Last week, two unrelated events: a Stakeholders Round-table on Northern Nigerian Youth Development, organised by Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation; and a valedictory Senate session in honour of the late Senator Ifeanyi Ubah ( Anambra South) facilitated this write-up.
The first event illustrates how leaders offload politically sought burdens from their heads to elsewhere. Whilst the second proposed a legislative succession template, reducing a legislative chair to a family seat, inheritable by the spouse, son, daughter, or brother of a deceased legislator to facilitate, according to Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, continuity and honour.
Represented at the first event by Vice President Shettima, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, PBAT, urged Northern leaders to seek robust solutions to their problems. This admonition effectively transfers presidential burden to the people. This is a perfect reflection of the changing relations between the president and citizens, before and after the elections. The call on Northern leaders underscores the failure of the renewed hope regime, to articulate solutions to Northern problems.
As presidential candidate, the Jagaban couldn't have framed his request to Northern leaders as it was posed to them at the round-table. As a candidate, he couldn't have urged them to seek solutions, robust or not, to their problems. He would, head over heels, profusely offer to seek and solve the problems afflicting the region.
As party leader and presidential candidate, the Jagaban was well acquainted with the challenges in the North. As a candidate, he desperately warmed up to the Northern electorate and leaders whose arsenal: massive electoral power, could shape the destiny of any politician. But after the elections, roles had to change, transforming the vulnerable party of yesterday( candidate BAT) into a powerful president, shaping the destiny of the powerful electorate of yesterday, now rendered powerless and vulnerable to the neo-liberal policies of the regime.
After accelerating the economic downturn in the region by the removal of fuel subsidy, almost two years ago, the economic outlook is still bleak; substantial farmlands are lying fallow due to insecurity; millions of children are out of school, etc. The presidential assertions at the roundtable that Nigeria can't prosper unless every part of the nation thrives, and whatever disrupts the development of one region retards the nation, are contradicted by the economic philosophy of the regime: emilokun, operationalised as the turn of a particular people and a section of the nation to rule, which facilitated the appointment of ministers for finance, petroleum resources, marine and blue economy, solid minerals, trade and industry, power and communications ministries; governor of CBN, and CEOs of BOI, FIRS, the Customs Service, NIRSAL, BPE, BPP, etc, from that section, venting fullest expression to the exclusive ownership of the nation by that geopolitical zone, projecting emilokun as an ethnic and sectional prerogative. Nothing stops those vested with the control of the emilokun ministries and agencies from disproportionately channelling public projects, and economic empowerment schemes to their people and geopolitical section.
The massive economic powers in select ministries and public agencies, greatly dwarfing the trickles from the FAAC to the 19 Northern states and LGAs, can't be entrusted to those outside the emilokun enclave, effectively edging other sections, including the North, out of the economic corridors of the nation, setting them backward by decades, if not a century.
After the North has disproportionately voted the APC into power, its government has disproportionately relegated it backward by reserving juicest parts of the national cake for those whose turn is to rule, and offering paltry crumbs of the cake to the North and other sections. The neoliberal precepts of the regime which eliminated fuel subsidy; increased unemployment; hiked the inflationary rate, glossed over the developmental impact of education, regarding it as a cost centre only, wouldn't allow the Almajiri and Out of School Commission initiative of the administration to effectively function.
At the second event, Senator Ndume deployed legislative esprit de corps to justify the reduction of a legislative seat to an inheritable chair, spiced with appeals of continuity and honour, campaigning for Mrs Uchenna Uba, the widow of the late Senator to replace her late husband in the red chamber. The grief, appeals and legislative esprit de corps may cut ice on the floor of the red chamber, but wouldnt do so in the YPP( Young Peoples Party) and APC families in the Anambra Southern Senatorial District.
Reducing a legislative chair to an inheritable property paves way for every Tom to contest for a legislative seat. If every Dick could partake in a legislative contest, it isn't certain that he would be a good parliamentarian. And If every Harry could become a legislator, it could produce poor legislative outcomes. And If every spouse is eligible to inherit a legislative seat, society can't preclude the emergence of lady Macbeths with eyes fixated on legislative inheritance.
The Senator Ndume template could send signals that there is more to being a legislator than legislative functions, justifying the enclosure of each National Assembly, restricting entry to those without blood relations to existing members, portraying it as a private political club, rather than a great political institution.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
The transfer of presidential burden to Northern leaders underscores the peripherisation of the North in the nation, and lack of political commitment to frontally attack its challenges. As if they anticipated the presidential challenge to them, a group of Northern leaders constituted themselves into a League of Northern Democrats, LND, seeking robust solutions to the problems in Northern Nigeria.
Appreciating the commitment of the League in reinventing the North, a repositioned ACF is disposed to partnering with the League in shouldering the burden offloaded by PBAT to Northern leaders. The emilokun-led administration should be a propound lesson for Northern socio political and cultural groups(ACF, LND, MBF, NEF, etc,) to work together to regain the lost political and economic glory of the region.
The Ndumes shouldn't deploy grief, emotive appeals and legislative fraternity to deny the people the right to determine who should succeed deceased political leaders.
· Jahun, a public affairs commentator, wrote from Dutse, Jigawa State.
