FROM the Ohaneze’s redoubt with its epicentre in Imo hills, to the Arewa’s sanctuary amidst the ancient relics of Kano’s groundnut pyramids, to the South-South’s warren of creeks in the Niger Delta’s mangrove forests, a curtain of ethnic nationalism has descended upon the Nigerian Federation, casting a death-like pall over its political terrain. The common demand is encapsulated in the new political evangel of "rotational" presidency, otherwise described as "arrangee" Presidency – better explained by the motor park language of, "rub my back, I rub your back!" for us to produce the next president, one after another. These are many voices carrying the same message of doom for the Nigerian nation. They shall not prevail.

No doubt, this essay will be regarded in some quarters, as running against the current of ideas presently extolling the virtues of the system of rotational presidency for Nigeria, beginning with the next presidential election in 2003. If it is so regarded, I would have succeeded in my primary objective, which is to debunk this spurious theory of presidential succession, and infuse some sanity into the mob psychology that is propelling us towards certain doom. For in our time, what is at issue is not only the very nature of the Nigerian man, his psyche and his schizophrenia, but also the apparently limitless possibility of his capacity for willful self-destruction.

The voices we hear crying out there in mock tortured dissent, are not the voices of reason from a group of patriots, but those of ethnic existentialists - those who would rather that the country died for them, than that they should be denied the opportunity to take their turn in milking the national cow. This new political evangel of rotational presidency, if subjected to critical or empirical examination, will be seen to be basically subversive of the democratic process, and a travesty of the 1999 Constitution. Put kindly, advocates of ethnic-determined rotational presidential succession, are simply attempting to cut the nose to spite the face.

It will not work – not as long as we make any pretence of sticking to the democratic process of governance, and also because we do not have a clear view of the objective – end that the system of rotational presidency being advocated is expected to achieve. In this sense, the end does not justify the means to be adopted, which apparently is in order to correct the wrongs and injustices of the past, without saying how. Indeed, lofty and seductive as the idea sounds, it can only be justified by recourse to pagan ethics – or in terms of the ideals of the ancient classicists – Polybius, Cicero or Livy-according to which, Brutus was justified to kill his children, because he thereby saved Rome!

By the same token, Savonarola who had sound ideas about how to acquire moral strength to curb corruption, ironically perished because he failed to realize that the fate of the gallows awaited an unarmed prophet. The same thing applies to those who plan to save the nation, by first ripping the heart of unity from the body politic, in order to install the mammon of rotational presidency.

Even as a conceptual idea, it is disingenuous, dishonest, hypocritical and ultra vires of the existing 1999 Constitution. As a piece of metaphysical conceit, it will manifest and vapourise as a mirage.

Viewed objectively, the prevailing upsurge in ethnic existentialism, which is the spur for the idea of a rotational presidency, is a retrogressive fall-back to a more ancient tradition – that of the Greek polis, or of republican Rome – an essentially collective or communal morality according to which, to be a fulfilled human being and have premium value and a sense of purpose, one must be an identified member of a community or ethnic group.

Tragically for us in Nigeria, the values and priorities of such a group, which are assimilated by persons belonging to it, are deemed to take precedence over that of the larger group of which they are a part.

This collectivist mentality determines the degree of their allegiance to, and reverence for the welfare and glory of their patria - (the fatherland). It creates a need for choice, between the ultimate values of the group, and the conflicting but sovereign prerogatives of the patria, which is usually resolved at the expense of the latter. That is why the nation which provides us with our world identity and recognition as "Nigerians" plays second fiddle to our various states of origin or ethnicity.

In a pluralistic federalism such as ours, with infinite varieties of cultures and values, all viewed as equally ultimate and incommensurable with one another, thus rendering logically incoherent, the belief in a universally valid national value system or points of view; the hegemonic insistence for power rotation among the dominant ethnicities is bound to destroy the very fabric of our already tenuous and fragile national unity. The ultimate result, if this chauvinistic pursuit is not abandoned by all concerned, is not a more perfect and balanced federal structure, but a fractured federation which has self-destruct itself to form a confederation. We simply cannot expect to eat our cake and have it!

Clearly, the course of events since 1966, particularly the illegal accretion of power in a few hands, and the criminal sequestration of the nation’s wealth by a tiny cabal, lie at the root of the rampaging craving and rage for ethnic individualism, and agitation for resource control. The implication is that the unjust federal structure, has failed to meet the peoples’ hope for a better life for all, and that the only way to guarantee that the "group" to which a people belong does not lose out in the national struggle for power and influence, is to have their own man in Aso Rock.

The notion is rife, that in Nigeria today, only when someone, first and foremost, seeks the progress of his own community, to which he adheres naturally and unself-consciously, can he enter into the living stream of the nation and lead a full, creative and fulfilled life protected by the might of his own people. Though partially true, it has unfortunately been over-exaggerated to assume the veneration of the articles of a religious faith. This is even worse among a people suffering from a crisis of identity and low self-esteem, in our largely selfish and atavistic society.

Frustration at not being able to belong to the mainstream of national power (political/military) could propel such a group in search of a final solution to their problem, leading to the pursuit of an aggressive isolationism, or a Samsonite instinct for self-immolation, taking along with them to their doom the oppressor groups. But as of today; we are not there yet; the stage at which we are now, is that of a conscious and vociferous demand by individual ethnic nationalities for equality of status, or failing which, recourse to association with some other equally aggrieved and oppressed group, also in quest of justice and self-identification for co-ordinated agitation or group action.

My central thesis is that, the clamour for a rotational Presidency, outside the provisions of the 1999 Constitution, purely as a matter of political chicanery and expediency is wrong, wrong, and wrong; and is ultimately both disingenuous and subversive of the democratic norms we profess to uphold. To categorise and embellish this utopian option as our "home grown democracy" is equally fraudulent. It will prove to be the ultimate ruin of f our nation as a unified country, bound together by shared values and common interests.

It is not here suggested or implied, that people should deny their roots, or deny their true identities within the federation’s ethnic melting pot. That indeed would be as impossible as it is unnatural, bound up as people are with the historical memories, language and traditions of their people. But this ought not to conflict with putting on the seamless cloak of a Nigerian national identity. Therefore, far from extolling cultural cosmopolitanism, what is being suggested is that our cultural pluralism should be viewed as our collective heritage, to be exploited as an inexhaustible source of creativity and vitality for our common benefit. We reject the Hegelian distinction that is being drawn between the dominant majority ethnicities on the one hand (who claim to have the historic mandate to appropriate the Presidency and have it rotated among themselves) and the minority ethnic nationalities, whom the former by dint of their numerical superiority, think they have the right to exploit and assimilate as second class citizens.

History shows us that the pathological response on the part of those whose dignity have been insulted, is to exaggerate their own real or imaginary virtues and excellence, against those of their tormentors, with resultant schism in the polity.

All of this raises the fundamental issue of hegemonism, and respect for human dignity, both for ourselves and for others as well, and this is what has inflamed the passion and quest for rotational presidency among the dominant ethnic nationalities, on the assumption that the minority ethnic nationalities have no intrinsic right to the presidency. In response, the minority ethnic nationalities have hit back with agitation for resource control. Needless to say, these delusions of grand political manipulations need to be comprehensively repudiated, to the extent that they are inconsistent with, and subversive of the true ends of democracy and true equality (of persons and opportunity) under the 1999 constitution.

Nothing could secure the values and free doms sacred to all men of goodwill in our
country today, than an unremitting effort to create de-tribalized Nigerian leaders, by demonstrating that our Federation provides equal opportunity for excellence to prevail over mediocrity, and for the weak among us to find succour in our collective strength. We must guard against all that patronises and diminishes men, and threatens to rob them of their true worth, and undermine their self-esteem.

In recognition of the need to respect all men as men, in terms of primal human passions and emotions, we must rid this nation of the kant of ethnic supremacy, based on the numerical superiority of some ethnic groups, and the presumptuous right to rule, based on a decadent Hegelian historicity.

While we are all filled with revulsion at the arbitrariness, cruelty, oppression and injustice of the system of governance by which we have been ruled since the beginning of the era of military government in 1966, and fervently desire to bring this to an end, nevertheless, we remain skeptical and suspicious of the nostrums by which certain interest groups in the country wish to accomplish this desirable objective.

Specifically, we remain skeptical of the resort to the unconstitutional political contrivance of an "arrangee presidency" or "rotational presidency", being canvassed as a superior replacement for the due process of election to the presidency as provided for in the constitution.

To the extent that this hunger for Presidential power is actuated by the desire for revenge and retribution, those who claim that they have been brutalized and marginalized by the system, will in turn, without doubt, breed their own terrible excesses and injustice on others. Above all, such a prospect holds within it, threat to individual liberty and the free exercise of democratic rights, that is each person’s due under the constitution. Ultimately, it could lead to individuals voting under duress for a presidential candidate they neither like nor trust, all in the name of the supposed panacea, of a rotational presidency.

There is no a priori guarantee, that a rotational presidency, with the potential of further fragmentation of the country, will not perpetuate, aggravate and institutionalize habits more fearsome, cruel and devilish than those we presently contend against.

In a country which is not known for rational behaviour, but prone to chaotic and undisciplined behaviour, and open to unforeseeable and capricious changes, any pretence to have found absolute values and final solutions to our existing problems, to be achieved by the denial of the exercise of free-will and informed choice, via the back door mandate of a rotational presidency, must be regarded with consummate skepticism, and should fill us with disquiet foreboding, if not fretful apprehension. What the nation sorely needs is a symptom of sanity in the politics of our time, which the introduction of a rotational presidency is decidedly not.

Clearly, at this moment in history, our country is at cross-roads, plagued with the crisis of failed leadership that goes back thirty years. Our quest for a different formulation of federal government, which takes cognizance of our ethnic pluralism and idiosyncrasies is both urgent and legitimate, but a rotational presidency which has no constitutional sanction, is neither the best way forward, nor the panacea for the ills of the nation.

Therefore, we reject in toto, the idea of ethnically sponsored candidates for the Presidency. Let any Nigerian, regardless of his tribe or ethnic affinity, who considers that he possesses the qualities and virtues desired of a President of this great nation, step forward in his own personal recognizance to contest for the prize. A President so freely chosen will have the trust and allegiance of all Nigerians. The late Chief M.K.O. Abiola demonstrated that such a feat is indeed feasible. Similarly, the incumbent President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo did not have the support of the majority of the Yoruba in the 1999 Presidential elections, yet the rest of the country voted to elect him President. This is the preferred approach for the election of our President, not an "arrangee" method. My loyalty to my country, and sworn allegiance to its flag is unwavering, constant and total. But I will be damned if I am going to pledge allegiance to some political charlatan foisted on the country as President – through the back-door contrivance of rotational presidency. Nigeria deserves for its President something far better than the chosen representative of an ethnic chefdom. But we need not be unduly dismayed, the course before the nation is clear – it’s all a matter of choice – as Robert Frost admonishes:

The same thought is offered with the majestic cadence and sense of sobriety which only the Holy Scriptures is capable of rendering:

Nigeria eagerly awaits the emergence of its authentic redeeming hero, to show the light, so that this nation may at last find the road that leads to life – life more abundant for all. Therefore, no ethnic flag-bearers or political adventurers need apply – there is no vacancy in Aso Rock for men like these. Our nation is faced with a historic crisis of trust, let the true patriots arise and shine:

These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women". —Thomas Paine: The Crisis

July 2002