Political analyst and Chairman, Editorial Board of The Nation Newspapers, Sam Omatseye, joined by Member, Editorial board, Femi Macaulay to discuss the 2019 Presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory, credibility of the 2019 election, INEC, leadership of the of the National Assembly, and the governorship and Assembly elections.
Political analyst and Chairman, Editorial Board of The Nation Newspapers, Sam Omatseye, joined by Member, Online Editor, Sunday Oguntola to discuss the 2019 Presidential election and President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory at the poll.
A greater Lagos is possible. The promise by the All Progressives Congress (APC) Lagos State governorship candidate, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to take Lagos to greater heights makes him taller than his rivals. His campaign catchphrase is: “For a greater Lagos.”
Speaking to reporters, Sanwo-Olu gave an insight into his vision: “I believe at this point in time, Lagos, which is the fifth largest economy in Africa, needs to set a new standard on how the state is managed and get new direction. It needs to do a lot of things quicker, faster and better. It needs to have a path through which we can begin to deal with all of the challenges that come with Mega City States. It needs to rebrand and to position itself for the opportunities that abound. We need to recalibrate the economy of the state and make it competitive for local and international competitiveness. Lagos needs to expand the economic base to create more private sector jobs. We have infrastructural deficits across sectors that we need private capital to fund. All of these I am prepared to deal with and can do better than anyone contesting against me.”
Indeed, megacities are faced with mega challenges. It is noteworthy that in 2017 Lagos was listed among the world’s 100 Resilient Cities (100RC). A project of the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation, the 100 Resilient Cities include places in Africa, U.S.A., South America, Europe, Asia and Middle East. According to a report: “President of 100 Resilient Cities, Mr. Michael Berkowitz, said out of the over 1,000 applications received and three rounds of selection process, Lagos was chosen for its innovative leadership, infrastructural strides and influential status not just in Africa but in the world.” The project has its definition of urban resilience, which provided a context for the listing of Lagos: “Resilience is about surviving and thriving, regardless of the challenge.”
Lagos was in 2015 listed 12th among the world’s largest 35 cities. With over 23 million people, the city has to grapple with mega challenges. On account of its mega status, Lagos State is exposed to “chronic stresses” and “acute shocks.” “Chronic stresses,” which are said to “weaken the fabric of a city on a day-to-day or cyclical basis,” include “high unemployment, inefficient public transportation systems, endemic violence, and chronic food and water shortages.” “Acute shocks,” which are described as “sudden, sharp events that threaten a city,” include “earthquakes, floods, disease outbreaks, and terrorist attacks.”
A list of resilience challenges facing Lagos: Chronic Energy Shortages, Coastal Flooding, Disease Outbreak, Infrastructure Failure, Overpopulation, Overtaxed/ Under Developed/Unreliable Transportation System, Poor Transportation System, Rainfall Flooding, Rising Sea Level and Coastal Erosion.
If resilience is elasticity to manage change, Sanwo-Olu’s trajectory suggests that he has the capacity. A university-trained surveyor, he held senior positions in banking before he switched to the public service following his appointment as a special adviser on corporate matters to a former deputy governor of the state.
He had been acting Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, and Commissioner for Establishments, Training and Pensions. He was Managing Director/CEO of the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC) before he won the APC governorship primary.
Ahead of the primary, a pillar of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had painted a portrait of Sanwo-Olu: “I am encouraged by the emergence of a candidate in this primary who has served the state in senior positions in my administration, the Fashola administration and even in the current one. While possessing a wealth of experience and exposure, he is a young man endowed with superlative vision and commitment. Most importantly, he understands the importance of the blueprint for development. He esteems it as a reliable and well-conceived vehicle for the future development of the state. He also knows the value of reaching out and working with others in order to maximise development and provide people the best leadership possible.”
This testimonial was decisive in the primary. It may well be decisive in the governorship election on March 9. Victory for 53-year-old Sanwo-Olu means he would be in a position to implement a master plan that has served the state well enough since Tinubu’s two-term tenure as governor from 1999 to 2007.
Tinubu had shed light on the pivotal blueprint on the eve of the primary: “Roughly 20 years ago, a corps of dedicated and patriotic Lagosians, put aside personal interests and rivalries, to put their minds and best ideas together for the good of the state. Out of this collaborative effort, was born a master plan for economic development that would improve the daily lives of our people. Bestowed on me was the honour of a lifetime when I was elected to be your governor in 1999. My administration faithfully implemented that plan. The government of my immediate successor, Tunde Fashola, also honoured this enlightened plan. Where state government remained true to that blueprint, positive things happened. During my tenure and Governor Fashola’s, Lagos State recorded improvements in all aspects of our collective existence, from public health to public sanitation, from education to social services, from the administration of justice to the cleaning of storm and sewage drains. Businesses, large and small, invested, hired millions of workers and thrived.”
Tinubu provided an insight into the defining principles of the master plan: “All Lagosians were to fully participate and justly benefit from the social dividends and improvements wrought by this plan. From the common labourer, to business leaders, to professionals and our industrious civil service. We all were to be partners in a monumental but joint enterprise. None was to be alienated. None was to be left out. And none were to be pushed aside. This is especially true for those who contributed so much to our development, whether as a business leader who has invested heavily in Lagos, the homeowner who struggles to pay his fair share of taxes or as someone employed in the hard work of keeping our streets and byways clean so that others may go about their daily tasks unimpeded.”
Of course, as Tinubu observed, the master plan “can always be fine-tuned.” Sanwo-Olu would be faced with the challenge of following the plan and fine-tuning it. Sanwo-Olu’s involvement in the foundational work of the Tinubu administration and the progressive development of the Fashola and Ambode eras makes him better equipped to govern Lagos State at this time. Sanwo-Olu should win the March 9 governorship election because experience counts.
“Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation,” Prophet Joel.
A week to the polls, a friend phoned from the United States and thought Atiku Abubakar had won the polls. I had predicted a resounding Buhari victory all along.
“From what I am reading, it seems the story is going to be different,” he piped out. He was under the spell of the internet of the social media variety. Soyinka’s millipedes had cooked a viral diet and he had been at table.
“They are minority of Nigerians,” I assured him. “Most of the voters don’t even know Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.”
After the polls, a certain ennui wrapped the nation. Those who won are as though they mourn, and those who lost are in sack cloth. But the funeral air of the Atikus was eerie while the Buharis were like amused morticians.
The APC was quietly jubilant, while a chest-thumping Atiku was a quarrel in the closet. You saw his screaming face but could not hear a word.
President Buhari warned against gloating, but it happened in the shadows. The streets did not carp, the drum rolled in backyards, the clinks of wine glasses like muffled clicks. Even the rhetoric of the winners was more about silencing the hoopla of the losers.
During the Second World War, Churchill fired up Allied zeal with the following words: “In war, resolution. In victory, magnanimity. In defeat, defiance.” We saw resolution as both barnstormed the country. Buhari is showing magnanimity but Atiku defiance. Churchillian defiance was against an anti-democratic demon named Hitler. Churchill had warned that if the Brits were defeated, they would fight with everything, and in the end, even in defeat, history would say, this was their “finest hour.”
It does not look like a fine hour for Atiku in defeat. He is sore and sour. He probably thinks he won the polls. He is like the social media folks who rollicked in their own echo chambers. They talked to themselves, embraced their own delusions, laughed at their own jokes, and mistook their peculiar narrow universe for that of the whole world. It is the character of fanaticism, only your world counts because only your world exists. Some persons have joked that Facebook CEO would swear in Atiku as president on May 29.
They forgot that Buhari is like no leader in Nigerian history. The few that enjoyed such cult following are not close. They include Ojukwu, Awolowo, Kano and the Sardauna. None of them adored their icon like Buhari. Ojukwu led the Biafran war, and was a head of state. Awo was the greatest Nigerian who ever lived. Yet, for all his following, he confronted a rampage from a right-wing elite in Yorubaland that had its roots in pre-colonial Nigeria as enunciated in the writing of Richard L. Sklar. For all his fabled charisma, the Sarduana held an office and deployed it for effect. Aminu Kano corralled the Kano talakawas.
Buhari’s rise in the hearts and minds of the talakawas across the north deserves a treatise in political psychology, something in the nature of Crowds and Power by Nobel laureate Elias Canetti. Buhari did not win their soul as head of state, but his mystique grew gradually over a few decades. He calls to mind a mystique Joseph Conrad describes in his immortal novel of the sea, Lord Jim.
It was the echo chamber that killed the candidature of Atiku. He thought the polls were about him. I disagree. It was all about Buhari. For most parts, the polls were a contest between Buhari and Buhari. In the final analysis, even if Atiku won, it would have been Buhari, who won it for him. But Buhari won it for himself.
Many who voted for PDP did not vote for Atiku. They voted against Buhari. They tended to be those who voted for faith, who voted for the era of free money, against the war on corruption, who voted in league with their pastors who were pulpit bullies, voted against the hunger in the land, against the divisive rhetoric that showed he lacked some of the ingredients of a statesman. They voted for Onnoghen, for tribesmen and tribe, against herdsmen crisis and the deaths, against the contempt for the rule of law, the spectre of coffins and blood, against the swarm of northern appointments.
Not many leaders could survive such ululations of protest. The irony is that the rich voted against him, the poor for him. It was a sort of class war, a rebellion of a pampered elite. They snuggled in Ikoyi, Banana Island, Asokoro, and they voted for revenge, a cynical democratic quality of vision.
We should remember another irony. Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki, came in line with his father as surrogate nobles. They seized the high throne of Ilorin from the legitimates through the ballot. The people voted for an authentic noble in Oloriegbe. They saw the Sarakis as subversive nobles and have voted for a historical one. Are they bringing nobility to the service of the republican idea, or the nobility has browbeaten the people with a feudal whip? Or is the prince acting like pauper, as in Mark Twain’s novel of that name? Time shall tell.
The election is also a cautionary tale for the so-called men of God now turned into gods of men, who became warriors of the world instead of the word. They should have read Jesus’s words to Pontius Pilate to the effect: “my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom is of this world then would my servants fight…” A pastor prophesied Buhari’s death, some victory for Atiku, others turned the pulpit into a remorseless flogging of Buhari while asking their followers to obtain PVCs. Jeremiah warned: “a wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests bear rule by their authority and my people love to have it so. What will you do in the end thereof?”
Now that it is over, what will they concoct for their credulous sheep?
If Atiku wants to head to court, he may. But he should know that the videos he claims to have may not be enough to cancel four million votes and he should know, too, that his APC folks also have videos in areas they lost. The election was not perfect, but for most parts observers and witnesses have adjudged it passed the test.
Those who say Buhari did not do well, even among the thinking elite, are frauds of the intellect. He may not have done well enough for them. They also lack historical understanding. Buhari inherited a mess, and the world would have witnessed a Venezuela in Africa had Jonathan won in 2015. He stopped a haemorrhage. I know corruption still festers under him. What we have had under him is controlled, if reprehensible bleeding. Before him, it was a financial carnage. Under him, you thought before you leapt with that loot. His critics downplay 9.5 million kids who fed daily in school, or the market women who had Trader Moni, the Lagos-Ibadan rail, or the second Niger Bridge, or the highest power uptick in history in spite of challenges, or the seeds of Mambilla Plateau prosperity, the diminution of the herdsmen crisis, or pensions for Biafra soldiers and railway workers, or bailouts to ailing states for salaries, etc.
The messaging was awful but the facts are legacy. Buhari should understand that a second term belongs to history, and he must not be tardy as he did in 2015. It’s time to be a genuine statesman. As Kennedy said, politicians look at the next election but statesmen the next generation. His last electoral hurrah should foreshadow a monument in the hearts not only of the talakawas but all persons of goodwill who will read his biography.
So long, Dalung
He spent quite some time fighting. He fought as sports minister. He even fought the leadership of his state APC, undermining the governor of his home state of Plateau. But when it mattered most, he flunked just as our sportsmen in important duels. At the last presidential polls, Solomon Dalung was not a winner. He did not deliver
his ward, neither did he deliver his polling unit. At the Langtang South LGA, his party APC polled 873 while the PDP had 1955, a shellacking. In his polling unit, his APC picked up 118 votes to PDP 241. With this performance, I don’t see this fellow returning as minister. Nigeria did not excel under him. He is a lawyer, and he will do well in litigations. So he should return to the court.
Those exposed to the social contract account of the theory of state are familiar with the evolution of modern governance framework from the atavism of the state of nature. The state of nature aptly captured by Hobbes, Montesquieu etc was ‘war of man against man-the survival of the fittest’.
But man in the state of nature got fed up with the lawlessness and uncertainties of that order. They yearned for a superior power, a sovereign to which they will surrender some of their powers in return for their safety and protection.
Having surrendered some of their powers to the sovereign, they remain the ultimate sovereign since power is exercised on their behalf. Thus, government is a contract between the people and their leaders. It involves rights, duties and obligations.
That was how the concept of democracy as government of the people, by the people and for the people emanated. But the size of modern states has precluded direct democracy as practiced in the Greek City states. In its place, we have representative democracy in which people participate in governance through representative freely elected at periodic elections
Each time elections are held, the supposition is that the people are given unfettered latitude to elect their representatives. This inalienable right to choose leaders is one cardinal feature that gives allure to modern democracy as opposed to other forms of governance framework. It is this pristine value of democracy that is assailed each time the will of the people is not allowed free reign in the selection of their leaders in supposedly democratic electoral contests.
For us in this country, we have overtime had serious challenges conducting elections that satisfy the conditions for free and fair contest. These challenges have been there in varying degrees recording some improvement during the regime of President Jonathan.
In the early years of the PDP regime especially when Obasanjo held sway, Nigerians got so disenchanted with manipulated elections that they began to lose confidence in the electoral process. The refrain was that it was needless wasting valuable time casting votes when the final outcome will not reflect the actual wishes of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box.
Sentiments and dispositions to electoral matters were so negative that public confidence waned very considerably. Apparently mindful of the increasing loss of confidence in the electoral process, late President Yar’Adua, a beneficiary of that flawed process began to reassure Nigerians of improvements in the electoral process such that would make the will of the people count. His successor, Jonathan took over from there and introduced a number of reforms to guarantee the sovereignty of the people as reflected at the ballot box.
Substantial improvements were recorded in the 2011 elections and capped in 2015 culminating in the defeat of an incumbent for the first time in our electoral history. Nigeria gained considerable mileage in the rungs of the democratic ladder, attracting for itself the attention of the world. It was therefore not surprising that as the 2019 elections drew nearer, our country became the cynosure of world attention and focus.
The expectation was that this election would be a substantial improvement on the last one by enhancing and consolidating on the gains of the past. The electoral umpire was expected to tap into the gains of the past and conduct a seamless election to demonstrate that the democratic political culture is being imbibed and internalized on these shores.
But that failed to happen as most of the sordid features of our political past were fully at play during that election. Killings, snatching of ballot boxes and election materials, outright manipulation, tampering with and falsification of election results were all visible drawbacks of the just concluded presidential and national assembly elections. Ironically, the public space had been awash before the elections with allegations and counter allegation of speculated plans to rig the exercise.
It was perhaps, in apparent attempt to ensure the elections meet the standards of free and fair conduct that President Buhari came out with the stern warning and instruction to the police and the military to deal ruthlessly with those who attempt to snatch ballot boxes or lead a body of thugs to disrupt the electoral process. Though that directive did not go down well with a lot of people because of prospects of abuse by overzealous police and military officers, the order saw to the massive deployment of the military for the exercise.
Writing under the title ‘Ballot box metaphor’, I had in this column last Monday examined the emphasis on ballot box snatching and the propriety in singling it out as the raison d’être for the president’s directive. I had appraised the malfeasance called ballot box snatching vis-à-vis other manifestations of electoral infractions- banditry and arson leading to loss of lives and property and tampering with smart card readers. Falsification and tampering with results by officials of the electoral body was also a potent consideration. Contrived attempts by unscrupulous officials of the electoral umpire in connivance with politicians to disenfranchise the electorate through late supply of materials and non supply at all to skew the outcome of the election to predetermined directions was also raised.
It was argued that the president’s order of death penalty for ballot box snatchers was seriously impaired in addressing more potent, more debilitating and destabilizing manifestations of electoral infractions in a technologically driven electoral process. Not only is it incapable of addressing the sabotage of the collective will of the people that stands to be subverted through pre-configuring of the smart card readers, it is patently helpless in checking the falsification and alteration of results at collation centers by unscrupulous officials of the electoral body whether ad hoc or permanent.
My conclusion was that “the propriety of the president’s order will be measured by the extent the conduct of the military is seen to enhance the overall credibility of the elections and it is hoped they will not succumb to political partisanship and pressure from the government in power”.
Alas, events seem to have borne out these predictions. Though there were incidents of ballot box snatching, much of the grouse of the opposition against Saturday’s elections hinge on allegations of tampering with smart card readers, falsification and manipulation of results at the collation centers and intimidation of voters by security agencies. There have also been copious allegations on how the security agencies were used to prevent accredited agents of the political parties from gaining access into the collation centers.
That left sundry collation officers to alter and manipulate the results with reckless abandon. The verdict of the people as expressed at the ballot box was fatally vitiated as the final outcome in many areas had no correlation with votes cast at the polling booths. This is damn serious and can only be ignored at the risk of our democracy. It may be convenient for some people to makes excuses or dispute this but the reality on the ground is that the outcome of that election is not such that imbues confidence on the electorate that their votes count.
The consequence may manifest in voter apathy during this week’s governorship and state assembly elections. There is palpable apprehension, fear and low morale among voters and if nothing is done to give confidence to the electorate that the conduct of coming elections will be a substantial improvement on the last one, not many people will come out for that exercise. This is more so given threats and intimidation of voters in parts of the country for exercising their franchise they way they considered best.
What this country requires is immediate electoral reforms that will guarantee the sanctity of the collective will of the people as freely expressed at the ballot box. The current process of collation of results is a serious fault line in the electoral engine. It gives ample room for the manipulation and falsification of results by those who hold the coercive apparatus of state power. Ironically, the electoral reforms passed by the national assembly but which the president refused assent, provided solutions to all that. We must get back to it if our democracy will not turn out a charade.
There is nothing more exciting in the life of a nation than the anticipation of the vote. The only thing more exciting is waiting for the results. After that, the disappointments surpass the joys. For in politics, a loss runs deeper than a win. In victories, we exhale. In losses, we choke.
That is what we expect in a few days when INEC will reveal the pulse of the people. A few days to the polls, Lagosians lined up in banks and markets. They wanted the polls, but they dreaded the outcomes. Not the results, but the results of the results. Will the politicians absorb the losses like sportsmen, unroll their sleeves, sit back on their sofas and choke like gentlemen? Or will they spit fire from the rumbling within their frustrated breasts?
Already we have witnessed flashpoints of ill temper. In Rivers State, where a new poll will take place because some men could not keep their fingers from the trigger. Or in Sapele where a gun man dazed a queue of voters and unleashed rage that left three persons dead, or in Ibadan where two people will not live to see whether it was Atiku or Buhari, who will shepherd our affairs in the next four years.
If the loser acts in the spirit of the violence we saw, then those stocking up on supplies will have prophesied with their pockets and anxieties. In the bank, a young fellow across the counter marvelled at the traffic of customers depleting their accounts.
“If you were grown up during the June 12 crisis, you won’t be surprised. Banks and all services were shut down for months. And the fever of war was everywhere,” I said.
“Oh, did it have to do with…Abiola?” he asked, reflectively and unsure of his facts. It was a moment in historical ignorance of the young generation who know little of the nation’s past, a thing encouraged by the virtual wiping out of history from the curriculum. Obasanjo saw to that and we have not recovered.
I reassured and told him yes, and gave him a few history lessons about streets empty, pockets and stomachs hollow, army on the prowl, deaths from guns and neglect, democracy warriors fighting back to retrieve our republican soul from a state of cold-blooded murderers.
It was the unspoken voice in the bargains in the market and the courtesies between customers and bank cashiers. So, the loser should understand that it is not about him, but about us, and about a democracy limping along. Impunity, corruption and a lack of decency throb slyly and ominously at the foundation of this system.
The reason many fear is that politics is the only game in town, the only cash cow and drone’s paradise. It is a veritable rewarder of them who work with diligence at the most indolent profession in the land. It is luxurious indolence but it inspires its special devotions, its peculiar efficiencies. For all its indolence, it extracts its own arduous labour. For instance, it takes a special acumen to plot the death of a fellow human who wants to take away your daily bread by a legitimate means called election. Or plot the snatching of ballot boxes, or rewriting figures for INEC.
So in Rivers State, a certain Mowan Etete lost his life and so did his brother on the same day. They were cut down because they belonged to a so-called enemy party. It takes a special kind of efficiency to spot such an enemy, time his vulnerable hour and foible, identify the weakness of the security agencies, and chart the path of escape. The killer often has no grudge against the victims. He is just an errand boy of blood. In another clime and another day, outside the ken of politics, they might have been spotted in a suya spot. But someone employed the killer and the killer, with no scruples, was only performing a job.
They might have returned to the sender and said, “sir, we have completed the assignment.” It is a nightmarish parody of a workaday routine. But those who send such people have enjoyed so much luxury from politics.
The fellow was probably working as supervisors in a company or a business selling some fish or paint in a largescale. He made profits, but sweated to his gains and the gains came stingy. But this thing called politics turned him into an instant moneybag. He joined and the big man spotted his talent for despatching the enemy, and he organised a band of men and was given perhaps N15 million for the job. After paying his men, he carts home N10 million. He accomplishes this in one weekend.
What a bonanza weekend. He ponders his life. How long and how much perspiration did he have to sacrifice in the past for such princely gain? He probably was denied lesser amount as a loan application in his bank. His efficiency makes him a prime star in the constellation of the party machine. He is given bigger tasks, and within six months his coffers swell to as much as N70 million. He is a specialist as a task master and he grows over the years to become a candidate. He has won an election or two, and has become a member of the Nigerian political elite. He probably has forgotten that he once sold fish or paint. He has built mansions, married quite a few wives and furnishes a bevy of concubines, with a dozen children, some of them in the choice universities in the United Kingdom and United States.
He has become a brand of philanthropy, and members of his extended family and village who once dismissed him as an outlier and desperado in the city with little to show for it now bow to him. They laugh at his every joke and ponder at his every wisdom.
His self-image has soared. He has made it. His ego bloats with the worst vanities. So, when an election comes, at stake for him is not democracy or progress, but all his accumulated indecencies and wealth and lifestyle. If he shot his way to the top, he will shoot his way down. Many innocent victims, many dead, but the spoils for them are inviolate.
That is why it is hard for some to accept defeat, or not to rig. When it is a presidential poll, many of those who will goad the loser to reject the people’s vote also stake their vanities to the victory of their candidate. That was what Jonathan encountered before he followed the noble path of surrender.
French Prime Minister Clemenceau once said petrol is more important than blood. In the violence of Nigerian electoral wars, blood is currency. It is the price of the ultimate prize: victory.
Political analyst and Chairman, Editorial Board of The Nation Newspapers, Sam Omatseye, joined by Member, Online Editor, Sunday Oguntola to discuss the 2019 General election, Democracy in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, INEC, PDP, APC, Corruption in Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, Ballot box snatching.
The original article slated for this column today was titled ‘Fire at INEC’. It was an appraisal of the fire incidents that razed INEC offices in parts of the country in the face of mounting allegations that the electoral umpire was working to rig the polls.
In that write-up, we took a cursory perspective of the fire incidents in Plateau, Abia and Anambra states and wondered at the sequence with which they were occurring a few days to the election. In the inferno at the Qua’anpan local government area of Plateau, ballot boxes, newly printed manual and electronic voters register, uncollected Permanent Voters Cards PVC’s were consumed. INEC attributed it to a novice security man who attempted to put on the generator.
At Umu-Ikaa in the Isiala-Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, an unspecified number of PVC’s were burnt. It was attributed to the handiwork of hoodlums. As if these were not enough, containers housing a whooping 4,695 card readers went up in flames in Anambra State in inexplicable circumstances. INEC quickly issued a statement promising to make up from the consignments of other states.
The opposition cashed in on this curious development to reinforce allegations that the fire incidents were primed by the government in collusion with INEC to disenfranchise their members in identified areas of their stronghold. My submission was that though the uncanny coincidence gave serious cause for worry, the conclusion that they were targeted at compromising the outcome of the elections remained within the realm of speculation that only the actual conduct of the election can bear out.
But one also observed how these allegations eventually play out will depend on the organizational prowess, capacity and ability of the electoral umpire to provide a level playing ground for all the political parties to participate in a free and fair electoral contest. It will predicate substantially on the operational efficiency and effectiveness of INEC in making election materials available at the polling booths within the stipulated time. All would eventually depend on events during the actual conduct of the elections. I surmised that what INEC does or fails to do on the day of the election will serve as a litmus test for the veracity or otherwise of these allegations.
As fate would have it, we woke up on Saturday morning only to be confronted with the news that INEC had postponed the elections citing logistic, operational challenges and the imperative to guarantee free and fair elections. In a brief statement signed by the chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the presidential and the National Assembly elections were shifted to February 23 while the governorship and state assembly polls were put forward to March 9.
Curiously, the postponement was done few hours to the commencement of accreditation of voters and actual voting. It came when election materials had been dispatched to the local government areas and for subsequent distribution to the wards and the polling units. It came when the various political parties had effectively deployed their agents to ensure that unscrupulous ones do not tamper with the materials.
It could therefore be conjectured how confused the atmosphere was when the news filtered that elections were no longer going to take place. Many were jolted. Businesses had been shut and many travelled far and wide to cast their votes where they registered. The nation lost immeasurably in terms of productive hours and the time wasted in anticipation of an elusive election.
For INEC that had already deployed its staff, the dislocation and the attendant cost was colossal. Materials had been moved to the local governments with the possibility of some of them finding their ways to the wards and polling units. With the postponement, INEC resorted to the panicky measure of recalling all the materials to the state headquarters for safe custody.
But chances are that some of them may have developed wings and fled. In a clime where people go at lengths to compromise election outcome, the conditions provided by the postponement stand the risk of being further exploited to compromise the overall outcome of the elections.
What INEC succeeded in doing by the manner and timing of the postponement is to provide further loopholes for manipulation and exploitation by unscrupulous ones. Rather than enhance the overall perception of the elections, the shift will further fuel speculations that there was more to it than ordinarily meets the eyes. It is not surprising allegations that the government worked in concert with INEC to effect the shift so as to perfect their rigging plans have resonated with increased ferocity.
Surprisingly, Festus Keyamo of the Buhari Media Organization has also sought to place the blame for the postponement at the door steps of the main opposition party, the PDP. There is now mutual suspicion regarding who stands to reap from the postponement or who it favours most. Different theories have been floated and suggestions made with varying degrees of plausibility depending on the divide one stands.
One thing that stands clear is that INEC cannot escape culpability for bungling this election. It is good Yakubu has taken full responsibility for the muddle. He has also sought public understanding citing all the efforts they made to ensure a foolproof performance. But the reality is that all this failed to deliver on promise. This is an electoral body that told who cares, time without number that it was fully prepared for the conduct of the election. Its chairman had boasted severally that the commission was so ready for the elections that any talk of postponement was a futile imagination.
Alas, it is the same body that came up few hours to the commencement of voting to announce a shift in dates citing logistic and operational challenges. This has raised questions as to the propriety of all the assurances INEC had given regarding the level of its preparedness for the successful conduct of the 2019 elections. How come INEC discovered it was ill-prepared for the elections only few hours to voting? And was there any attempt at any time to test run its logistic and operational readiness before it came to the conclusion that it had all it takes to hold the elections. It cited sabotage in the burning of its offices. But there is no full disclosure as to who is sabotaging who and whether full security measures were taken to protect the materials.
I raise these posers because the impression the action of the electoral body conveys is that it really did not have a good idea of what it takes to run a successful election. Logistics and operational readiness are entirely an internal affair of the INEC. If it only dawned on them a few hours to the elections that they cannot go ahead due to ill-preparations, it speaks a lot of the professional competences of those entrusted with the management of that critical agency of government. The overall cost of this miscalculation both in human and material capital is too heavy for a country in dire economic straits.
Those who sought to rationalize this postponement with the one carried out by Attahiru Jega in 2015 miss the point. Then, Jega had told the nation though his commission still had issues with the collection of PVCs, he was substantially ready for the elections and at a comfort level in the deployment and delivery of election materials. The challenge he had was at the level of national security given the letter issued him from the office of the National Security Adviser NSA to have the elections shifted for six weeks to enable them conclude some security operations in parts of the north east.
The situations are quite different, so also the handling. Jega announced his postponement a week before the elections. The circumstances that compelled him to shift the elections were entirely beyond his control. But Yakubu is the architect of his own problems notwithstanding the weather challenges, the sabotage and his touted commitment to avoid staggered polls. It remains to be seen how INEC will proceed in the days ahead to remedy this bungle and credibility hangover.
His cap fits him, especially as a measure of his ego. It points up like an airport tower as though intending to graze the sky. Ibikunle Amosun’s head gear suffers from what Sigmund Freud and his followers would call phallic anxiety. From base to top, the cap occupies a real estate bigger than his face from fore-head to chin. To his credit, few politicians have so mastered what I would call the “political look.” Some showcase their shirts, others their shoes, many their caps. But few set themselves apart like the Ogun State governor as a fop of the head. Many say it is inelegant with the top rims caved in so the centre spikes up like a blade. But it is his own.
What does not fit, though, is the man and his task. So, Amosun may be a governor, but he is not gubernatorial. He has never been gubernatorial, not even before he mounted the throne and grovelled in prayer from party leader to party leader, sitting in lobbies on end and playing the suppliant fellow as an impresario of humility. Like Oliver Goldsmith’s familiar character, Amosun thinks he stooped then. Now it is his time to conquer. He was afflicted early by the fear of gratitude, and his ogas must pay for his humble pie.
The first shadow of the ego at work was a picture of a flood few months into his reign. The man paid a visit, and in spite of his ponderous boots, he would not allow his special footwear to touch the intrusive waters. He cruised on a canoe while the rest of Ogun humanity around swam. He, with his boots, was too pristine for the stain.
Of late though, what he has done puts the man in bold relief, especially his bold belief. He wanted to post his successor, and he had the right to it. But he wanted to do it without due process. A godfather must earn the respect of his son. The scriptures warn parents not to provoke their children to wrath. It was lesson number one that he did not understand. He was less than the lesson. Godfathers must play a delicate game of balance and flattery of conflicting interests and tendencies. If he wants to impose he must follow the paradox of imposition by consent. He followed the path of imposition by fiat.
Because he was too confident, he fell out of touch with the grassroots. The primary poll came, and he lost. His candidate for governor had to wait on the side-lines. But while others cheered, he lamented. His party, the APC, had thumbed its finger for another man, Dapo Abiodun. Amosun would not yield. His patriarchal air would not absorb such a defeat. He had to seek oxygen elsewhere.
His path was to seek another party, and be on record as one of a few governors who are leaders without discipline. He betrayed what Joseph Conrad calls a “bravado of guilt” or “an adventurer’s easy morality.” He, like his Imo State mate of erections, Rochas Okorocha, announced that his candidate was going to another party. A party leader masterminded an anti-party activity. Party chairman Adams Oshiomhole yelled, but the man Amosun yelled back. He had cried that party leaders had squeezed him out of contention in his own realm.
He screamed at Lagos, and at Abuja, and he screamed until he turned hoarse. He said he wanted to run as senatorial candidate of APC. The people of Ogun State he urged to vote him as APC senator and his candidate Akinlade of the APM as the governor pick. That was local politics.
He who claimed to love Buhari more than the so-called cabal decided to play another stunt. His people should vote Buhari of the APC for president, him for senator and Akinlade for governor. A confused trinity. He took his man Akinlade on a sojourn to Aso Rock. It was indeed a theatre when even Buhari received Amosun in Aso Rock and received the candidate and posed for the camera. If all politics is local, Amosun is making the byway the main road. Governor is main road but by asking his supporters to go to another party for the top post in the state, he made the byway the main road.
Segun Osoba had to remind Buhari that he had erred woefully by taking the party pick to visit him. But Buhari is for everyone and nobody and the translation is that Buhari is for Buhari only. By that, Buhari had become guilty like Amosun.
But nothing reflected the absurdity like what happened in Abeokuta at the APC rally when members of his own rival party APM pelted the president with missiles and boos. He endangered the life of the first citizen. Rauf Aregbesola called him a hypocrite. It was a lawless scene that day. Eyewitness accounts show that persons were mauled and one person’s eye was gouged.
Yet he wants to be a senator. As I tweeted, we have enough of the tout in a certain fellow from Kogi State. The senate cannot abide another one, especially if he was once governor. Amosun is a great shuffler. That day, he jostled Abiodun from the front row. It took the vice president’s intervention who ceded his place beside the president to him. Prof Yemi Osinbajo had to secure a place on the other side of the president. More than one governor has told me that when his colleagues gather around the president, he often pushes them away so as to stand beside Buhari. Hence he is often beside the man for photo ops, unless on a few occasions when the shuffler fails.
Amosun ought to learn about the limits of power. A friend of mine apprised me of a text message he sent Amosun as new year greetings in 2017. Excerpt: “…it is obvious the euphoria that greeted your ascension to power in 2011 has avoidably vanished… rather than be the solution, most inhabitants of the Gateway state, including civil servants, most politicians, civil society groups, market men and women now see you as the problem…this could be traced only to one factor: …you listen only to yourself…which can only lead to self-perdition…why are you daring God with your published statement that you know the person that won’t be governor come 2019…you’re determined to play Babangida here but we all know how Babangida ended…but try to reflect on why the populace of that state no longer like you. Remember the verdict of history and the incontrovertible fact that: today is not forever.”
During the Yoruba Wars, the story is told of an Alafin, who grovelled by day and plotted by night, and he ended up in the night of infamy. For now, we can say Amosun is playing emperor, but an expiring one. His reign is going roughneck into that goodnight. He is raging against the dying of his light, apologies Dylan Thomas.
Like a comet
We all woke up to a day different from what we slept for. The polls did not come but the day came and left. So after INEC chief Mahmood Yakubu explained all that happened, I said to myself, one week will be over soon, and the election will come and go like a comet. The significant point he made was that he wanted to avoid a scenario where most states would have performed their duties and a few would be left, like Edo or Taraba or Oyo, and it would look like a staggered election. So if it becomes a tight race, it would look like a few states would vote after the fact and exploit perceived momentum or spike it.
It would look like a rerun rather than an election of the whole country. If epochs sweep by and are defined by a few sentences, like the Second World War or the life of Mandela, what is a week in a nation’s life? Time seems to grind when we are impatient, but it has the wings of a bat.