By Ehichioya Ezomon 

Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, elder statesman, former Federal Commissioner, Leader of the Ijaw Nation, and Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), died on Monday, February 17, 2025, aged 97. Since his passing, the family home in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has become a melting port for “our leaders” to sympathise with the bereaved.

What such a solemn occasion demands of the visitors is an expression of genuine sympathy and empathy mostly for the demised’s family members, friends and associates, the people of their tribal and ethnic nationality, State of origin and the entire country.

This is done amid reminiscences of the life and times of the departed, especially a personality of Clark’s standing, an unpretentious patriot and nationalist, whose voice of reasoning and moderation on issues of equity, fairness, justice, and national cohesion rang loudly till he breathed his last on earth.

Politicians – individually and severally – have been queueing to show their faces and pay last respects to the Patriarch of the Niger Delta. Friday, February 21, was “the turn” of a coterie of opposition members to pay a “condolence visit” to the Clark family.

Peopled mainly by Northern politicians, and led by former Vice President and thrice Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the group postures for a political platform for an alliance, a coalition or a merger that can remove the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Tinubu from power in 2027.

It’s debatable whether it’s Atiku that led the “condolence visitors,” but among the delegation was the new “enfant terrible” (a person who behaves in an unconventional or controversial way) of Northern politics, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, former Kaduna State Governor (2015-2023) and ex-Minister of the FCT.

El-Rufai boasts of rallying, for the 2027 poll, a similar opposition movement that transformed into the APC in February 2013, and defeated then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

Imbued with such a self-imposed responsibility, el-Rufai, at the condolence visit, veered into the politics of 2027 presidential contest, and craved for a North-South-South alignment to “rescue Nigeria” from the Tinubu administration. 

El-Rufai urged the people of Niger Delta to continue with the good work of Pa Clark, noting that he really played a fatherly role throughout his lifetime. “I think the legacy of E.K. Clark and the work he has done should remind us all of the importance of being courageous, standing up for justice and risking everything for Nigeria,” el-Rufai said.

Reflecting on the historical bond between the North and South-South, and imploring political stakeholders to restore that collaboration for the nation’s survival, el-Rufai declared: “In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the North’s traditional political partners were from the South-South. Let us not forget that. Let us go back to that. Let us save this country because it really requires saving. We need a rescue operation.”

As a pointer to whose trumpet the group blows, el-Rufai praised Atiku for his contributions to Nigeria’s economic development, particularly during his tenure as Vice President under President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 to 2007).

“Atiku was at the forefront of economic reforms that repositioned Nigeria during the Obasanjo administration,” el-Rufai said, adding, “Atiku’s role in attracting investment and restructuring the economy was crucial” – implying that an Atiku presidency will replicate what he did in government over two decades ago.

El-Rufai’s solicitation reveals the actual purpose for the opposition visit to the Clark family: To capitalise on the emotional state of the bereaved, to score political points, and backing for a Northern presidency in 2027, unmindful of the zoning of the Presidency between the North and South of Nigeria every eight years.

Embarking on an anti-Tinubu campaign, that the president hasn’t performed, and should be replaced in 2027, el-Rufai and his Northern colleagues make nothing of the zoning arrangement between the North and South that ensures equitable representation in a diverse society as Nigeria.

For them, that “arrangement” was blatantly “breached” in 2011 when President Jonathan and the PDP refused the North to pick a Northerner to complete the “eight-year tenure” of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who died in 2010.

Then-Vice President Jonathan from the South (and South-South) stepped in to complete the barely one-year remaining of Yar’Adua’s first term in office, and was supposed to pave the way for a Northerner to round-off the last four years of the Yar’Adua presidency. But Dr Jonathan refused to step down or step aside; and egged on by cheerleaders, he’s “coronated” as the PDP candidate, and subsequently won the presidential poll in 2011.

If Northerners were mollified in 2011 to allow Jonathan to “usurp” the remaining four years of the Yar’Adua presidency, they didn’t condone a similar antic in 2015 when Jonathan wanted a “Third Term” – as critics put it, taking cognizance of his being sworn-in twice in 2010 (to succeed Yar’Adua) and 2011.

Jonathan discountenanced his Oath of Office in 2010, whereas the amended 1999 Constitution of Nigeria states that, upon the resignation, removal or death of the President, the Vice President shall assume the position, to complete the term (not tenure), and could seek a second term if he hadn’t been sworn-in twice as President.

Not surprising, Jonathan faced stiff opposition from within the PDP, especially in the North, during the 2015 election, to the extent that the party leadership in the region, and members of his campaign council sold out and betrayed him on Election Day. 

For instance, Atiku – who’d defected to, and run for President under then-Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 2007, and returned to the PDP before the 2011 election – led five PDP governors to walk out of the National Convention in 2014, and formed a factional New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP), which later dissolved into the APC, to wrest power from the PDP and Jonathan in 2015.

On the APC side as the main opposition, el-Rufai was a major actor in the scotched-earth campaign that prevented Jonathan from being re-elected in 2015. Going personal (as he does currently) el-Rufai, on November 9, 2013, reportedly tweeted a photo of Jonathan praying, and wrote: “The many prayers of the lazy, docile, incompetent, clueless, hopeless, useless leader.”

That’s the kind of scenario el-Rufai and his new opposition soulmates contemplate for 2027, with consultations ongoing across the country, and members gracing all sorts of gatherings, including visits for condolences, such as they undertook to the Clark family home in Abuja.

During the visit, el-Rufai, acting like a magician performing advanced tricks, switched from condolence to politics of 2027, for a Northerner to supplant President Tinubu, who holds a Southern ticket that Chief Clark joined in fighting for in 2023, even as he wasn’t supportive of Tinubu’s candidacy.

Clark, though, had extolled Tinubu for some of his bold initiatives, such as the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway; renewed efforts to clean-up the Ogoniland of oil polution; establishment of a University of Environment and Technology in Ogoni; and decentralisation of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology to the six geopolitical zones of the country.

These projects, which favour both Ijawland and the Niger Delta, represent a subtle restructuring of Nigeria, which Chief Clark and like-minded Southern and Middle Belt leaders had advocated for decades, but opposed by the core North, whose agenda el-Rufai, Atiku and others are propagating for 2027.

In an open letter to Tinubu on March 20, 2024, which raised some issues relating to infrastructural development of the Niger Delta, and the country at large, Clark commended the President for the coastal highway, stating that when completed, it’d change Nigeria’s landscape.

Clark’s words: “I congratulate you (Tinubu), your Minister of Works and former Governor of Ebonyi State, His Excellency, David Umahi, for the recent award of the coastal road, which will stretch from Lagos State down to Calabar, Cross River State. 

“This is a landmark project, which if completed, will change the landscape of infrastructural development in Nigeria… I assure you, Mr President, that we will not only endorse this project but will fully extend our support, to ensure its completion, especially at the areas of the Niger Delta where it will pass through. I want to assure you that on such a noble effort, you can count on my support and that of the entire people of the South-South.”

Surely, el-Rufai and company addressed the wrong message to the wrong audience at their visit to the Clark family. Perhaps, were the protocols of such a solemn and sober occasion to permit, the family members would’ve responded in a way that el-Rufai and his group won’t forget in a hurry in their 2027 kite-flying!

In any case, has el-Rufai forgotten that Jonathan is from the South-South? Or does his group want to atone for the North’s “conspiracy” against him in 2015, by “offering” him another shot at the Presidency, which Tinubu’s likely to recontest in 2027? 

That’ll be a deft and clever calculation by el-Rufai and his Northern campaigners: Set a Southern challenger against a President from the South, thus paving the way for a Northerner to emerge as President in 2027! 

It’s left to be seen if Jonathan will fall for this gambit, and soil his towering and soaring reputation as a beacon and the face of “true democracy,” not only in Nigeria, but also across Africa and the global community.

Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria. Can be reached on X, Threads, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp @EhichioyaEzomon. Tel: 08033078357