SUDDENLY  there is a storm in the teacup of political patronage. A lot of Igbo investors in the Jonathan presidency are up in arms.

They feel “betrayed” that the position of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives was not ceded to South East, but rather remained in the South West where the PDP managed to win a miserable five House seats, out of a possible haul of 68! Some of the more agitated are threatening demonstrations against Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the organisation chiefly responsible for persuading them to back Jonathan’s presidential bid.

With due deference to all the South East coveters of the top positions in the National Assembly, it needs to be pointed out that neither the Senate presidency nor the Speakership of the House of Representatives is the biggest deal in political power calculations.

Of course, holders of such positions are heard when their voices crash over the general din, and when they bring the gavel down with trenchant force. The Senate boss and his House counterpart could respectively claim the third  and fourth  positions in the nation’s political hierarchy. In real terms, however, we have seen legislative brass reduced to sawdust in this country.

President Obasanjo had four Igbo sons – Enwerem, Okadigbo, Wabara and Anyim – in relay of the Senate presidency during his two terms!  A Senate President or House Speaker may have his convoy and his security detail. He may command a battalion of fawning legislators and attendant staff, but that is where it virtually ends, except one considers the junket tickets, the photo opportunities and the possibilities for deflecting common funds into private accounts.

Didn’t Ndigbo always know that what food comes from picking the teeth never fills the belly? Put differently, who made ends meet by means of overtime wages when the main paycheck hardly kept body and soul together? It is important to stay focused. President Goodluck Jonathan has not betrayed Ndigbo yet; I personally do not believe that he is minded to do that anytime soon.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo has not betrayed the people, either. It is not a political party and was not even consulted by the South East PDP that went discussing the spoils of office at its national caucus. If the South East PDP played a naïve hand, should that tie up Ohanaeze leadership with the thorns of culpability?

To cite Obasanjo again. Shortly after General Abdulsalami Abubakar released him from prison, the man spoke to a London audience of which I was one. Some Igbo leaders had gone to him to negotiate key positions in order to support Chief Moshood Abiola’s 1993 presidential bid.

Obasanjo’s answer was that, good as top federal posts may be, a powerful political position was tied solely to the extent one had the President’s ear. Of course, he knew what he was talking about, having been Number Two Man under General Murtala Muhammed, and Number One Man following Murtala’s demise. Office does not mean power. We have seen in this country how overbearing power is wielded outside the ambience of political power apparatuses.

Certain traditional rulers sit on their thrones and order elected leaders about as if they were zombies. Certain religious leaders stand on pulpits and dictate to heads of governments as they would to messengers.
Look at it from another angle.

During the eight years of General Ibrahim Babangida’s military presidency, a most powerful persona lurked behind the spectacled visage of a certain Professor Omo Omoruyi who, as far as the general public knew, was only the Director-General of the Centre for Democratic Studies.

While TV viewers often saw Omoruyi carrying on while imbuing politicians with democratic credentials, the man was every night with IBB determining in which direction Nigeria headed! While President Obasanjo called the shots, Chief Andy Uba, his Senior Special Assistant on Domestic Matters, was more powerful than Cabinet Ministers and military brass.

Those then angling for vice-chancellorships or ambassadorial postings or board appointments or lucrative contracts primed their knuckles for knocking on the doors of good old Andy! How much power did Vice-President Atiku Abubakar wield during Obasanjo’s second term? How much power did Mrs. Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele wield as Governor Bola Tinubu’s deputy?

As Ndigbo put it, it is splendid that Okeke ended up with a military commission. But more important is where, after his service years, are his boots? A top federal political appointee of Igbo origin is meaningless to the ethnic group if his office serviced only his lifestyle and those of his cronies and consorts. Therefore, all the wailing and lamentation regarding a “missed” position of House Speaker should cease.

The cynosure of all eyes should not dab their face in charcoal. Ndigbo should rather concentrate on those issues that belong to their eventual escape from the status of second class citizenship. This habit of appropriating the media to hector and holler at the drop of every hat, this shouting from the rooftops at every twinkle of an eye cannot solve a thing.

Similarly, threatening to fly posthaste to Britain, to report their betrayal by President Jonathan to Dim Ojukwu only begs the question.

Because I held, until recently, a political position that left me in the centre of the Igbo question, I was privy to the specific matters raised and discussed by Candidate Goodluck Jonathan and South East governors and selected Igbo leaders.

No one has betrayed anybody yet. What matters is the realisation that Igbo PDP leaders cannot be speaking for their numbers alone.

If a dividend of Jonathan’s presidency is the establishment of a South East Economic Zone, the benefits will not accrue only to card-carrying members of the PDP. Nor would they alone ply a second Niger Bridge once constructed.

We have always hankered for the abolition of the South East’s sole membership of the second division of Nigeria’s geopolitical zones.  We are strictly about equity and justice. We are about justice which is the only condition for lasting peace in the entity. This quest goes beyond the ken of partisan affiliation.

It should not be forgotten that is morning yet on Appointments’ Day for the incoming Jonathan administration. If the South East PDP means well for Ndigbo, it will not consign Ohanaeze Ndigbo in the dustbin of redundancy. If they play well, they will ensure that the hand that fits is used to pick the nose in the matter of appointing the new national chairman of the PDP, a position zoned to the South East.

If the next national PDP chairman is an Igbo whose head is on top of his shoulders, it will not be business as usual. But we know how these things happened previously. An Igbo candidate is thrown up whose credentials are unknown even to himself, let alone to Ndigbo. He is backed by characters who care not a hoot whether Ndigbo end up in hell or in high waters.

He mounts the throne and systematically embarks on the scripted sequences of denigrating his people, his very person. Already, we hear that certain South East governors might not want a PDP chairman hailing from their states, they being allergic to alternate governors! It hardly gets more asinine than this.

Yet, we do know that when it hits, it reverberates. Which is why we must caution that, whatever they are doing – these governors! And whoever is preparing for the barricades on account of gavels! Two points: It will be counterproductive to alienate President Jonathan; other ethnic groups must also eat from his plate.

This doesn’t mean that Ndigbo would not sooner determine the level at which he places them. Ndigbo should start from appropriating the national chairmanship of the PDP. In this and in other respects, a central role for the new Ohanaeze Ndigbo, cannot be overemphasized. This is because the body hears better than the ears.

BY CHUKS ILOEGBUNAM, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Lagos.