Ata Ikiddeh
From 1999 to 2007, the South East held the Senate Presidency as a man grips his walking stick in old age, firmly and without apology. Eight uninterrupted years. Evans Enwerem. Chuba Okadigbo. Anyim Pius Anyim. Adolphus Wabara. Ken Nnamani.
One after another like masquerades emerging from the same shrine. Nobody disturbed them. Nobody cried foul. The South South called it equity with firm lips. Believing that when it’s their turn their brothers will support them.
And do not tell me there were no capable men. Did the South South not have Senator Udo Udoma, learned silk, ministerial timber, UAC boardroom colossus? Yet the seat remained in the South East and the nation carried on as though the rain fell only on one roof. Abi?
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Then came the turn of the North Central. David Mark sat there for eight years, sturdy as a boabab tree in Harmattan. Before the seat could even grow cold, another son of the North Central, Bukola Saraki, that political Amalinze with more than nine lives sprang into it from 2015 to 2019.
But even the clever tortoise sometimes miscalculates the distance between two trees.
Saraki unfortunately mistook cunning for political immortality. The retired General from Daura looked upon the rebellious feline in his backyard and decided enough was enough. Out he went. In came Ahmad Lawan from the North East.
For a moment it appeared the North East had found its own long feast at the table. But in Nigerian politics, once a man throws his cap into the Presidential ring and loses, he must not complain when the crowd also takes his chair. The gods of power are jealous gods. And that was how the North East lost out.
Lawan listened to political drummers who whispered that the North should continue its stay in Aso Rock past 2023. Four years would become eight. Eight would become twelve. And, as Nigerians say with one eye open, twelve in this country can stretch its legs towards 16.
But the delicate arithmetic of “turn by turn” rejected that calculation by the cabal at the time.
Then came 2023.
A former Governor from the South South stepped aside during the primaries and poured his supporters into Tinubu’s basket. When victory came, reward followed swiftly. Senator Godswill Akpabio became Senate President, the first South Southerner to occupy that seat since Joseph Wayas nearly four decades ago.
History had finally remembered the abandoned South South.
Now let us count carefully:
- South East, 8 uninterrupted years.
- North Central, 12 uninterrupted years.
- North East, 4 years due to a misguided challenge.
- South South, barely settling into the chair before drums of succession have started beating.
And suddenly, before Akpabio’s tenure can even mature like palm wine in the calabash, Governor Hope Uzodimma is already warming up his boots for the Senate Presidency. “My people have called upon me to serve,” he says. Indeed! It is only in Nigeria, the goat always claims the yam invited him. Wonders!
Nobody says he cannot contest. Democracy is not a burial ground where mouths are sealed. But politics is also has memory. And memory in this country is longer than the River Niger.
The South East has always leaned heavily on South South political solidarity for years. Between 1999 and 2007, not one South Southerner rose to challenge the political arrangement. When political arrows have flown from the North, the South South often stood in the line of fire. To many outside the region, see us across the Niger as one indistinguishable people. No difference between ‘Yamiri’ and ‘Onye Mmongo.’ We have often caught their bullet. And now they want to start a political fight. As the old men say, when two brothers wrestle in the market, strangers call both of them madmen.
And history is also watching.
In 1953, Professor Eyo Ita of Calabar a brilliant, urbane politician, one of the finest minds of his generation was Premier of the Eastern Region. Then Nnamdi Azikiwe, having failed to secure political footing in the West, returned East. Eyo Ita’s government was sacked with ignominy by South Easterners sacrificed on the altar of the majority. Minority protests rose like smoke into the sky and disappeared unanswered. The current Senate President’s uncle, Dr Ibanga Udo Akpabio was compensated with Deputy Premiership. But the wound never truly healed.
Today, many in the South South are looking at these fresh political manoeuvres and hearing old footsteps approaching again. Is this deja vu 1953?
Because when tomorrow comes, when the South East seeks the Presidency in Aso Rock and calls once more for South South solidarity, people will remember how quickly some became impatient with the South South turn at number 3. Politics is about the utmost patience, lessons Peter Obi and Atiku have still not learnt, the reason they keep resitting their exams. Take lessons from Tinubu who waited from 2007 before he sprang in 2022?
There is an Igbo proverb that says: the man who wakes a sleeping leopard should not complain when the forest becomes restless.
Allow sleeping political dogs lie, bikonu!
For the ghost of Eyo Ita is still wandering the corridors of Eastern politics. And some people are beginning to say they will not allow that betrayal to happen twice.
The South South deserves eight uninterrupted years, like the South East. And eight uninterrupted years it shall be, by God’s good Grace!
Ikiddeh is a Public Affairs Analyst
