When Nasir El-Rufai stood before the world in June 2022 and declared that 12 out of 14 northern APC governors had agreed to cede presidential power to the South, he was hailed as a statesman, a unifier, a northern leader with the courage to put national interest above regional ambition. He told reporters that day that a super majority of northern governors had taken a decision and that everyone, including the defiant Yahaya Bello, was bound by it . It was a moment of rare political sacrifice from a region that had grown accustomed to holding the reins of power.
Today, as El-Rufai languishes in the detention facilities of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the question that every thinking northerner must ask is this: What did the South do with that sacrifice? The answer is as devastating as it is simple. Silence. Complicity. Continued support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from southern political elites who have paid their media houses, their data boys, and their influencers not only to denigrate El-Rufai but to paint the entire North as a region of power-hungry traitors.
And now, these same southern voices expect the North to trust zoning again in 2027. They expect northerners who can see, who can think, who have not been blinded by tribal sentiment, to once again hand over power to a region that has demonstrated exactly what it thinks of northern loyalty.
Let us rewind to the beginning. Professor Ishaq Akintola, the founder of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has been remarkably candid about his role in this saga. In a press release dated March 23, 2026, Akintola confessed that MURIC was the first to demand a Yoruba Muslim president as far back as February 2021 . He and the Concerned Yoruba Muslim Scholars met and persuaded Tinubu to run. But they quickly realized that Yoruba Muslims alone could not deliver the presidency. They needed a handshake across the Niger. So they networked with northern Muslims and specifically sought out El-Rufai, whom they described as the only northern politician with the necessary political acumen to bring the North together behind Tinubu .
The meeting between Akintola, other southwest leaders, and El-Rufai was not a casual affair. It was a strategic intervention. And here is the detail the southern establishment does not want you to remember: When Akintola and his delegation came to El-Rufai, the former governor was not on good terms with Tinubu. They were, by El-Rufai’s own admission, political adversaries. Akintola pleaded with El-Rufai to reconcile with Tinubu and to support the Yoruba Muslim project. And El-Rufai, against the wishes of many in the North, agreed .
But where were the other southwest leaders? Who else from the region spoke out in that critical moment? The truth is, aside from Akintola and his small team of Islamic scholars, the southern political establishment was conspicuously quiet. They were happy to receive the North’s gift. They were ecstatic to watch El-Rufai publicly champion power shift, to watch him rebuff the naira redesign shenanigans that threatened Tinubu‘s election, to watch him accompany the candidate to Chatham House and defend the Muslim-Muslim ticket before an international audience . They were silent then because they were winning. They are silent now because silencing El-Rufai serves their purpose.
MURIC warned of this betrayal as early as August 13, 2023, when the Senate first withheld El-Rufai’s ministerial nomination. In an emergency statement after its Central Think Tank meeting, MURIC declared that the non-confirmation was a major threat to future alliance between the North and the South-West. The group issued a chilling prophecy: “The North may not hobnob with the South-West again if the champion of the North-South alliance is shabbily treated” . Today, that prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes.
What makes this betrayal collective is that no prominent southern voice of consequence has risen to defend El-Rufai. The governors from the South, the Yoruba elders, the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC)—they have all maintained a calculated silence. Some have even gone further, actively painting El-Rufai as a corrupt politician who deserves his fate. This is the reward for the man who, as MURIC put it, “gave southerners the presidency” . This is the gratitude of a region that received power on a silver platter from the North and responded by locking the platter’s carrier in a detention cell.
The northern politicians who remain in Tinubu’s cabinet are not blind to this betrayal. They see it. They feel it. But they are trapped. They are not loyal allies; they are servants of the crown, functionaries who understand that speaking out would cost them their positions. They watched El-Rufai be sacrificed, and they know they could be next. Those standing on the mandate of Tinubu today are not partners in a national project. They are prisoners of a regional arrangement that has shown its true colors. As the philosopher George Santayana famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The North remembers. And the North will not repeat its mistake.
Let us speak plainly about the numbers. Between 1999 and 2023, the South occupied the presidency for 14 years (Obasanjo 8 years, Jonathan 6 years) while the North occupied it for only 8 years (Yar‘Adua 3 years, Buhari 8 years minus Yar‘Adua’s 3). If Tinubu serves his full first term until 2027, the South would have held Aso Rock for 17 years against the North’s 11 years. If Tinubu wins re-election and serves until 2031, those numbers become 21 years for the South versus 11 for the North. This is not power sharing. This is power hoarding. And yet southern voices have the audacity to call northerners who question this arrangement “traitors” .
The philosopher Edmund Burke once observed, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The good men of the North, the ones who followed El-Rufai’s lead in 2022, have learned a bitter lesson. Their sacrifice was met with silence. Their champion was met with detention. Their loyalty was met with betrayal. It will take a very long time for the South-West to secure another genuine alliance with the North. Trust, once broken, cannot be repaired with appeals to zoning. It can only be restored with justice, reciprocity, and the release of Nasir El-Rufai from the clutches of a persecution that has shamed the very concept of Nigerian federalism. Until then, the North watches, the North remembers, and the North will not trust zoning to the South in 2027.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com
