By Obi Nawkanma
Dr. Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe was an astute and consummate politician who brought a colourful dash to Nigerian politics. With graduate degrees in political science from the American ivy-league Columbia University, New York,  earned in a very auspicious moment in  20th century America, Mbadiwe knew a thing or two about political strategy and horse-trading.

He was a master-tactician. He was also not above a bit of blather if it could win him a vote or two. He left Nigerian political lexicon rich with recondite oratory. Much was deliberate, colourful bombast – very Clevelandian. Among the more renown of his rhetorical nuggets include a description of those with political, economic and cultural worth or capital as “men of timber and calibre.” He later described himself once as a “political caterpillar” – that is, capable of ploughing through any political opposition with ease and consequence.

It was the late K.O. Mbadiwe who described the zoning agreements of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN,  in 1982, as a pragmatic and necessary policy. “We have zoned to unzone,” he told reporters after the NPN party conference in Calabar in reaction to questions about the limitations of this formula. Zoning to unzone was Mbadiwe’s inimitable way of describing a formula of accommodation for the distribution of power in the land.

It was a transitory measure towards “national unity.” It was, of course, an internal party policy, not a national policy, and was no doubt, subject to reconsideration. In other words, it was not considered a permanent policy; it was a transitional arrangement aimed at rapprochement, particularly in the post-war democratic dispensation, when “national unity” was necessary for the fabric, and the strategy of the ruling party in its claims as a Nigerian melting pot. Never mind that in that pot cooked a lot of political pork.

In any case, in that arrangement, within NPN, the Igbo people of the East were set to produce the presidential candidate for the party in 1987 at the expiration of the full term of the incumbent, President Shehu Shagari, from the North.

As we all know, that was not to be. That agreement within NPN, the incumbent party in power at the centre, was scuttled by the military coup of December 31, 1983, that overthrew the Shagari presidency and the governments of the federation. Indeed, as the late Ibrahim Tahir confessed to Sam G. Ikoku with whom he shared prison cells after the coup, key northern politicians had been privy to the coup, and could do nothing about it.

One of the key issues for the military boys in 1983 was the insurgent return of the Igbo, former Biafrans, to the epicentre of Nigerian politics; and the seriousness for many of them of a possible president from the East in 1987 given the NPN arrangement.

Many of these officers had been young field commanders in the last war, and were loath to see that prospect. Today, two of the central figures of that 1983 coup, Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida, former military dictators, are now reformed democrats and are vying to return to the centre of Nigerian power, the presidency.

To be fair to Buhari, he has been consistent in his avowal of a national rebirth based on principles, including the clear fact that the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan has the right to contest elections irrespective of the PDP zoning formula.

Babangida on his own part has banked much political capital on the PDP zoning principle irrespective of his claims to nationalist fervor.

I have gone to this length to give a backdrop to the shifting moralities in Nigerian politics and its current implications for our contemporary realities given the squabbles in PDP over zoning. To put it plainly, when Alex Ekwueme brought back the NPN zoning formula to PDP, he was dealing the same old hands. The zoning of the office of the president, let us be frank, is a most hideous form of political engineering.

Its intent is extremely narrow and shortsighted. It is elite power-grab at its worst. Zoning is a means of sharing the booties of office among Nigeria’s political elite. It has nothing for the regular Nigerian. But, Nigerians would rather than an “ethnic” or “zoned” president, have a national political figure with the strength and goodwill to bring Nigerians from all affiliations together; a national figure – giant in the mode of Zik who could be a rallying force for all quarters of the nation rather than for narrow geo-political interests.

This is the current conundrum of contemporary Nigerian politics, that it is built on the notions of the fragmented rather than a coherent nation. The PDP zoning policy continues to amplify such fragments and men with huge egos, deadly agendas, and powerful ambitions continue to stoke the forges of Nigeria’s national incoherence. This is what this whole gripe about PDP zoning of the presidency and the northern lobby’s arguments against a continued Jonathan presidency means.

It is, of course, not strange to me also that Igbo politicians would be divided over the question of support for the current President, who by the argument of the northern lobby, have been zoned out and should, therefore, relinquish the PDP ticket to the northern “consensus” candidate. Such men as A.B.C. Nwosu, former Professor of the Biological Sciences at Nsukka and Kenechukwu Nnamani, former president of the Senate, all of them ambitious men, have spoken for the North against the prospects of a Jonathan presidency.

The Igbo lobby, Ohaneze, on its part has formally thrown its weight and support behind Jonathan. Such broad divisions within Igbo politics is not unexpected given Igbo democratic culture which many Nigerians do not understand. But, the buttress of this entire game is on the question, what is in it for the Igbo?

Atiku Abubakar and Babangida have pledged a one-term presidency to allow for an Igbo person to be president in 2015 according to the terms of the PDP zoning principle. This is all so amusing, that even Babangida has now become an advocate or a champion for Igbo causes, never mind that the South-East fared worse under his presidency, and that he made no significant political or infrastructural investment in the East in the years of his dictatorship.

Besides, the offer of the vice-presidency to the Igbo is a calculated insult at this stage. The Igbo are not born to be vice-presidents. I, therefore, think that a more pragmatic choice before the South-East must be to leverage their position – argue for more jobs in the East, more infrastructural investments; greater access to credit for its entrepreneurs; opening of the Eastern ports; etc – that would benefit a wider Igbo population than the presidency or the vice-presidency.

Nigerians disregard these men who speak about zoning at this stage of our national life. Zoning continues to perpetuate the backroom agenda of only a few men. Zoning is an elite form of gerrymandering. It might “unzone” Nigeria as a republic sooner than later. I think President Goodluck has made a good case for the continuity of his presidency and his rights to contest this election if he gets the ticket. He should get the ticket. But more on this later.