Read this excerpt from a Research Paper by Leena Koni Hoffmanns Africa Programme | July 2014 titled Who Speaks for the North? Politics and Influence in Northern Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, even after unsuccessfully contesting previous elections in 2003 and 2007, Buhari, a former military president, became not only a symbol for many of northern opposition to the governing PDP, Nigeria’s largest party, but also of widespread grassroots outrage over political and economic corruption at all levels of government. In the aftermath of Buhari’s third loss at the polls, demonstrations by his supporters – mostly young Muslim northerners – degenerated into deadly clashes with security forces in Katsina, Kaduna, Kano, Plateau and Bauchi states. The homes and businesses of several members of the northern elite who had openly supported Jonathan and the PDP were attacked, for what the protesters perceived as the betrayal of the north’s interests and the failure of democracy to improve their lives. The violent rejection of the 2011 election results in the north combined with festering ethno-religious tensions in the far north and the central states to produce ‘the most violent election in 50 years of Nigerian history’. There was little attention from the international media on these early warning signs of the north’s growing disenchantment with its fortunes ten years into the democratization process. Three years on, northern anger continues to simmer but remains unresolved and deeply misunderstood. Too often it is misrepresented in the Nigerian and international media as simply a demand for a northern (specifically Muslim) president. However, the widespread discontent among ordinary northerners with President Jonathan and the northern political elite has more to do with a long-held sense of political and economic marginalization than a desire to see a northerner assume the presidency again. The rhetoric around the need for a northern president is more likely generated by northern politicians negotiating for their own positions or trying to improve their prospects by ‘narrowing the pool’, as Tukur Baba, a Sokoto-based academic, observes Discuss...
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 07:38:45 +0000
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