From Aso Villa With Yusuf Ozi-Usman
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I was privileged to be in the entourage of President Goodluck Jonathan on his walking visit to both Anambra and Imo states last week. The visit was exciting, tasking and above all, educative. For one thing, the visit has brought into sharp focus the length to which people can go to impress leaders, and or the length which the leaders can go to impress the people.
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As a body corporate, fully conscious of the constitutional right of contest of her members, the PDP, in 1999, met and consensually voted to enshrine in her Constitution, a Presidential power-sharing arrangement which precludes members from exercising that right outside a mutually beneficial geo-political quid pro quo between the North and the South.
This story is hypothetical. Seven years ago, a Deputy Governor of a prosperous state in Southern Nigeria asked to see the Minister of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. He made a confession that both he and his wife, who had accompanied him on this appointment, did not have “an inch of land anywhere in Nigeria”. They asked to be given plots of land.
Last Friday, after almost 41 months of struggle, Kayode Fayemi, of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), regained his stolen mandate and become governor of his Ekiti state. His was a long, heroic struggle. He fought many legal battles, won some and lost some. But he won the war. And by so doing, put paid to the subversion of the wishes of the Ekiti people that had gone on for 41 months.
Since almost all of Nigerians development took place in the 20 years between independence and 1979, when looking for the true heroes to celebrate and honor on the occasion of the country 50th anniversary, it is the personalities of this period who should have been more rightfully honored. But they were ignored. It is certainly not enough to just honour the more well-known leaders.
