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 [email protected] Abuja Network News