The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Still on supplementary polls

    Writing under the heading ‘inconclusive elections’, this column last week, examined the propriety or otherwise of inconclusive elections as have been applied since the incumbent chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, Mahmood Yakubu assumed office.

    The article which was submitted before the supplementary elections in Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto states had queried the basis for declaring some of these elections inconclusive when in all actuality, clear winners and losers had emerged. Two typical cases that illustrated my position most poignantly were those of Benue and Adamawa states.

    In Benue State the PDP scored 410,576 while the APC scored 329,022 votes. The margin of difference was 81,554 with 121,019 votes outstanding while the PDP in Adamawa scored 367,471 votes as against 334,995 by the APC. The PDP candidate was leading with a margin of 32,476 votes with cancelled votes amounting to 40,988.

    I had argued that it was indefensible to have declared the Benue and Adamawa states governorship elections inconclusive on account of the outstanding 121,019 and 40,988 votes  because the standard ratio of voter turn-out vis a vis the total number of registered voters is put at about 30 per cent. And that if you allocate this 30 or even 50 per cent of the remaining votes to the APC candidates in both states, they will still fall short of the number with which the PDP candidates were leading them by more than 20,000 and 12,000 votes respectively.

    But allocating 50 per cent of the votes to the losing candidate is hypothetical since both candidates would at any rate, have to struggle for the remaining votes. Even then, there is nothing to indicate from the pattern of scores that the losing candidates would fare better in the supplementary polls. My conclusion was that it was nigh impossible for the supplementary election in Adamawa and Benue states to produce outcomes that could change the equation in favour of the losing candidates. The possibility was not there given the issues raised on standard percentage of voter-turnout in relation to the total number of registered voters or cancelledvoters.

    In all, there was no basis for a supplementary election in Adamawa and Benue states. These and some other double standards in the application of inconclusive elections are the basis for the suspicion that there is more to the bastardization of the principle than ordinarily meets the eyes. The supplementary elections have come and gone in these states.

    It is vital to compare the situations that prompted these inconclusive elections with the final outcomes of the supplementary elections so as to figure out what value if any, they added to the advancement of our democratic engagement. This is more so given that the first basic assumption underlying supplementary elections is to ensure that vital segments of the voting population are not disenfranchised. The second is to guarantee fairness to the losing candidate since it is envisaged he could still turn the table in his favour with the remaining votes.

    The extent these objectives were served by the results of the supplementary elections can only emerge after comparing the outcomes of the scores of the contending candidates from the main election with what they got in the supplementary polls.Such outcomes will be of immense help in appraising the capacity of the principle underlying inconclusive elections in approximating the objectives of enfranchising all segments of the voting population and guaranteeing free, fair and credible elections.

    In the result of the main election in Adamawa, the PDP was leading with a margin of 32,476 votes and in Bauchi state the PDP scored 469,512 while APC scored 465,453 votes. The margin of defeat was 4,059 while 45,312 votes were cancelled.  In Benue State, the margin of victory in favour of the PDP was 81,554 while 121,019 votes were cancelled. The result of Kano had PDP scoring 1,014,474 and APC 987,819 votes. The margin of win was 26,655 votes while cancelled votes stood at 128,572 votes. For Plateau State, APC had 583,255 and PDP 538,326. The margin of win for the APC was 44,929 votes while cancelled votes were 49,377. That of Sokoto had PDP with 489,558 votes and APC 486,145. The margin of win was 3,413 votes with 75,403 votes cancelled.

    The supplementary elections had the following outcomes: In Adamawa and Bauchi, the PDP won by further increasing the margin of votes in favour of its candidates. In Benue, PDP scored 434,473 to emerge winner while APC had 345,155 votes. In Plateau APC won with 595,582 votes while PDP scored 546,813 votes. Kano saw APC winning with 1,033,695 votes against PDP’s 1,024,713 votes. The marginal difference was 8,982 votes. For Sokoto State, PDP won after securing a total of 512,002 votes against 511, 660 votes by the APC.

    Thus, it can be seen from the outcome of the supplementary elections that safe for the case of Kano State, the party that was winning in the main election also emerged victorious in the supplementary election. That was exactly the case in Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Plateau and Sokoto states. Kano State was an exception. And off course we are at home with how rancorous and deadly that election was.

    Reports posted by both local and international observers were very unanimous that the Kano supplementary poll was an example of what free and fair election should not be. It is clear that the stakes in Kano were for obvious reasons, very high and everything had to be put in by those controlling the coercive apparatus of state to skew its outcome to predetermined directions.

    One thing that remains clear in Kano and other states where the opposition came from the side-lines to take a lead in the elections is that the incumbent governors have lost favour with their people. It is a vivid indication that people of those states are bored with extant regimes and therefore desired a change. If after four years the verdict of the people was against them in the main election, procuring victory through the instrumentality of inconclusive elections would amount to forcing unpopular governors down their throats. How that will further the overall course of democracy is left to be conjectured.

    The direction of the will of the people was loud and clear in the main elections as amply demonstrated by the outcomes of the supplementary polls in five states. That raises question as to the heuristic value of inconclusive elections since in almost all those instances, the parties leading in the main election eventually won. So when appraised in terms of not disenfranchising vital segments of the population and ensuring free fair and credible elections, it remains doubtful if any value has been added to our electoral process given the outcomes of those elections. Above all, the results do not leave anyone with any iota of doubt that the people of those states spoke their minds clearly in the first elections.

    But we have expended huge resources both in human and material capital to bring about an end that could have been well served by the first elections. It is therefore imperative that the concept of inconclusive elections as have been applied since Yakubu assumed the leadership has to be seriously reappraised. Even in the case of Plateau where the APC candidate was clearly winning with 44, 929 margin of votes, it is unimaginable how the cancelled votes of 49,377 could produce a different outcome.

    It stands to be argued that the concept of inconclusive elections as we have seen is an avoidable duplication of efforts and waste of scarce resources. And given the very volatile nature of electoral contests on this clime, the killings, maiming and destruction of properties in some states that heralded the supplementary elections could have been comfortably avoided. Supplementary elections have proved unhelpful in terms of guaranteeing popular choice by affording all segments of the voting population the opportunity to exercise their franchise and in guaranteeing free and fair and credible elections. Rather, they have turned out an opportunity for self-help by those who wield the coercive instruments of state power skew the outcome of the polls to self-serving ends.

  • The voice of Chi

    No greater irony in the last round of polls than the victories of Simon Lalong of Plateau State and Samuel Ortom of Benue State. Fellow columnist and member of The Nation editorial board Femi Macaulay first pointed it out in one of our casual, if sometimes luminous, dialogues on the state of the nation. In his taciturn air and often deep, grave voice, Macaulay observed it in passing, his face looking down and away. My antenna quivered and I agreed, but we said no more.

    It occurred to him that both governors stood on two antipodes. Lalong called for embrace among his tribes and faiths. Ortom dangled the spectre of fear and hate. But I have turned it over in my mind ever since.  One called the herdsman a foe and interloper, a bloodthirsty carpetbagger, a hoodlum, a savage from the furnace of human treachery. He invoked Armageddon and enacted a law to banish his group.

    The other set a template like his Lord, and called for love for your enemies, seek ways in the language of the Psalmist for all to dwell together in harmony. Hate he saw as corrosion, a demeaning virus in the affairs of men. Ortom was probably looking at Christianity and his state as practitioners of a cult, adhering to its purposes, codes, rituals and sense of exclusive community. While Lalong dreamed nirvana, Ortom said never.

    Yet both pray to the same God. We can ignore their first names as icons of the Christian faith. One a prophet smothered in beard and solemn vows and the other a leper who hosted Christ and led to an opulence of oil anointing. We can also discount the meanings. Samuel points to petitions answered and Simon indicates a listening ear.  No contrast in the biblical sphere, so that should not bother us.

    But Benue and Plateau are neighbours. In some places, their borders meet without a joint. Not long ago, they were one state known as Benue Plateau, and they played politics as one unit. I hear they make pounded yam by day and make love at night. Yet they voted differently. Benue voted Ortom, which endorsed the rhetoric of division. Lalong was going to win all along. But it means Plateau endorsed unity.

    We cannot forget that, in the high wire of the herdsman fury, President Buhari goofed into the conversation, asking the Benue elders to embrace their neighbours. So what do we make of this contradictory trends in the polls. We also saw some of that strain in the retention of Ishaku in Taraba and Bindow’s ouster in Adamawa. But nowhere is it more potent than the contiguous neighbours.

    It indicated a binary war within the Nigerian soul, like the womb of Rebecca, the mother of Jacob and Esau, where the good book says they represented two worlds, antipodal nerves. So part of us loves the hate, part of us loves the love. We are like Walt Whitman’s line in Leaves of Grass. “Do I contradict myself? Yes I contradict myself… I am large, I contain multitudes.”

    So, what voice do we listen to now? Is it the one that harries and yaps, or the lolling, mollifying rhythm of Lalong? Shall we just abide with the divided self, a thing Salman Rushdie implies as inevitable in his turbulent novel The Satanic Verses?

    Nor is it a new thing in our society or others. From the beginning of time, ‘we versus them’ has been a strain in communities. We have those who close their minds to others and others who welcome. Ortom was accused in the high temper of the crisis of exploiting it for political gain. He used it to put down the herdsmen, even sometimes when it was them and sometimes when it was mere criminals. Some have argued that the mass burial day of coffins was less to mourn than a call to electoral arms. Even some members of his own security apparatus have been accused of stoking it. He never stopped to raise its spectre even when the state was quiescent. On the other hand, Lalong would not sign anti-grazing law, once proposed and eventually abandoned the idea of a ranch. He buried the Plateau dead in peace. But he had from the beginning pursued a template for all, including the Hausa-Fulani and Birom, to work together. It did not always work, but he did not faint, even when the state erupted with blood and tears.

    Fear is easy to invoke in times of stress. But to appeal to our better angels is a risky place to tread, and it can be politically fatal. Ortom chose the cowardly and cynical path. Lalong walked the narrow path, what Shakespeare calls a walk in the night. He endured and won.

    Trump rides human fear and hate, and he may ride it again to a second term, just like Ortom. To inspire fear needs a few and simple words. To allay fears compels circuitous explanations, often seen as boring. Trump says Mexicans are rapists, drug addicts and murderers. You have to write an essay to counter. Who would read that? And the voice of conciliation is not on the rooftop, but gentle and coaxing, what the Bible calls a “still small voice.” Hence Brexit passed, Duterte of the Philippines is popular, Orban of Hungary rouses nationalist passion, and Merkel is at the bottom of the polls in Germany. Ghandi may be the world’s darling but Indians grovel at Nehru’s feet because he chose tribe over humanity. Yet all these countries are at war in their souls. Those who want embrace rage against the racists. History has shown that fear wins when the society is already on the way down and it accelerates the fall.

    The Greek orator Isocrates – not Socrates – tried in vain to work Athens to bind the Greek city states together as Athens declined. Persia was on the rise and threatened. But the parliament as if held hostage by some Greek goddess even voted out its own democracy. When they unite, societies grow. When they breed divisive ideologies, they splinter and fall. First they grow fat, and become self-important and hate others as if they own destiny. Paul Kennedy noted this in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Garibaldi held together the Italian States, with Cavour. Bismarck built the German State to its height of culture and even military prowess. But when Hitler came with his narrow, suffocating Nazi ideology, the Allies bombed Germany to its knees. Trump does not read, so he does not know that the great USA is in decline and he is helping it down.

    The voices of unity and division are speaking simultaneously as reflected in Benue and Plateau. It is like the Chi in Igbo cosmology talking to his host as novelist Chigozie Obioma delineates in his new and masterly work, An Orchestra of Minorities. What is the Chi of wisdom? Is it Lalong or Ortom? Even many in Benue State are going through voter’s remorse. Ortom moved to PDP, beheaded his godfathers and rules the roost. But the voters now know that the man had no other item to run on in the last election than the fear of the herdsman. Now the people will face the demons: no salaries, bad roads, poor healthcare with perhaps the fewest number of doctors in the country.

    What Ortom did is what maligns society. I would rather listen to a Simon Lalong, who personifies the Chi speaking to the host, Nigeria.

  • Ambode and Lagos History Lecture

    When the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode administration organised the Lagos History Lecture to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lagos State in May 2017, it wasn’t expected to be just a one-off.  However, two years after the first lecture, there are indications that the idea is going nowhere.

    The title of the lecture: “Lagos: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” Prof H. O. Danmole, who delivered the lecture, was at the time Dean, Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin. The event happened on May 24, 2017 at the Eko Convention Centre, Lagos.

    In his welcome speech, Ambode had said:  “The gathering of today goes beyond the periphery; this is because today offers us all, an opportunity to have introspection into the past, engage in an objective appraisal of the present and, a realistic prognosis of the future of another fifty years… It is important for us at this epochal gathering to refresh our memory about the beginning.”

    He added: “I have no doubt that this assemblage will at the end of its sitting put an end to the erroneous impression by some in the public space that Lagos is no man’s land. The need for this becomes imperative so that today’s young folks will know the truth and be able to stand on the right historical platform.”

    It is noteworthy that the government had reportedly planned to distribute printed copies of the lecture to the public, particularly public secondary schools in the state, as a way of publicising “the truth” about “the beginning.”  Two years after the event, this hasn’t been done. Ambode had observed:  “What we are doing here today is another history and as such I urge all to take it serious so that history will be kind to us all.” Ironically, it seems the Ambode administration itself didn’t take the event seriously enough, which explains why the lecture has not been printed and circulated as initially planned.  This isn’t the way to be history-friendly.

    Danmole’s lecture, divided into eight parts, covers The Early Years; The British in Lagos Affairs; Establishment of Colonial Rule; Colonial Government and Traditional Politics; and Lagos: Nigeria’s First Capital City. Other parts are: The Creation of Lagos State; Lagos: The Era of Action Governor, Jakande Years; Tinubu to Ambode Revolution; and Lagos of the Future.

    “The history of Lagos has received attention from historians and others; and a single lecture cannot do proper justice to it,” Danmole notes.  “However, this lecture shall try to give some insight into major developments in its history. Lagos Island (Eko), which is the epicentre of our present Lagos State, is one of the oldest kingdoms on the West African Coast. Incidentally, the kingdom of Lagos was also one of the earliest recipients of European traders and travellers in what is now modern Nigeria. Reportedly, Portuguese merchants, because of the geographical location of Lagos on the lagoon, gave the Island its name Lagos.  Lagos Island, to the indigenous population, is called EKO, a name whose origin is told in two well-known traditional but controversial accounts.”

    Danmole continues: “Nevertheless, it is important to note that one version of the name relates to the advent of the Awori, while the other is connected to Benin adv entures in Lagos. Our knowledge of the early history of Lagos is enriched by the accounts of European travellers, historians and traditional accounts. What is fairly certain is that the Awori settlement in Lagos was earlier than that of the Benin which eventually subjugated the emergent settlement. Lagos continued to evolve as a veritable place of migration for many Yoruba groups; some of these included the Ilaje and other groups who were attracted to Lagos because of their fishing activities.”

    According to Danmole, “The idea for the creation of a Lagos region could be traced to a suggestion by C.D. Temple, who was Lieutenant Governor of the Northern Protectorate in 1914 when Nigeria was created. He suggested that Nigeria should be divided into seven regions, the Lagos Colony being one of the regions. Conversely, the Governor-General of Nigeria, Sir F.D. Lugard, rejected his suggestion. It was not until after the Second World War, during the process of decolonisation that the thought of dividing Nigeria into regions or states resurfaced on the political scene… With the creation of Lagos State on 27th May, 1967, the task of administering the state fell on Brigadier (then Colonel) Mobolaji Johnson, who had earlier been appointed the Administrator of Lagos before the State was created.”

    Danmole sheds light on the state’s divisions: “The military administration under Mobolaji Johnson issued an edict on 1st May, 1968 which divided the state into five divisions, namely Lagos, Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu and Epe. These administrative divisions represented, in our view, the old Lagos colony and province, and this perhaps explains the term IBILE, being the first letters of the names of the five administrative divisions.  Thus, the acronym IBILE signifies the long standing administration and socio-cultural relations which had existed among the divisions before, during and after colonial rule.”

    Speaking about the future of Lagos, Danmole argues:  “I make bold to say that the commitment which those in government have been giving to the state since it was created in 1967 has continued to give Lagos State a central position when compared with other states in the Federal Republic. The expanding economy of the state, the infrastructural growth and continued investment in human capital, will lead to the rapid growth of Lagos State in the future. The megacity that Lagos has become is a result of encouragement given to organised initiatives that contribute to social and economic development of the state. This must continue, if Lagos must be among the frontline megacities in the world.”

    It is interesting that Danmole emphasises the importance of planning for development. He says: “For Lagos to reach greater heights there must be adherence to development plans. Development plans assist governments to achieve their focus within a particular time frame. Furthermore, development plans allow for measurement of growth. Two examples will help to illustrate this point. Nigeria and India were almost at the same level of development in 1960, but India has left us behind because of her strict adherence to development plans. India is currently on her own 17th development plan. Also, Malaysia was behind Nigeria in terms of development some decades ago; however, through development plans, Malaysia has overtaken Nigeria. I do know that Lagos State is a part of a whole, but as a state, Lagos can show leadership for others to emulate.”

    It is inexcusable that this enlightening lecture is gathering dust.

  • Inconclusive elections

    Before this article is published, most of the outstanding governorship and state assembly elections declared inconclusive by the electoral umpire for one reason or the other would have run their full circle. Then also, one would be in a better stead to appreciate the heuristics of declaring elections inconclusive even in contests winners had clearly emerged.

    Here a difference must be made between run-off and inconclusive elections. The first relates to a situation where election outcome is unable to produce a clear winner in keeping with extant laws while in the second there is a clear winner. However, the total number of cancelled votes during the election is said to be higher that the margin with which the winning candidate is leading his opponent. In such circumstance, INEC, relying on extant regulations and guidelines for the conduct of elections has had to declare the outcome inconclusive while ordering supplementary elections to be held in those areas votes were cancelled.

    This novel criterion for determining winners in national elections surfaced during the very first elections conducted by the incumbent INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu. The furore it generated was so much so that it earned Yakubu the sobriquet ‘inconclusive elections’ It soon became a matter of serious embarrassment that virtually all the elections Yakubu conducted during his first few months in office were virtually inflicted by this electoral virus. And this raised serious suspicion.

    Of course, the new concept was challenged in court. And the case ran its full course with the Supreme Court curiously ruling in favour of the INEC though to the dissatisfaction of the discerning public. But we have since been left to bear the brunt of this strange mode of determining winners in elections even as INEC has not been able to uniformly apply it. The expectation that INEC would progressively strive to exorcise the ghost of inconclusiveness from its electoral process has remained largely illusory. Rather, what we have seen since the 2019 elections commenced has been a deluge of arbitrariness in the application of the formula. Lack of uniformity and indiscriminate application of the formula have combined to raise serious suspicion on the purported inconclusiveness of inconclusive elections.

    Not unexpectedly, this has given rise to genuine feelings that the formula is a subterfuge by the government in power for self-help in circumstances it finds itself losing to the opposition. This position appears to have been given added fillip by the turn of events since the conduct of the governorship and state assembly elections.

    Elections in six states: Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto fell to the hammer of inconclusiveness. Of the six states, the opposition was clearly winning in five of them except Plateau. That of Rivers State was halted midway collation on account of heightened insecurity in the state. But, INEC lately decided to recommence collation and announcement of results in Bauchi and Rivers states. Curiously, there have been litigations seeking to bar the electoral umpire form doing this. While the continued collation and announcement of the Bauchi governorship result has been halted following a court order granted the incumbent governor, that of Rivers is to proceed though on a later date.

    It remains however curious that no other person than the governor of Bauchi State is spearheading the litigation not to have the electoral body continue with the collation and announcement of the results. And in the case of Rivers State, the opposition African Action Congress AAC which claimed initial lead in the results collated before the suspension had approach an Abuja High Court asking that the collation and announcement of results be discontinued. One then begins to wonder what all this is intended to achieve except to reinforce the suspicion that there is more to the inconclusiveness and cancellation of results than ordinarily meets the eyes.

    The term inconclusive elections as applied by INEC has become so contentious that it will continue to divide opinion given the way and manner it has been applied since Yakubu assumed the mantle of leadership of that agency. Before him, that terminology was virtually alien in the overall calculations of the conditions precedent to the declaration of contestants as winners or losers in our elections. Take the case of Benue State where the incumbent governor of PDP extraction was clearly leading with 410,576 votes over his APC counterpart who scored 329,022, translating to a margin of win of 81,554.  INEC declared the election inconclusive on the ground that the total number of cancelled votes stood at 121,019. By its warped estimation, this number is bound to make a lot of difference on who finally emerges victorious. Hence, elections have to be held in those areas where votes were cancelled.

    This arithmetic is even contradicted by the standard percentage of the electorate who come out to vote vis–à-vis the number of registered voters. Standard statistics have it that not more than 30 per cent of registered voters actually come out to exercise their franchise during elections. And even if we concede the whole of this percentage  or even 50 per cent of the cancelled votes to the APC candidate, it will still fall short of the winning margin of the PDP by more than 20, 000 votes. And it exposes the duplicity in the entire exercise.

    The above scenario is hypothetical case since both candidates will still have to share the remaining votes. There exists nothing to indicate that the losing candidate will fare much better when elections are held in the cancelled areas. There is also the case of the Abia North senatorial district where the APC candidate polled 31,201 to beat the PDP candidate who scored 20,801 votes. The margin of win was 10,400 votes. But 38,526 votes were cancelled which would have qualified for inconclusive elections using INEC criterion. But that did not happen as a winner emerged.

    All these reinforce the arbitrariness in the application of the concept and fears that it a contrivance by the government in power for self-help where it finds its candidates losing. That is why it is difficult to dismiss accusations by the opposition that the idea of inconclusive elections is designed to deny its members victory through sundry subterfuge. The high number of states where the PDP candidates were clearly leading but declared inconclusive lends ample credence to this view.  By the time this article is published, the inconclusiveness of the elections in the six states would perhaps, have been determined. The way they go would further be a veritable barometer to gauge the value of that regulation in approximating the collective will of the electorate as explicitly expressed at the ballot box.

    One thing certain though is that inconclusive election, the way it has been applied since Yakubu assumed office has become another nomenclature for staggered elections. Such elections place governments in power at added advantage and ipso facto stymie elements of freeness and fairness that are irreducible decimals of democratic engagement. And in a clime where the coercive apparatus of state are deployed sometimes to cajole and intimidate voters, it affords the government higher latitude to achieve its aims through unwholesome means.

    With rising incidence of vote buying, such elections place at vantage position, those with unlimited access to state finances and power. And because of the higher prospects of staggered elections compromising our electoral process, it has become an anathema that should be exorcised from our electoral process. It is not only time-consuming but unnecessarily depletes the very scarce resources needed to tackle the daunting developmental challenges of a country whose citizens have largely remained hewers of wood and fetchers of water.

    More seriously, the Yakubu-led INEC has become a serious embarrassment to this country and its electoral process. It has overtime shown an increasing inability to conduct seamless elections; one that will not result in inconclusive outcomes in many states. Before his adventure, we have had elections in this country devoid of the inconclusiveness he inflicted in our electoral process. Our electoral laws must be tinkered with to obviate the distractions and anti-democratic value of ‘inconclusive elections’.

  • Rogue Arithmetics

    His name is Peter Obiora, not Obi. He is not a former governor or the man who stumbled on his way to be vice president. He is a judge, and he read the lead judgment over the governorship poll that declared Gboyega Oyetola as the governor of Osun State. Some news organs that had fallen under the spell of the former governor of the  effeminate voice had spelt the judge’s name as though he were the politician. Maybe they thought him one given the tendentious tenor of his verdict.

    This Obiora reminds me of a book of logic that psychologists, philosophers, educationists and lawyers have read since Robert Thouless published it in 1930. I first read Straight and Crooked Thinking after I completed my School Certificate because I was fascinated by the audacity of its title and it rested imperiously on my father’s bookshelf. I was to encounter it later at the University of Ife in the hands of law students who informed me it was a recommended text. The idea, I gathered, was to apprise law students of the wherewithal to navigate dishonest ways of reasoning and fortify their logical senses.

    From Justice Obiora verdict, I wonder if he ever read Thouless. If he read it, I wonder if he understood him. Maybe he could understand but could not withstand it except by capsizing its logic in the exercise of his work as a judge. Obiora inoculated himself against the august notions of Thouless and embraced illogic. He would have flunked out of a class that required straight thinking, and a crooked turn of mind informed his verdict.

    In the first place, he based his verdict on two main planks.  One of them nullified the rerun election after the number of cancelled votes exceeded the difference between PDP’s Demola Adeleke’s tally and Oyetola’s. Adeleke had the edge but the returning officer, based on INEC’s guidelines ordered  a rerun. It happened and it favoured Oyetola. The dancing Senator’s feet turned sore and he could only walk to the court in protest. This was not only tendentious, it was a judgment in disenfranchisement. The logic that Obiora could not withstand is the reason we had rerun elections in a few states last weekend, including in Plateau, Benue and Sokoto states. INEC did the right thing because polls are about the people. For instance, Simon Lalong won in Plateau State even though it was mathematically impossible for his septuagenarian rival – Jerry Boy – to catch up. But the governor submitted himself to the process. It is a process that Obiora and his folks did not understand. It is called the rule of law and it is one of the planks of democracy if it is executed in good faith. Aminu Tambuwal of the PDP won by a hair’s margin, but he subjected himself through the process. That is the logic alien to Obiora.

    The returning officer had the right to give democracy a full throttle. Obiora thought it was better to be arbitrary. The verdict also did something that Thouless frowned upon and he called it cherry picking evidence. According to the 273 page judgment, there was what we called in high school ‘jomo jomo to the answer’ – that is, an arbitrary leap to the mathematical conclusion.

    It seems, in a manner is speaking, he was shopping for conclusion. He cancelled some units of the polling and rendered the results null. He subtracted the numbers from the total. In the same line of intellectual bravado, he cancelled the numbers from the supplementary election. The numbers favoured the dancing Adeleke.

    No witness proved that there was any thumbprinting. About 80 witnesses came forward and stated there was no multiple thumbprinting, including the polling units the tribunal cancelled. Even the petitioners abandoned this during the hearings and Obiora acknowledged this in his verdict. Yet, he decided to cancel without evidence of malpractice or tampering.

  • Pot-pourri

    “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction,” Winston Churchill.

    Every election cycle throws up its own tale. And for a variegated nation such as ours where egos, culture and tribe intermix with the heres and nows of hunger and belief, we enjoy a treasure trove. No one can tell all the stories of this year’s poll in one seminal sway of prose.  Too many riches of intrigues, manoeuvres, permutations, forays and parries. They at once sour and sweeten the narratives.

    As political philosophers contend, every election, like capitalism, has its own three Cs. For capitalism, it is cars, condos and credit cards. For election, it is candidate, condition and culture. Both have C’s as if cacophony, in all its abrasiveness, contains the sound of life. In capitalism, it captures our workaday rhythm. And in politics it is a concatenation of the way we vote with its consequences. Through this triad, we can put the past month in perspective.

    It’s drum roll for winners and sepulchral tunes for the others. Some Irokos have crestfallen, ants have bitten off giants, egos deflated, some others had squeaked to victory while a few walked in majesty to wins. Bitterness has shone darkly in some quarters. For instance, some editorialists, commentators and editors have not recovered from Atiku’s beating, and continue to spew sour grapes in headlines and tendentious ideas disguised as reasoned opinions. Some politicians are sulking in silence. A few who won by brigandage are savouring savage joys. Some won by default and may recall Joseph Conrad’s words in Heart of Darkness that “our strengths are accidents arising from the weaknesses of others.” Some are moaning over wasted investments, while winners are swooning to the cash hauls ahead. Fulminating social media rodents have crept into curious silences, this column being a target of quite an army of malicious tirades over the past half year. They should have congratulated me for seeing the future they didn’t know. But like Churchill, I am magnanimous in victory. Not political victory, but intellectual victory, the sort of thrill you get for rewards for the labours of the mind.

    Today, I excavate a few narratives of the past polls. Here I try to look at a few of such in an unusual format for In Touch.

     

    CAP-sized Amosun

    The word decapitate literally means ‘to behead.’ In that sense, it may not apply to Ibikunle Amosun of the heavenly cap. We may not rightly call his fetishised headgear  a ‘skycap’ because it describes bag carriers at airports. But by the liberty that language confers, I can say that the governor of Ogun State was deCAPitated. That cap was meant to compete with the sky, so it was his sky cap, not skycap. Now in one fell swoop, Dapo Abiodun, who is taller than Amosun even with his cap on, has cut him to size. In other words, Amosun was CAP-sized. Abiodun’s triumph was the humbling of Amosun’s cap, which is a measure of his delusion of grandeur.

     

    From firewood seller to Marshall Plan governor

    In evangelising his virtues as his successor, Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima waxed lyrical. Professor Babagana Umara Zulum was not his closest friend. He was not a party wheel horse. He was in the words of Shakespeare, “cometh the man, cometh the hour.” Prof Zulum was, to follow the cliché, a self-made man. He was a grass roots man by upbringing. Though a professor today, he did menial jobs to fund his education, including selling firewood and driving taxi. His is a life of industry and perseverance, which are recipes for empathy. But he did not flaunt or make an extravaganza of this humble start, Jonathan-style. He did not even act out what Conrad calls “proud humility.” He did his job. He became the commissioner for reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement after the Boko Haram goons were routed back to their lairs. But the terrain was perilous and he embedded himself in underbellies of subaltern Borno that still crawled with bombs and militants. When Governor Shettima asked him to travel in bullet-proof vans, he turned it down saying he wanted to be as vulnerable as others in the trenches with him. Now, he will take charge as governor unlike General George Marshall, who retired as secretary of state.

     

    Okorocha’s Iberiberism minus Hope = Ihedioha

    Rochas Okorocha had become too familiar with power. He taught he was big enough not only to erect monument to failing foreigner but he wanted to turn Imo State house into his family nest. So, he wanted to foist Nwosu as governorship candidate on his APC. In this pursuit, he defied party chieftains, decorum and decency, and even the stirrings of Imo soul. He wanted to be deified, perhaps with a statue like the one he erected with moral dysfunction.

    So, he set his in-law as candidate of his default party against Hope Uzodinma of his APC. Between them they polled enough numbers to win. But they split the votes and allowed soft-talking gentleman Emeka Ihedioha to play Bill Clinton at the polls. A house divided against itself in Imo was Ihedioha’s divine platform to the Government House. His foes fought so he could be free. Ross Perot became an independent candidate and split the Republican votes to hand the presidency to a man from a town called Hope.

    We should not forget that Okorocha will be the first person in history of this country who will be declared winner of an election to the Senate but who would not attend the ceremony to receive the certificate of return. Okorocha returns home. It is still curious what happened there since INEC has yet to tell the nation the full story of how a man who could not family-arise the Government House has kept mum over his non-victory. He delivered neither himself nor his successor. Iberiberism struck him back like a cobra.

     

    The Kaduna megaphone

    Nasir El-Rufai was a loudmouth in his first term. Now that he has nobody to account to, how much cacophony awaits our eardrums?  The man who threatened other countries with Armageddon, talked hegemony about the Fulani, undermined logic, divided Muslims and Christians, denigrated the Pope in explaining why he did not pick a Christian as deputy. This same man would have been an entertainer if he were not governor, like a dark and scary minstrel.

    With his dwarf frame and almost imperturbable mien, El-Rufai refreshes like garlic on a wounded tongue. This man who bulldozed two senators out of town cannot be said not to have done well in governance in other areas, including education where his implementation of the feeding programme gained traction as well as tackling of the al majiri programme. But governance is as much about decency as in putting food on the table. Here’s hoping that the man will abandon his juvenile spirit for a mature temperament. Or else he might leave the state broken and ablaze.

     

  • Imo governorship election

    By way of paired comparison, Imo and Ogun states shared a lot of similarities in the just concluded governorship elections. But they also have their dissimilarities. They stand out as the two states incumbent governors fell out with the national leadership of their party in the choice of the governorship candidates.

    During the primaries of the All Progressives Congress APC, both governors, Rochas Okorocha and Ibikunle Amosun had their preferred candidates for the governorship position. The national leadership of the party preferred otherwise and went ahead to offer its ticket to candidates of the party’s choice to the dissatisfaction of the governors. But they still left both governors with the senatorial tickets of the party.

    Not satisfied with the development, the governors opted to still push their preferred candidates through the platforms of some other relatively unknown political parties basking on the political structures they had established in their respective states. So it was that while Okorocha opted for Action Alliance, AA with his son-in-law Uche Nwosu as the candidate, Amosun went for the Allied Peoples Movement where his preferred candidate Adekunle Akinlade flew the flag of the party.

    The governors pursued their senatorial ambitions through the platform of the APC while at the same time working against the candidates of their party at the governorship level. But whereas Amosun emerged successful in the senatorial election, Okorocha’s election was enmeshed in serious controversy. The returning officer had while declaring the result in favour of Okorocha, said he was doing so under duress and to save his life.

    Apparently acting along this line, INEC said it would not offer Certificates of Return to any candidate where results were announced under duress. It made good this decision by excluding Okorocha from the list of successful senatorial candidates to receive that certificate. But Amosun’s was devoid of controversy. It is not certain the final position INEC will take in relation to Okorocha’s case. But one thing that appears certain is that there are still thorns strewn on his way to the National Assembly.

    The governorship elections have come and gone. While Amosun’s candidate lost to the candidate of the APC, both the APC candidate and that of Okorocha lost to the Peoples Democratic Party PDP in Imo State. For keen watchers of political events in the state, the turn of events should not be surprising.

    Okorocha came into the saddle after he defeated the incumbent regime of Ikedi Ohakim who had fallen out of favour with people of the state. He had a very popular mandate such that expectations were high that he would take the state to higher heights. This feeling was fuelled by some of the philanthropic ventures he was involved in before he became the governor. The expectation was that if he could touch many lives in his private capacity, he would definitely do more when he has the resources of the state at his disposal.

    But this expectation was to turn out a pipe dream. He soon began to incrementally squander the goodwill that brought him to power through very unpopular policies and scant regard to due process.  He was even quoted to have queried the efficacy of due process in the business of governance. He displayed an uncommon disdain for elite involvement in governance accusing leaders who came around him of a hidden desire to share government money.

    Okorocha became so loud, boasting that he was going to retire all known political leaders in the state except himself and made good this promise by relegating the elite and people of substance to the back seat, always preferring to surround himself with yes-men for whom the lure of the stomach was the prime motivation. He began to create a new class of leadership with questionable credentials, always preferring those who will do his bidding without questioning.

    With such a mindset, Imo State was brought down to its knees. His new class of leaders basking on the euphoria of their newly unmerited status displayed an uncanny disdain for those who cared to question the slide to the precipice into which the state was inevitably headed. Every sector of governance: the education system, the civil service, social infrastructure and the health care delivery system were so assaulted and desecrated that it will take years to bring them back to form. Even in the area of some of the projects he attributes to his credit, poor quality work and an abysmally poor standard of performance combine to erase whatever credit he might wish to ascribe to his regime.

    His regime became a catalogue of woes as workers were owed salaries; pensions and gratuities running to several months stood in arrears. But he found comfort in praise singing and cronyism. His became a regime of what has now been aptly described as government of Okorocha for himself and members of his immediate family. He was so blinded by the trappings and arrogance of power that his became a verity of Lord Acton’s maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    Apparently because of the enormous resources at his disposal and his connection with the federal government, he thought he could bulldoze his way to become a maximum ruler in the state whose words must be obeyed at all costs. It was very common to hear him rehearsing how he single-handedly built the APC in the southeast, the insults he received in the process and how that should qualify him for special attention.

    All this was designed to run down his people by creating the false impression that he is the only one that can be trusted and entrusted with higher offices by the powers that be. So it was that he could not find any other person suitable to hand over power except his son-in-law despite extant understanding that power should rotate among the three senatorial zones of the state. Curiously, Okorocha who has been positioning to run for the presidency on the grounds that power will shift to the southeast in 2023 scorned the same principles in his state. Despite protestations and tension created by the idea of having three governors from the same zone for 24 years, he was bent on bulldozing his way at all cost.

    But respite came the way of the state when his party denied his anointed candidate the governorship ticket. He failed to see the handwriting on the wall. Not even the strident campaigns mounted against him by the national chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole was enough for him to do a rethink. Oshiomhole had during the flag-off of the campaign rally of the APC in Imo lambasted Okorocha accusing him of sundry misdeeds including running the government of the state as a family business. In saner climes, that was all that was needed to vote out Okorocha or any of his surrogates from any elective office.

    He trudged on accusing Oshiomhole of being an ingrate for turning round to work against him after he had helped him to secure the office of the national chairman of the party. Before Oshiomhole, he also had issues with John Oyegun, the immediate past national chairman of the party. And when Oyegun left he boasted that all the wrongs he allegedly wrought against him especially in the conduct of the primaries of the party will be redressed by Oshiomhole.

    It was a matter of time. Soon, he again fell out with his supposed rescuer. Curiously Okorocha was blinded by the lust for power to decipher the handwriting on the wall. He talked to himself, listened to himself and could not come to terms with the reality that he was in a deep mess. Imo people resented him, resented all that he represents even as he went around with the noxious obsession that he was the best thing that had happened to the state.

    But the people of the state spoke very unequivocally in their choice of the PDP candidate, Emeka Ihedioha as their preferred governor despite Okorocha’s sundry strategies and devious subterfuge to procure victory by all means. The verdict of the Imo people is clear. It is a verdict against running government as a family business; a verdict against poor leadership and a verdict for credible alternative and power rotation. It is a verdict of the will power of the electorate and that verdict must be respected.

    It is a bold statement that Okorocha, who defeated an incumbent in 2011with practically nothing, could not install his preferred candidate in 2019 with everything at his disposal. Such is the verdict of history and he should give peace a chance!

  • Here we go!

    By the time this article is published, the governorship and state assembly elections would have been held. Perhaps also, results would have started trickling in with winners and losers emerging in some instances.

    So also is the overall picture of the actual conduct of the polls. In this wise, the actions or inactions of officials of the electoral umpire and sundry political actors and the extent they worked to guarantee free and fair electoral process would have become manifest. This is more so against the background of some of the infractions recorded in parts of the country in the presidential and National Assembly election held two weeks ago.

    The outcome of the elections would provide a veritable yardstick to assess the overall performance of the current leadership of the electoral body under Mahmood Yakubu. This is more compelling given serious issues and reservations raised against penultimate Saturday’s elections. Opinions have been expressed in many quarters that the overall conduct of that election fell short of the progress recorded in 2015.

    It may be convenient for some to repudiate this assertion citing some of the comments of international observers especially in the area of the peaceful conduct of voters. But the truth is that there were manifest infractions that cast serious slur on the capacity of that election to truly reflect the wishes and aspirations of the electorate as freely expressed at the ballot box.

    Not only were there reports of ballot box snatching and deliberate acts of sabotage sometimes leading to the burning of INEC offices and materials in some places, smart card readers were either stolen or deliberately put into disuse to enable rogue politicians to swing the outcome of the polls to predetermined directions.

    Perhaps, the gravest infractions recorded during that election were in the area of collation of election results. Compromised INEC officials deliberately made the process ineffective by either hiding or securing the services of law enforcement agencies in connivance with politicians to bar accredited agents of the parties from accessing the collation points. With that, they had a field day to write results that had nothing to do with the actual number of votes cast. Instances where returning officers had to declare election results under duress illustrate most poignantly some of the glaring imperfections of that election. And one asks where were the security agencies when returning officers were forced to declare results? If such could happen at that level, then your guess is as good as mine.

    It was therefore the general expectation that INEC would take a serious perspective of all these complaints and infractions and ensure they do not rear their ugly heads in the governorship and state assembly elections. They must take more seriously the role of security agencies.We were made to believe that security agencies will provide a secure environment for the voters and agents of the parties to perform their electoral obligations without let or hindrance.

    But allegations of partisanship were very rife; precipitating demonstrations in some states by women groups at army and police headquarters. Apparently in reaction to this, the Nigerian Army came out to reassure of their impartiality in electoral matters. But the import of the demonstrations at their headquarters as well as that of the police should not be lost on these key security institutions.

    How acceptable those assurances are will predicate on the roles security agencies play in the governorship and state assembly elections. There have been suggestions that the stakes of the governorship and state assembly elections are not as high as those of the presidency and National Assembly. This school of thought believes the tension associated with the first election would considerably reduce in subsequent ones.

    Whereas one may be inclined to share in the opinion that the stakes of the presidential election are much higher given our convoluted federal contraption and the sweeping powers at the disposal of the center, it is no less correct that localized elections can also be that vicious, rancorous and contentious. Given this, our security agencies still have more work to do as they had during the presidential and National Assembly elections. In many of the states where sundry electoral infraction were prevalent, allegation were that the situation would have been different had the security agencies lived up to their professional responsibilities. In many of these states, the parties have mobilized to take their destinies in their own hands. They do not seem to have been sufficiently reassured that the security agencies will be fair to all contenders and political parties.

    We may witness more acts of violence as the various political parties resort to self-help in protecting their votes. We may see more organized resistance from the people to any attempt to circumvent the rules of the game or use security agencies to do the selfish bidding of politicians. All these will further raise tension during the elections. The outcome may snowball into more violence and killings than witnessed during the presidential and National Assembly elections.

    But all this will predicate on the overall perception and dispositions of the security agencies. All will depend on how truly the security agencies are seen to be manifestly impartial in their conduct. Apart from the actions of officials of the electoral umpire, the successful outcome of that election will depend on the actions and the inactions of security agencies.

    It is the minimum expectation that they should proceed beyond these assurances and issues clear instructions to their men and officers to strictly adhere to the rules of engagement. Electoral infractions impair the growth of democracy and it should be in the interest of our security agencies to ensure that genuine grounds are provided for our democracy to thrive without let or hindrance. It is in our national interest that the rules of free and fair electoral contest are neither abridged nor compromised.

    Since we have opted for representative democracy as opposed to other forms of governance framework, all our energies ought to be channeled on how to perfect that order rather than explore loopholes to incapacitate its effective functioning. Unfortunately, not many of our political actors are fully committed to allowing the participant political culture to germinate and flourish. But there exists a limit beyond which we cannot continue to trample on or sabotage the collective will and destiny of the peopleunder the guise of practicing democracy. We must not only begin to make substantial progress in the rungs of the democratic ladder but demonstrate discernable commitment to it such that will disabuse views held in some circles that Africans abhor opposition and benevolent dictatorship is most suitable for their organization. That is the potent danger we face given the wobbling and fumbling that have been the miserable fate of our electoral process and democratic outing.

    But it appears not much will change unless we identify and seriously address both the manifest and latent factors that propel and reinforce bitter competition for political power that has been the greatest undoing of our political recruitment process. Why our politicians seek power at all costs is at the root of the unwholesomeness of our electoral process.

    We are contending with the imperfections of a federal order that compels the constituent units toseek power to take advantage of its enormous resourcesfor the advantage of their ethnic groups and members of their family. This in turn, breeds corruption and other associated ills. A dysfunctional federal order and corruption are two sides of the same coin. The first breeds and incubates the other.

    As long as we continue with this decadent federal order, so long will our electoral process witness the kind of assault we have seen in the past. It will be neigh impossible for people that emerged through a corrupt electoral process to fight systemic corruption. There is a choice before us.

     

  • Anti-party godfatherism

    In a display of crude godfatherism, Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun and Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha shamelessly supported the governorship candidates of political parties different from theirs in the March 9 governorship election. It remains to be seen how their disloyalty will benefit the candidates they backed.

    Amosun and Okorocha of the All Progressives Congress (APC) had clearly carried godfatherism too far. It wasn’t surprising that their party decided to punish them. It was surprising that the party delayed the punishment till March 1 when its National Working Committee (NWC) suspended the governors “for anti-party activities.” In a statement, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, said the NWC “has also taken a decision to recommend the expulsion of the suspended individuals to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party.”

    The APC statement stated that “the NWC had earlier written to the suspended governors on their anti-party activities, and several other steps were taken to ensure they desist from taking actions that are inimical to the interests of our party and candidates. Notably, these individuals have not shown any remorse and actually stepped up their actions.”  The party accused the suspended governors of “serial anti-party activities,” and “noted how the suspended members have continued to campaign openly for other parties and candidates that are unknown to our great party. They have in fact constituted themselves as opposition to APC candidates in their respective states.”

    At the APC presidential campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on February 11, Amosun had openly opposed his party.  “You know what to do when it is March 2nd, but please honour me on February 16 and vote for our father, President Muhammadu Buhari,” he had said to his supporters, referring to the governorship election, which was moved to  March 9,  and the presidential election, which was moved to February 23.

    Amosun refused to recognise Dapo Abiodun as the APC’s governorship candidate. Abiodun had defeated Amosun’s preference, Adekunle Akinlade, in the APC primary, leading to Akinlade’s exit from the party and his candidacy on the platform of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).

    Curiously, Amosun, whose second term ends this year, defied his party by endorsing Akinlade for governor, but chose to run for senate on the APC platform. Interestingly, Amosun won the senate race. Amosun was free to support Akinlade, but it was absurd that he did so at the expense of Abiodun, his party’s candidate. No rationalisation can make this rational.

    There were levels of drama at the January 29 APC presidential campaign rally at the Dan Anyiam Stadium in Owerri, the Imo State capital. The party’s chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, had presented the APC governorship candidate, saying, “Senator Hope Uzodinma will win and restore good governance in Imo. APC will win in Imo State.”

    Remarkably, Okorocha’s son-in-law and Action Alliance (AA) governorship candidate, Uche Nwosu, was at the APC rally. Okorocha wants Nwosu to succeed him, and had said so loud and clear. Okorocha, who has also won a senate seat on the platform of APC, supported Muhammadu  Buhari for president and Nwosu for governor. Nwosu had defected to AA from APC after failing to get what he wanted.  The state chapter of AA had endorsed Buhari, and promised to secure one million votes for him in the presidential election.

    Buhari obviously needed all the votes he could get. His re-election campaign was a serious matter and he meant business.  Perhaps this explains why he dramatically asked his party members to vote for a candidate of their choice in the Imo State governorship election, and not necessarily the APC governorship candidate.

    A report of the APC rally said: “President Buhari, who broke his silence on the crisis rocking the party since the party’s governorship primaries, urged APC members to vote for any candidate of their choice across party lines irrespective of inter or intraparty squabbles.”

    This means Buhari and Oshiomhole were not on the same page regarding who APC members should vote for in the Imo governorship poll. This also means Buhari and Okorocha may be on the same page concerning the governorship election. Obviously, Okorocha doesn’t want the APC governorship candidate to win.  He wants the AA governorship candidate to win. Though Buhari stopped short of endorsing another party’s governorship candidate, his non-partisanship was odd because he was expected to endorse his party’s governorship candidate. The rally was a partisan event. In partisan politics, there is no room for non-partisanship.

    When Okorocha first publicly expressed his preference for Nwosu, who was the Chief of Staff, Government House, he had said:  ”Uche Nwosu is hardworking and never gets tired. He is a very humble young man. Not proud. Not arrogant. So, power won’t enter his head. In spite of the position he occupies you can’t see him quarreling with anybody or maltreating anybody. He does not segregate against anybody whether from Orlu or Owerri or Okigwe zone… I have checked him in and out; I have not found him wanting… The young man is a team player, who does not use his office to molest anybody. He has the qualities of a good leader.”

    Okorocha added: “You see, you don’t hide a good product. And the joy of every leader is to have a worthy successor. You don’t mind political opportunists. We have done very well as a government and we should be concerned about what happens to the achievements after.”

    Amosun and Okorocha have shown that they are birds of a feather when it comes to their thinking on succession. Believing they must pick their successors at any cost, they seem desperate to remain in power after their tenure.  It is contrived continuity.

    If their governorship favourites win because of their support, it will be a Pyrrhic victory for the governors.  By their anti-party activities, Amosun and Okorocha showed an arrogant contempt for party supremacy. Their suspension and possible expulsion from the APC is bad for their image and good for party supremacy.

    Having been elected to the senate, it is a cause for concern that these dishonourable politicians will sit in the Red Chamber pretending to be men of honour.

  • Militia

    We call it election but rather than vote, we tote AK 47. Before that, there were campaigns, rallies, posters, songs and dances, party names and emblems, rhetoric and barnstorming. Azonto, shaku shaku, et al. It swings from a fanfare to a fair of death and rancour. It ends not as democracy, but impunity. It is comedy if we remove the blood. A comedy in which we are afraid to laugh.

    It is the ceremony of violence plus the blood, especially the blood. Polls in Nigeria now bow to blood. That is because elections are about violence. This rite seemed a right for all regions before, and many citizens often retreated to their holy hills for safety.

    But from the past two election cycles, a region sticks out like lone lava. Nothing is legitimate unless it is mated to fire and fury. It is what we call the south-south or the Niger Delta. Since 1999, it has not been the people’s wish that matters, but gangrene from a gang of elite hoodlums. They have no respect for democracy, or the coercion of the conscience. They want power and they snatch it, and they amass wealth, weapons, street never-do-wells, and what is left is the Churchillian blood, tears, sweat and toil. Except that Churchill meant it in the language of sacrifice to country.

    These politicians in the Niger Delta want it for personal, group interest, to ransack and flog the region to its knees and cart away the resources.

    Except for two states of relatively low tides of brigandage, all other states in the Niger Delta can only legitimate polls by gansterism. They include my home state of Delta, as well as Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa.  The relative innocents here are Edo and Cross River, who show spasms of infection of turbulence from time to time.

    I wonder what the people, the helpless underlings of society think of democracy. They see it as a system of violence, by violence for booty. So, whoever represents anyone there must not be seen to have earned it from the authentic hearts of the people.

    It is democracy by fiat, fuelled by guns, bombs, machetes. We have seen it in the past two weeks in all the states. In Sapele, we read of gunmen shattering the calm election queue by a rat-tat-tat of guns. Voters scampered away, a few fell and died, blood coloured the pristine sand, screams upturned the morning air. Ballot boxes were destroyed and the instruments of power mingled with blood and sand.

    INEC offices are blown off in other states. Port Harcourt, Uyo, Yenagoa, Warri. Roads are apian ways of death. Hoodlums are hooded. In Rivers State, it is a military operation. Gunshots are a continuation of politics by other means. The foot soldiers are faithful. They parody the message of Christ in the Revelations: “Be ye faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.” They fight, they ride on stormy boats, they flit through forests like silhouettes, they howl like wolves, they kill, they burn houses and ballot boxes when they are not stealing them.

    A video in one of the states is in circulation of militants in a frenzy of thumb printing. They are unfazed though. They are like young men in a workaday routine, doing a job as genuine as an accountant sorting out the day’s numbers. There is no air of guilt, but sighs of fulfilment with every thumb that smudges a paper.

    They see violence the way the ritualist sees it. In the shrine, the priest takes the goat or the cow, or the ram, and slaughters. The blood gushes out. The gore, too. The priests and others glow to the triumph. If it means fertility, then the child has come. If it means wealth, it means money will adorn every effort or lack of effort. If it is gunning down your enemy, your foe has fallen. You are triumphant. The ritual is a prophecy of victory. It is testimony in itself. After all, even the Bible says, a “testimony is the spirit of prophecy.”

    So the big men, governors, senators, representatives, local government apparatchiks, all converge to strategise. Not on  ideas about school for all, food for all, or road for all, but gore of all the foes. How to snatch the boxes, re-write the results, pay the billions to all who will do the task, and win.

    Is there any surprise that some of the governors do nothing but drone in luxury as they await the next ritual of the slaughter and mayhem that will bring them back to power? Why do roads but only a few months to the election, and pretend there has been no money all along? Some governors have done nothing of consequence but argued they had no money until  it was a few months and the billons started  coming out like spirits turned into flesh. We see the miracle and wonder.

    It makes one shudder about the region. What calibre of governors and legislators would have represented the people if the brigands did not take over the cathedral? We shall never know. When we have senators without theories, or governors without vision, or commissioners with the gift only to toady up to the master, then the region is doomed.  Militancy has been blamed for this, including the roars of the Itsekiri-Ijaw hostilities. When they downed the bullets and guns of hate, they did not drown. They morphed into political footmen.  Some of them took advantage of the resource control idea and exploited it for personal fortune.

    A place of immense wealth is a hovel of poverty of the people. The quest for resource control has followed after the analysis of the writer Eric Hoffer in his book, The True Believer. He said a movement starts as a cause, then it becomes an enterprise and ends as a racket. Oil is now a racket with politicians as the masters of the game.

    The best way to win is to steal, kill and rapine. In his novel, Bound To Violence, Yambo Ouologuem tracks the African obsession with blood and death. The problem with our political class is their lack of education. They therefore have no ideas. They crave nothing but power. Outside of it, they are bored and useless. Hence philosopher Soren Kierkegaard noted that not money, but “boredom is the root of all evil.” Their minds are too vacant to contemplate great ideas to lift their environment. They want power for power ‘s sake. They do not fit into Thorstein Veblen who demonstrated that the leisure class build new centres of pleasure with their excess wealth. Ours have no such imaginations. They build mansions and store money in the west. When they make more money, they are also bored. They seek excitement, what better way to get their veins a-boil with blood again than to shed blood.

    It is not that other regions are not fascinated with violence. We have read of a representative shot dead in Oyo State, of the Okota episode in Lagos. In the southeast and north, the polls result can be predicted even without violence. A herd sentiment marks out the regions. In the southwest, a sophistication shuts out the bull from the electoral china shop. The incidence of violence in other regions, though disturbing, pales in relation to my birth region.

    We sometimes forget that Edo and Delta were part of the old western region, and had what we know as progressive credentials. We also know that what was known as the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers also flirted with the idea in the First republic. But how did those regions fall into the sway of brigands and they have been on the other side of the spectrum? In political history, such changes only happen after a sea change of values. But it was a coup of opportunistic elite, a rage of carpet baggers that have held them in thrall of violence.

    Elections there are a plebiscite on guns and not love of the masses, of military power, not the people’s will. Elections are a military operation, not a republican rite. It is a Hobbesian ceremony, not a people’s hurrah. It is therefore a farce. Most, not all though, who emerge from the system are frauds and impostors. We need an emergency on democracy there. Only when technology through e-voting upends human mischief can liberation come. Any other means will fail.