All the noise about zoning is really distressing. For me, the most critically important issue in the polity is the quality of leadership, and I do not see how zoning relates to that. I have to say also that unfortunately the press is not helping matters by giving so much prominence to a subject that is being advocated by failed ideologues and intellectual midgets who constitute the remnants of Nigeria’s failed power elite and who are clutching at the zoning straw, only as a means of remaining relevant politically. These people are intellectually lazy. They lack the capacity for the intellectual riguor required to run a modern government and are instinctively averse to any attempt to raise the intellectual bar on which our national government should rest. There may be a time when Nigeria will have the luxury of discussing the issue of political rotation in its public space. But for now, getting a capable leader is by far the most pressing and crucial national issue. I do not care where that leader comes from. So, for now I am totally deaf to any discussion about zoning. Maybe when Nigeria gets the kind of leader it really needs and has enjoyed good leadership for at least four years, then we can begin to address such luxuries as zoning, that is if there is in fact any relevance for it at all.In other lands the press leads in the intellectual debate and discussion of the future of the country but here, so far, the fourth estate is content with allowing others to dictate the pace and/or lack the capacity to show leadership in elevating the content of debate about Nigeria’s future. For example we have a situation where Nigeria has had a leadership crisis for decades, something almost everyone acknowledges. Since the late President Umaru Yar’dua was sworn in, in May 2007, that crisis has deepened, coming to its highest level when, as it turned out, he was terminally hospitalised in Saudi Arabia last November. In that situation Nigeria seemed to have stumbled on a solution, in the person of Goodluck Jonathan. He  apparently came from behind as a former lame duck deputy governor and vice president, with a stint as governor in between, rose to the occasion, filled the vacuum and as a consequence steadied the course of an otherwise dangerously floundering state. This rare feat of leadership is something Nigeria has not seen for a very long time, yet the press is finding it difficult to acknowledge it. Instead it is giving so much prominence to a discussion of what amounts to a distraction and a negative factor in the scheme of things. Of course there are strenuous efforts to underplay what President Jonathan represents and has achieved but such efforts are most visible in the press. One cannot help but wonder whether the nation’s media houses, by omission or commission, are in an unholy alliance with the unprogressive forces in the system. If common sense can be allowed to prevail, what we should be talking about is how Nigeria should seize the opportunity presented by Jonathan to bring about the long awaited evolution of a virile, competent and purposeful leadership in the country. Instead we are giving prominence to ultra-conservative, corrupt and unprogressive ideas and the elite who promote them for their vested or selfish interests. This of course is to demoralise and disorient the Jonathan government and make it vulnerable to the unprogressive forces in the system. The elite who represent and embody these negative forces see the evolving situation as a threat and are fighting a desperate battle for survival at the expense of all of us Nigerians. It will be very sad indeed if they eventually win the day as they pretty much did with the Obasanjo administration. Why should it be so difficult to look beyond zoning? Those who insist on talking about zoning are unable to conceive the very simple fact that despite its tribal, religious and geographical divisions, Nigeria is made up of people, human beings who all have the same basic needs. They interact more or less peacefully everyday with one another, economically, socially and politically but unfortunately have been perennially denied the kind of leadership they need for a more solid and stable integration. Nigeria can have and in the past has had leaders who are genuinely interested in the people’s well-being, irrespective of which part of the country they come from. In Goodluck Jonathan we have a rare chance for such a leader to emerge and all we seem to be able to do is to balk at it. Today, as bad as things seem to be, it is still possible to find virile and principled leadership in every sector or level of government but the set of circumstances that produce such leadership at the peak of the national level has eluded Nigeria for a long time. As a leadership commodity, I think that President Jonathan has demonstrated that we can take a chance on him and that is not something that can be said of the nation’s immediate past leaders or of so many of those who are making zoning an issue today.   I am worried about the authenticity of our national leadership. I am concerned that the next Nigerian leader come 2011 has enough ethical and intellectual integrity to ensure that he or she does not relapse into the divisive politics of ethnicity and/or religious jingoism, as has been more or less the case in recent decades. A plural society like Nigeria should best be governed in the interest of stability and peace, by diffusion of power. Although we claim to have adopted the American presidential system, power is far less diffused in ours than in that of the Americans. In the Nigerian system, power is too concentrated in the presidency. The Nigerian president is without doubt the most powerful head of state and head of government in the world; the same with state governors. The Nigerian president or governor has too many prerogatives, to the point of being almost totalitarian, including literally the right to kill and not be questioned. And some have used or tried to use the full measure of such powers. A mass grave was discovered in Kaduna in 2006 or thereabout. The state government and the police were believed to be complicit but till date nothing has been done about it. In 2009, Boko Haram suspects were mowed down by policemen in Maiduguri. The case is currently being studiously suppressed by the powers that be. Quite recently a state governor in Imo State had a critic of his brought into his office where he personally tortured and threatened to kill him. This is apart from the widespread looting of treasury, graft, corruption and misappropriation of public funds that goes on in all three tiers of government while the general population wallow in what can only be described as lethal poverty.
 
By Lt-Col Peter Egbe Ulu (rtd)

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