IN SEARCH OF AN IGBO PRESIDENT

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo while hosting the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Ogun State chapter led by Bishop Tunde-Akin Akinsanya, threw weight behind a possible Igbo President for 2019. He proclaimed: “Irrespective of the thinking of the people ahead of 2019, I personally think that South-east should have a go at the Presidency too.”

Is it time for the Igbo to be President of Nigeria? Do Ndigbo have credible and detribalised personalities who have the capacity to preside over the affairs of Nigeria? Would an Igbo presidency guarantee the unity of Nigeria in the wake of continuous agitation for the Sovereign State of Biafra?

These questions have been recurring since after the civil war, about 46 years ago. In addition, since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, the South-east region has remained an appendage for the production of presidents of Nigeria from other tribes of the country. Simply put it, the presidency has been rotating amongst the South-west, North and minority South-South. That is why Obasanjo ‘personally’ thinks that the South-east should produce the next president, maybe after the north has had its eight years as generally accepted, though not constitutionally documented.

In 1999 and 2003, former vice-president Alex Ekwueme contested the seat on the platform of the PDP and lost. In 2007 former governor of Abia state, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, who has defected to the APC, contested for the presidential seat on the platform of the party he founded, the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA). Governor of Imo state, Chief Rochas Okorocha has continued to nurse the idea of becoming the first Igbo President of Nigeria through the ballots.

But the Obasanjo’s quest is coming at a time when the polity is so much enmeshed in controversies. The incumbent president is barely two years in office, with rumours of ill health and death. There are reported cases of attempts by politicians even within and outside the ruling APC to outsmart others in the build-up to 2019 general elections. Obasanjo is joining the likes of former military heads of state, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) and General Yakubu Gowon, who had also called for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction. IBB said the agitation for Biafra republic was a distraction and setback. “We do not need this distraction now. I will vote for an Igbo president in 2019, if I find one.” Gowon in March when he delivered a lecture entitled “No Victor, No Vanquished: Healing the Nigerian Nation” to mark the 6th Convocation ceremony of the Chukwumeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), said it was wrong to conclude that the civil war broke out following the failure of the Aburi Accord but was the direct result of a unilateral decision of independence for Eastern Nigeria. “If there was no secession, there would have been no war. It was a reluctant war waged to unite the country. An Igbo president would help heal the civil war wounds. The idea of rotational presidency is good.”

Controversies have trailed the proclamation for Igbo president. Youth groups in the South-east hailed the idea. In a joint statement, the National President of the Igbo Youth for Good Governance (IYGG), Dr. Benjamin Okeke and the National President of Igbo Youth Initiative (IYI), Comrade Wilfred Eze, thanked Obasanjo for extending his sympathy for the Igbo cause and described him as the new father of democracy. This support for Igbo Presidency, the groups noted has given Ndigbo hope for realignment and fairness within a united Nigeria. They urged other elder statesmen and national figures to support the national call for a president of Igbo extraction.

But the ex-governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, believes Obasanjo’s call was because he understands the dynamics of the nation’s politics. A governorship aspirant of PDP in Imo State, Brady Nwosu, said the call was “a very bold statement”. But Chief Maxi Okwu of APGA chided the idea. Also, the founder of Igbo Youth Movement (IYM), Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko berated Obasanjo whom he described as enemy of the Igbo people.

In the Sun Newspapers of October 27, 2016, Acho Orabuchi wrote on 2019: A strong case for Nigerian president of Igbo extraction saying that the Igbo have a pool of qualified people more than any other ethnic group. They have a vision that encompasses the entire nation and not a section of it. “A case in point is the Jonathan and the Obasanjo administrations that were replete with credible and qualified Igbo people whose records of service were impeccable.”

In its reaction, the Northern Progressives Youth Initiative (NPYI), carpeted Obasanjo and warned against ‘playing God’ in the nation’s scheme of things. Secretary-General of the NPYI, Malam Gazali Abdullahi, noted that with so much fuss over the President Buhari’s medical examinations, it was sad that a former president would be canvassing a successor to a sitting president.

He described Obasanjo as an enemy of the North, recalling that in the trying times of late former President Umaru Yar’Adua, it was the same Obasanjo who released statements against the late president who was battling for his life on his hospital bed. –– Muhammad Ajah, Abuja