Since last week’s provocation

Politics offers yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems. Marshall McLuhan

  Most of the response  to my column last week agreed that it was kite- flying on the part of Malam Mamman Daura to nudge the nation away from a fairly known (if thoroughly abused) routine of zoning and rotating elective offices (actually we are talking the office of the President here).I thought the word provocation would be impolite if applied to an elder like Malam Mamman, although the political terrain tends to make elders a little less recognizable in this country these days. I had laboured under the impression that I had followed the political firmament fairly closely from the type of distance that allows you to be wrong and still sleep well, but the last few days have revealed a lot that makes up the fascinating and often worrisome phenomenon that is Nigerian politics. I thought I should share some of the most important issues that arose from reactions and discussions. 

1.   Motive

 

        There was  broad agreement  that he offered a personal opinion to redress a drift towards the institutionalization and universalization of a political arrangement created to address a historically-specific problem. Its continuation would harm the nation by short-changing its search for competent leaders to steer it through the next challenges stages in its development. Worse, it threatens to perpetuate a problem that ought to have been solved at this stage. It freezes a political process that should develop from engaging and resolving problems related to pluralism and inclusiveness and the creation of consensus among the elite.

 

Another  possible motive could be the realization that a southern presidency for quite possibly the next eight years will damage the north irretrievably, after his uncle’s two terms would have left it a lot more insecure, poorer and more divided. The only real asset the north could be certain of in a democratic setting is its voting power and its questionable ability to think and act politically as a region. To be forced, threatened, intimidated or cajoled into giving this up is to strip it of its loincloth. No one says the northern voter must vote only a northern candidate, but no one should insist that he votes for a southern president because politicians looking at their fortunes say so either. There is a popular view that a northerner who is both competent and popular can be freely elected.

A substantial number of people also thought that a possible motive could be to distance President Buhari from possible fallouts and consequences of having to live under the questioning attention of a PDP president, in the event that  APC fields  a southern candidate and  loses. Without a doubt, even the most forgiving President elected on APC platform will have many questions to ask President Buhari, ministers and officials regarding the management of the economy, among other issues related to governance. There could be  a few people who squirm at Tinubu’s recent political outings  as party leader. They look at his soiled hands in the party, Lagos and Edo States, and they worry whether President Buhari and his small circle will sleep with both eyes closed under his Presidency.

2.    South Vs North

 Two issues were particularly revealing regarding the North/South divide. The first is the dominant of the insistence that the northern voter has no obligation to vote for a candidate decided by leaders of his political party. If he has to be persuaded, it will have to be done by politicians he trusts and feels comfortable with. Right now, these are very thin on the ground. The caliber of current northern political leadership is pitiable, and it does not help the case for rotation that some leaders will appear to be jockeying for positions under a southern President at the expense of the north.

The second issue is the damage which the zoning/rotation idea has done to the expectations that leaders will be just and fair to all sections and all Nigerians. The primacy attached to identity politics creates for it the impression of a zero-sum game. With the spread requirement,  the constitution has taken adequate care of concerns that leaders could emerge only on the basis of sectional support. The more you tell the  northern peasant or petty trader running away from bullets, robbers and rapists that a president must be elected from the south because politicians say it must be done to unite the country, and other Nigerians want to enjoy power he has not enjoyed, the more he thinks he is being abandoned for another eight years. Southern politicians who hurl abuses and insults at northerners for every  ill in the country provide ample motivation to many northerners to stay closer to theirs. You could pry away a substantial portion of votes of minority north, but it will be at a huge price that could compound the region’s and nation’s fragile security and unity.

The strongest argument against the rotation/zoning principle has been that it serves the fiction of the existence of a south and north, two regions that each share broad interests and commonness which make them counterpoints to each other. Even a stranger to Nigerian politics knows that the north is so heterogeneous that rotation merely benefits the largest religion and the biggest of its many ethnic groups. Far from improving access to power by smaller groups, rotation merely recycles the instruments of dominance. Similarly, the idea of a political south comes to life only when there is something to share or wrest from northerners. The rest of the time, major groups maintain as much distance and hostility as they can from, and towards each other, and smaller groups only get their share when they cause trouble. As we speak, the tussle between Yoruba and Igbo over who should field a presidential candidate in either party is assuming fearsome proportions. There is a theoretical possibility that an Igbo PDP or a Yoruba APC candidate could ignite enough anti-north sentiment to create a pan-south support to counter the numbers of the north, but there are no politicians working to build bridges across huge, historical political chasms in the south.

 3.   Will there be trouble without rotation?

There are many Nigerians from the north who think it is the right thing to do to support the emergence of a President from the south in 2023.There are also many from the south who think without rotation, the country will be handed over to forces looking for good reasons why they should question their stay in Nigeria. Majority of Nigerians just want credible elections and good leaders who will heal the nation. If politicians from the south and north engage productively,

it will be possible to field a southern candidate, but no one will guarantee that they will win. The same applies to politicians from the north who believe they can win in spite of their primary identities. Rotation is about winning tickets, not winning elections (although this position will be vigorously disputed by some northern PDP politicians who believe rotation does not occur unless power is actually won and exercised).  If parties allow fair processes to work in the manner their candidates emerge and the electoral process works with an improved level of transparency, fears over rotation will not translate into serious problems. If there will be trouble over rotation, it will be an intra-party problem which the parties will sort out or pay a price for.

4. Is there a solution to the rotation problem?

 

        In a way, Malam Mamman Daura had offered one solution: just find the most competent person(s) and trust them with power. This solution, however has many problems, not the least of which is that competence dressed by politics wears many looks. President Buhari gained from perception of competence and was not a product of zoning/rotation in his party. Alas, he is not a shining example of the primacy of competence over all else. A third party which is not trapped by the rotation problem and other anachronistic baggage of the two big parties could field a competent Nigerian who could win against the PDP and APC. This option, if it works, could signal the rebuilding of the nation’s political process, and put behind us all the nightmare of recycling problems in the name of the search for solutions.