The statement by the leader of the Yoruba Cultural Group, Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo, that the South East should get the next turn at the presidency has ruffled quite some feathers.
The advocates of power shift have managed to define a geopolitical South that excludes the South East. They speak only of equity in power shift insofar as it means power going to the South West or ‘South South’. Adebanjo bucked the trend, and Edwin Clark has also lent his voice. In the All Progressives Congress , for example, the first sign from the North that all the talk about a Southern candidate meant nothing was when the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, shelved the idea of being a running mate potentially to a ‘South South’ candidate, fancied at the time to be former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The Federal Character Commission is a useless bureaucracy costing the country billions of naira. It was improvised by General Sani Abacha in 1996 to help disadvantaged states catch up with the others and to create a sense of belonging. I wonder why the beneficiaries, mostly Northern states, did not think it prudent to earn the privileges bestowed by this crooked system.
How do critics of the Igbo quest explain the fact that even though the South West has enjoyed the lion’s share of power in two decades, it is still in the race with a bigger sense of entitlement than any other region? Or why did three other Northern aspirants contest for APC’s ticket against Buhari in the party’s presidential primaries, despite the push for a consensus candidate at the time?
Then, of course, there are those who argue that rotation is pointless because it is simply the crutch of the thieving political elite. Ordinary people up and down the country, North and South, hardly benefit. And when the elite are conspiring to steal, they hardly discuss tribe, religion or region. We should be concerned about what the candidate can – or has done – rather than where he or she is coming from.
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