2023 may be Nigeria’s last hope of restoring hope in our faltering Federation. As we debate the future, it is important we recognize the need to fix our broken trust. If we do not fix what is broken, we will be in deeper trouble as we cannot have peace in an atmosphere fouled by injustice. And there is no jujitsu or magic wand to achieve development in the absence of peace.
The corner stone of our republic is peace, unity and faith. A situation where the nation is literally bleeding , the people deeply divided across ethnic and religious lines and a situation where citizens faith in the federation is broken means we can’t just pretend all is well. We must make sacrifice to fix what is broken and restore back hope.
2023 provides us an opportunity to achieve full reconciliation and move on as one people. The current lack of faith in the system is not acceptable. Despite the effort by the South West controlled media and political elites to condition the psyche of the South East; the North, the South West and South-South have no moral right to produce Nigeria’s next president having held the office between 1999 and now, whereas the South East hasn’t gotten a fair chance.
The South West faction of APC are making a rather bizarre claim to what they said was a gentleman’s agreement between President Buhari and Tinubu to pass and toss presidency to themselves and to the exclusion of South East. The snag here is that while Tinubu and his minions are insisting there was a backyard agreement on power sharing, grand old Buhari cannot remember anything of such.
Rightly, party stalwarts are beginning to ask questions: They want to know the place, time and parties to the so-called agreement which is obviously insane.
The mere notion that the presidency is privately zoned to an individual without recognition of national unity is obscene, an evil and ridiculous contemplation capable of jeopardizing the unity of Nigeria if we don’t put a stop to it. The makers of the deal need to recognize that Nigeria comes first, not their gluttonous ambition to grab power.
No matter what the political titans may think, injustice is the bane of this country, and we cannot continue to perpetrate injustice hoping the victims will allow us to live in peace. The time for that has got to stop. We must take a realistic view of 2023 focusing on justice and reconciliation, and knowing the unity of our federation shall be better served if we help our disadvantaged neighbours to rise, and not push them further down.
A situation where any part of Nigeria is deliberately pushed out of the dinner table and not even put into consideration when dinner is served is not acceptable. Anyone fueling this tendency is the real adversary of a united, peaceful and prosperous Nigeria.
The recent short article written by one Zayyad. I .Muhammad titled ‘The Bola Tinubu Presidency’ published in This Day and Daily Trust of 7thDecember 2020 here merits my further commentary especially his forecast for 2023 and analysis of the geopolitical zones and the potential candidates like Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi , Nyesom Wike, Dave Umahi, Rochas Okorocha and Aminu Tambuwal, etc.
My response on Zayyad’s analysis will focus on some of his unsubstantiated statements on Mr. Peter Obi. He said, Obi doesn’t have friends in the North and has never tried to pull an appeal directly or by proxy. He also claimed that the deportation of other Nigerians to their states of origin when Obi was governor of Anambra state was used against him during the 2019 campaign and it worked . He also claimed that for the South East, the major hurdle is IPOB from which it is mirrored.
Let me begin by conceding that Obi in both style and quality is unlike the other listed presidential hopefuls as he represents a very distinct style of politics. For Obi, public office is about service and not about primitive accumulation of wealth or using public funds for the patronage of a few friends while the masses are impoverished . He may not have put tonnes of public money into many private pockets because that’s not his style but to say he has no friends in the North obvious flies in the air. Obi has friends across the country whom he has quietly assisted in various ways over the period of his business and political career. He has also invested in education , health care and other life changing initiatives regardless of politics.
More importantly, Obi understands the North and its peculiarity. He had repeatedly described the North as the future and hope of Nigeria. He recognizes that the North has a land mass and population that can be positively harnessed for good. He recognizes the huge potential of the North to feed Africa. With Obi as President, the North will not be the same, the fortune of the region will dramatically change for good.
I personally find it obscene to see very intelligent people who frown at the labeling of herdsmen, bandits and militias terrorising parts of Nigeria as Fulani or Hausa but find it convenient at the drop of the heart to mirror the Igbo from IPOB. If we must mirror the Igbo from IPOB, then it will be fair and proper to mirror the South West from OPC and the North from Boko Haram , bandits and militia herdsmen respectively, after all , every region has their own vagabonds.
When a sizable population of citizens are disgruntled, the right thing to do is to address their grievances and not to mischievously tag them against an ethnic nationality. Over time the government has failed the people and has continued to fail them without being accountable. Government at all levels must be held accountable for the failure to deal with the various ethnic militias and for the mismanagement of governance which breeds ethnic agitations.
On the issue of deportation of Nigerians from Anambra State under Obi’s watch which he said was used against him in 2019 campaign and it worked.
The writer was obviously mistaken. My advice is; don’t gang up against an innocent man or bear false witness against an innocent man.
Deportation of non-indigenes from Anambra State was never a policy under Peter Obi, and no single individual was deported from Anambra State on that account.
No South East governor or smart politician from the South East would have contemplated such rascality for the fact that the Igbo are scattered across Nigeria . More than twenty million Igbo live outside the South East. They are the second largest population after the natives. If retributive justice is to be served in the event of retaliatory deportation, Igbo will be the worst hit hence.
Facts are sacred; it was Lagos under Babatunde Raji Fashola, the current Minister of Works and Housing and a protégé of Bola Tinubu , the new darling of the North, that actually instituted deportation as a state policy and implemented same to the fullest. Hundreds and thousands of Nigerians including Northerners and South Easterners were deported from Lagos under the guise that they were destitute. South-South and South East deportees were dumped at the Onitsha Head Bridge end of Anambra State, a practice Obi officially protested against to both the Federal Government and Lagos State on the ground that no Nigerian deserved to be uprooted from any part of Nigeria.
As we count down to 2023, I will encourage us to engage on politics of issues and less about tribe and religion. That we all believe in one Almighty Allah(God) is sufficient to unite us for the common good of Nigeria.
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