There are fears that the several calls for restructuring and the perceived alienation of the Igbos, a major Nigerian ethnic group, from vying for the country’s presidency are setting the stage for an implosion.
Dr. Okey Okechukwu, a prolific political analyst, and the Executive Director, Development Specs Academy, believes that “an implosion is being brewed and the north is paying the right kind of attention to it.”
Dr. Okechukwu was a guest on ARISE News and said the intelligent thing elites in northern Nigeria will do is to shun putting forward a candidate for the next presidential election as “there will be nobody to govern” even though “all the variables they’ve placed on the table can give them the presidency in 2023.”
He made a case for an Igbo presidency come 2023 and said the southeasterners believe they are no longer part of Nigeria.
“The southeast is totally decimated, lowest number of states, lowest number of local governments, lowest budgetary allocation since 1999, and in the current government, near-zero appointment at the federal level and then the place is also being overrun by herdsmen.
“So what do you expect, the people no longer feel they belong and if you say we have the instruments of state, we have numbers and we can produce a president, yes you can, but who will you govern eventually.
“When most governors do not spend more than two weeks in the respective states when Senators and House of Reps members can’t go home and at the political level you maintain the illusion of grabbing, holding the centre and draining it to live at a level that doesn’t make sense, we are begging for implosion the way we are going,” Okechukwu said.
According to him, events in the country have gone so bad that the Nigerian state is not trusted by a single ethnic group or sub-ethnic group as talks by northerners about meritocracy only heightens the trust deficit.
He said the ethnic groups and sub-ethnic groups “see the state as a sleeping man and all the ethnic groups are like mosquitoes looking for a favourite place to perch, so to now suddenly talk about meritocracy, let them start by introducing meritocracy in admissions. It’s convenient to pretend Nigeria doesn’t exist and talk about meritocracy at the level of the president.
“The deception is smart but it’s not going to take anybody anywhere and my real concern is not even whether its an Igbo person that becomes president but the fact that an implosion is being brewed and the north is not paying the right kind of attention to it.”
By Abel Ejikeme