The speed with which the country is receding in its effort at building a virile democracy calls for a serious concern. How else can one explain the situation in which votes are not being canvassed on the basis of issues but on the basis of accident of name. In African tradition, a father is supposed to be guided by peculiar experience which may be circumstantial before giving names to a new born baby. The important thing however is that such peculiarity should be restricted to that lineage.
Accordingly, the lucky father of President Goodluck Jonathan should have been guided by the immediate circumstances surrounding the birth of his equally lucky son before giving him the name Goodluck. To some extent too, that luck had been working in the life of Mr President. Otherwise how can one become the President of a country like Nigeria known for its heterogeneity both in culture and politics within the first decade of his debut into politics. Mr President is certainly a worthy candidate for the famous Guiness Book of Record for being governor and later President without facing any direct election in a supposed democracy.
The paradox in human phenomenon however is that if it is true that luck works in the life of man there is usually a limit to such luck. Hence the usual admonition for such lucky people not to overstretch their luck. This is because in the generous dispensation of luck there is always something that God wants to prove. In the particular case of Goodluck Jonathan, it is that ‘I can make you president without facing the rigour of election’.
One way of looking at Mr President’s insistence to contest the Presidency this time around is that he wants to be on his own with no regard to what luck had done in his life. It is therefore no wonder that his campaign slogan had principally remained “GOOD LUCK NIGERIA”. Nothing can be worse than that as far as his rating of the intelligence of the average Nigerian is concerned.
Perhaps it is on the basis of the presumed elongated luck that the President had said that he would not promise Nigerians anything to win their votes. The point must however be stressed that the tool for good governance is not luck but hard work and planning. For instance it is not luck but adequate planning that sustained Awolowo in his innovative free education programme in the old western region. He did not depend on luck for his free medical service at that time.
It is not by luck that China is gradually assuming the status of most developed technology in the world today.
Incidentally, there is an empirical causal relationship between luck and docility. It is a truism that only the indolent depends on luck throughout his life time. Although, there was an Eastern region comprising the present Igbo speaking states and what used to be the COR- Calabar Ogoja Rivers there was certainly a no love-lost relationship between them when it come to matters of politics. For instance in the First Republic the people of the minority areas of the Eastern region led by the likes of Udo Udoma, Winike Briggs among others opted for the Action Group as against the Igbo dominated NCNC, the story was not different in the second republic. This time around however they changed their alliances.
Instead of Awolowo’s UPN it was the turn of the northern dominated NPN. In the two dispensations however, one thing was constant. It is that in electoral sentiments, the minorities of the East showed their dislike for the Igbo politically. This they did by rejecting both the NCNC and latter the NPP, both of which were Igbo dominated. It was also the fear of ‘Igbo annihilation’ that made them frustrate the Biafra dream of the Igbos. This time around, and unlike the case of the First Republic when the likes of Winike Briggs held sway for the Action Group, it was the likes of Merford Okilo and Clement Isong that led them into the northern alliance as a direct affront to the Igbo.
The thrust of the submission is that in national political discourse the erstwhile minorities of the East had never behaved as brother in need to the main Igbo interest. If under the zoning arrangement, of the PDP, the first slot went to the south in favour of the Yoruba with Obasanjo, which is fine. The second slot went to the north, with an eastern minority as the running mate. Given the circumstance that brought the Eastern Vice President as the President following the death of the incumbent President Umar Yar’adua, that could at best served as bonus to the East but certainly not the main slot.
The main slot still rests in the north.
If Yoruba could take the first slot to the south, and Hausa Fulani takes the slot to the north, it is only natural under the principle of equity and justice for the Igbo to take the next slot to the south. If however Jonathan continues after 2011, it can only mean that he will finish the bonus slot in 2015, and start fresh on the southern slot in 2015 for another eight years. In that case the East would have appropriated half of the tenure of the north. This time not to the benefit of the south as a geopolitical unit but for the egoistic greed of an individual.
The question then is what would then have been the gains of the Igbos as a political bloc in the political permutation? The question becomes more appropriate and relevant when it is remembered that even within the old East there had never been a political confraternity but political alienation between the Igbos and their minority brothers as had been explained earlier. I think like the northern consensus candidate Atiku who had been categorical and definitive about he favouring an Igbo President for 2015, President Jonathan will be kind enough to say which zone he would hand over to in 2015 if he remained the President till then. The igbos have suffered for this country enough that they do not deserve to be made the whipping horse in the power equation.
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