All those who believe Tinubu has any plan to make a South East person president of Nigeria are deluded. The script he is following is simple: power will forever rotate between the Fulani North and his Lagos axis, and “Yibo” — which includes the South South and North Central — will never smell Aso Rock.
This idea did not originate with Tinubu. It began with Yar’Adua. He was the one who concluded that other parts of Nigeria were too weak politically to contest power against an alliance of the Fulani North and a Lagos-led South West.
Recall his presidential campaign of 1992. The late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua — former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, under General Obasanjo’s military government, and allegedly murdered in prison custody under General Abacha — won the SDP presidential ticket with ease by promising the vice-presidential slot to every notable South West politician.
In those days, South West politicians envied South East politicians for having secured the VP ticket under Shagari. They did not rest until they brought Shagari’s government down.
Yar’Adua recognized their uncanny ability to play spoiler in any arrangement where they were not principal players. He concluded they were the only real threat to Fulani hegemony, and that the wisest move was to bring the South West under the North’s wing — a seeming power-sharing arrangement through rotation, in which any South West president would in practice remain a Northern puppet.
This is the philosophy that brought Tinubu to power, and he is working hard to sustain it. The only complication is that his greed has alarmed the Northern hegemonists. They now want power back — but not to hand it to an Igbo man.
Obi, again, is the spoiler in the works. Yar’Adua never anticipated that an extraordinary figure like Obi, with genuine national appeal, would emerge.
Tinubu is trying to scam Igbo leaders into surrendering the South East’s best chance yet at producing a transformative national leader. Those who fall for it do so out of their own greed and self-loathing.
Our people say that from the morning, you can tell what the day will look like. What has Tinubu actually done for the South East? Has he treated the region with any respect? In his appointments, he vowed that no South East person would ever hold a politically sensitive post under him — and true to his word, none does. The South East remains the least represented zone in his government. During the 2023 campaign, he stood in Enugu, in front of South East people, and boasted that the best they could expect from him was bread soaked in water.
The only “sin” Goodluck Jonathan committed was that South East people were visible in his government — regardless of the fact that he worked to ensure sensitive appointments had genuine national spread. The few Igbos who served did so mostly as technocrats appointed on merit, and they served the country well. But even that modest visibility was too much for the power hegemons of the North and South West to accept. Jonathan had to be brought down for it — though, in my view, he was also foolish enough to fuel that hostility by appearing to pursue a third term in office.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
