The title of this is drawn from the position of Senator Seidu Dansadau, who once represented Zamfara Central Senatorial District in the Senate, and who, soon after the 2015 presidential election, stated, in an interview with Daily Trust, that the north will continually “decide and dictate the political landscape of Nigeria”.
The interview was published in May 2015. There, Sen. Dansadau argued that God used Muhammadu Buhari’s goodwill to make the north to vote as one, something that the north had been pushing since 1999.
He argued that with Buhari, the north will consolidate and afterwards, dictate the politics of Nigeria.
Read him: ‘’So now that we have achieved the unity, we long for because of Buhari’s goodwill, it is only fair that we now make some efforts to consolidate these gains because General Buhari will not be the president for ever. So that after him, we have consolidated on this goodwill and we will be able to grow this unity, political cooperation, electoral cooperation from strength to strength so that the North will as much as possible dictate the political landscape of the country and what happens in Nigeria as it used to do’’.
To support his conviction, Dansadau said: ‘’Nigerians should take note of the voting trend since independence. In fact, since the 1950s, the North Central per se had never voted in the manner it did along with the other parts of the North as it did at this particular time.
“These are the kind of things we have been looking for a long time. Various initiatives have been put in place in order to see that northerners from wherever they are, from the 19 states, become one as far as voting is concerned.
“We are not saying 100 percent of northerners should be in one political party but that northerners should have one voice; they should decide and dictate the politics of Nigeria; like it has been before independence and even during the First Republic because of the numerical strength of the North.
But of recent we became divided so we became so vulnerable. But God in His infinite wisdom and mercy used the goodwill of General Muhammadu Buhari and we have gotten the kind of unity that we have been yearning for so long. We have realized this dream now.”
Dansadau’s position exposes the thinking of some political leaders of the northern region who, even now, suggest that the north must dictate, and determine, who leads Nigeria from 2023.
This view finds expression in the arrogance of some politicians from the region who have openly argued against the presidential pendulum swinging away from the north in 2023 even with the obvious need to do so. Underlying this position is the fear of losing grip of power which has been used to nepotistic advantages.
Those who fear what may happen to them if power swings to southern Nigeria, are in the main, architects and executioners of the current nepotism and sectionalism in government. For them, sustaining a failed governmental and leadership system serves as protection. But as it is said, the day of reckoning will always come.
The north would have nothing to fear if its leaders, especially those who drafted and executed the Buhari leadership philosophy of 95 percent versus five percent, which alienated and punished sections of the country, and also, grossly mismanaged Nigeria’s diversity, had thought of a day when the reality of power swinging to other regions in strict observation of the power rotation convention between the north and the south as adopted by the two top leading political parties.
Fact is, Nigeria is a country of six geopolitical zones. And, no zone is more Nigerian than the other. Also, no zone is more entitled to the ownership of Nigeria than the other. Any such arrogation, would mean literally telling other component units of the federation to seek independent existence.
However, since Nigeria’s progenitors had agreed to fuse a nation of over 250 independent nationalities into a common union, the central leadership slot, as a consequence, does not belong of any particular divide. Further consequence, therefore, is that such arrogance as displayed by Dansadau, and translated by the current leadership of the country, must be thrashed in the overall interest of a stronger fusion of nations.
If the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable, as we have been severally told, and if “to keep Nigeria as one is a task that must be done”, the arrogance of appropriating, and determining, the leadership of the country, as the sole right of those that Dansadau spoke of, must be seen as the basic tool that would ensure the destabilization of the same country.
It therefore means that if justice and peace should marry and bear children for the overall future of Nigeria, the power pendulum ought to swing to the south in the 2023 general election. That is the minimum requirement at this time.
Besides, the unity of the 19 states of the north, the basis upon which many political actors from the divide keep boasting of numbers, may come back as imaginary. The experimentation of governance since 2015 and the instrumentation of human lives through the lethargic handling of security threats by bandits and other criminal elements in the north and other parts of the country, which led to the creation of ‘The North Is Bleeding’ protests, clearly punctuates any claims to majority opinion, or votes, as the north that has emerged from Buhari’s reign, is rather more fractured than united. 2015 may never repeat in Nigeria’s history.
Those in the north, who believe that it is theirs to determine who leads Nigeria as President, ought also, to understand, that the wind of change is blowing steadily.
The EndSARS protest of 2020 is a signal which lessons ought not to be lost in the arrogance of power appropriation. The youth, who have come to the realization that their future, spoken of years ago, is actually their today, are not trading with the same mindset that their fathers traded with. They are thinking differently.
They do not see the boarders that their political leaders created and traded with. Those borders have been collapsed by social media. Their ability to mobilize, participate and make loud demands were proven with the EndSARS protests.
Their voices can no longer be shut, not even by decrees. For them, 2023 is a date with their resolve to liberate and win back their country.