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damol66@yahoo.co.uk Berlin, Germany

2003 ELECTION: ASSUMING ETHNICITY RULES

or quite some months now, many Yoruba writers have been trying to express their fundamental right of opinion by endorsing the attitude of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and their Yoruba example. In their well articulated essays, they have endeavoured to give credence to the shrewdly contrived decision of the AD not to field any other presidential candidate to compete with the Yoruba's most sagacious, most diplomatic, most strategic and most ideological son, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, but rather to vote massively for him as their consensus candidate. In the same process, they have tried to castigate and ridicule the non-Yoruba ethnic groups for fielding candidates. They have most arrogantly condemned the Igbo people in this vein and further went on to blatantly blackmail them, making efforts to instigate the people of South-South against the South-East, and to instigate the people of South-East against themselves. Even when they attempt to disguise their creativity in borrowed robes of friendship, their choice of words, imagery and allusions reveal nothing more than a conceit of hatred. However the essence of this essay is not to defend the Igbo people.

After going through the breakdown of the distribution of the eligible voters for this years election, a certain question began to strain my sense of thought: Assuming that ethnicity rules and everybody has to vote on the basis of ties of consanguinity or ethnic sentiment or on the basis of the colonial geographical divide, what chances does a Yoruba man or an Igbo man or an Edo man or a person from any of the southern minority tribes have in the presidential election? Assuming that everybody borrows the example of Afenifere and the Yoruba AD and endorses on the basis of ethnicity, can Obasanjo easily emerge the winner of the next election? Before we can answer this question, let us look at the summarized analysis of the registered voters as published by the Vanguard of April 6:

"At the bulk zonal level, the North West zone comprising Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi and Jigawa States, has the highest voters of over 15 million, followed by the South-West (Lagos, Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti States) with over 12 million.

Northeast zone (Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Borno, Yobe, Taraba) posts 9 million voters, South-South zone (Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom) has 8.9 million voters, leaving the North Central (Niger, Nasarawa, Kwara, Kogi, Plateau, Benue, Abuja) and South-East zone (Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Anambra states) with 8.3 million and 7.2 million voters respectively."

In this analysis given above, one can easily notice the answer to my question lurking somewhere behind the lines. That is to say that, ceteris paribus, the North has a total of 32.9 million votes or thereabout against their southern partners with a total of 28.1 million votes. In a further analysis, the number of the so called "bulk" votes of the North West is more than those of all the Yorubas put together (including those of the non-Yoruba people living in the congested Lagos).

Against this background, I find it very difficult to unveil the reason why the Yoruba people with their leaders of political strategy and thought have been clamouring for ethnocentric voting. They have decreed by consensus to vote their son-of-the-soil, while at the same time expecting the other ethnic groups to vote for a Yoruba man. Is that what they call shrewdness? I wish they should understand that having shamefully rekindled the embers of ethnicity in the Nigerian politics in this present century, they should not expect any non-Yoruba man to vote for Obasanjo as he has been officially declared a Yoruba candidate by his own kinsmen. I can assure the Afenifere and Yoruba AD that a great majority of the North will vote their fellow Northerner as they no longer have any justification for casting a vote for a Yoruba man in a wake of ethnocentrism.

If I were the Yoruba people, I would have consolidated the rare opportunity by preaching sermons of national consciousness than to meddle in cheap blackmailing and insidious intrigues against the rest of the country and the southern partners in particular. Now it is too late to convince even the northern Christians to vote for Obasanjo who is the bane of their untold suffering in the hands of their Muslim brothers in the North, with Obasanjo`s introduction of Sharia in the Nigerian constitution in his first coming and defending it since his second coming. Nor would the Northern Muslims favour him against their fellow Muslim whose least performance can never jeopardise their interest. After all, Sharia itself is already on the ground. What it now needs is a capable and reliable hand to nurture the already planted seed, which (according to Prof. Jubril Aminu in his interview with allafrica.com, and with his reference to the Koran) should be a gradual process.

If I were the Yoruba people, I would consolidate the rare opportunity by advising Oba-Sanjo to consider the right of the oil-producing states than to canvass the policy of divide and rule against the Igbo people and their neighbouring South-South. In doing this I would have tried to clean the tears in their eyes and grant them at least some of their rights to enable them forget some of their human losses. I would have signed the on-shore/off-shore dichotomy abrogation bill to write my name in history as a man in favour of fairness and justice.

If I were the Yoruba People, I would consolidate the rare opportunity by mending fences with their Igbo partners than to indulge in exhuming the lingering Yoruba-Igbo feud that had once gone into oblivion, having been overtaken by events. However, the greatest contribution of the Yoruba press and commentators since the return of Oba-Sanjo has been to ridicule the Igbo people and to cast aspersions on them in feckless and unfounded arguments that rather chase the shadow than stay on current and relevant issues. In fact they are at their best, displaying their linguistic expertise whenever they set out to rewrite the Igbo history to suit their interest. This reminds me- in one of the recent publications, one Yoruba writer claimed that there were many Yoruba people who tried to fight for the Igbo people during the war. He mentioned colonel Banjo and colonel Alele. I don't want to dispute this assertion, whether it is right or wrong.

The fact is that in any ethnic group in Nigeria, there are at least a few people who stand for justice and fairness. To this end I should at any time commend the efforts of Wole Soyinka to bring the war to an end through peaceful means- A venture which led to his detention and later to his exile. However, as for Banjo and Alele, they were tried along with their accomplice Ifeajuna (an Igbo man) and were found guilty of sabotage. There was also living evidence of people who testified against them. Even after the war, some men from my town who survived their plots told the story.

Furthermore, just as the Yoruba commentators would want us to appreciate their helping hands, we would also expect them to appreciate the series of help and cooperation the Igbo people have been giving them for so long, especially the fact that Awolowo was set free from prison where he was serving a life jail for attempting to topple the government of the federal republic of Nigeria. But Awolowo`s reward to the Igbo people was an excruciating suffering.

It should be remembered that Awolowo agreed with Ojukwu to declare an Oduduwa republic on his release, but he chose the people he had earlier rejected, joining forces with them to exterminate the Igbo nation. Even Adekunle who had carried genocide against Biafra attempted to justify his action after the war but stuttered in a hollow argument, though he was able to convince his feeble people with that. In the process he claimed they joined the North because the Biafrans headed on to annex Lagos. That was a blatant lie. The Biafrans headed towards Lagos to join forces with Oduduwa Republic as Awolowo and Ojukwu had earlier agreed - not knowing that Awolowo had since betrayed them. You should better set history straight for the posterity.

Back to 2003 election: If I were the Yoruba people, I would try to evaluate the existing performance of His Excellency to be able to forecast how he might perform again if he happens to win. In doing that I would remember that he had declared fighting corruption as his main objective, but failed woefully. I would also remember that neither in power supply nor in logistics did he provide a lasting solution. I would be more objective to understand that the GSM is rather a global trend and should not be counted as Obasanjo`s achievement as it is the right of the citizens to enjoy such a trend. Or can any government of Nigeria boast of giving us Internet (another global trend).

If I were Obasanjo, after passing "through the valley of the shadows of death," I would do no evil. I wouldn't have massacred the people of Odi and Zhaki Ibiam. Nor would I have pitched my tent on the repugnant dirty surface of vendetta against my opponents, especially the members of the National Assembly. I wouldn't have destroyed the image of ICPC just because of the selfish interest of converting it into an instrument of oppression and vendetta. I wouldn't have surrounded myself with sycophants and selfish corrupt advisers who would advise me to remove Vincent Azie for having displayed his allegiance and loyalty to His Excellency and the entire citizens of Nigeria by contributing a great deal to the cause of fighting corruption. Rather I would have commended him for unveiling the already hidden crime by the government officials and their agents.

If I were the Yoruba people, I would first of all try to correct the ills in Yorubaland before condemning others. I would have noticed the disunity in Yorubaland before I begin to say that the Igbo people are not united. I would have realised that being jealous of the Ijebu people because they are richer and more influential (or seem to be dominant) cannot solve our problem. I would have first understood that ridiculing the Oyo people for being conservative and "backward" is like chasing the shadow. I would first understand that and possibly correct it, before I begin to see and condemn such attitude in the other tribes.

If I were the Yoruba people, I would not aim at destroying the national image of AD by carving out a Yoruba AD in a multi national Nigeria. I should readily know that such a venture is not only a mere leap in the dark, but also a gross misconduct in the Nigeria`s democratic process.

Assuming ethnicity finally rules in the next presidential election, those who claim to be Awoists "to the core" should not expect to come near the Aso Rock. Then at the end of the election the Afenifere and the Yoruba AD would begin to realise their error. More over, with this return of ethnicity, Yorubaland may also witness the return of chaos shortly before and after the governorship election in an unprecedented rate as the country waits to watch the AD and the PDP candidates in the Southwest engage themselves in series of dramatic and nerve breaking squabbles. I wish they should be careful about it, so that they don't cause too many casualties on themselves.