{"id":2889,"date":"2017-06-06T01:42:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T01:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=2889"},"modified":"2017-06-06T01:42:19","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T01:42:19","slug":"what-nigerian-historian-max-siollun-wrote-to-trigger-presidential-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=2889","title":{"rendered":"What Nigerian historian, Max Siollun, wrote to trigger presidential reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gentleman\u2019s Agreement That Could Break Apart Nigeria.<\/strong>
\nBy Max Siollun.
\nFor the second time in seven years, the political stability of Africa\u2019s most populous nation hinges on the health of one man. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is once again in Britain for medical treatment because of an undisclosed illness. He was there for almost two months earlier this year, and in June 2016 he spent nearly two weeks abroad being treated for an ear infection. In the past month, he missed three straight cabinet meetings due to sickness, and perhaps more tellingly for a devout Muslim, he missed Friday mosque prayers in Abuja, where he usually attends without fail.
\nBuhari\u2019s unwillingness to disclose the nature or extent of his illness fuels rumors that he is terminally ill or, periodically, that he has already died. Last month, Garba Shehu, a spokesman for the president, was forced to issue a series of tweets denying that anything unpleasant happened to the president. He added that reports of Buhari\u2019s ill health are \u201cplain lies spread by vested interests to create panic.\u201d Buhari\u2019s wife recently tweetedthat his health is \u201cnot as bad as it\u2019s being perceived.\u201d
\nRegardless of the severity of his illness, Buhari\u2019s extended absence risks igniting an ugly power struggle that would threaten not just the political fortunes of his ruling party but also a long observed gentleman\u2019s agreement that has been critical to maintaining the stability of the country.
\nThe unwritten power-sharing agreement obliges the country\u2019s major parties to alternate the presidency between northern and southern officeholders every eight years. It was consolidated during Nigeria\u2019s first two democratic transfers of power \u2014 in 1999 and 2007 \u2014 and it alleviated the southern secessionist pressures that had festered under decades of military rule by dictators from the north. For a time, this mechanism for alternating power helped keep the peace in a country with hundreds of different ethnic groups and more than 500 different languages. But it was never intended to be permanent, and as Buhari\u2019s illness demonstrates, it has increasingly become a source of tension rather than consensus.
\nIf Buhari, a northerner, doesn\u2019t finish his term of office, and power passes to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a Christian from the south, it will be the second time in seven years that the north\u2019s \u201cturn\u201d in the presidency has been cut short. In late 2009, then-President Umaru Yar\u2019Adua, who like Buhari was a Muslim from the north, traveled abroad for treatment for an undisclosed illness. When Yar\u2019Adua died in office the following year, his southern Christian vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, succeeded him, setting the stage for an acrimonious split within the ruling People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) over whether Jonathan should merely finish out Yar\u2019Adua\u2019s term or run to retain the office in the 2011 election.
\nIn the end, Jonathan ran and won in 2011. But not before 800 people were killed in riots in the north after the PDP allowed Jonathan to contest the election. The anti-Jonathan faction later resigned in protest and defected to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) party. Buhari led the APC to victory over the PDP in 2015.
\nAn eerily similar scenario is now playing out in Buhari\u2019s APC party. If Buhari dies, resigns, or is declared medically incapacitated by the cabinet, it would likely ignite a similar struggle within the APC over whether Vice President Osinbajo should permanently succeed him as president. A group of prominent northerners has already stated that Osinbajo should serve merely as an interim president and that he cannot replace Buhari on the ticket in the 2019 presidential election. Should Osinbajo succeed Buhari, win the 2019 election, and serve a full term, a Christian southerner will have been president for 18 of the 24 years since Nigeria transitioned to democracy in 1999.
\nThere is a chance that APC leaders will convince \u2014 or force \u2014 Osinbajo to stand down in favor of another Muslim candidate from the north. But sidelining Osinbajo would pose other sectarian risks. He was chosen as Buhari\u2019s running mate in part to counter southern accusations that the APC is a Muslim party. And although he is seen as a technocrat, Osinbajo is a powerful political force in his own right \u2014 too powerful, perhaps, to be sidelined in 2019 without alienating millions of voters. He is a pastor in the country\u2019s largest evangelical church, which has some 6 million members, and his wife is the granddaughter of Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria\u2019s early independence politicians who is beloved in southwest Nigeria.
\nYet if the north\u2019s \u201cturn\u201d in power is interrupted again, it will further alienate the region \u2014 already home to the bloody Boko Haram insurgency, which has thrived in part because of government neglect \u2014 and make north-south cooperation on security, development, and a host of other critical issues more difficult. It could easily lead to another round of deadly riots, as it did in 2011. But there is a way out.
\nNigeria should abandon the convention of north-south presidential power rotation now that it has outlived its purpose. At the same time, it should deepen power sharing in state and local governments, which have steadily gained influence relative to the national government since 1999. Many of the country\u2019s 36 states and 774 local governments already practice some form of power rotation among politicians from different ethnic, religious, and geographic groups. The key will be to frame the abolition of power rotation at the presidential level as an opportunity to strengthen these norms at the state and local levels \u2014 not a chance to terminate them everywhere at once.
\nThe reality is that most Nigerians experience government at the local level anyway. Regardless of whether Buhari or Osinbajo is in the presidential palace, state and local officials have the most purchase on the lives of ordinary citizens. Letting go of a dangerous convention at the national level while devolving more power to inclusive governance structures at the local level offers a way out of the current impasse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gentleman\u2019s Agreement That Could Break Apart Nigeria. By Max Siollun. For the second time in seven years, the political stability of Africa\u2019s most populous nation hinges on the health of one man. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is once again in Britain for medical treatment because of an undisclosed illness. He was there for almost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5777],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}