How do we protect the interests of the SW in 2023?
SW has produced the President in OBJ and the VP in Osinbajo. SW young Turks have held strategic positions in the bureaucracy. What then would best serve the strategic interest of the SW in an emergent Nigeria in 2023?
Would it be an enduring partnership with the far North to perpetually control the leverage of power to the exclusion of the NC, SS and SE, although the emergence of Atiku from the PDP has made this a far less likely scenario? Some are dreaming that. Would it produce an enduring benefit for the SW? What would be its cost? Would the SW be able to pay it?
Let us look at the present partnership with the far North. What has been its overall benefit to the SW? Has it increased the prosperity of the Region? Has is raised the standard of living of the people of the Region? Has it ensured their security and improved their sense of well being?
If the answer to the above is in the negative, would the reason lie in the fact the SW is the junior partner in the alliance? Would the indices be different if the SW where the senior partner with the far North in the control of power at the Centre?
To answer that question, we have to consider the opportunity cost of such situation. What would shift if the SW should occupy the Presidency in 2023 with the help of the far North? How much would the nation invest in holding down other disgruntled and disaffected sections of the country? What would be the cost in terms of distractions to the Government and the compulsion to pursue expensive populist policies to “bribe” the people the opportunity cost of which would be more crippling debts and more stunted economic growth?
The SW experienced tremendous growth during the OBJ years, as did the rest of the country, due to the general economic prosperity that those years brought, which were the product of sound, not necessarily, populist programs. OBJ did not pursue any markedly partial attention towards the SW to produce that prosperity for the people of the SW. It was a rub off from the general prosperity of the country but from which the SW benefited more due to its advantageous placing in the economy of the country. The core economic infrastructure of the country is located in the SW by grace of nature and the accident of history.
The SW would therefore profit more from a Nigeria that is competently managed and at peace with itself. That therefore is the strategic interest of the SW. That is what it should pursue in 2023, not necessarily having its own blood in occupation of Aso Rock. The SW already knows the geography of that place. It’s nothing knew to it.
