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We are in a new year. Happy New Year to everyone and thank God for the privilege of His grace and mercies to see a new year. By the strength of our own arms, it wouldn’t be possible to cross over to a new year. Many more righteous, richer and healthier people started this year with you but are now dead. Some were shot by armed robbers, kidnappers, terrorists and even police officers. Some died of several sicknesses. Some died of road accidents and so on. Some just slumped and died. It pleased God to keep you alive. Don’t you think God deserves your praise? As for me and my house, we say thank you Lord for your magnanimity, provisions, protection and preservation. We also thank God for the preservation of our country despite the terrible challenges and failures of our leaders.
Nigeria has had a chequered history from the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates in 1914 to independence in 1960, to the first military coup in Nigeria in 1966, to the civil war, to the first, second and third Republics, to the many military coups that interrupted the Republics, to the cancellation of June 12 presidential election, to the democratic movements against military rule after the cancellation, to the emergence of the fourth republic which we are in now. It is by miracle that we are still together as a country.
This country is groaning under bondage, eagerly and earnestly waiting and yearning for the manifestation of leaders who will deliver us from the powers of darkness and translate us into the glorious destiny which Almighty God created Nigeria to be. We have crude oil flowing like river for us yet we import all our refined petroleum oil for use and pay about N6.5 trillion in subsidy to help build refineries in foreign countries while our four refineries are comatose. We have the best of men that are youthful and energetic yet we cannot qualify to play in the world cup. Our armed forces are one of the best in the world, yet we cannot chase away a ragtag insurgency group that metamorphosed into bandits, terrorists, kidnappers, armed robbers, unknown gunmen, oil thieves, cultists, ritualists, killer herdsmen and so on, because they are not properly manned, equipped and not technologically driven. We are the most religious nation on earth yet one of the most corrupt to the extent that the custodian of our money, the Accountant General of the Federation, is alleged to have stolen about N109b identifiable cash from the country’s treasury because in Nigeria citizens are going to Churches and Mosques but are not going to God. We have a lot of resources that will be generating revenue for us like iron ore, gold, oil yet we allow foreigners to come in surreptitiously to tap such resources to enrich their countries while we go back to such countries to borrow from them what would have been our revenue to the extent that our revenue can no longer finance or service our debts. Nigeria has about 923,000 Square kilometers of arable land but only about 2.5% of the land is cultivated. We have clement weather all year round to cultivate our farms and feed ourselves yet we are dying of hunger because farmers cannot go to farm owing to insecurity. It’s obvious to everyone that what we need now in Nigeria is a democratically engineered disruptive change that will turn around our free fall into abyss and crystallise our dream for a better Nigeria.
However, for this dream to come true, equity, justice, fairness, inclusiveness, character competence, capacity and youthful energy are required of any new set of leaders to lead Nigeria. The question is: in the pursuit of these qualities in our leaders, Can all Nigerians sstand up and be counted? Can the youth all come out and be counted? Can the political umpires stand to be counted? A particular group of powerful politicians have emerged and are seemingly the most significant in the determination of the kind of leadership that will emerge in 2023. They started as the G-5 Governors that enlarged into the Integrity Group. The G-5 comprises of Gov Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, Gov Samuel Ortom of Benue State, Gov Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State, Gov Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State. They are all of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). They come from four out of the six Geo-Political Zones of Nigeria covering South-East, South-West, South-South and North-Central. Their mantra is that the choice of the next President of Nigeria must be rooted in equity, justice, fairness and inclusiveness.
Where we are today is that we have a President from the North, who is a Muslim of the Fulani ethnic stock. He is about to complete his second term of 4 years in office, making a total of eight years on the whole. The PDP selected Atiku Abubakar, another Muslim of the Fulani ethnic stock to succeed him for another eight years. APC selected Tinubu, a South-Western Muslim, who chose another Northern Muslim as VP, to succeed him for another eight years. The Labour Party chose Peter Obi, a South-Eastern Christian, who chose a Northern Muslim VP to succeed him for another eight years. In the APC today, we have a Muslim Presidential Candidate, Muslim Vice Presidential Candidate, Muslim Senate President, Muslim Speaker of the House of Representatives, Muslim Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Muslim National Chairman of APC, at a time when we have a Muslim Chief Justice of Nigeria. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and that of the Parties are clear on the need to ensure sectional, ethnic and religious balancing in the recruitment of the leaders of Nigeria. Sections 14(3)(4), 15(1)(2)(3d)(4) and 17(1) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as amended and Section 7(3)(c) of the PDP Constitution coupled with Section 20(v) of the APC Constitution are unanimous that no particular ethnic, linguistic, sectional or religious group should be allowed to dominate others in the sharing of political or party offices and that these offices must be shared in a manner that recognises our federal character and diversity and the need to ensure the integration, participation and involvement of all sectors, religious and ethnic groups in the government of Nigeria to the extent that ensures that the government commands national unity and loyalty of all Nigerians and give everyone a sense of belonging.
From 1999 at the inception of our nascent democracy, Nigerians identified the exclusion of some sections of the country as a major cause of political instability in Nigeria. The North, through military regime, dominated political power to the detriment of the progress of the country. The resources are in the South while power is in the North. This led to agitations for power shift between North and South. This agitation increased beyond measure from 1993 when a Northern military Head of State cancelled a presidential election won by a Southern politician without any reason. As a means to settle this rift that nearly ended the life of Nigeria itself, elder statesmen and politicians from across Nigeria came together and agreed that the best approach to political stability in Nigeria was to shift the presidential post between North and South. PDP, which was the major political party then, even enshrined it in its Constitution. Indeed the Party was built on the foundation of power shift and power rotation. Paragraph 2(d) of the preamble to the PDP’s Constitution emphatically states that “the leaders of like-minded political associations in the country prompted by a sense of duty to the nation, assembled in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on the 28th Day of July, 1998 and resolved to conform with the principles of power shift and power sharing by rotating key political offices amongst the diverse peoples of the country”. The party consolidated this provision in the body of its Constitution in Section 7(3)(c) where it admonished their members that they must pursue their aims and objectives by adhering to the policy of the rotation and zoning of Party and Public elective offices in pursuance of the principle of equity, justice and fairness”.
It was on this trajectory that the APC borrowed a leaf and mandated its National Working Committee, subject to the approval of the National Executive Committee, in Article 20(v), to make Rules and Regulations for the nomination of candidates for primary elections and “All such Rules, Regulations and Guidelines shall take into consideration and uphold the principle of Federal Character, gender balance, geo-political spread and rotation of offices, to as much as possible ensure balance within the constituency covered”. The 1999 Constitution went further in Section 222(e) to warn that no political party should be run in a manner that will give it any ethnic or religious connotation or give the appearance that the activities of the association are confined to a part only of the geographical area of Nigeria. The Constitution mandated the State in Section 15(3)(d) to “promote or encourage the formation of associations that cut across ethnic, linguistic, religious and or other sectional barriers.” in order to “foster a feeling of belonging and of involvement among the various people of the Federation, to the end that loyalty to the nation shall override sectional loyalties”. (See Section 15(4) of 1999 Constitution)
If genuinely the aim of the G-5 is equity, justice and fairness in the 2023 presidential election, their work is clearly cut out for them. Any party that wants the same ethnic, religious, linguistic and sectional background to succeed the same ethnic, religious, linguistic and sectional background for a period of 16 unbroken years offends every sense of the law and sense of equity, justice and fairness and should be rejected as it is trying to ensure the domination of one ethnic group over others. Also any party that has chosen persons from only one religion should be rejected because it offends every sense of the law and sense of equity, justice and fairness as it is trying to ensure the domination of one religious group over others. In addition, they must factor in the qualities of character, competence, capacity and youthful energy in their quest for the next President of Nigeria because the challenges of the country requires a man with youthful mental and physical energy to overcome them. It is important to point out that the G-5 were in agreement to the declaration of the Southern Governors in Lagos that it is time for the post of President to move South in honour of the power shift policy of both parties in the interest of justice and it’s expected that their endorsement will reflect same. It is only when the G-5 adheres to these principles that a new Nigeria which we all crave for will become possible and achievable in the new year. A prosperous new year to you.
