WHO IS THE SENIOR PARTNER IN SOUTH-EAST/SOUTH-SOUTH ROMANCE?

I don’t know how many that has noticed the new found love or is it romance between the South-East and South-South geo-political zones? Please don’t get me wrong, because I am for love wherever it could be found. So I am in support of the show of love between the two zones. These days all that I hear is South-East/South-South professionals, South-East/South-South Traditional Rulers Council, South-East/South-South Governors meetings and all kinds of South-East/South-South groups. If others are not seeing it, let me tell them what I am seeing. This is all about President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid for 2015, even if he has not said so. I have to say also that if others are not seeing it, what I have seen is that the South-East is the “junior partner” in this relationship. The South-East presidency in 2015 is being mortgaged in this romance. Not that I have confidence that the South-East would win the presidency in 2015, but my worry is that they are not making any serious effort this time around to try and as Michael Jordan said, “I am not afraid of failure, because everybody has failed before, but what I cannot stand is doing nothing”. In 2011, I warned in my column in now rested Summit Daily Newspaper, that if the South-East failed to support the PDP zoning arrangement which demanded that the presidency should remain in the North till 2015 so that the South-East could get their turn by then, the chances of the zone to produce a president was farfetched. I argued relentlessly that zoning is the surest way for a South-East president to emerge. It is therefore living in fool’s paradise to believe that after Jonathan leaves power in 2019, that is if he wins the 2015 election, it would be the turn of the South-East to produce a president. If Jonathan stays in power for nine years plus Obasanjo’s eight years that would add up to 17 years that power has been in the south in the new democratic era. If the South-East is allowed to have eight years uninterrupted hold on power after Jonathan, it means the North will not taste power until 2027. North waiting till 2027 for power seems unrealistic to say the least, since they stand a very good chance in 2015 and are really working hard for it. But if the South-East can extract a water-tight agreement on power shift from the North, the North can be supported for presidency in 2015, so that by 2023, the next president of Nigeria will come from the South-East. To me that is the only realistic way for South-East presidency and not some people erroneously thinking that after Jonathan stayed till 2019, a South-East person would be supported by Jonathan to become the next president. South-East would be confined to political wilderness if the South-West and the North produce a president for Nigeria in 2015 as they are planning to do, without input from the zone. The best option for the South-East in my thinking right now is to produce a vice president with a northern president in APC. That way the presidency will go to the zone in 2023. Already the South-West that produced Obasanjo for eight years are positioning to produce a vice president under APC, only after less than 10 years that their kinsman ruled this country. Nothing could be so unfair, but is likely to happen while the South-East continues to put its future on a sinking ship: PDP.