As a principal participant in the backroom politics that ensured power shift to the South (or South West) in 1999, I have come to the realization that a lot of Nigerians still do not know the whole truth of how the historic event panned out at the time. My purpose here, therefore, is to inform the public by providing some window into what happened behind the scenes and glance it off the ongoing clamour for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction when time comes for the next transition either in 2011 or 2015. Suffice it to say that the best way to begin this time travel to past history is to recognize the following facts as self-evident.

First, Obasanjo was overwhelmingly elected in 1999 without the Yoruba vote, as compared to the far second Olu Falae scored, despite garnering virtually all Yoruba vote that mattered. And I wager that Obasanjo would have been elected anyway even if, like Abiola, he committed faux pas and declared assuredly "I don't need Y orubas to win the 'presidential' elections". Several factors were responsible for this.

Flash back to the formation of PDP without any recognizable pivotal role by Obasanjo, and you might agree that the presidential elections were probably decided in his favour way before the PDP Jos convention, where Igbo delegates were said to have engaged in the so-called "sabotage" of Ekwueme that presumably saw to Obasanjo's nomination. Those blaming Igbos and their Jim Nwobodos for stabbing Ekwueme in the back verge on political double speak when they keep silent on the opposite truth that Yorubas did not only oppose Obasanjo's candidacy for the presidency, they relentlessly worked against it. And as compared to Ekwueme's Igbo grassroots support, the Y oruba non-support of Obasanjo was supposed to be much more damaging because it was total and notoriously vocal to boot.

And there is more. Assuming that all Y oruba and Igbo delegates to the Jos conference made political history for once by banding together to support Ekwueme in a two-way contest between him and Obasanjo, it is still unlikely to have worked any opposite result, except to the extent that it would have made Obasanjo's nomination a close call. Put differently, Obasanjo, with the votes of delegates from the non-Yoruba Northern region, and the nonYoruba and non-Igbo Southern region, would have clinched the nomination anyway.

And he would have gone on to coast to victory in the general elections on the same equation or formula, except that this time around the vacuum created by Ekwueme's loss opened new electoral opportunities for him in the East. Recall Abiola saying that he did not need the Igbo vote to win the presidency or something to that effect. What he failed to say made the same sense, and that is: speaking strictly in terms of the true population of Yorubas and Hausas, Abiola did not need the votes of these other two either, standing alone as single entities, to win. In other words, winning the Nigerian presidency only requires the pan-Nigerian vote even when the guaranteed block vote of one of the three major ethnic groups is absent.

Look at it this way. If Abiola won the votes of the Hausa and Yoruba, he was more likely to win than when he won the votes of Yoruba and Igbo and lost the Hausa vote. But instead of deploying political correctness or niceties to express what everyone knew to be true, he waxed somewhat insolent and bravado by singling out the Igbos for belittling, and thus created a new pocket of resentment exploited by the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) and other forces to get his victory annulled.

Secondly, as compared to the apex conservative Igbo political class represented by Ekwueme and the PDP crowd, the intermediate neo-progressive class represented by Ogbonnaya Onu read the political pulse of Nigeria of the time much more correctly. That political pulse was one that institutionally favoured an all- Y oruba candidacy for the presidency of Nigeria as an appeasement of sorts for the annulment of the victory of their son, Abiola; and this pulse was driven by the collective Nigerian guilt felt more at the highest levels of the northern political leadership, and less by their equal members in the East. Yet, the intermediate Igbo leadership, though lacking in any political guilt for the annulment, understood that Yoruba presidency had never been more .expedient. The only question that remained was which Y oruba candidate deserved to be supported.

Therefore, what the former APP did by nominating Ogbonnaya Onu, and Onu's celebrated stepping down for the APP/AD coalition candidacy of Olu Falae was not, in my opinion, "another case of Igbo lack of seriousness for the presidency", but a tactical, yet costly electoral concession by the Igbos that other Nigerians, especially the Yorubas who supported and voted for Olu Falae must acknowledge and reward in time to come. It is a political debt owed by Yorubas the more because they were later to embrace the presidency as their own when they voted enmasse for Obasanjo in 2003.

And I do not believe the hype that the North foisted Obasanjo as a potential puppet that can be trusted to promote Northern interests; rather the North knew that while Obasanjo may slant his presidency to correct inequities of the past and thus favour the South or Yorubas, he was less likely to do so than any of the other Yoruba front-runners like Ige and Falae -who were seen to be possessing A woist credentials. And the reason I see the Onu capitulation to Falae as a political debt is at that time, it was not very clear that a prominent and highly electable renegade candidate from the North, especially one from one of the minority linguistic (or ethnic, if you like) groups would not have given Obasanjo a good trouncing and thus upset the political calculation of the establishment which was single-mindedly geared towards ensuring power shift to the South first, and to Yorubas, second.

If you are skeptical, just pause for a moment and consider whether that is not what happened with the election of Abiola over Tofa. It is on record that more than Abiola, Tofa had the support, though mostly tacit, of the established kingmakers of Nigeria, including the military regime of the time, but for once, the Nigerian grassroots acted out of character to upset the applecart and elect a populist Abiola. Yet, in the end, the establishment had its way by seeing to the annulment of the results produced by that very truly fair election.

In view of the foregoing scenario, I cannot help wondering why pundits are so quick to point to Igbo disunity as the major obstacle to Igbo presidency but seem so unwilling to concede the efficacy of the equal logic that Obasanjo won the first time despite the absolutism of his electoral rejection by his own people - the Yorubas. This makes the important point, and that is, despite this much blamed Igbo disunity, an Igbo man can still be elected president with or without the Igbo vote and support provided other Nigerians closed ranks, like they did behind Obasanjo and become sincere in their mass support of an Igbo candidate for the presidency.

My postulate therefore is that the greatest obstacle to Igbo presidency does not lie with the Igbo or their famous disunity or republicanism, as some non-Igbo Nigerians love to say triumphantly and dismissively, but with an institutionalized aversion to the idea by the non-Igbo political establishment that controls the levers of federal power in Nigeria. If you doubt me, then consider that Obasanjo, a man just out of prison, and despised by his own people, was sought out by the establishment class represented by the conservative North, the intermediate political leaders of the East in PDP, and the military political class and offered both the PDP nomination and Nigerian presidency on a platter.

And while you are at it, recall that despite being public enemy number one to the apartheid regime, Fredrick De Klerk and his fellow Boers wanted a Mandela they imprisoned for high treason as President, and they had their way in the face of stiff opposition by their erstwhile collaborators, the Inkathas, and their Buthelezi. That was the quintessential political debt owed and paid to a man who did no wrong other than crying freedom for his oppressed people. Therefore. what may be required to deinstitutlonalize the Nigerian visceral resistance to an Igbo as president is not for the Igbo to deny their heritage but to highlight and harp on the many political debts the rest of the country owe the Igbos in the real hope that it will gather enough steam and momentum to bring the non-lgbo political establishment to play ball for a change. And truth be told. you do not need to look far to find those political debts because they are legion, in plain sigh, and overdue to boot

Dr. Kalu is BOT chair. PPA