s jockeying intensifies among several political camps regarding the 2011 presidential elections, an issue has been raised about the appropriateness of President Jonathan contesting in the said elections, in view of the zoning arrangement of the PDP which zoned the office of the president to the north for eight years. This issue has naturally thrown up arguments for and against the proposition that Jonathan can and should contest. The most salient of the arguments against Jonathan contesting is the rupture it will cause to the zoning arrangement of his political party ( The PDP), and the implications that the rupture portends relative to across the board fair political representation. In this context, the north is perceived as being shortchanged from a complete realization of its eight-year shot to govern at the center, as a consequence of Jonathan’s succession of the late Umaru Musa Yar Adua and an elongation of his presidency by a full term, should he be allowed to contest in 2011 and win. The counter argument advances three points as follows: first, that zoning is incompatible with true democracy; second, that the south has less control of the Nigerian state at the center compared with the north when measured in length of time of control, the north having held political power for 37 years to the south’s 12 years; and third, that true political equity and fairness relative to the opportunity to hold the reins of federal control obligates the old Northern and Western Nigeria to support an Eastern Nigerian to hold those reins in 2011.

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The third point of the counter argument is the thrust of this article. The federating units at independence in 1960 were the Northern, Western and Eastern regions. Although political evolution and the successive creation of states have rendered the geopolitical structure of 1960 obsolete, in practice the tripodal structure remains relevant in the formation of informal political and social structures. The tripodal structure is thus a validating principle undergirding this article.

In spite of the balkanization of Nigeria into several states, political unity still exists among these states along the old geopolitical divides, except for the erstwhile eastern region. There is, for example, a northern governors association and a northern senators forum. There are similar groups in the old West, obviously without the old Midwest which was carved out of the old West in 1963. But among the nine states in the erstwhile Eastern Region, there are no comparable bodies that cohere all. The primary cause of this is the Biafran War and its detritus of interethnic suspicion, mistrust and interethnic hatred among the various ethnic groups that make up the erstwhile Eastern region—Ijaw, Igbo, Efik, Annang, Ogoja, Ogoni, Ibibio, Oron and the sub groups of the major ethnic groups.

Seizing upon these difficult issues, the West and the North, some believe, have engaged in opportunistic acts, including malfeasances of government policies to perpetuate them. And they have done so through control of the federal government and the pursuance of policies inimical to the political and socioeconomic progress of the east. Perhaps, the biggest malfeasance of government policy was the use of Igbo property in Port Harcourt as a wedge issue to divide the people of the East. Left on their own, given the new political realities in the aftermath of the war, there was no way the Igbos would have sought to undermine the River’s State government, then controlled by the Ijaws. But the “Abandoned Property” chimera had to be created by those in control of the federal government to keep the East divided, while its oil resources were mined and the proceeds primarily used to develop the rest of Nigeria.

Leaked minutes of a Supreme Military Council meeting during the regime of General Gowon, not long after the Biafran War, revealed a constellation of individuals from the West and the North agreeing to the deliberate underdevelopment of the then Southeastern and Rivers States, two states carved out of the Eastern Region for the non Igbos of that region during the highly combustible period leading to the war. The reason for this infamous act was to deny those states an industrial base backed by federal might, lest the “defeated yet industrious and adventurous Igbos,” whose homeland was close by, take advantage of those industries to rehabilitate themselves sooner than Gowon felt comfortable with. He and Awolowo had wanted to do lasting political and economic damage to the Igbos for the Biafran secession. In effect, this policy collectively punished all of the East for the Biafran War, even though significant parts of Rivers and Southeastern states supported Federal Nigeria.

It could be argued that northern and western elements in the fight to crush Biafra were in it for their interests. Before the first guns in the war were fired slightly more than a month later, Awolowo in a speech delivered to the Western leaders of thought in Ibadan on May 1, 1967 warned that “…The Eastern Region must be encouraged to remain part of the Federation. If the Eastern Region is allowed by acts of omission or commission to secede from or opt out of Nigeria, then the Western Region and Lagos must also stay out of the Federation...” Awolowo’s words were not meant so much to goad Biafra into war, as many Igbos believed, as they were intended to sound an alarm about the West’s apprehension should the outcome of the monumental events occurring in the country change the complexion of Nigeria to a republic consisting of a large North that dwarfed the remaining Western and Midwestern Regions. The implications of such a political arrangement on the political and even territorial survival of the West were too alarming to be ignored or treated lightly. Awolowo made his choice: the West would fight to keep Nigeria one in order to prevent a northern behemoth from completely taking over. Alas, the Northern takeover still happened after the defeat of Biafra and was to last for a very long time, interrupted just twice by Obasanjo’s two stints as head of state.

The Northern interest, then borne by middle belt army officers, was generally to avoid an economic disaster that would be unleashed upon the north if Nigeria were to shatter, for the North would be landlocked and be forced to exist without Eastern oil. More specifically, Middle Belt officers, in spite of their oversized role as the sometime military sword of the North, were really motivated to stop Biafran secession to prevent the existence of a rump Nigeria with an overwhelming demographic advantage to the Hausa/Fulani whom their people have had a love-hate relationship with since Lugard’s amalgamation of 1914. The periodic interethnic crises in Jos pitting the Hausa/Fulani and indigenous Middle Belt people provide a vivid demonstration of this relationship.

In summary, the interests of the North and the West provided the impetuses for their coalescence to stop the Biafran secession. But a competing school of thought on the complicated issues pertaining to the Biafran War propagated by a large segment of the Igbos, avers that congenital hatred for the Igbo people by the Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani was the most powerful factor in the formation of their coalition to wage a war of annihilation against the Igbos. However, this position paints a problematic broad brush that fails to recognize the heroic deeds of people like Wole Soyinka, who was jailed by Gowon for daring to speak up against the injustice being meted out to the Igbo people. In the book, “You Must Set Forth at Dawn,” Soyinka narrated an incident in January 1969 upon his release from prison by Gowon: Journalists had come to the Ibadan airport where Soyinka had been flown from Kaduna Prison. He had a brief statement for them thus, “ to keep Nigeria one, justice must be done.” These words bravely contrasted sharply with the then popular wartime slogan in Nigeria “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.” Soyinka’s uncommon courage and fight for justice for all has continued till this day.

While the Eastern ethnic groups have harbored and demonstrated hatred toward one another, a question arises as to what has occurred to their political and economic interests within the Nigerian state post the cessation of hostilities in the Biafran War in 1970? In published articles, interviews and speeches of the Eastern intelligentsia, and the militant community, there is a discernible element in response to this question, and it is the element of MARGINALIZATION in capitals. Easterners have unanimity in identifying the aspects. They are generally political and economic, and two of the specific aspects are: blocking and/or frustrating the aspirations of Easterners to the highest political office in the land; and less than proportionate investment of federal resources obtained from the East, inside the East.

The consequences of the marginalization have been enormously retrogressive to the East, where there is irreversible environmental damage from oil and gas exploration, where soil erosion has claimed hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, where social infrastructure especially in the Niger Delta such as schools are dilapidated, and hospitals are under equipped or not equipped at all. There is no concerted industrialization that partners the Eastern governments and the federal government. In consequence, an exodus of the East’s best and brightest to the industrialized West where better opportunities abound, which has been going on for decades, continues unabated. Ultimately, the concentration of a nation’s industrial base in one section of its territory is unwise and poses a threat to its long term security.

The disgust that is this marginalization permeates the writings and speeches of the Eastern intelligentsia, and provides the impetus for the violence of MEND. Ken Saro Wiwa during his closing statement at his trial in 1995 stated that “…Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni people loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence.” Recognizing the unfinished work of liberation for his Ogoni people, and facing death, he uttered the following words at his execution “ Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues.”

Professor Ebiegberi Allagoa in a keynote address at the Adaka Boro Day celebrations of the Ijaw National Alliance of the Americas (INAA) in Woodbridge New Jersey on May 24, 2003 stated that “…the contemporary history of Nigeria is confronted with the issues arising from the condition of the Niger Delta: highlighted by the conditions of abject poverty under which the Ijaw and other inhabitants of the region live.”

Edwin Clark, the northern apologist extraordinaire, even acknowledged the utter injustice that aptly describes Nigeria’s treatment of the people of the Niger Delta, a substantial part of which is in the East.

In his essay, “The Niger Delta Question: The Imperatives for peace and progress.”

contained in the book “Oil, Democracy, and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria,” edited by A.A. Ikein, D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha, and S.S Azaiki, and published in 2008, he stated inter alia: “It is due to the uneven development arising from oppression, injustice, marginalization, refusal to abide by the terms upon which the regions came together that Nigerians, particularly from the minority area, cried for a sovereign national conference where all Nigerians would meet to discuss what form of association and government they should have.”

Clark’s un-Clark like call for a sovereign national conference to remedy the intolerable situation was commendable, given his pro north tendencies, and the fact that the North wants nothing to do with a sovereign national conference. Along with the late Melford Okilo, who won a seat for the Northern Peoples Congress in 1964 in a constituency in Ijawland, northern sympathies are woven into Clark’s DNA.

Of pertinence to examine in these complex matters is whether the animosities present among the peoples of the East always existed. Much of the historical material indicate that the current free-wheeling hatred is a by product of colonialism and the political structures created and imposed by the British. The British were interested in the expansion of their economic and political interests as a world power, and the territories of what later became Nigeria were to be subjugated in pursuance of imperialist goals. In doing this, political realities were introduced, regardless of their impact on the people.

The seeds of discontent, sowed during colonialism germinated toxic politics that buffets the fabric of Eastern societies till this day. Toxic politics permeated the politics of the then Eastern Nigeria, where the Igbos, major beneficiaries of the political arrangements bequeathed by the British, were perceived to lord it over the so-called Eastern minorities. Thus when the combustible mixture that poured over the Nigerian political landscape exploded and events spiraled out of control, the East, in spite of the loss of its military officers and civilians to mass murder perpetrated by northerners who did not discriminate between who was Igbo or non-Igbo, could not effectively cohere as was the case with the West and the North. The lack of Eastern unity was exploited to devastating effect by Gowon in a master stroke national geopolitical restructuring, which created twelve states, and carved up the Eastern region and created the southeastern and Rivers states for the non-Igbos of the east.

Writing in his biography, “Nigeria and Biafra: My Story,” Major General Phillip Efiong of the Biafran Army, stated that Gowon’s action “… alienated minority group support for secession… and rendered the position of minority officers and civil servants in the east suspect and almost untenable.” Although, states Efiong further, “when Ojukwu’s call went out to the people to gather in Enugu for the fight, the response was tremendous. People came from all walks of life…the Port Harcourt delegation was one of the largest ( if not the largest) and included large elements from the non-Igbo speaking areas of the former Rivers State. A lot of people came from the former Southeastern state. The minorities did not want to be left out in the fight for Biafra. They volunteered their services like other Easterners...”

But mistakes were made in managing the multiethnic nature of Biafra, for according to Efiong, “Ojukwu and field agents parading fear, suspicion, tyranny, insecurity, and lack of tolerance in the non-Igbo speaking areas of Biafra resulted in the withdrawal of support for the Biafran cause in those areas. They the people of those areas now saw the federal troops as liberators, which was a serious political blunder as far as the Biafran dream was concerned.”

Although interethnic relations soured as a consequence of the above, Efiong insists that, “…the war was not a rebellion against anybody or any government…it was a war of survival to ensure for ourselves and our children, a secure place on the landmass known as Nigeria.”

Biafran accolades were not earned by only the Igbo. There were thousands of non-Igbos who contributed to the war effort. Representative of them in the Biafran elite were such men as the Ijaw born Frank Opigo, who suggested the name Biafra as the name of the Republic; Dr. Frank Leighton who was the Ogoni born co-father of the Ogbunigwe bomb; M.T Mbu, the Biafran foreign affairs minister who is Ogoja born and was in Efiong’s delegation to the surrender ceremonies in Lagos at the end of the war; Ekukinam Bassey, Annang born and administrator of Annang Province; Philip Efiong, Colonel Utuk, Colonel Nsudoh, Colonel Jaja, Major Okilo who were all loyal to Biafra to the bitter end.

The colonial and post colonial periods have consisted of difficult stretches of pain for Easterners, who have borne the brunt of political upheavals, such as the Biafran War and the militant war in the Niger Delta. But pre-colonial east was not awash in interethnic hate as it is today. Indeed, there were healthy socioeconomic relationships, which were strengthened by common cultures and mixed marriages. In their literary work titled, “The Izon and their Igboid Neighbors,” Nwala, Orji and Sokari-George found that “the early Ijaw contact with the Igbos were induced by trade which gave rise to cultural exchange, cross-fertilization of ideas, mutual contribution to the economic and social development, and the evolution of Ijaw settlements in the Igbo speaking areas. Additionally, cordial and peaceful relationships existed between the settler communities and their Igbo hosts.”

The Igbo/Ijaw relationships over the centuries have actually produced a mixed race that is bilingual in places like Opobo, Bonny, Abua and Ogbia, the hometown of President Jonathan. In the Cross River area, the Aro Igbos and the Efik have intermarried for ages and are culturally similar in many respects. The Ngwa Igbos share similarities of culture as well with the Ibibio, with whom they have also intermarried for centuries.

Kenneth Dike in the book “Trade and Politics in Niger Delta,” and Ebiegberi Allagoa in his book, “An Outline History of the Niger Delta,” detailed the patterns, extent and the drivers of socioeconomic relations among the Igboid and Ijaw speaking people in pre-colonial times. The relations reached apogees of high flourish during the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the successor trade in palm oil following the abolishment of the slave trade.

The overarching point is that the peoples of the erstwhile Eastern Region of Nigeria have more in common than today’s interethnic hostile relationships suggest. It is thus imperative that they achieve a multidimensional rapprochement, in order to secure a more just order for themselves and their children in Nigeria. The culmination of this rapprochement must be a coalescence behind President Jonathan as the unopposed candidate of the entire Eastern Region for the 2011 presidential elections.

The cogent reasons for the proposed unequivocal support for Jonathan by the East are: equitable reflection of the federal political arrangement in providing an Easterner the opportunity to lead the country; reducing the relative disadvantage of the East compared to the West and North in the number of years at the helm of affairs of the Nigerian nation; and the demonstrated competency of Jonathan, based on the quality of his governance during the short period he has been in charge as acting president and substantive president.

Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, democratic governance has occurred for twenty years and five months out of the forty nine years of independent national existence. In all the democratic dispensations, the North has controlled executive federal power for twelve years and five months: under Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (five years and three months), Shehu Shagari ( four years and two months), and Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua (three years). The West’s control of democratic federal power was for eight years, all under Olusegun Obasanjo. The east’s control of federal power in a democratic dispensation is all of just one month, under President Jonathan. When respective periodic controls of federal power, both during military and democratic periods, are aggregated, the east comes out worse. The calculations reflect northern control of thirty-six years and five months; the west comes in second at approximately 12 years; and the east just seven months ( Ironsi’s six months and Jonathan’s one month). The North and the West having had their turns at control of governance for so long should, as a matter of equity in representation and making available for the governance of the Nigerian nation the talents of an Eastern president, support the East to produce the next elected president in 2011.

Without prejudice to the current six zonal structure, which is not written into the constitution, but has been adopted as a political process methodology to deal with competing interests in the polity, the tripodal structure seems most appropriate at this juncture of continuing national political evolution to recognize, relative to the presidential contest of 2011. It is also noteworthy that the tripodal structure remains relevant with regard to the north, as pointed out earlier, in its application in forming the Northern governors’ forum. Thus there is no North-central, Northwestern, or Northeastern governors’ forums.

The case for Jonathan is not simply a regional matter. It is also based on the man’s competence and promise as a true national leader. His measured and matured decision making process, self-confidence, erudition, calm and modest manner are all attributes needed to move Nigeria forward. He mirrors Ojukwu’s smarts without the indignation, Gowon’s self-effacing style without the repetitiveness, and Obasanjo’s firmness without the brusqueness all rolled into one. As an accomplished academic and researcher, he possesses an additional ability of rigorous analysis of a problem to better understand it in order to deal with it effectively.

A demonstration of this ability appears in a scholarly chapter titled “Environmental management in a depressed economy,” which he contributed in the book “Oil, Democracy, and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria, edited by A.A. Ikein, D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha, and S.S Azaiki,” In the chapter, Jonathan identified one of the problems bedeviling Nigeria and that has contributed to her stunted growth. He stated that, “The greatest problem facing the Nigerian state today is that of greed,” and that in the Nigerian context, one possible explanation of this phenomena is that “being surrounded with poverty, people struggle to accumulate more for their children…” He went on to posit that poverty has to be tackled as a panacea to environmental management and the taming of greed to some extent.

The scientific process in decision making should be a breath of fresh air at the highest decision making level in the land. As the West was proud of Obasanjo and refrained from fielding any candidate from AD against him in 2007, and the North was proud to have produced Yar’ Adua in 2007, so is the East proud of Jonathan and will line up behind him as its proud candidate next year.

An unchallenged Jonathan candidacy will not be easy for the following reasons: Igbo feelings of being shortchanged in not being able to produce the president in 2011; Babangida’s machinations and possible offer of the VP slot on his ticket to an Igbo man and siphoning the Igbo vote from Jonathan; and Edwin Clark’s counter productive hubris regarding Ijaw ascendancy with Jonathan at the helm, and his rabid one-man crusade of condemnation and alienation of the Igbo nation.

The Igbo desire to produce one of their own at the helm of the Nigerian state can vicariously be achieved through Jonathan, who declared himself a member of the ethnic group in a PDP campaign stop in Abakaliki with Obasanjo and Yar’ Adua in 2007. Declared Jonathan thus during his speech “…Nigeria cannot do without Ndigbo, and I am one.. My middle name is Ebele and it means mercy.” (see Kalu Okwara’s report in the Daily Champion of March 4, 2007). Jonathan hails from a local government area in Bayelsa State called Ogbia, where there is a healthy presence of Igbo speaking Ekpeye people. So Jonathan may actually be a mixed blood Ijaw/Igbo. Jonathan also stated in an interview a few years ago that another of his given names is Azikiwe, and that it was given to him by his grandmother in honor of her hero, the famous Zik of Africa. The grandmother thereafter blessed him and declared that he would grow up to be like the great man. There is a minority of Ogbia people who aver not being Ijaw, in spite of the linguistic and historical evidence.

Redolent of the Igbo, Ikwerre, Ika-Igbo controversy regarding who is Igbo and who is not, the Ijaw face similar controversy. Addressing an Ijaw gathering to celebrate Adaka Boro Day on August 15, 2008, Sam-James Miriki Hebden, an Ijaw Peoples Assembly (IPA) member opined thus about this controversy, “…Presently, are the Ijaws a dying tribe with every dialect proclaiming to be a tribe of its own? For example, the Apos claiming to be Yoruba’s from Ondo state, the Kalabaris of Rivers state claiming to be a tribe of its own, the Opobos of Rivers state claim to be Igbos, the Nembes claim to be a tribe of its own, the Ogbias claiming to be a tribe of its own, the Okirikas claiming to be a tribe of its own, etc. So who are the Ijaws? According to the Vice President in his speech delivered last year at the Boro Day event, “This year, I intend to draw attention to the urgent need to get things right so that the sacrifices of our leaders and elders will not have been in vain. Among other things, I would also serve a reminder of the seven great cultures that have kept the Ijaws and their neighbours as one people under God.” Does the Vice President who is from Ogbia dialect agree to be an Ijaw man?...”

The second challenge to a Jonathan candidacy in 2011 is likely to emanate from Babangida’s efforts to return to Aso Rock as civilian president. It is becoming clear day by day that a crucial part of his strategy is to offer the VP slot on his ticket to an Igbo man. Orji Kalu and Ken Nnamani are being rumored as potential running mates to Babangida. Of all the military regimes since the end of the Biafran war, Babangida’s regime is remembered by many Igbos as the most fair to the Igbo people. This Igbo verdict on the Babangida regime most definitely will be misunderstood by the rest of Nigeria, large parts of which have never really been on the same wave length with the Igbos in their assessment of national issues since the Biafran War. But here are some of the heralded pro Igbo Babangida decisions during his regime: the creation of two additional states in Igboland in spite of vehement opposition by his colleagues in the Armed Forces Ruling Council; the location of the capital of Delta state in Asaba in Igbo territory in spite of vociferous opposition from non-Igbo Deltans; the appointment of Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe as his deputy ( Ukiwe actually ran the government during Babangida’s hospitalization in Europe); his influence on the NRC, his preferred party in the elections of 1993, to select Dr. Sylvester Ugoh as the running mate to Bashir Tofa; his return of all of Ojukwu’s family properties under seizure by the government almost two decades after the end of the Biafran War; the appointment of an Igbo admiral, Allison Madueke, to head the Nigerian Navy, the first time in the history of Nigeria.

Pro Babangida Igbos can effectively sell Babangida’s candidacy to the Igbos from a purely ethnic interest perspective, but it is doubtful that he can win, given that the Southwest and South-south ( the former Mid West and parts of the East) will not vote for him. The Southwest will not do so over the June 12/Abiola saga, and the South-south will not do it either because one of their own, Jonathan, will be in the race as well. The option thus left for the Igbos is to adopt Jonathan as one of their own and work towards electing him.

Lastly in terms of the challenge in electing Jonathan is the hubris of Edwin Clark. An Ijaw ethnic political warrior, Chief Clark is stuck in the bitter ethnic politics of the past. His brazen chest-thumping and loquaciousness about the Ijaw being at the pinnacle of federal power in the person of President Jonathan could galvanize anti Jonathan forces, especially among his old northern allies, who are versatile political players, having been at it for centuries in the Hausa, Kanem Bornu and Fulani empires of old, where they fomented political intrigues and always came out vanquishing their opponents. Senator Uba Ahmed, an NPN senator in the Second Republic and a prominent member of the northern intelligentsia, recently made ominous remarks about vainglorious behavior and reminded Clark that Ijaw votes alone couldn’t elect Jonathan.

Chief Clark’s virulent antipathy towards the Igbos is second to no other’s. If he persists in this manner, he risks alienating Igbo support for Jonathan. Thus northern and Igbo votes cast for someone else as a consequence of Chief Clark’s counterproductive approach could cost Jonathan the presidency. But the Igbos would be advised to ignore Chief Clark, adopt Jonathan as one of their own and troop en masse to the polls in 2011 and mark their ballot papers for GOODLUCK AZIKIWE EBELE JONATHAN for the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The rest of the East (Ogoni, Ijaw, Annang, Ibibio, Efik, Ogoja, Oron and all other sub groups of the major ethnic groups ) must do likewise. It is a bounden duty which must be done for one of their own.