By Ochereome Nnanna
THE most unusual political figures of this era include Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State. His uniqueness is not surprising, considering his political background, the Mallam Aminu Kano model which not many outside the old Kano axis really understood.

Certainly, the mainstream North of old did not tolerate it, and was able to infiltrate it during the 1983 elections when the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) sponsored Alhaji Sabo Barkin Zuwo to emerge as the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) Governor of Kano State amidst widespread disenchantment among Aminu Kano’s teeming supporters.

Even though Mallam Aminu Kano did not succeed in growing his political influence (by way of winning elections) beyond the old Kano sphere, he was a genuine nationalist who believed that the primary objective of politics is service to the people, especially the most downtrodden of society.

His Northern Elements Progressives Union (NEPU) was a coalition partner of the Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe-led National Council for Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), which scored majority of the votes cast in the 1959 Federal House of Representatives elections, though they lost to the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) group due to the British colonial master’s decision to award more constituencies to the North.

Lamido, who grew up in the stable of Aminu Kano, has carried this legacy of nationalism till today, and many of his contemporaries in the North do not understand why he would not enlist in the “Northern political army” to keep Nigeria under perpetual Northern subjugation.

Lamido and his co-travellers in the Aminu Kano group stood against the NPN (a party seen to be carrying the banner of the Northern political oligarchy) in the Second Republic, when he was elected into the House of Representatives.

He was a governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic. He and his group were instrumental to the defeat of Alhaji Othman Tofa, the National Republican Convention (NRC) presidential candidate, in his native ward in Nasarawa Local Council of Kano State.

He supported the move for the de-annulment of Abiola’s presidential mandate and was an ardent supporter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo throughout his eight years in power.

Today, Lamido, as the proverbial leopard, has not changed his colours. My real objective in this write-up is not to dwell on the person of Alhaji Sule Lamido. It is my intention to draw attention his stance in the debates towards the emergence of the next president of Nigeria after the 2011 general elections.

At a time everyone else is whipping up themselves into a frenzy over the presidency, Lamido seizes every opportunity to remind fellow Northern leaders that that region is a part and parcel of Nigeria and must pursue its political interests in that context.

The mainstream push in the North (particularly the North West to which Jigawa State belongs) is that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) must respect the zoning formula and allow a Northerner to emerge as the next president.

Like many of us who believe in the zoning arrangement as a temporary means of confidence building in the polity, Lamido has not kicked against this idea. Rather, he has spoken out against the manner in which Northern leaders are going about it.

In setting up the so-called Malam Adamu Ciroma-led Committee of 17 “wise men” to choose from the four contenders to the Northern presidential ticket, the conveners had initially restricted its membership to Northerners.

It was later on that the idea hit them that members of the campaign teams of the aspirants from the South should be brought in. Only a few days ago, it further dawned on them that the consultations towards picking the consensus candidate should be extended to the South.

In other words, the effort to select a presidential candidate of Northern extraction to slug it out with President Goodluck Jonathan for the ruling party’s ticket was never really seen by the conveners as a national project.

The idea was for the North to select a president and impose on Nigeria, just as it did in 1979 and 1998 when the North-controlled military was handing over to civilians. Governor Lamido openly kicked against this when each of the Northern presidential aspirants came calling at his doorstep.

General Ibrahim Babangida, in an interview, once claimed, in answer to a question, that “the Northern agenda is the Nigerian agenda”. While addressing a rally in Yola, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, had also claimed that once the North decides what it wanted to do, the rest of the country would follow.

These claims are now being put to test, and what we see so far does not seem to support that assumption. If a section of the country used to decide and impose its will on the rest that was in the dim past shortly after independence and the civil war when the sectionally controlled military held power.

As the governor rightly pointed out, the political party is a credible national institution, and genuine leaders build democracy through political parties, not ethnic and sectional interest groups.

Many of those clamouring for President Jonathan and zoning have, at one time or the other, left the ruling party only to return when the party is about to produce a new group of elected leaders. Opportunism, rather than regional interest, is what drives many people’s political activities, and this, Lamido detests.

The irony of regional politics as opposed to party politics is that most regional leaders of today ride on the crest of regional sentiment but as soon as they find themselves in the seat of power they forget the very people whose interests they purported to be championing.

The lack of meaningful development of the North in spite of the region’s dominance of the political power of this country is being increasingly noticed, and many Northerners are no longer taken in by worn-out, empty sentimental platitudes.