Nigeria's journey to nowhere
February 18 2019 By Abiodun Karim Giwa
Nigerian leaders - past and present
Latest reports show that President Muhammad Buhari had said the INEC had everything needed to hold the election and that the electoral commission had no reason to have postponed the election. He challenged the electoral commission to explain to Nigerians the logistic problem it said caused the election postponement.
This is against the reason advanced by the nation's Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, that the postponement was caused by what it called an attempt by the ruling party to manipulate the election and hailed the head of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for his courage for the postponement of the election.
The People Democratic Party, PDP, the nation's major opposition party and a member of the CUPP, said separately that the ruling party and INEC were responsible for the election postponement in order to favor the ruling party. These are all emanating from the Nigeria's stranded political journey.
Nigeria has not just begun a journey to nowhere. Majority of Nigerians believe that signs for the journey to nowhere have been apparent from 1960, when the country gained independence and that the signs have been glaring in the course of the political battle between different political groups, with the retrogressive political group gaining the upper hand and clueless drivers manning the wheel.
You have to belong to a particular part of the country for you to be recognized as a leader and if you don't belong to that part of the country, powerful political personalities from that part of the country must approve your emergence for you to be.. Let us see how the country has been choosing its leaders from inception.
Tafawa Balewa was the first prime minister under a Parliamentary system of government, while Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was president. Balewa was from the North and Azikiwe was from the East. Balewa exercised the political power, while Azikiwe was said to have been much a ceremonial president. Both Balewa and Azikiwe were kicked out of office in the first military coup by Kaduna Nzeogwu. Balewa was killed along 'Ladoke Akintola and Ahmadu Bello, Okotie Eboh from the Midwest. Azikiwe's life was spared. The North accused Nzeogwu and his colleagues for sparing Azikiwe's life because accoding to them the coup was masterminded by officers from the East.
The Nzeogwu's coup was not successful as much but left an Easterner in the name of Aguiyi Ironsi in the saddle, the most senior officer at that time to become the country's leader due to the vacuum created by the Nzeogwu's deadly coup. The Northern officers were unforgiving and followed with a vengeance coup that installed Yakubu Gowon as leader after the killing of Ironsi.
The stranded journey led to the senseless killings of people from the Eastern part of the country living in the North, and Odumegwu Ojukwu was forced to declare secession, leading to three years murderous civil war against the East because Gowon decided Nigeria was a country that must be kept united at all cost. It was an autocratic decision and Nigerians were never asked to determine their own future.
Let us rewind the tape back to how Obafemi Awolowo was deprived election in favor of Shehu Shagari when the country was restored back to democracy in 1979 after a long and useless military governance. Many Nigerians knew that Awolowo was cheated for Shagari to be president by powerful political forces in the North and rotten southern millionaires. One of the reasons that many Nigerians with heads on their necks who knew what happened may never forgive Olusegun Obasanjo for the role he played for the emergence of Shagari as president. Obasanjo had a lifetime opportunity to put Nigeria on a course of political sanity, but he missed it.
After Shagari and his power cult in the North and South messed up the country, Muhammed Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon emerged with a forceful hand to restore the country to sanity. But the corruption laden military stopped the effort because the Buhari regime itself thought it could play God! Then Ibrahim Babangida seized the opportunity, freed Buhari's captives and promised freedom and transparency. And the media embraced him!
Babangida did what was necessary to win the media to his side before he turned into an unmanageable tiger, under whose regime an unresolved journalist's assassination by letter bomb occurred and the cancellation of a presidential election won by his own bosom friend, Moshood Abiola, was cancelled.
Abiola's cancelled election is part of the resolve of the North never to allow any southerner's election to stand. Election of anyone not approved by the powerful northerners cannot stand. Obasanjo became a civilian president after the death of Sanni Abacha because Northern military officers wanted him as an instrument to overcome the crisis of leadership after Abacha and Abiola's death.
Many Nigerians did not have pity for Abiola after he was arrested by Abacha who put him away in jail because they felt that Abiola was part of all the rubbish that the North had undertaken to stall the nation's political journey from moving forward by the northern conspiracy that denied Awolowo the presidency. Of course, they denied Awolowo and denied Abiola - despite the latter's bribing of the North with incomparable amount of monetary donations over the years before he decided to run for president.
As at 2015, Buhari had no business returning as an elected president. He had completed his part in the effort of returning the nation to sanity in 1984 and failed. If he was a southerner, he could not have had that opportunity of a lifetime of returning to power for the second time. And what has he done with the opportunity to fight corruption?
Though Buhari has said he is not corrupt, but he nonetheless surrounds himself with corrupt people all in the name of retaining power at all cost, and he has thus become a counterfeit in his undertaking as a president. How do you fight corruption having corrupt people around you? The worst is closing his eyes on how his EFCC leaves corrupt people alone the moment they move from the PDP to the ruling party. Does that not make Buhari to equal Shagari whom he overthrew in 1984?
Now, one is at a loss about the ruling party and the major opposition party fielding all northern tickets with ruling party accusing the PDP flag-bearer as a thief, as if the ruling does not have its own share of thieves working for the president's reelection. The worst thing that has happened to Nigeria since independence is the fielding of almost 75 presidential candidates.
Most of these young politicians are reportedly working to displace old politicians whom they describe as thieves or corrupt as if they lack the knowledge of the history of their country and the culture of corruption from which they themselves can hardly claim to be exempt. They seem to close their eyes to the fact that if you don't have the blessing of the North that you can never be granted the right to be president in Nigeria and that for this reason Nigeria has been on a journey to nowhere.
Many people think these young politicians should have eschewed pursuing their personal ambitions without restraint in the best interest of the country and form a strong front against corruption and northern domination. Find like-minded people in the north who have Nigeria’s interest at heart among northerners to coalesce with. Because the journey to nowhere will continue as long as long as the North continues to dominate the position of leadership in the country.
This is against the reason advanced by the nation's Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, that the postponement was caused by what it called an attempt by the ruling party to manipulate the election and hailed the head of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for his courage for the postponement of the election.
The People Democratic Party, PDP, the nation's major opposition party and a member of the CUPP, said separately that the ruling party and INEC were responsible for the election postponement in order to favor the ruling party. These are all emanating from the Nigeria's stranded political journey.
Nigeria has not just begun a journey to nowhere. Majority of Nigerians believe that signs for the journey to nowhere have been apparent from 1960, when the country gained independence and that the signs have been glaring in the course of the political battle between different political groups, with the retrogressive political group gaining the upper hand and clueless drivers manning the wheel.
You have to belong to a particular part of the country for you to be recognized as a leader and if you don't belong to that part of the country, powerful political personalities from that part of the country must approve your emergence for you to be.. Let us see how the country has been choosing its leaders from inception.
Tafawa Balewa was the first prime minister under a Parliamentary system of government, while Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was president. Balewa was from the North and Azikiwe was from the East. Balewa exercised the political power, while Azikiwe was said to have been much a ceremonial president. Both Balewa and Azikiwe were kicked out of office in the first military coup by Kaduna Nzeogwu. Balewa was killed along 'Ladoke Akintola and Ahmadu Bello, Okotie Eboh from the Midwest. Azikiwe's life was spared. The North accused Nzeogwu and his colleagues for sparing Azikiwe's life because accoding to them the coup was masterminded by officers from the East.
The Nzeogwu's coup was not successful as much but left an Easterner in the name of Aguiyi Ironsi in the saddle, the most senior officer at that time to become the country's leader due to the vacuum created by the Nzeogwu's deadly coup. The Northern officers were unforgiving and followed with a vengeance coup that installed Yakubu Gowon as leader after the killing of Ironsi.
The stranded journey led to the senseless killings of people from the Eastern part of the country living in the North, and Odumegwu Ojukwu was forced to declare secession, leading to three years murderous civil war against the East because Gowon decided Nigeria was a country that must be kept united at all cost. It was an autocratic decision and Nigerians were never asked to determine their own future.
Let us rewind the tape back to how Obafemi Awolowo was deprived election in favor of Shehu Shagari when the country was restored back to democracy in 1979 after a long and useless military governance. Many Nigerians knew that Awolowo was cheated for Shagari to be president by powerful political forces in the North and rotten southern millionaires. One of the reasons that many Nigerians with heads on their necks who knew what happened may never forgive Olusegun Obasanjo for the role he played for the emergence of Shagari as president. Obasanjo had a lifetime opportunity to put Nigeria on a course of political sanity, but he missed it.
After Shagari and his power cult in the North and South messed up the country, Muhammed Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon emerged with a forceful hand to restore the country to sanity. But the corruption laden military stopped the effort because the Buhari regime itself thought it could play God! Then Ibrahim Babangida seized the opportunity, freed Buhari's captives and promised freedom and transparency. And the media embraced him!
Babangida did what was necessary to win the media to his side before he turned into an unmanageable tiger, under whose regime an unresolved journalist's assassination by letter bomb occurred and the cancellation of a presidential election won by his own bosom friend, Moshood Abiola, was cancelled.
Abiola's cancelled election is part of the resolve of the North never to allow any southerner's election to stand. Election of anyone not approved by the powerful northerners cannot stand. Obasanjo became a civilian president after the death of Sanni Abacha because Northern military officers wanted him as an instrument to overcome the crisis of leadership after Abacha and Abiola's death.
Many Nigerians did not have pity for Abiola after he was arrested by Abacha who put him away in jail because they felt that Abiola was part of all the rubbish that the North had undertaken to stall the nation's political journey from moving forward by the northern conspiracy that denied Awolowo the presidency. Of course, they denied Awolowo and denied Abiola - despite the latter's bribing of the North with incomparable amount of monetary donations over the years before he decided to run for president.
As at 2015, Buhari had no business returning as an elected president. He had completed his part in the effort of returning the nation to sanity in 1984 and failed. If he was a southerner, he could not have had that opportunity of a lifetime of returning to power for the second time. And what has he done with the opportunity to fight corruption?
Though Buhari has said he is not corrupt, but he nonetheless surrounds himself with corrupt people all in the name of retaining power at all cost, and he has thus become a counterfeit in his undertaking as a president. How do you fight corruption having corrupt people around you? The worst is closing his eyes on how his EFCC leaves corrupt people alone the moment they move from the PDP to the ruling party. Does that not make Buhari to equal Shagari whom he overthrew in 1984?
Now, one is at a loss about the ruling party and the major opposition party fielding all northern tickets with ruling party accusing the PDP flag-bearer as a thief, as if the ruling does not have its own share of thieves working for the president's reelection. The worst thing that has happened to Nigeria since independence is the fielding of almost 75 presidential candidates.
Most of these young politicians are reportedly working to displace old politicians whom they describe as thieves or corrupt as if they lack the knowledge of the history of their country and the culture of corruption from which they themselves can hardly claim to be exempt. They seem to close their eyes to the fact that if you don't have the blessing of the North that you can never be granted the right to be president in Nigeria and that for this reason Nigeria has been on a journey to nowhere.
Many people think these young politicians should have eschewed pursuing their personal ambitions without restraint in the best interest of the country and form a strong front against corruption and northern domination. Find like-minded people in the north who have Nigeria’s interest at heart among northerners to coalesce with. Because the journey to nowhere will continue as long as long as the North continues to dominate the position of leadership in the country.
