| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
LAGOS, 22 February 1999 (IRIN) - In Nigeria it's known simply as "power shift": the idea that political control - since independence almost exclusively in the hands of the generals and politicians of the north - should finally be allocated to the south.
This time around, the long-standing demand appears to have won consensus across the country. Presidential contenders Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae are not only experienced politicians. They are also Yorubas from the country's commercial heartland of the southwest; the home region of Moshood Abiola whose 1993 perceived election victory was anulled by the military, and the base of opposition to army rule.
According to northern-based human rights lawyer Festus Okoye, the north has generally endorsed the concept of "power shift" for two solid reasons. "For the country to remain one united entity, the northern elites realise they have to make a concession," he told IRIN. In addition, "the ordinary people haven't been beneficiaries of 'northern domination'. The sense I get is that they are more broadminded than the political elites."
Among Nigeria's 110 million people, three ethnic groups hold sway. The Hausa-Fulani of the north are officially the majority population. They have traditionally controlled the upper echelons of the military. In broad terms, the Yorubas, along with the Igbos of the southeast, are the country's professionals and entrepreneurs.
Fear and frustration has historically marked relations between the mainly islamic north and largely christian south. The north worries about the economic clout of the educated south, which in turn feels unfairly treated by successive regimes. The repercussions of the anulment of the 1993 election, which Abiola, a Muslim, ironically won on the strength of his northern support, has served to deepen antagonisms.
However, Nigerian party politics are based on the art of coalition making, and the strength of political networks to deliver the vote - a process which cuts across ethnic lines, analysts say. It's about money and deals. Concern with ethnic balancing has also ensured that both presidential candidates in the 27 February election have chosen northern vice-presidential running mates.
Falae's Alliance for Democracy (AD) has inherited the mantle and political machine of southwestern hero and chieftan, Obafemi Awolowo. He has however broken the mould of "progressive" southwestern political tradition by entering into an electoral pact with the "conservative" All People's Party (APP). "It is the first time that the core north has teamed up with the core west," political researcher Prince Phillips told IRIN. The move is all the more suprising given APP's identification with key political figures of the unlamented regime of General Sani Abacha. But, insists Phillips, "all the Abachaists have since been purged."
The support base of Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party (PDP) is far more national. Substancial Igbo backing was ensured by the party presidential candidacy of one of the PDP's founders, and vice president in the last civilian government, Alex Ekwueme. Ekwueme's suprising landslide defeat by Obasanjo at the party's primaries on 14 February owes much to the same political network, now in Obasanjo's service, which propelled Abiola to within a hair's breadth of the presidency in 1993. Analysts add that Ekwueme ruffled ethnic sensibilities by over-playing the Igbo card. Obasanjo's record, on the other hand, rests in part on leading a military government from 1976-79 in which northern interests were preserved.
Obasanjo's political network reportedly relies heavily on the connections created by his former deputy, General Shehu Yar'Adua, a northern aristocrat who died in detention under Abacha in 1997. It encompasses a new generation of politicians and deal-makers that overpowered some once important northern power-brokers in Ekwueme's camp - popularly known as the Kaduna Mafia - who served with him in the same civilian government. Clement Nwankwo of the Constitutional Rights Project describes the team behind Obasanjo as built around a "convenience of interests".
The campaign is believed to be part funded by wealthy senior former military officers with a murky past to protect, and allegedly individual political ambitions for the future. Beyond ethnicity, sections of the military and their business partners are the important other constituency in Nigeria's political make-up. With the alleged tacit support of the military establishment, Obasanjo is regarded as the winning side. That popular perception, in a country where political patronage is a well-honed instrument, gives Obasanjo a further leg up on the opposition, analysts say.
But in one embarrassing area, Obasanjo's political machine let him down. Even though he is a former head of state, was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment by Abacha, has been feted around the world as a statesman, he was unable to secure his own local government ward, in the heart of Yorubaland, for the PDP. "He did not even win the polling booth outside his house," one critic claimed.
"Obasanjo's main constituency is the military," Phillips says. "In Nigeria today, we don't want them, whether in or out of uniform."
Obasanjo supporters say that is an unrealistic proposition in a country in transition from 15 years of military rule. Obasanjo offers a reassuring face to both the military, and a nervous north, and would provide much-needed stability after Nigeria's grim recent past. According to Nwankwo, an independent human rights lawyer, "Obasanjo should be given a chance".
But in the southwest, where Abacha's repression of the pro-democracy movement was so severe, the visceral opposition among many ordinary citizens to anybody tinged by military acceptability suggests widespread protest would greet an election victory even by such an eminent son of Yorubaland, analysts say.
[ENDS]
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 16:00:05 From: IRIN West Africa <irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci> Subject: NIGERIA: Power shifts to the south 1999.2.22
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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