J. Gilbert -
Sitting on the dining table does not always demand that partakers eat food or drink liquor. Some of the greatest deals were stroke at table talks. It is in such moments that parties get to see themselves eye ball to eye as there is no heap of pounded yam to barricade anybody’s views towards the other as in Chinua Achebe’s fictitious ‘Things Fall Apart’ that has mirrored our society perfectly.
For Nigeria, the wilderment as to why table talks are often feared regardless of the gravity of such needs that may warrant them is endless. This is a major reason why our sharing formula when it concerns resources, power and even death and human orchestrated disasters are beyond description, faulty. Will anyone be in rabbit’s hole if like the North, West and South-South, the South East produces Nigeria’s President for the first time come 2023? While the two main political Parties; APC and PDP do remember now that zoning was never a part of their various constitutions, they need a swift reminder that every single region has benefitted from that gentle-man’s agreement with the exception of the South East. In order to eject zoning, the South-East has to benefit from that unwritten policy before its jettisonability. For the sake of facticity, since the return to democracy in 1999, We have seen the North/South arrangement. President Olusegun Obasanjo from the South West heralded this in 1999 with Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who hailed from the North East.
Then came President Umaru Yar’Adua from the North West and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan from the South-South in 2007. With the demise of Yar’Adua, Jonathan paired with Namadi Sambo until he lost out during the 2015 election. President Muhammadu Buhari entered in 2015 with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and they will leave office at the expiration of their term in 2023. It will be totally hypocritically for anyone to say that meritocracy should now topple zoning as the Sout-East is merit-laden in human resources too. It has never been a hard read of the handwriting that of the three tiers of our government, Nigerians have no complaints with regards to Local and State Governments in dealing with issues arising from power rotations and injustices at those levels. While pockets of such may exist awhile, they are not as pronounced as obtained in the Federal tier. Authorities should not stay deaf eared to the calls for true federalism, devolution of power and the all dreaded restructuring by the federal Government of General Muhammadu Buhari.
The country has found and brought itself to this point because we all know and agree that right from time, our differences were glaringly clear but we have all pretended we can live together without necessarily convening to understand how that can be achieved in all sincerity. It is this sort of pretentiousness that has debunked any arguments preferred by Dr. Isa Pantami’s proponents and even would-be ones. It is unimaginable that at this time, critical in our national history that security of lives and property is something akin to a Ludo game not taken seriously, a serving minister of the Federal Republic finds himself in the middle of terrorism “allegations” and “romance” and has (right or wrong) thinking Nigerians taking to his defence for mythical reasons. Despite playing the proverbial ostrich at the former stages of his accusation himself, the man has come out to apologize to the shame of his supporters. To them however, this is not enough reason to ever bear in mind that he has ever espoused terrorist views and ideologies. It is for this reason that Nigeria has failed to find appropriate leadership, capable of charting a path clear for this nation to move in the right direction. One fails to find answers as to the satisfactions people derive from defending the indefensible, but this is Nigeria and here, the practice is common place. That the Minister of Communication and digital communication is on the United States’ terror list is enough shame for anyone to associate themselves with him, in a “saner clime” like we say in our country.
What is the point in handing goats over to a hyena for care and protection? It may well be that we have not seen enough terror to allow the alarm bells ring so much so that Pantami does not only resign but face thorough investigation and sincere de-radicalization. Him being behind the data of civil and law abiding citizens is handing over We The People to a predator under the guise of a protector. For this government, its handling of insecurity has been nothing less than creating some comic skits at a funeral ceremony, a joke taken too seriously in the direst of times. One cannot imagine or attempt to get to the root of the whole situation around the Eastern part of the country. That police stations and Headquarters can be easily attacked is a viable option to consider outside the shores of Nigeria against banditry, School children abductions and Boko Haram attacks for comic relief or a laughter session. These tragedies occur repeatedly without the slightest response by government or even arrest of perpetrators. In this regard, the violence and killings against innocent lives appears to go round without any federal character reflection. This is partly responsible for the feeling that the attack of police stations is about giving the South East a bad name in order to hang it. If this theorem is water-tight or anything worthy of reckoning, it is the unfairest way to treat a people whose offense is seeking for equity, justice and fairness.
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