This is the ninth in an eleven-part series by veteran editor and commentator Reuben Abati. See prior posts for links to previous issues.
Guardian
16 January 2011
Reuben Abati
THE position of the so-called political North in relation to power politics is one of the recurrent sore points in Nigerian society and history. Nigerians of other ethnic extraction for many years, including the Yoruba and the Igbos are suspicious of what is regarded as Northern domination of the political space, resulting in protests about perceived marginalization of other groups within the polity. With extant historical fact indicating that the North was favoured by the British colonialists in the processes leading to independence in 1960, and in the original composition of the Nigerian military, with a state like Sokoto describing itself as a state of people who are “born to rule”, and with the Nigerian power structure dominated for more than 30 years by Northern political figures, every move by the North to gain political control at the centre simply sets off strong ethnic sentiments in other parts of the country.
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