Just as surely as racial demographics loom large in all things political throughout the Americas and Europe, tribal allegiances rule African politics. Taking Nigeria as a case study, the disproportionate number of northern Muslim soldiers and politicians that have risen to presidential power in the country since its 1960 independence has often been cited as a major contributive factor behind virtually all of her violent upheavals till date.

The handful of southern Nigerians who have served as presidents, have, right up till the ascension of current President Jonathan E. Goodluck , included NOT ONE person of Niger Delta ancestry, so it does not take a political analyst to appreciate the calming effect Johnny B. Good has brought upon the Niger Delta, the source of ALL Nigeria’s daily spending money, simply by virtue of President Jonathan’s blood-line.   

Gone are the days of weekly crude oil pipeline and infrastructure explosive demolition sabotage in the Niger Delta, since the discontent and rage that fueled that 30-year insurgency rarely rise to critical mass as was common back in the days when the notion of an Izon president in Nigeria was simply unthinkable.

While the Niger Delta’s grinding poverty, occasioned by half a century of oil pollution, governmental neglect, industrial scale oil smuggling and unemployment, will certainly take decades to arrest and longer to reverse, there is for the first time in living memory a sense of HOPE for a better future, among the custodian tribes of Nigeria’s crude oil wealth - the Itshekiri, the Urhobo, the Izon and the Ikale, among disparate others.

Even if President Goodluck Jonathan’s assured second term in office is not ultimately regarded by historians as an era of dramatic economic growth that heralded the resurgence of an African Tiger called Nigeria, his re-affirmation to the seat of power on April 16 2011, is,  in significant measure, a tip of the hat from the rest of Nigeria,  towards the long-suffering and once forgotten people of the Niger Delta, who have till very recently sacrificed so much, yet gained so little from the black gold drawn and piped away beneath their ancestral land and waters for the past 50 years.

Johnathan E.  Goodluck for Nigerian President 2011.