By Mohammed Jalingo
It is evident that, from different parts of the country, more support keeps pouring in to ensure that former President Goodluck Jonathan returns to power in the 2023 presidential election. Of course, there are good reasons Nigerians in the six geopolitical zones are desperate for their beloved GEJ to come back to power.
Since November 2020 when governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress, (APC) started visiting former President Jonathan, the visits had generated debate in several quarters. Within the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has triggered panic among leaders of the party that the APC is wooing one of their best possible presidential materials for 2023.
However, for political observers are taking note of developments on the political turf, the APC governors appear to be taking proactive measures to ensure the party retains power beyond 2023. In the past few years, Nigeria has been inching towards a failed state and there is an urgent need to pull the country back from the cliff. To achieve that, the country needs a competent President that can be trusted by every section of the country.
This possibly informed the decision of the APC governors to draw former President Jonathan nearer to them ahead of the 2022 national convention of the party. In 2015, Dr. Jonathan shocked the world by a very rare display of sportsmanship and statesmanship when he conceded defeat by calling on his opponent, General Muhammadu Buhari, before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the final result of his second term presidential election.
Surely, Nigeria is inching closer to the most anticipated presidential election in the history of our country and many Nigerians, and indeed watchers of Nigeria’s affairs from outside the country, have been watching with intense interest where the pendulum would swing with particular reference to the binary North-South power blocs. This is in view of the fact that Nigerian national democracy gravitates around geopolitics, which is usually laced with ethno-religious nationalism.
What makes this even more interesting is the reality of the perilous times we are living in as a country in terms of national security. Since the present government of President Buhari came into power, the country has been thrown into protracted conflicts at higher dimensions than it inherited.
There is more than the decade-long insurgency in the North-East, banditry in the North-West, farmers-herders’ conflicts in the North-Central, which has spread to the South-East, South-West and South-South, as well as kidnappings nationwide, including the incursion of kidnappers into the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
There is an overwhelming perception that banditry and farmers-herders’ conflicts are criminal activities mainly perpetrated by the Fulani and that the Federal Government, headed by a Fulani man in the person of President Buhari, has been giving the suspects moral and logistical support.
This accusation appears to have been supported by the fact that the security agencies have been controversially involved or allegedly compromised in that they have not demonstrated any genuine commitment to arresting and prosecuting the criminal suspects; rather, they are being fingered as providing protection for suspected criminals to execute their barbarism with a view to fulfilling a land-grabbing agenda and take over the country in a so-called jihad.
As a Fulani man, in as much as I detest and refuse to accept such demonization of my race as criminals, it is very unfortunate that the Buhari administration has failed to dislodge these allegations through decisive security measures to arrest the daily fighting, killings and displacement across the country.
This is not ignoring another weighty accusation that the APC created the conflicts as political launching pads, which it massively deployed in the bitter electoral campaign of calumny against President Jonathan of the PDP in the build-up to the 2015 presidential election, and which subsequently swept Jonathan out of power.
The present government and its foot soldiers have not refuted the gamut of these allegations that have been trending for years. As a matter of fact, top officials of this APC-led government have wittingly and unwittingly admitted to this very telling label.
This has led to the violent regional agitations in the South-East by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOD), the Yoruba Nation in the South-West, etcetera. Evidently, those of us who witnessed the events that snowballed into the civil war know the fact that, since that nationwide pogrom, Nigeria has never been so divided along ethnic, religious and geopolitical lines.
Where then can our country, under such disruptive forces, find peace, unity and progress? President Buhari’s second tenure will end in May 2023. Where and who should the country turn to at this critical time? These questions are as important as the concern over the future of Nigeria.
At this juncture, many people may be wondering: Why GEJ in 2023? Of course, from all indications, the GEJ factor in the 2023 elections is pivotal to the survival of democracy, which is anchored on peace, unity and progress.
More importantly, power moving to the South will definitely create that political and power balance between North-South power rotation circles, that is, after eight years of the Buhari administration (North’s turn).
We live at a perilous time in our country, where the government appears to be accountable to no one. No country can be called free which is governed by absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the country is today.
If there is any time that Nigeria needs a national character, a statesman who promotes the country and its people above self, a man who has amassed more national and international confidence and accolades after he left power, that ‘hero’ that Koyenikan talks about is GEJ.
Arguably, GEJ is one of the most respected African voices in the world among former leaders in the African continent. The youths miss their freedom of expression, media and association under him.
Among the contemporary national leaders of our dear country Nigeria, GEJ is definitely the most accepted national leader in Nigeria who is respected openly across political divides. Members of the ruling party and top officials of this government confessed and apologized to GEJ for working against him in 2015 because time proved them wrong and him (GEJ) right on economy, political accommodation, tolerance and humility.
Among several refrains that GEJ wrote in our political lexicon is that “My ambition does not worth the blood of any Nigerian” in a country where elections have been ignominiously described as a war or a do or die affair. In one of his valedictory interviews ahead of the 2015 presidential elections, GEJ clearly stated that, “the choice in the coming election is not between President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari, or between PDP and APC; it is between freedom and retrogression”.
Of course, Nigerians were goaded into making their fatal choice and today, we are buying our freedom with the blood of our citizens, a very costly price indeed.
If we must move forward as a country, we must jettison ethnicity, religious and primordial interest so that we can live together as a harmonious entity and the only national figure that can forge that bond in our current history is GEJ.
As Albert Einstein once stated, “the only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance”, which is what some elements in the Buhari government and certain conservatives in the North are trying to exhibit. The coming election in 2023 and, of course, Nigeria is greater than any region, group or individuals.
If by any means power is retained in the North in 2023, then it would become very clear that the North is creating a very dangerous imbalance in the already shaky system. It means that the region is sowing the wind and it would, without fail, harvest the whirlwind, which would finally nail the coffin of the entity called Nigeria.
It is obvious to the discerning minds that the North has been making fatal errors in its politics of regional interest as exemplified in the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua and the current President Buhari. Unfortunately, all these are as a result of visionary leadership whose voice provides clear direction and focus.
That is why despite producing more presidents and heads of government in Nigerian history, we remain the most underdeveloped and impoverished region and people. In other words, the region needs to play its politics well this time.
Nigeria needs a national cohesion. The country needs to return to the winning ways among the comity of nations under a truly inspirational leadership and not the other way round. There is an urgent need to rebuild and reunite the different entities that are hurting and blowing hot as a result of obvious marginalization and exclusion in the governance structure under the current dispensation. It would amount to betrayal of common sense and friendship between the North-South power structure.
• Alhaji Jalingo is based in Wukari, Taraba State