Zoning: Robbing South-East to pay OBJ
However, while nobody is in doubt as to what the South East gave, especially given the block votes President Jonathan received from the zone at the PDP presidential primary and the election proper, the question is, “what did South East governors and leaders take away from the presidential parley?” The Igbo leaders also had their […]
However, while nobody is in doubt as to what the South East gave, especially given the block votes President Jonathan received from the zone at the PDP presidential primary and the election proper, the question is, “what did South East governors and leaders take away from the presidential parley?” The Igbo leaders also had their own round of meetings and subsequent endorsements of the president. In fact, the president received total support even published as advertorials by Ohanaeze Ndigbo right from his struggle to emerge as Acting President. Could it be that Igbos took so many things for granted? Could it be the governors merely extracted assurances that Jonathan will assist them pick the PDP governorship tickets?
Was Ohanaeze’s support just about such petty patronages as the recent appointment of Amb Uwechue, President-General of Ohanaeze into the Election Crises Investigation Panel?
These questions have become very pertinent at this time because if the plan by President Jonathan and the PDP to zone the Senate Presidency to the North succeeds, then the South East should gather enough stuff that will last them very long while in the Nigerian political wilderness. Had the South east played their cards well, the attempts to scheme it out and marginalise the geopolitical zone from the zoning of the principal presiding officers of the National Assembly would not have arisen in the first place. Today, the PDP and Jonathan are trying to rob a people to pay OBJ.
The CPC governorship candidate in Enugu, Osita Okechukwu, spoke the minds of even an Igbo man on the street. According to him, “It is a great disgrace to one of the most populous and hard working tribes in the country to go with nothing despite the five million votes that was allocated to President Jonathan by the South-east leaders.”
“It was disgraceful that the South-east governors, Ohaneze and the PDP leaders were coming out from a meeting where Senator David Mark was rated higher than Ndigbo as a whole. It is more painful when we recall that Ndigbo had always voted for the PDP since 1999.”
The CPC gubernatorial candidate further said the groups must apologise for going back home without a trophy in a race they fully participated and paid their dues.
Conversely, if the PDP plan scales through, the South west will be smiling home with a golden trophy in a race they took a distant last position. In fact, rumour was rife even before the general elections that former President, Obasanjo was already grooming his daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, to succeed Senator David Mark. However, after ACN’s political hurricane in the South West that left the PDP virtually homeless and in tatters in that geopolitical zone, OBJ has quickly made a “U” turn and began to scheme for the Senate President to remain in the North, preferably the Central so he could produce a Speaker out of the few, rag-tag south west House of Reps members. In other words, Obasanjo is not only working to rob Peter to pay Paul, but also trying to get PDP to reward him and his kinsmen for their mass failure at the polls. This is ridiculous, but Igbos are the most ridiculed.
Did I hear anyone, especially the North say “Serves the South east right” for throwing a blind support behind Jonathan? Maybe. But this is a matter of principle, convention and the constitution which provides for fairness and equity in the distribution of such offices. The convention is that whenever the South produces the President, the North picks the Vice President. The Senate Presidency then goes to the South, while Speakership goes to the North. This was evident in the Obasanjo’s eight years as President. For the same man now to work to scheme out the Senate Presidency from the South East to pave way for him to have a South west Speaker is insensitive, selfish, and an aberration of equity. Worst again, he is not even doing so because he loves the North Central or any part of the North, for that matter. It is because he simply wants to have something to hang on to as the leader of the party in that geopolitical zone.
Therefore, it will be a very sad commentary on the part of the PDP and Jonathan’s sense of justice if they accede to this selfishness and injustice. By every parameter we measure it- convention, the prime law of the constitution, and electoral performance, Senate Presidency should naturally go to the South east and the Speakership to the North. Anything short of this will amount to robbing hard work to pay indolence and robbing south east to pay OBJ. It will also go down in history that it was under Jonathan that the Igbos lost every glory and relevance.
James Akpontu is a businessman based in Kano. [email protected]