South East: Not just about zoning

             By Victor Agusiobo 

 

For reasons that can possibly make up large portions of academic discourses, seminars and papers, the Nigerian politician seems not to have been a spectacularly positive export of the nation’s image 

The suffocating paradox is that quite often, the politician is very comfortable and confident in that ignoble status. And the only reason that comes to mind for such embarrassing confidence in the midst of the cesspool he often superintends and the distrust upon which he is held by the people he claims to govern and protect is his deviously opulent vintage. 

The Nigerian politician wins election, legitimately, he feels comfortable. He rigs, he feels equally comfortable. He then goes ahead to bear the sobriquet, Your Excellency with the same glee albeit begotten of a winner or ‘rigger’. Monies under his watch get missing, he exudes unequalled bravado in response or feigns a faint upon inquiry. He appears shamelessly on national television to tell stories that can’t be penned for a Nollywood comedy about how some totemic animals swallowed up monies under his care. 

Corruption tends to unite the politicians. In that vile enterprise, creed, religion, tribe, geography, language are all inconsequential. 

It is therefore not for nothing that many an introspective individual would sometimes ask: is one really never ashamed to be called a Nigerian politician, that unconscionable member of a tribe of clowns in nauseating motley who seeks the sun but relies so much in darkness. As our exposure as a nation continues via the social media, it is not unlikely that very soon a generation will rise from the labyrinth of drudgery and seeming mental confusion to truly question the big bang that occasioned the big snap of many of their forebears into becoming terribly worse than men and a shade better than beasts. 

Until that happens, the nation still holds out thin hope on the fading army of patriotic, conscionable and altruistic politicians to save her from violent disintegration. It is time for them to inject the necessary elixir for the survival of Nigeria. 

The most challenging of this call is the mustering of the needed sacrifice, nationalism and selflessness to allow the south east zone of the country to produce the next president of Nigeria. 

Doubtlessly, to some, politics holds the significance of life and death. And obviously to such people, the undue advantages of politics are placed not only beyond price but precisely above life. In their vaulting ambition, there is no confidence that is inviolate; no pact or covenant, sacrosanct. The profoundly noble idea of rotating the presidency of the nation along geo-political lines must therefore not be allowed to be hobbled or truncated by the greed and perfidy of these politicians. 

The need for a president of Nigeria to come from the South East of the country issues from equity, Justice and fair play than mere cosmetic geographical permutations. A president of lgbo extraction is sure going to be the last important lesson a politically troubled Nigeria would learn towards discarding or accentuating the atavistic notion that effective leadership is the product of geography. 

The clamour is akin to that which threw up an Obama as President of the United States. It is not to showcase any uncommon competence but to heal a nation. Development, they say is a coward, it hardly goes to troubled lands that are bereft of equity and justice. The continued denial of a South East presidency amounts to blatant inequity and injustice. 

This write-up therefore, very respectfully entreats the Atikus, Tinubus, Sanusis of Nigeria to exude the necessary patriotism for the making of a new Nigeria. They must not allow whatever self interest residing in them to overtake their real nationalistic need. And that real need must angle for a perfectly negotiated Nigeria along the lines of harmony, unity and the freedom for enterprise which is what essentially South East presidency represents. 

It should therefore be the ultimate yearning of these ambitious Nigerians in their various political parties to see to it that South East presidency is not to be filched from the depths of infamy and pugilism. It must be the product of a typical Nigerian thoughtfulness, political ethic and innate sense of Justice and equity and which bespeak of a practical doctrine for the workability of Nigeria. 

Even in the spiritual realm, it is now obvious that the gods of Okonkwo, Aremu, Tamuno, Dada, Rasaki, Aina, Abdullahi, Aniete are resplendently up in upholding the even-handed justice that permits a South East presidency. 

A society or country is almost as big and stable as what it prizes and values. It sure would be healed or destroyed by what it rewards. It stands to reason that absence of a South East presidency in 2023 will be a reward to a negatively skewed patriotism, lack of conscience and a recipe for anarchy albeit delayed.  

When therefore, that very cerebral, late erstwhile Vice President of Nigeria, late Dr. Alex Ekwueme canvassed the rotational compass of power along six geopolitical lines, that multidisciplinary mind was voicing nothing but a celestial recipe for peace in Nigeria. 

My history tells me that no Nigerian, living or dead ever fought in more manifest ways for one united Nigeria than the late Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. The spirit of the late sage will surely rest in peace if a sense of well being is offered in the opportunity for every Nigerian to rule the country. And it is in that profoundest sense of equity that the clamour for South East presidency is located. Once, this is achieved, the point would have been pragmatically made that no one tribe is bigger than Nigeria. It is only on that footing can a new Nigeria be born. 

The next dispensation should therefore be the finest hour for Nigeria's finest politicians. It calls for a majestic movement away from self to country. It should be a practical rise from the nadir of primitive covetousness and selfishness to the height of uncommon nationalism. It is an opportunity to showcase the acme of service and the paragon of consideration to their fatherland. It is about brotherhood; it is about Nigeria and these are rooted in the very equity upon which South East presidency beckons. 

There obviously can never be peace in injustice. And as a nation, we may never really know how soon or even how bitterly, the very ingredients of our poisoned chalice may be commended to our own lips.