The South-South welcomes this type of trust-building initiatives but is justifiably leery for some reasons. For many years in Nigerian politics, major role-players and political stakeholders from the South-South aligned with the different interests groups in the north in the hope that the close ties will help actualise the developmental potentials of the region. But the outcome was often condescending exploitation which came to a brazen zenith when elements of the northern political elite resisted the constitutional right of Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 election and ganged up through the Ciroma committee to produce a northern president at all cost; a project that they have now taken to the opposition party APC.
The South-South has never experienced such condescension from the South-West, South East or North Central. Each of these zones have helped to forge mutually beneficial relationships with role players from other zones and embrace national fraternity and solidarity in politics and other spheres, hence the South-South is often flummoxed at the motivations for such unrelenting resistance in power sharing and affirmative zoning from the North-East and North-West. This is why the call by Abdulkadir is a desirable re-affirmation of national political solidarity.
Mohammed Abdulkadir’s acknowledgment that “it was clearly best to share power affirmatively with the acquiescence of all parties, than from the pyrrhic victory of fractious regional political conquest”, is a very welcome departure from the Ciroma group’s belligerence. But while we accept in principle the benefits of zoning and power sharing as an important democratising device, especially in Africa where ethno-religious differences confound politics, the earnest desire of the people of the South-South is not desperate central power control. The desire of the South-South as well as other zones in the South has always been an agreement at the centre to devolve power for more effective participation from the ground up to the federal centre.
The reasons for the zealous support of the South-South for regional devolution are obvious, especially when instantiated using the developmental pace of the zone. In the first republic when regions developed their key infrastructure, the South-South had several fast developing growth points, all its maritime assets were utilized fully, oil and gas was a complement and not a substitute for its other international commodities, and the aids of trade such as road and rail infrastructure were given prompt attention. As a result of these later facts, the vital human resources necessary for growth remained within the zone and helped develop themselves and their communities rapidly.
Today, after years of centralised struggle for power in which the South-South was critically marginalised despite its huge contribution to the federal centre, most of our youths are economic refugees in the commercial capital of Lagos and the political capital of Abuja. However we are hopeful. The South-South is hopeful not because the President is from the zone, but because his transformation agenda has made these key issues of regional participation more salient, especially after the national conference.
We are also hopeful because unlike others before him, the president coming from a marginalised background, saw reasons to end disparities in infrastructure development. He ensured the even spread of federal tertiary infrastructure by creating federal universities in previously neglected places like Oye Ekiti, Dutsi-ma, Okerenkoko, Kashere and Ndufe-Alike. Aviation infrastructure revival has seen similar inclusivity in spread.
Also, knowing the limitations faced by the marginalised Nigerian, particularly in moving goods and individuals around the country, he has embarked on a rapid revival of the vital rail infrastructure that will bring back forgotten towns and cities which were dying of neglect back into the national economic mainstream, and thereby re-enabling participation.
To underscore the devolving impact of the revival of rail by the president’s transformation agenda, it is germane to recall the words of the influential German economist Georg Friedrich List, who indicated that railways play the following vital roles for national development: For national defense, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army; for improving the culture of the nation, it brings talent, knowledge and skill of every kind readily to market; for national logistics, it secures the community against dearth and famine, and against excessive fluctuation in the prices of the necessaries of life; and for integration it promotes the spirit of the nation, as it has a tendency to destroy the Philistine spirit arising from isolation and provincial prejudice and vanity. This is not unlike our own national experience, many who are educated today, had parents who worked in many Nigerian towns peacefully as railway or power sector workers. These are areas that the president have given hope of a revival.
In other words, while some have made it a primary duty to stop Jonathan at all cost because he is not a northern president and are killing and maiming, creating destructive and disruptive narratives to make disorder and chaos the main news in the media, he has calmly been reviving the regions and rural small towns to ensure inclusivity and more participation of more people in economic activities, generating future opportunities. These are the primary function of democratic leadership, the creation of societal welfare by generating multiple opportunities.
We are glad that Abdulkadir and other northern elite will support the president’s re-election bid to finish this transformation and allow these revivals to bear fruit. We know a few people remain unconvinced, but that is democracy, the majority of people will reaffirm the president’s quiet but steady work. However, we agree with Abdulkadir, that when a zone is affirmatively opportuned to have access to central power as the South West has very gracefully demonstrated, it easily cedes the opportunity to others. It is in the same spirit of inclusivity, that the South-South will fully support President Jonathan for re-election in 2015, and will gladly do same for a northern candidate who will promote the spirit of regional devolution and full participation of Nigerians in governance come 2019, a value that the national conference has endorsed and that President Jonathan’s transformation agenda has ably propelled.
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