WE should be talking about national integration, politically and economically, possibly, culturally and socially also.

We should be talking about strengthening our public institutions such as the civil service, the military, the educational systems, the judiciary, the law making bodies, the executive branches of government, economic infrastructure, so that together they can deliver world class services to each and every Nigerian wherever he or she may be.

The prevailing impression of a North-South dichotomy is a function of time and place. It is also, most importantly, a function of the prevailing political leadership. From every indication IBB seems to think that the eight years of his military presidency were the glory years of the nation. But what did he really do to resolve the divide? Men like IBB are fixated on the destructive aspects.

That is why he subverted his own government in 1993 by the annulment of June 12 of that year. That is why he undermined and subverted the Obasanjo government. That is why he is hell bent on destroying or in IBB-speak, on annuling the Goodluck Jonathan presidency.

And if we care to look back it is a perception of the North–South dichotomy that lead to the perennial underdevelopment of certain parts of the federation, notably the Niger Delta region and the particularly bad condition of federal infrastructure, particularly roads in the South–East zone.

It is a perception of the North-South dichotomy that led to the repression of the eighties and nineties, notably the deaths of Dele Giwa in 1986, of the Ogoni 9 in 1995, of  Abiola’s in 1998 and of Bola Ige’s during the administration of General Obasanjo, who in his first term was firmly under the control of a North-South dichotomy cabal. One question IBB needs to answer is why it should be necessary to use Nigerians’ blood as libation to the gods of North-South divide.

General Babangida was president for eight years. Today he enjoys all the appurtenances of a past head of state. Whether he deserves to do so is altogether a different matter. He even has a seat at the table of governance in the Council of States, a mandate of the 1999 Constitution of which IBB is a principal contributor.

If he was a (grateful) statesman what he should have done is to retire from politics and do whatever he can to assist subsequent regimes to move the nation forward and realise the Nigerian dream. But being who he is he has chosen the path of calumny and anarchy. He does not just want a seat at the table, he wants to be at the head of the table for life, not by the will of the people but by imposing his own will on the people by subterfuge, failing which he is prepared to do anything to realise this ambition.

The 1999 Constitution is pretty much the same as the 1979 Constitution. It is the same constitution, in effect, which guided IBB’s self–aborted transition programme. IBB played a key role in the production and approval of that Constitution.

If he felt so strongly about North-South divide and zoning what provision did he advocate for inclusion in that constitution to accommodate that obsession? Is it not rather ironical that he is so obsessed with working outside that constitution in order to actualize his ambition of becoming president a second time?

If you read or listen to much of the nonsense IBB and his agents have been spewing out in the media lately you’d think that the PDP constitution and zoning plan has now been adopted as the nation’s constitution. Is this not yet another rape of democracy, a confirmation of IBB’s specialty? The truth of course is that IBB had no plans to ever relinquish power.

The 1999 Constitution, at the end of the day, was merely a contraption for his convenience as a life president or possibly for the perpetuation of a Babangida dynasty as power is handed over successively to his protégé or his natural heirs. Having been so far frustrated in that ambition what we see today is IBB’s last stand. For him the 2011 election is ‘do or die’. I think that this is as good a time as ever to give the general a kiss or a handshake and say goodbye to politics.

Writing through one of his agents in ThisDay, September 20 on page 60 in a paid advertisement IBB accused President Jonathan of ‘…using his incumbency to stay in power and wants to upset the fragile North-South political arrangement that keeps Nigeria one ….’ This is a pretty potent piece of scare mongering that should not go unnoted and unrequited.

This is calculated to incite. Also for some unfathomable reason IBB seems to think that he has exclusive mastery of how to manage that ‘fragile North-South arrangement’. It is actually strange that at this point in time there are actually people who still see Nigeria as simply a matter of North and South geopolitics; no West, no East, no South-South, no North-East, no North-Central, no South-East, no South-West, no North-West, a country with about 250 ethnic groups, with as many corresponding cultural identities and diverse allegiances. IBB has been in the business of subverting governments, including his own, for the past three decades.

Mr.Egbe Ulu, a  rtd Lt-Col, writes from Lagos.