Several weeks back I was tempted to reproduce the article below which I wrote almost exactly 12 years ago this month in the Weekly Trust of August 14, 1998. I was so tempted because of the distinct sense of déjà vu I felt that we’ve been through all these before again and again as I listened to the on-going debate over power rotation between the North and the South. After reading Chief Edwin Clerk’s interview this weekend in the News Star of August 21 in which he unsuccessfully tried to deny the self-evident fact that he is President Goodluck Jonathan’s godfather – he says in one breath that “I am not his godfather” and in the next breath that “I am the leader of the South-South. I am the leader of the Ijaw people. I adopt him as my son...and he has taken me as his father” - and after reading a counter interview in The Guardian of the same date by Malam Adamu Ciroma, the leading defender of PDP’s contentious zoning agreement, I could not resist the temptation to reproduce the piece any more.

Except for a few changes in the cast  from 12 years ago and a difference in the context, the piece could as well have been about the current heated debate on zoning. Read it below for what it is worth:

 Of rotational presidency and all that

   In writing this article, I was tempted to entitle it “Awo betrayed”, a titled I gave to a piece in my column in the Citizen (since defunct) of October 19, 1992. In that article I tried to show how the late Chief Obasafemi Awolowo, the one politician who has worked hardest, longest and most systematically at becoming Nigeria’s leader, never allowed the frustration of his life-long ambition to destroy his faith in the unity of Nigeria. I tried to show how, even when he seemed to have lost faith in a democratic Nigeria following his defeat in the very controversial elections of 1983, he did not give up on the unity of Nigeria. Instead he even bent over backwards to try to save it at a time, early in General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime, when calls for a confederate Nigeria (really the code word for breaking it up) by the likes of Lt. General (rtd) Alani Akinrinade, were peaking. At that time, the chief sought a secret rendezvous with Babangida to warn him about meetings his (Awo’s) subordinates were holding behind his back on the issue because they knew he would not support breaking up the country simply because these lieutenants felt the Yoruba race was being cheated out of power at the centre. Babangida heeded the warning by bringing in a number of confederate elements, including Akinrinade, into his government. The calls subsequently died down.

Several years on, we seem to have returned to where Babangida left off. Worse actually; whereas the calls then were disguised as confederation, the disguises have now been thrown away. Either the break-up of the country, say the potential secessionists, or power must shift to the south, presumably the south-west, in the next presidential elections.

This demand for power shift, or rotational presidency, if you will, did not start today or even with June 12, 1992. It goes all the way back to our colonial days when the more Westernised southerners thought their Western education entitled them to rule over the more numerous and more united but less Westernised northerners. Democracy, being essentially a game of numbers and unity and cultivating trust, unfortunately stood in the way. Presumably realising that the democratic dice seemed permanently loaded against the south, some south-eastern elements in the army tried to shoot their way into power and in the process nearly wiped out the northern political and military leadership. Things worked for a while, but then the south-easterners overplayed their hands by declaring the country a unitary state and the north successfully counter-attacked. Today, thanks to that military misadventure of January 1966, we have been having a hell of a time persuading the military to return to the barracks and stay there. And because all the successful coups since then have been led by northerners, it seems as if power will permanently reside in the north whether by the vote or by the gun.

Needless to say this is a frustrating prospect for any non-northerner with ambition to rule the country. This frustration has increased with time leading eventually to the Biafran secessionist bid in the late ‘60s. Since the cancellation of the June 12, 1992 presidential election which Chief M.K.O. Abiola, a south-westerner, seemed poised to win, it would seem as if the south-west thinks it is now its turn to seek to secede – unless, of course, the rest of the country, the north in particular, concedes power to it.

Not to put too fine a point to it, the south-west is clearly seeking power that it seems unable to get either by the vote or by the gun through sheer blackmail. The question is, is it justified? Personally I think the region’s frustration is understandable especially in the wake of June 12 1992 when a southerner seemed set to win power through the vote for the first time in our history. The frustration is understandable because the elections were cancelled by a northerner. However, it is unfair and unjust to blame the entire north for the deeds of one or even a clique of northerners because no one had the region’s mandate to cancel the election.

The truth about “June 12”, stripped of its democratic camouflage, is that it was little more than a deadly game of political and financial intrigue among so-called friends who, each with his own hidden agenda, thought he could outplay the others. It was a game in which most of us, northerners and southerners alike, were regarded as mere spectators. Babangida, Abacha and Abiola were of course not the only major players but the three were the main actors, each thinking he could use his key strengths (charm and wit for Babangida, guile and brute force for Abacha and money and media power for Abiola) to outwit the others. In the end they only succeeded in destroying themselves, one way or the other, because of the bad faith that pervaded their relationship. Unfortunately for the rest of us lesser mortals, as in the fight of the elephants, we got trampled upon.

So far the best insight into this three-concerned fight is the Tell (August 10) interview by Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, himself a major player in the saga, on how Abacha plotted his way into power. However, insightful as it is, it tells only one side of the story. I have no doubt that in time we will come to see that Abacha was not the only one who acted in bad faith. We shall then come to realise, as I have said on these pages before, that “June 12” is not worth the unity of this country. It is not even worth breaking out heads over.

The second reason why the current secessionist threats are not justified is actually a much simpler one than the intrigues of “June 12”. This is the simple fact that the southern frustration from its inability to wrest power from the north is really self-inflicted. Because of its superiority in number and its relative homogeneity, power through democracy may seem to be permanently loaded in favour of the north, but in practice nothing stops it from shifting if the southerners would only show a readiness to play the power game by the rules of democracy. Instead, from day one, they adopted the haughty position that Western education and not number – and trust – should dictate who rules. As a result the southern strategy has been to try and blackmail and abuse northerners, their leaders and their beliefs with big grammar. But then you do not and cannot gain anyone’s trust by blackmail and abuse. If Chief Abiola nearly succeeded where Chief Awolowo, with all his hardwork and resourcefulness, failed, it was because millions of northerners identified and felt somewhat safe with him.

The main lesson of “June 12”, which seems lost on its protagonists, is that power shift, desirable as it is, is only possible on the basis of mutual trust rather than through blackmail or by fiat; blackmail or fiat can only provide ammunition for those who seek power by exploiting the genuine fear of northerners that power at the centre in so-called hostile hands, will only be used to make them (the northerners) even more economically deprived than they already are in spite of their region’s monopoly of political power.

 2011: playing with fire-By Mohammed Haruna