Can Nigeria's benevolent and unlikely Christian president Jonathan find his Muslim soul mate, his David so to speak, to keep his fractious country together, asks Gamal Nkrumah Onerous, I presume. The labyrinth that is the search for suitable running mates for Goodluck Jonathan bodes ill. There are many pretenders to the throne; the problem is that they represent radically different constituencies in what appears to be an irreconcilable political dilemma. The case for political renewal is unanswerable in a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic federation of 36 states where the vice-president is prescribed to be a Muslim if the president is Christian, and vice-versa, of course. It is on this basis that Nigerians will judge the fitness of the contenders for the post of vice-president. Their judgement will hinge not so much on the question of their God-fearing reverence, piety or even spirituality but more on their religious affiliation. Whoever wins the Nigerian vice-presidential post is bound to suffer a form of the winner's curse syndrome. Why this should be the case in a contemporary democracy remains a mystery. Since Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, changes of government in Nigeria have not led to significant policy shifts on the domestic front. The ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) to which both the deceased president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and his successor Jonathan belong is an unwieldy amalgamation of rival forces. The problem with the PDP, as with Nigeria as a whole, is that it is obliged to stage a precarious tightrope act in which token Christians and Muslims are evenly represented in any prospective government. The last PDP president of the country, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was an ethnic Yoruba from the southwestern part of the country and a devout Muslim. His successor the ailing Yar'Adua was a compromise candidate whose paramount credential was that he was a moderate Muslim. No sane Nigerian can be entirely satisfied with a status quo in which political posts are contingent on a candidate's professed religion and not on his political platform and stated objectives and agenda. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that most of Nigeria's rulers have been uninspired and lacklustre. None has managed to convince a wary public that he is in a position of power by virtue of his political acumen. Worse, Nigerian politicians have no fixed political allegiances. But then this very religious dynamic is what animates the Nigerian political establishment. The vital importance of Nigeria's newly elected Goodluck Jonathan, sworn in last Thursday barely hours after his predecessor's demise, is that he hails from the Ijaw ethnic group of the conflict-ridden, oil-rich Niger Delta. The indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta have long been resentful of their role as the goose that lays the golden eggs in contemporary Nigeria. Jonathan's kinsmen commiserating with Yar'Ardua's family nevertheless suspect that "the PDP cabal is planning to foment trouble". In lingo incomprehensible to outsiders they insisted that "Jonathan can rule because he is not a slave." The Ijaw chieftains were among pre-colonial Nigeria's maritime slavers just as the northern Muslim emirs were their Saharan counterparts enslaving thousands of their compatriots. "We are the ones feeding the nation and they are saying we cannot be president unless we take permission from the people we are feeding," noted an incensed Chief Joseph Evah, president of the Ijaw Monitoring Group. His acrid remarks ensued after he heard that some northerners deeply resent the swearing in of a southern Christian as head of state of Nigeria, a predominantly Muslim nation. That is not an unreasonable immediate reaction to the news that Jonathan was not considered a suitable successor to Yar'Adua, whose brother was Obasanjo's deputy when the general was military ruler 1976-79. That is why pretending that Nigeria is an exemplary pluralistic democracy may be a necessary piece of political hypocrisy. Of course, this is a hard argument to make stick in the politically volatile climate of Nigerian politics. Sadly, the Muslim Yar'Adua died. So he was survived by the Christian Jonathan -- an optimistic soul for whom the glass is always half full -- and he set off for another spin on Nollywood's magic political roundabout. Nigeria has the world's third largest film industry after Hollywood and India's Bollywood. Now that the playing field is clear, a suitable moderate Muslim northerner must fill the post of vice-president -- preferably an ex- general. Deprived of the presidency, other Nigerian opposition parties also put more effort and money into cultivating the political loyalties of ex-generals. Another former military strongman, Major-General Mohamed Buhari, was the presidential candidate of the All Nigerian People's Party, the country's most influential opposition group. Former Nigerian heads of state General Yakubu Gowon and Alhaji Shehu Shagari are backing Jonathan for the national democratic elections scheduled for 2011. If Yar'Ardua's tenure in office was regarded as arduous, so Jonathan's ascent to power as Yar'Ardua's "lawful suc c essor" blessed by Washington threatens to be even more troublesome. Both Buhari and the late Yar'Adua hail from the impoverished northern and predominantly Muslim ethnic Hausa state of Katsina -- a bastion of traditional conservatism and fundamentalist Islam. Religion and ethnicity permit Nigerian political gurus to claim the moral high ground in a country besotted by superfluous cultural specifities. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, of the opposition All Progressive Grand Alliance, led the ethnic Igbo breakaway state of Biafra during the Nigerian civil war. The ex-general ruled Biafra with an iron fist. But the vast majority of Igbos still rally round him to this day. The stories, though, are a bit all over the place. The one facet of life that all Nigerians care about is improving living standards. Nigeria, like most other African nations, is plagued by complex socio- economic problems and a crippling foreign debt which fuel ethnic and religious strife. Divided into an overwhelmingly Muslim north and a largely Christian and animist south, Nigeria still suffers from the lingering legacy of the bitter civil war that nearly ripped the country apart between 1967-70. The problem with Nigeria is that the scale of its burdens and challenges means that other African nations' worries simply pale into insignificance. Saddled with a huge foreign debt of $30 billion, the Nigerian economy is heavily dependent on oil exports which account for 95 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings. And economic matters dominated debate in the run-up to the last presidential poll. It is hoped by all and sundry that the 2011 general elections will be better managed and smoother run. This will require a public guarantee of Nigeria's debts and soon. Nigeria's 80 million voters, it appears, by and large placed their trust in Obasanjo's political heir Yar'Adua and threw in their lot with his ruling party. Who will they put their trust in at next year's poll? Obasanjo, a Christian who hails from the Yoruba ethnic group, Nigeria's second largest, was a seasoned politician, and Yar'Adua struck most Nigerians as a political novice. Jonathan's very political mystique is replete with symbolism. At the 2003 presidential polls, the virtually identical in ideological orientation All Nigeria People's Party bitterly complained about fudged tallies, ballot box theft and other electoral irregularities. The electoral process appeared to be especially flawed in certain contentious regions including the oil-producing regions such as River State. Nigeria produces two million barrels of oil a day and production is forecast to double in less than a couple of years. But in spite of its enormous oil wealth, the standard of living has plummeted over the past three decades. Nigerians are poorer today than they were at independence from Britain in 1960. Nigeria inherited the clap-trap of Western-style multi-party democracy from its colonial master, where pseudo-ideologies blur the glaring underlying similarities between parties which leave little choice to despairing voters. Nigeria might not have a hung parliament like Britain, but its parties are equally banal. What the current political turmoil highlights is that the country's leadership must reflect the body politic in a just, proportionate way. A fight between bland parties with little to differentiate -- or recommend -- them to the voters would be no help. The process by which Jonathan's political mate is being chosen is mishmash of tribal jockeying with military, big business (read: mafia) and religious overtones. Nigeria has had serious problems with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions. Nigeria's budget deficit crept up to nearly five per cent of the country's GDP. Nigeria must sort this mess out. The reputation of all Africa depends on Nigeria. Clouds of uncertainty hang over the country, the continent's most populous nation. It remains a most stirring political moment in the living memory of Nigerians -- at least since the brutish Biafran war of the late 1960s. A defining moment without the anguish of full scale civil war. At least not yet. Already, the indigenous peoples of the Delta who see Jonathan as their coreligionist have threatened to relaunch their insurgency for control of "their" oil if the political process does not move quickly to meet their needs and just demands. The current malaise that Nigeria is experiencing is the result of continuing financial fragility, political instability, economic mismanagement and chronic underdevelopment. As the Nigerian crises unfurl, policymakers desperately are trying to create conditions where green shoots may break through. Jonathan's real motives for hanging on to power may be different from his predecessors. The key to his political success is whether he is capable of reining his countrymen in. This is the time for a more open debate on the future of Africa's sleeping giant.
