by Akin Osuntokun

He is today the most passionate canvasser for the APC and has endeavoured to persuade me to join his party. This mission has ended in flare ups on two occasions and he has threatened to lead a public party delegation to overawe me at the next attempt.

The political misfortune that befell the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South-west in 2010 gathered pace and momentum with the 2011 general election. In the space of one month the PDP governors of Ekiti and Osun States were relieved of their positions by two judgments of the appeal court under the leadership of Justice Ayo Salami. He presided over the panel that sat over the Osun State appeal and the earlier one of Ekiti State was heard by Justice Clara Ogunbiyi and others.

Asked why he tended to appoint the same set of justices to hear the cases, Justice Salami said they were the only ones he could trust. He more or less reiterated the same view at a forum organised by the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) two weeks ago. If those views are genuine reflections of the state of the judiciary, then Nigeria is in trouble.

The general election of 2011 took off from where the judgments of 2010 stopped and completed the rout of the PDP from governance position in the South-west. There was no let up to the misfortune as the PDP National Assembly members yielded to the candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on an industrial scale. The wholesale swap created a nuisance value for the new APC incumbents and they employed it to wreak maximum damage on the PDP. They colluded with PDP fifth columnists to install the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, against the express wish and directive of the majority party. By this action, they fomented disharmony and disequilibrium in the PDP (and by extension Nigeria itself) which had zoned the position to the South-west.

Beyond partisanship and in so doing, the APC legislators wilfully deprived the South-west of representation at the highest echelons of government and are directly responsible for the marginalisation of the Yoruba in the current political configuration in Nigeria. They should be made to account for this at the coming elections.

The understated definition of the behaviour of Tambuwal is anti-party activity and lack of political fidelity and principle — going against the explicit directives of his party and teaming up with opponents to undermine and destabilise the platform that brought him to office — in the first instance. The double tragedy of Tambuwal’s misdemeanour is the news floating around that he is set to defect to the APC and probably take the Speakership with him to his new destination. The rumour is thick in the air that he is one of the presidential hopefuls of the APC. If that is the case and he goes ahead to pick the ticket he will start his race against significant headwinds. The first important huddle of his obstacle race will result from his cruel insensitivity to the South-west — a zone he deprived of the opportunity to occupy a befitting seat at the national dining table. Some of us from the South-west will remind him of this self-centred opportunism and disregard when he comes to profess his love for the zone. One bad turn deserves another.

I have been severally told and it may well be the case that Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso has done well in his primary assignment of governing Kano State. In addition to his rich political resume, this is another good credential in aid of his presumed presidential aspiration. It is up to his party to decide on what becomes of his aspiration but I have two strong reservations on his prospects. They are encapsulated in his tendentious regionally hawkish and arrogant positions on national issues. The other day he was reported as saying ‘we’ will not allow an additional state to be created in the South-east zone. That is the first time I heard of anyone from another zone threatening to stop the creation of state in the other. Kwankwaso is not bound to share any antipathy against Major Hamza Al-Mustapha but going so far as to publicly spearhead a reception party to welcome him back to Kano is the height of indiscretion and insensitivity to the feelings of many Nigerians — for whom Mustapha is the anti-hero.

My position on the eligibility of General Mohammadu Buhari for the office of the president of Nigeria is too well known to warrant a recapitulation here but of course one man’s poison is another man’s sweet cup of tea.

Besides, since I’m not a fan of APC, there is a sense in which my unsolicited assessment of their potential presidential candidates can be interpreted as that of an agent provocateur setting them up against the candidates who best stand the chance of coasting home to victory at the 2015 presidential poll! The logic that ties together all touted presidential aspirants on the platform of the APC is the adoption of the zoning formula originally enunciated by the PDP. The field is further narrowed down by the observation that the Middle Belt or the Christian North is not showing any particular interest in seeking to become president on either party platform. For the APC, it can be reasonably adduced that the ticket is reserved for the far (or Muslim) North. On this score, a situation has uniquely arisen that can best be understood by what sociologists call the theory of social reproduction which ‘refers to the emphasis on the structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next’.

This phenomenon is often complemented by the inertia of power which ‘is a power of resisting-by which everybody endeavours to preserve its present state’. As contemporary presidential politics unfolds in the APC, it is discernable that, wittingly or inadvertently, the Hausa-Fulani, to the exclusion of other sub-nationalities, has the run of the field. Even within this politically dominant exclusive group, the charge is sometimes made that the North-west Fulani arrogate to themselves higher political reckoning over their North-east counterparts.

Personally I’m inclined to believe that this is inadvertent and not deliberate. The problem about social and political inequality is that without intending it as such, it has a way of perpetuating itself. If Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his lieutenants in the western regional government did not introduce the free primary education policy when they did, a caste system would probably have, by now, emerged among the Yoruba. If the century long struggle to acquire the right to vote and be voted for by African Americans did not succeed, Barack Obama would not have the opportunity to prove his mettle as an exceptional President of America. Before him were the world historic figures of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

To suggest that the contemporary history of the defunct Northern region cannot be fully comprehended without reference to Hausa- Fulani hegemony is as true as to say that Shehu Usman Dan Fodio and his descendants founded the Sokoto caliphate on military and religious conquest. The subsisting Hausa-Fulani political predominance hacks back to the antecedence of the Sokoto caliphate and its Fulani-based theocratic hierarchy. And if the other ethnic and sub ethnic nationalities within the region are unperturbed and indifferent to their subordination then the caliphate and its standard bearers must be commended for exemplary political management skills in securing the happy and voluntary submission of others to the underlying socio-political order. Worthy of note in this regard is the 19th century legacy of the sophisticated statecraft displayed in the exchange of diplomatic demarches between the Shehu of Bornu and the Sultan of Sokoto to douse supremacist tension between the two.

The APC presidential politics was foreshadowed and foretold by the representative figures of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Presidents Shehu Shagari and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who are all Fulani. With the exception of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, all elected Nigerian chief executives of Northern origin were Fulani. Balewa is actually the exception that proves the rule-when it is recalled that he explicitly served as proxy for his leader, Ahmadu Bello, as the Prime Minister of Nigeria. The latter famously snubbed conformity to the norm of the parliamentary system of government — where the leader of the majority party is expected to assume the headship of the government — in this case, the federal government of Nigeria and chose to send his deputy to stand in for him.

Kashim Ibrahim Imam is one of the few members of our generation who has successfully transcended the regional-national political divide. He has put to good use his early Lagos cosmopolitan exposure as a student of Kings College, Lagos, where he bonded with fellow students of different ethnic and regional background.

He has his legs well rooted and planted in Borno politics and has his head successfully mingling in the air of national politics. He is
perhaps the most successful farmer among his contemporaries all over Nigeria and knows how to navigate Nigeria’s casino economy. The fact that he was consecutively the governorship candidate of the PDP in Borno State in the 2003 and 2007 elections suggests he is a formidable grassroots politician. Perhaps in deference to the logic of his height, he does not do things in small measures. He is today the most passionate canvasser for the APC and has endeavoured to persuade me to join his party. This mission has ended in flare ups on two occasions and he has threatened to lead a public party delegation to overawe me at the next attempt.

The truth is that I increasingly tend to feel lonely in the PDP while I’m hedged all round at family and friendship levels by members of Labour party (LP) and APC. It has got so bad that it has steadily chipped away at my social life but I’m comforted in the belief that my present persuasion is a vocation, a calling. Somebody has to stand up in the public space to give balance to the near one sided hypocritical narrative in the media today. By the way, is it a coincidence that my earlier three presidential preferences from the North (Dangiwa Umar, Nuhu Ribadu and Aliko Dangote) are all Hausa-Fulani? With the potential candidacy of Kashim Imam, the cause of political equity and inclusiveness is better served within the North itself. And for me personally it will serve as atonement for my unintentional Hausa-Fulani bias.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.