at the development is that a man who is still technically on death row is welcome to whatever device he thinks can prevent his date with the hangman. And in case President Jonathan is listening, with campaigners like Al-Mustapha and Asari Dokubo, his presidency and re-election campaign has bought into the massive baggage both characters carry.
Fifty-three years after Independence, we are still depending on the feeding bottle and pretending that all is well. These tribal/sectional campaigns could actually be interpreted as a ruse to keep the common people divided while the elite carry on their nocturnal negotiations on how to make loot-sharing more inclusive. Our leaders lie through their teeth as if bending the truth is congenitally Nigerian.
If a national conference is eventually arranged, we may have an opportunity to reshape our country in a peaceful atmosphere instead of the current dialogue of incendiary devices – gbam! Gbooom!! Isn’t a national dialogue better than all the strife currently defacing our landscape? Remember, a series of conferences preceded our Independence; crucial issues affecting each section of the country were ironed out and compromises reached. Now some people see the call for a conference as a secessionist ploy.
Conference or no confe-rence, what Nigeria requires in 2015 and beyond is a do-er, a pan-Nigerian national leader with proven integrity. We have had more than our fair share of hypocrites, kleptomaniacs and tribal demagogues.  In less than two years we shall call on the real Nigerian president to stand up and be counted. In that quest, we invoke Chinua Achebe: “Let the hawk perch, let the eagle perch, and if one tells the other not to perch, may his wing break.”
Happy birthday, Sola
… And to Sola Olaoye, who shares the same birthday with Nigeria, prayerful best wishes from Dad!