WHEN a group of Nigerians from the southern part of the country met in Lagos the other day, to deliberate on the national security crisis and the premature politicking ahead of 2015 general elections, their focus on regional and national interests did not immediately seem out of place. But some of the conclusions from their meeting raised serious questions about their intentions, however lofty they may appear.
The meeting emphasized the need for unity of purpose in the south so that it could always square up with its northern counterpart which, in their opinion, had always employed divide and rule strategy to undermine southern solidarity on key national issues. With regard to the nation as a whole, it applauded the state of emergency declared by President Goodluck Jonathan and correctly reasoned that curbing insurgency in the north will not necessarily guarantee peace, given the plethora of social crises plaguing the country. Therefore, it underscored the need for a national conference on the way forward for the country. The meeting held the view that it was only dialogue that could take the country off its present perch on the precipice and enable it realise its destiny as the ‘giant of Africa’. Besides these pivotal issues, there were matters that also crept into the communiqué, such as the creation of two additional states in the south in order to level up with its northern counterpart favoured by the skewed state creation.
The meeting of the self-styled southern leaders, however, raises a lot of important issues. First, who made them the leaders of Southern Nigeria? Second, they certainly do not have the mandate of the people to speak on their behalf. In the south and the north, all kinds of groups have mushroomed purporting to champion the interest of those parts of the country to the detriment of Nigeria’s national interest. This is condemnable. There may be nothing wrong with regional associations but only if such put the national interest above all else. It is not enough to throw up ad hoc organisations for the purpose of seeking attention and racketeering as many of these identity organisations across the country now do.
Looking at the array of individuals at that meeting, claiming to be leaders of the peoples of the south, it is appropriate to even query the service credentials of some of them. A coterie of bashers of the nation cannot truly claim to be leaders of the south, east, west or the north!
The meeting would have earned plaudits if it had taken an objective view of the state of the nation and not veered into the same primordial issues that have dominated national discourse and created divisive politicking in the country. Why, for instance, should any serious organisation be thinking about the creation of more states at this point when it is obvious that collapsing into regions the quasi states, many of which cannot exist independently without subventions from the Federation Account, ought to be more reasonable and convincing? As everyone knows, states were not created to address any imbalance in the Nigerian federation; they were either borne out of sheer brinkmanship or steeped in the politics of revenue sharing. Restructuring the skewed federalism in the country ought to be a priority and not compounding the anomaly by the creation of more mushroom states in the name of geo-balancing. True federalism in which each unit earns its keeps and fiscal autonomy would automatically rectify the contradictions of arbitrary state creation and this ought to be central to the demands of any group that seeks the good of Nigeria. Not the same lazy solution to age-old problems.
The obvious call on President Jonathan to contest the 2015 general election underlined by the caveat: ‘if he so wishes’, probably exposes the real purpose of the meeting. Seeking a second term is the least of the problems of this administration that has just spent two years out of a four-year tenure and has yet to justify the mandate of the people by delivering the so-called ‘dividends of democracy’. Therefore, the call is far from being responsible and amounts to a distraction from the important goal of governance. The conferees ought to have occupied themselves with a scrutiny of whether the projects of the present administration have been achieved. For example, the East-West coastal road project remains uncompleted; uninterrupted electricity for the country is still a dream, huge sums already spent notwithstanding, while road infrastructure is still in bad shape. Corruption, of course, is still the order of the day. In particular, kidnapping has become an industry in southern states, religious-cum political insurgency is continuing in the north, while other forms of insecurity haunt the entire nation. These are issues that need concrete solutions and on which the southern, eastern, northern or western leaders should have made suggestions.
In the face of all this, the current administration’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ has remained a mere slogan with no identifiable content and signposts. It thus, requires rethinking and reworking. Therefore setting aside these weighty issues and calling on the president to run for a second term is prejudicial to potential candidates, undermines the entire electoral process, over-heats the country’s democracy and is a disservice to the nation.
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