Nigeria: 2011 Presidency - a Northern Candidate Not Viable

22 November 2010
opinion

As a northerner I must confess that the zoning controversy has been embarrassing. The politics of the issue is quite pathetic especially in the way it deliberately stokes the embers of ethnicity and geo-politics at a time we should all be distancing our governance from such primordial considerations and embracing true democratic ideals. Whatever informed the original sin of adopting a zoning arrangement in 1999 was crippled at birth due to the overriding counter-impact of the Nigerian constitution, which expressly outlaws any arrangement that purports to shut out any Nigerian from freedom to vote and be voted for.

It is absurd that the unpatriotic and self-seeking schemes of military despots should become the cornerstone of our democratic dispensation. June 12 is after all a military malady, which should have been quarantined along with all the other manifestations of military dictatorship and, by the same token, the emergency adoption of General Olusegun Obasanjo to be Nigeria's President in 1999 cannot by any stretch of the imagination be construed as the popular wish of Nigerians-east, west or north. General Obasanjo was packaged out of prison and implanted in Aso Villa solely as an exit strategy for the marooned military politicians hiding behind General Abdulsalami, desperate to escape from their sinking ship. Obasanjo was never the choice of the Yoruba in 1999, even if they wanted to be compensated for the Abiola tragedy.

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