By Dele Sobowale

“If you don’t believe in something; you’ll fall for anything”.
-American expression depicting people without principles.

“Prophet Dele, you were right last year that Jonathan should not contest the presidential election. See now, the North has nos 2, 3, 4, 5 positions. More? Ema Avo.

In a true democracy, where the separation of powers between the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary is firmly entrenched, the President has no business interfering with the selection of the officers of the legislature.

But, because we have been running a Lafun Republic under Obasanjo; a Tuwo shinkafa Republic under Yar’Adua and are now operating a Banga Soup Republic under Jonathan, in which the Executive branch, at the Federal and governors at state levels, select the leaders of the legislature. We had allowed the sort of constitutional breaches which would never have been countenanced in other civilized democracies. We were partly saved this time, oddly enough, by President Jonathan himself, who, without realizsing it, plotted his own downfall in the House in June 2011 as far back as last year when he first decided to run for President.

President Jonathan, former President Obasanjo and the PDP leadership received a well-deserved slap in the face from the House of Representatives in the selection of a Speaker. Even, if the selection is ultimately reversed, the President had been embarrassed in his first major outing as the country’s leader. And the fault lies on his door step. It is not, and has never been, his business who becomes Senate President or Speaker.

Back in August last year, when President Jonathan was still pretending to be consulting widely regarding whether he should run for office or not, while at the same time announcing that the party had no policy on zoning, I opened a debate on this page on the subject. What had happened since then has portrayed us as a people who, by and large, don’t believe in operating on principles.

The President, who could not find the relevant clauses on zoning in his party’s constitution, when it served his interests to forget them, suddenly remembered them after the elections when it came to sharing other offices like Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives. How very neat! What principles does the man uphold – zoning or not? Or for that matter on anything.

But the President was not alone. All sorts of individuals, real and phony intellectuals came forward to tell us that zoning was “unconstitutional”. Others intoned that it promotes mediocrity; still other know-nothings proclaimed that it was a Northern agenda when, indeed, the father of zoning was Dr. Alex Ekwueme. It was all in a bid to pave the way for Jonathan to run for the presidency.

A majority of those holding these positions were from the Southeast and the Southwest – the over-verbose “zones” of Nigeria. Well, they won the battle. Jonathan ran and won. But the war on zoning has just started. The temporary triumph of those against zoning reminds me of the Japanese attack on American forces at Pear Harbour.

Every school boy who studied history knows that the Japanese struck the first blow; but the Americans won the war and they made the Japanese pay dearly for it. As Richard Neustadt, the chief chronicler of President Eisenhower’s administration, in his book, POWER AND PRESIDENTS, has told us, “the only battle that counts is the last”. We are in the opening skirmishes of the “zoning war” and the first major casualty is the Southwest -where all the people speaking dongo turanci or big grammar exist.

It has not taken long for the Southeast and the Southwest to start paying for the mass folly of their leaders. Hitherto, when zoning was rigidly enforced by  PDP, the emergence of a Southsouth President and a Northwest Vice-President would have resulted in the following alignment of offices:
1.Senate President: Southeast or Southwest; preferably Southeast because of party’s performance in the zone.
2. Speaker: Northeast or North Central.

But, the President unilaterally promised Senator David Mark the Senate Presidency and again wanted to zone the Speaker to the Southwest -just as it was before the 2011 elections. Unfortunately, he failed to reckon with mavericks within the party who wanted to remind the party that zoning was officially dead – and Jonathan himself killed it! Today, without zoning, the power line-up in Nigeria is as follows:

1.     President (Number one citizen)   —  Southerner. (Bayelsa)
2.     V. President  (Number two citizen) – Northwest (Kaduna)
3.   Senate President (Number three citizen)  — North Central (Benue)
4.      Speaker of House (Number four citizen)  — Northwest (Sokoto)
5.      Chief Justice of the Federation     —  North Central (Benue)
Now, God forbid anything should happen to Jonathan, the North will have positions 1, 3, 4, and 5  and can even claim number 2 – after all Southerners declared zoning obsolete.

Now, I challenge all those blockheads who wrote against zoning to tell me when zoning has ever produced such lop-sidedness in power sharing. The Southwest deserves nothing; which was exactly what the zone has got so far, because the Baba of PDP, increasingly a liability to Jonathan and the PDP, in Yorubaland started the ball rolling when Yar’Adua died. Without allowing the party to sort itself out concerning zoning, he proclaimed that Jonathan must run. He was ably supported by all those who “voted for Jonathan not PDP”.

We can all see where such shallow thinking has led us!!! What we have seen is only the rehearsal to the battles ahead. The North was caught pants down in 2011 and had very little time to re-group. It won’t be in 2015. Years from now, another generation of Southerners will be asking, nay begging, for zoning to be re-introduced.

One thing however is certain. Instead of moving ahead with the national agenda to move the country forward, the President is going to spend precious time trying to find ways of appeasing the Southwest and the Northeast. And who can predict that the appeasement will not bring mediocrities into high office?

ROUND 2 ON PIB: READY FOR WAR AGAIN

“If cobwebs unite, they can tie down a lion”.
Ethiopian proverb.
(VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS).
President Jonathan went on state visit to Turkey and promised to get the PIB signed by May 29, 2011. Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, his Minister for Petroleum Resources was so sure of victory in the contest against us, the opponents of the PIB in its present form, she actually spent about N200 million of the budget for its implementation.

I promised one old man, a frequent reader of this page, that it wouldn’t happen; at least not in May 2011. Well, we defeated them; Davids beat all the Goliaths once again.  But they are coming back. And unless they handle the matter differently, the bill will be in NASS for a long time. That is not a threat; it is a promise.

P.S.DEFEND NIGERIA; SUPPORT THE POLICE IN FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISTS.