When the employer claims ignorance about the terms of the contract of his prominent employee so brazenly, it is either he is being mischievous or that he has timidly surrendered his responsibilities. It is expected that this employer whose signature approves payment of such an employee’s monthly wages should know at the tip of his fingers everything about his critical members of staff.
Yes, the best way to elicit a diabolical response to probing questions on Super Eagles manager Jose Peseiro, is to ask if he had been paid. Or for you to insinuate the number of months’ salaries the Portuguese are being owed? You only get to know about Peseiro’s whereabouts when Nigeria has a game or matches one month away from the first encounter. Possibly his backers would sneak into the social media Peseiro’s pictures watching prospective Super Eagles players though the domestic leagues’ matches on the other hand are in full stream. The excuse before now by most of our foreign coaches was that the league hadn’t begun and it was admissible. Not anymore.
What Nigerians have in their hands now is a man who earns $70,000 monthly and can’t be given the rules on how we want him to work. He spends close to ten months at home in Europe, and visits Nigeria for a few days, perhaps to struggle for one month’s salary after the assignment rather than reside in the country to fish out budding stars who abound in the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs). Indeed, Peseiro’s itinerary doesn’t change.
Peseiro arrives in Abuja seven days before a home game with the Super Eagles team list neatly folded inside his breast pocket unchallenged or should one say the list isn’t interrogated. He walks through immigration with a motley crowd of Portuguese who he claims are his technical assistants including his biological son. Wonderful. Still stunned? Don’t because if the game is home fixtures, Peseiro and his ‘mechanics’ are ushered into the hotel by their Nigerian counterparts who struggle to outrun the other with most of them heading towards Peseiro to pick up his luggage and head for his hotel room. The Portuguese also enjoys the luxury of meeting his players in the countries where they have matches mostly for international friendly games against European nations.
Back to the home matches. Peseiro sounds his whistle on the Mondays before the weekend game only to discover that only five foreign-based players are in the camp. Of the five in camp, only one is an exchange player, meaning that the bulk of the teams were yet to report or were busy in other cities in the country attending to pressing personal matters including cutting marketing endorsements. Will you blame them? The resultant effect is the full compliments of the country’s big sneak into the camp two days before the match. This without any doubt is an invitation to anarchy which happens during the game – Nigeria gets beaten by Guinea Bissau in Abuja. The buck-passing begins. The fans are angry. They vent their anger by destroying the few facilities inside the MKO Abiola Stadium, Abuja as we witnessed when Ghana’s Black Stars qualified for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
In other climes, the federation’s chieftains sit down with the country’s technical crew to review the game to find out what went wrong and how to plug the loopholes noticed during such games. It is during such meetings that the coaches are told to sit up or walk away from the job, having been given all that they asked for by the federation. Those players who didn’t distinguish themselves or those who didn’t have sufficient commitment to the games are told to be dropped for the more serious-minded players who would be ready to fight for their fatherland. Of course, latecomers are reprimanded with the warning to be dropped in the future no matter their stature in the squad.
Not so for the NFF men who roll the sheet of evaluation over by blaming the stadium’s pitches, and late release of cash to prosecute games even after they told us that they are a certain percentage solvent. The truth is that the NFF must inform Peseiro not to invite more than 17 foreign-based players to the Super Eagles’ camp if they hope to bring down the cost of hosting and attending international matches. And that can also be enforced when the list of players to be invited for particular games is discussed with the NFF’s Technical Committee members who must be eminently qualified for such assignments.
The NFF needs to have a functional Technical Department where matches involving Nigerians in European clubs are recorded, discussed and tabulated to guide them when discussing the list of players to be picked for assignments. It amounts to a failure of leadership for NFF to release a list of players where three to four of them are injured. It is even more disturbing when players haven’t kicked the ball for the European teams for over ten to 12 weeks, yet they are listed for the country’s matches. It smacks of high-level fraud when those kinds of players arrive in the country only to pull out of the game after one training session.
When a player doesn’t play regularly for his club, it means that he is either injured or has lost form. Such players should never be invited to the Super Eagles camp. Only an unqualified manager would invite half-fit or injured players to camp. It shows clearly that he was sleeping on duty while the matches involving Nigerian players were being played. No doubt he can only watch one game at a time. But the manager can log on to YouTube to watch the games. Besides, why does a manager have technical assistants who don’t watch live games or/and even help their boss to monitor their players on YouTube? The NFF needs an ultra-modern technical department fitted with state-of-the-art equipment to make coaches and federation’s existing problems of picking only fit players to prosecute Nigeria’s matches.
It is only when the foreign-based players are effectively monitored that the NFF can achieve its mandate to Super Eagles coaches to include 25 per cent of home-based players on their lists. Time was when the argument in favour of recruiting foreign coaches had to do with their firm and zero tolerance for indiscipline. Not anymore in Nigeria because of the calibre of tacticians, we have employed. This set of Super Eagles does what they cherish. The coaches virtually worship them, especially when most of the matches they have played were prosecuted on credit. The talk in football circles alleged that the players were being owed 19-match bonuses. My problem with the players and coaches is that they don’t squeal to reveal that they have been paid.
Law and order have broken down in Super Eagles camp. You can see the players roaming around the corridors as late as midnight. Players’ hangers-on litter the hotel with many of them residing in the same hotel with the team. Of course, the players pay for such rooms which serve as distractions.
Category: Saturday
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Peseiro: a timid surrender
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No, Adamawa is not about women in politics
The 2023 elections in Nigeria have been concluded and the country now has a Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-elect. The governors of about twenty eight states were also elected. The legislative elections at both state and national levels have also been concluded. The winners are all getting ready for the inauguration on the 29th of May. Post-election litigations would however go on because the Nigerian constitution has not been amended to make it compulsory for all electoral petitions to be concluded before winners are inaugurated into offices like in other jurisdictions.
However, the Adamawa state gubernatorial election stood out for all the wrong reasons. Some of the March 18th election that were declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) included Adamawa and the April 15th scheduled for supplementary elections. However, less than twenty four hours after the election, one of the most scandalous electoral incidents went viral. The Resident, Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Adamawa, Hudu Yunusa Ari suddenly worked into the election collation center ahead of the 11am scheduled time for final collation and announcement of the winner armed with a piece of paper in his pocket.
Tne Adamawa REC, accompanied by the state Police Commissioner, Mohammed Barde and a staff of the Directorate of State Security (DSS) suddenly announced the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Senator Aisha Dahiru Binani as the winner of an election that as at the time of the announcement had not been fully collated given that results from some wards in about ten local governments were yet to be collated. Legally, the REC is not empowered by law to announce election results so Yudu had usurped the duties of the state Returning Officer by prematurely announcing a winner.
This singular action by the Adamawa REC and the fact that Senator Binani actually read a prepared ‘acceptance speech’ sequel to an illegal declaration of an inconclusive collation is an obvious aberration and a blight on Nigeria’s democracy. It had all the qualities of a civilian coup and many are worried that if not properly handled in terms of suspect punished according to the law, that singular incident might set an odious precedence in Nigeria’s democracy.
However, while the Roundtable Conversation finds the actions of the participants in the scandal very disappointing to say the least, it amounts to patriarchal arrogance and egoistic irresponsibility for some male commentators to credit Nigerian women with the actions of those in Adamawa state. Many women have vociferously condemned the whole charade and the involvement of a female Senator Binani in the whole scandal owing to her ‘accepting’ an illegal declaration of a fake election result, the women refuse to take the stereotyping of Nigerian women as electoral offenders owing to the action or inaction of one single woman.
It is instructive to note that Nigeria’s politics by both the military and civilians have been predominantly a male affair. The recent elections show that women are still systematically excluded from leadership. In fact the recent election pathetically shows that the number of women in elective positions has dwindled drastically. There is a progressive exclusion of women. The four frontline political parties, the APC, PDP, Labor Party and the NNPP all had male Presidential and Vice –Presidential candidates. There is no elected female governor. The National Assembly presents a more pathetic case. Of the 360 House of Representative Members, less than 18 are women. Only three women were elected to the Senate of 109 members.
Most of the state Houses of Assembly have less than five women and some have no woman at all. What this means is that not enough women’s voices would be heard in those states. Democracy is operated and validated by plurality of numbers. Women are almost half of the population, they are the bedrock of the informal sector that contributes greatly to the country’s GDP, yet, they are structurally excluded from policy-making in governance. The result is that the democracy in Nigeria is almost an all-male affair except for very few women whose voices are often drowned in legislative houses where laws are made.
The 9th National Assembly would go down in history for throwing out five gender equity bills that would have seen more women elected into the legislative houses thereby making it possible for women to be at the table enough to make their input as law makers. The male-dominated National Assembly threw out the bill without considering the short, medium and long term implications for development and women welfare and invariably that of men as well.
In the light of the Adamawa electoral scandal, even though a woman was involved, about 99% of the actions that culminated in the illegality were performed by men. The REC, the Police Commissioner and the DSS staff are all male. Just these principal actors makes it a 3:1 ratio so one begins to wonder how the actions of these men and many others who are yet to be named pending investigations can be credited to women beyond the Senator.
Granted that being a senator who was part of the passage of the 2022 Electoral Act bill, the Senator ought to have performed more creditably, that cannot excuse the REC who is said to be a lawyer who erred in law. The Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Barde is supposed to enforce the law, how did he get involved in the scandalous outing? The DSS staff is supposed to be a security agent too but was allegedly caught aiding and abetting electoral illegality.
The mischievous blaming of women for the Adamawa electoral scandal is a familiar narrative and shows how some men in Nigeria often feign ignorance of the roles men have perennially played in the often flawed elections since 1999.The late former Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu had on a TV interview before his death narrated how his political party, the PDP bribed INEC electoral officials and security agents so as to rig elections not just in the party’s favour but even for others. The PDP is a metaphor for the political parties here. Not much was done to investigate that seeming confession by the once number six-man in Nigeria.
The deeper implication of finding alibis for electoral infractions is that it continues to blight the Nigerian democratic journey. Playing the Ostrich and finding scape goats cannot solve the problem. There has to be the national decision to cleanse the Aegean stable if the country’s democracy can function for development. It is a well-documented fact that male violence and financial power are weapons used during elections that are often tools for excluding women who obviously cannot keep up.
In a veiled conspiratorial way by the majority of men in politics, mum is often the word when issues of electoral offences are brought up. Most times policemen who work during elections do not do enough to arrest electoral offenders and even when some are arrested, there are allegations of complicity with politicians to release the suspects and this still boils down to complicity of the male gender.
Make no mistake about it, the Roundtable Conversation is not in any way canonizing women in politics who like Senator Binani have been caught in the middle or indicted but alleging that every woman in politics behaves in the same way is as fallacious as it is mischievous and diversionary. There must be introspection and an attempt to clean up the political field.
There are key points to note from the chaos that happened in Adamawa, more has to be done in reappraising the ways that appointments of electoral officers are made. The Nigerian Information minister, Lai Mohammed in the heat of the scandal in Adamawa insisted that it is for INEC not for President Buhari to discipline an electoral commissioner, hours later, the president approved that Yudu the REC be suspended.
There are some schools of thought that believe that appointment of electoral commissioners and even the INEC chairman must be removed from the presidency to give the body a better independence and subject them to institutional sanitization processes. There should be devolution of power that empowers either a committee or an agency to make these appointments more functional. There ought to be a deeper integrity scrutiny to weed out characters without the requisite pedigree to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.
Democracy is about the people and as such, the Roundtable believes that the employment of technology is not a cure-all remedy for electoral success. The human element must be carefully chosen in ways that even though perfection is not human and humans are not perfect, there are still individuals whose character traits must naturally exclude them from holding sensitive offices that exposes them to taking actions that impact on the whole system.
Given that Nigeria is presently the poverty capital of the world with 133million people living in multi-dimensional poverty, it should take more than organizing elections for development to happen. The system must be rejigged to give a level playing field to every citizen irrespective of gender. The patriarchal arrogance of monopolizing power and victimizing already victimized women through flimsy criminalization like the one under review must stop. Nigeria should think deeper about inclusive politics and better electoral processes because in the real sense, a predominant male governance has not given the nation development. Inclusiveness and elections are at the core of democracy.
●The dialogue continues…
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Electoral melodrama in Adamawa
Twenty-four years after the restoration of civil rule in the country, the battle for a free and fair election has not been won. Doubts are still being expressed about the neutrality and integrity of some electoral officers.
In Adamawa State, there is a big question mark on the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Few bad eggs tried to dent the image of the umpire at a critical time, despite the feats it has recorded through its reform of the voting process by its innovative Bimodal Voter’s Accreditation System (BVAS).
A deep hollow has been created in its scorecard by the misdemeanour of its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa-Ari, who breached the provisions of the Electoral Act during the recent supplementary governorship poll in the state.
It was an equivalence of daylight robbery. It was crude, bizarre, and deliberate; a contempt for transparency and rule of law.
Yet, the situation would have become worse, if the Abuja Headquarters of INEC had not halted the absurdity. The error was quickly corrected. But the bad impression could not be promptly erased.
The attention of the country had focused on the northeastern state for some reasons. Being the base of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, the poll was a major test for him at the home front.
The former Vice President and Wazirin Adamawa, who had become a wounded lion for not winning the presidential election, returned to his home supporters for a showdown with the All Progressives Congress (APC).
But there was a rugged and determined opponent. The candidature of Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (popularly called Binani) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) generated more interest. She is the only woman governorship flag bearer in this year’s election.
In this season, she has seized the politics of the state by storm. Even, Governor Ahmadu Fintri acknowledged that he could not dismiss the threat possed by the highly popular woman with the wave of the hand.
Binani, a household name in Adamawa, campaigned vigorously. She enjoyed the sympathy, goodwill and solidarity of many Nigerians who wanted her to make history as the first woman governor. An added advantage is her clean record in the National Assembly. Her personal structure is formidable. Her party is strong and supportive. She was determined and focused to upset, displace and break the power of incumbency.
Binani may have been underrated as a woman. But the senator has a heart of steel. She was resolute, focused and prepared to rub shoulders with any man in the political arena. She made an impact and attracted votes that beat the imagination of PDP chieftains.
The initial March 18 election was inconclusive. The PDP and APC gladiators returned to the drawing board in dejection and anxiety. When they returned to the field eight days ago, the state was enveloped in tension at the tail end of the contest.
The residual poll was largely peaceful. However, the collation of result was halfway when Yunusa-Ari took the law into his hands. Accompanied by some security agents, he stormed the final collation centre, hijacked the function of the Returning Officer, Prof. Mele Mohammed, and declared Binami winner.
Yunusa-Ari is a lawyer. Therefore, he is conversant with the Electoral Act and the nation’s constitution. Why did a legal officer decide to trample on the law and ethics of his profession? This is a big puzzle.
The security officers could not have refused a REC when he asked them to protect him. It was doubtful if they knew his intention. Even, if they knew his motive, were they in a position to disobey or shun the REC’s directive? Investigation will reveal the extent of their complicity or otherwise.
In reaction to the REC’s misadventure, there was an uproar. Many people, including chieftains of the APC in other states, were taken aback. When the news got to President Muhammadu Buhari, he was said to have expressed surprise, because it was contrary to his ‘due process’ posture. But the Commander-in-Chief, as it was later revealed by Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed, insisted on non-interference, preferring that INEC should clear its mess. On Thursday, after a formal briefing, the President ordered the REC’s prosecution.
The electoral process instantly ran into turbulence through the action of a single individual. The poll, at that stage of illegal announcement by Yunusa-Ari, could not pass the test of integrity and credibility. This was the reason the nation watched in awe the unfolding melodrama. Despite the political ruction, the nation waited with bated breath where the electoral pendulum would swing afterwards.
The trouble could have immediately evaporated after the announcement. But it was exacerbated by Binani who, instead of rejecting her proclamation as winner when the final result was still hanging, hailed the illegality and delivered an infantile acceptance speech.
Who were the Ahitophelean advisers who also counselled her to hurriedly approach the court to seek a review of the process? To its credit, the Judiciary declined to give a frivolous ex parte injunction and asked the other side to be put on notice, thereby refusing to set Adamawa on fire.
Binani, an Amazon with widespread esteem, would have become an idol of the poll, if she had not jumped the gun to claim a stillborn victory, after the REC had willfully subverted the electoral process.
If, in reaction to the antics of Yunusa-Ari, the APC candidate had rejected the move to truncate democracy, history would have placed her on a golden page. After all, despite losing the election, she has a very bright political future ahead.
In the midst of the hoopla, Yunusa-Ari, the lead actor in the failed coup against democracy, was promptly summoned to Abuja. Later, the collation continued in an orderly manner and Governor Ahmad Fintiri, who had earlier been falsely declared loser, retrieved his mandate. Binani fought a good fight at the level of ballot box. But the governor laughed last.
The controversial REC could only be directed to go on indefinite suspension. INEC is constitutionally handicapped to sack him, despite his excesses. The process of removal is laborious. The powers to do so reside with the President and the National Assembly. It cannot be done by any fiat.
The Adamawa drama drew INEC backwards. It betrayed public confidence in the electoral umpire. Stakeholders may now have the justification to suspect their RECs, judging by the way Yunusa-Ari had arrogated to himself the power to hold a state to ransom.
To keen observers and students of history, the dog went back to its vomit in Adamawa. Yunusa-Ari only mimicked the INEC under Maurice Iwu’s ‘do-and-die’ electoral superintendence. It was a mock of how an old soldier and erstwhile president directed an inglorious election when results were announced while collation was still ongoing; when losers were declared winners and later asked to go to court. It was a period of political darkness when the Commander-in-Chief wore the garb of impunity with outrageous arrogance.
Any lover of democracy understands that a false declaration of results is dangerous. In 1983, the false declaration by the defunct Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) plunged the old Ondo State and parts of old Oyo State into violence. Lives were lost and property destroyed.
In 2007, the false declaration by the electoral umpire led to protracted litigations that compounded the cost of electioneering. Political parties and candidates had to spend fortunes to seek judicial redress. The period of conducting a thorough scrutiny of the election generated tensions across the land. It took years to retrieve the stolen mandates in Ekiti, Osun, Ondo, and Edo states.
It is important to remind those with Yunusa-Ari’s mindset, and desperate politicians, that the law prohibiting fraud at every stage of the electoral process is still in force. INEC has the power to prosecute the culprits, after conducting a diligent investigation.
Electoral officers should be made to understand that voters are more vigilant now than they were before and ready to defend their ballots. They should learn lessons from the fate of their colleagues who were tried and jailed to serve as deterrents. They should know that the same tribulation also befell erring professors on ad hoc electoral duty.
The setting up of an electoral offences tribunal for the prosecution of lawless polling officers and unscrupulous politicians will no doubt nip electoral fraud in the bud. The stiffer the punishment for desperate politicians and their conspiratorial INEC officials, the more sanitized our elections will be, and vice versa. It is not too late to begin to wield the big stick against those who subvert the electoral process for personal gains or favoritism.
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Competitiveness, credibility of 2023 polls
It would appear from all indications that one of the key participants in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential elections, the Labour Party (LP), and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, had a clear-cut and straightforward agenda to dictate the dominant narrative on the polls before and after the exercise. Before the elections, a number of sponsored and obviously flawed opinion polls had predicted an outright victory for Obi on February 25. In a worst-case scenario, they projected that the election would head for a run-off with Obi being one of the candidates that would qualify to participate in the supplementary poll. Although many influential foreign media houses apparently accorded utmost seriousness to these polls, their empirical basis was largely entirely unreliable as succinctly explained by renowned senior lawyer and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay, in a recent interview on Channels Television.
For one, the legal luminary submitted, the sample sizes of most of these polls were too limited to be of significant scientific value. Again, questionnaires and inquiries were directed mostly at urban-based educated youths who were accessible on the phone while the no less substantial number of illiterate rural dwellers particularly in the North-West and North-East were neglected in the conduct of the opinion polls.
It was thus not surprising that the ultimate outcome of the presidential election, in which Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged as the outright winner proved the utter distance of the predictions of the opinion polls from Nigeria’s political realities. While Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) came second in the election, Peter Obi’s LP emerged third although posting an impressive result given the fragility of the LP’s political structures across the country before the elections. Rather than seeing Obi and the LP’s haul of 6,101,533 votes and his outright victory in 11 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as being indicative of the credibility of the election, local and international supporters of the LP have doubled down on the claim that their candidate won a decisive victory at the polls without demonstrating credibly how this could have been a probable outcome of the election.
While the winner of the contest, Bola Tinubu, recorded 8,794, 726 votes, the runner-up, Atiku Abubakar, scored 6,984,520 votes. Interestingly, even though both Atiku and Obi have filed their petitions against the results of the polls before the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal (PEPT), it is Obi who came third and his supporters that have been most vociferous in decrying the elections, which they insist the LP won. Atiku led some members and key officers of the PDP on a one-day protest at the premises of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja and has, presumably, since abandoned that ultimately futile route to enable his lawyers diligently pursue his case before the Election Petition Tribunal.
Apologists of the Obidients and the LP have continued to stridently delegitimize the February 25 presidential election and denude it of all credibility and integrity by shouting themselves shrill that the exercise was massively rigged. Challenged to demonstrate through empirical facts and impeccable logic how Obi could possibly have won the election especially given the kind of narrow ethnic, regional, and religious campaign that he ran, the LP candidate’s supporters respond with even more vehement assertions that Obi was the victim of a stolen mandate.
One narrative cavalierly peddled by the Obi/LP’s vociferous social media mob is that the February 25 presidential election was the worst ever in Nigeria’s history. Of course, this kind of ignorant statement can be readily forgiven and its purveyors advised to get better acquainted with their country’s political and electoral history. Could these people who make these reckless and patently implausible claims have in mind, for instance, the 1964/1965 federal and Western Regional elections respectively? Any standard political science text on Nigerian politics contains accounts of those fraudulently manipulated elections in which the majority of candidates to various parliamentary seats were announced as returned unopposed when their opponents had been denied the opportunity to obtain nomination forms by the electoral commission.
It was that stupefyingly rigged election, in which the immensely unpopular Samuel Ladoke Akintola government was riding back to power on the wings of superlative electoral fraud; an election in which leading members of the Akintola government in the Western Region had publicly boasted that the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) would win whether or not the people voted for them that Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, reacted to in the famous gun incident at the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation in Ibadan. Yet, the Obidients lynch mob has tried in futility to demonize and discredit Soyinka for his courageous action as a 31-year-old at the time without any regard for the canons of historical and analogical equivalence.
If it is agreed that incidents of violence and related deaths have a proportional relationship to the scale of rigging in elections, it is noteworthy that documented records indicate no less than 200 deaths in the aftermath of the 1964/65 federal and regional elections compared to between 13 and 21 deaths in sporadic incidents across the country in the 2023 presidential and governorship elections. The estimated number of deaths during various elections includes 100 in the 1993 elections, 80 in 1999, 180 in 2003, 300 in 2007, 800 in 2011, 100 in 2015, and 150 in 2019. Despite the exaggerated reports of violence in a minuscule number of the over 176,000 polling units throughout the country, the scale of violence in the 2023 elections was the least in the country’s history.
Or could those who claim that this year’s elections are the worst ever have in mind the 1983 election; an exercise during which the all-powerful Minister of Transportation and strongman in the President Shehu Shagari administration, Alhaji Umaru Dikko, had boasted that the then ruling National Party of Nigeria ( NPN) would win not just a ‘landslide’ but a ‘moon slide’ victory. Even as the collation of results in that election was underway at the Headquarters of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), Umaru Dikko stormed the building for mysterious and unaccountable reasons thus badly compromising FEDECO’s declaration later of the incumbent, President Shehu Shagari, as the winner of the election.
No such incident occurred to vitiate the credibility and integrity of the 2023 elections. Or are bad election losers comparing the 2023 elections with the 2003 and 2007 elections widely acknowledged as easily the worst and integrity-deficient in this dispensation since 1999? In this regard, with respect to the February 25 presidential elections, the results were least competitive and thus least credible in the South-East zone where Obi scored over 95% of votes cast by his Igbo kith and kin.
In contrast to the monolithic block voting of the Igbo in the South-East, Peter Obi won in Lagos while Atiku Abubakar won in Osun both in Tinubu’s South-West ethnic-regional political base. Similarly, Obi won in Nasarawa and Plateau states while posting an impressive performance in Benue while Tinubu won in Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Borno, Zamfara Jigawa states in Atiku’s Northern base. It was only in Obi’s Igbo base that no other of the three leading candidates could score up to 25% of the votes cast. Ironically, when he appeared on the Channels Television ‘Politics Today’ programme, Obi’s Vice-Presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmad, claimed that the over 6.1 million votes received by his party at the presidential polls were valid, accurate, and not rigged.
The implication is that where the LP won, the election was free, fair, and credible while rigging and manipulation occurred only where Peter Obi and the LP lost. Till date, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar have not been able to credibly and coherently explain how Tinubu lost Osun and Lagos in the South-West or how even President Muhammadu Buhari and other key leaders of the APC presidential campaign council lost in states like Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi or Taraba in an election widely touted as massively rigged. The APC went into the election with at least 21 governors but won the presidential election in only 12 states. This shows that the power of incumbency, an ordinarily critical factor in Nigeria’s elections, was of negligible significance in this election cycle.
Not less critical is the fact that Atiku also won in 12 states while Obi triumphed in 11 states and the FCT, which made the 2023 polls one of the most competitive and thus credible in the country’s history. The introduction of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), in accordance with the Electoral Act, also significantly enhanced the credibility of the 2023 polls relative to those before it, particularly in this dispensation. According to reports by credible observers, the BVAS recorded an 88% success rate in the over 176,000 polling units across the country although 240 of these polling units had been demobilized by INEC before the elections because they had no voters.
In 9% of the polling units in which the BVAS malfunctioned, they were fixed and put into use while in 2% of polling units malfunctioning BVAS machines were replaced. The efficiency of the BVAS machines was clearly one reason why of the 93.5 million registered voters only 24.9 million actually turned out to vote in this year’s elections. In the 2015 elections, 29.4 million were recorded as turning out to vote while this figure was reduced to 28.6 million in the 2019 elections.
A comparison of the performance of the APC relative to the opposition parties in 2015, 2019, and 2023 presidential elections also speaks to the credibility and integrity of this year’s election. In 2015, the APC scored 15,424,921 votes and in 2019, the ruling party recorded 15,191,847 votes in the presidential election. On its part, the PDP won 12,853,162 votes in 2015 and 11,262,978 votes in the 2019 presidential election. While the APC’s margin of victory over the PDP in the 2015 presidential elections was 2,571,759 votes, the margin in 2019 was 3,928,869 votes and the margin this year was 1,810,206.
As was pointed out last week, had the PDP contested the February 25 presidential elections as one cohesive entity instead of breaking up into Peter Obi’s LP, Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and the G5 governors led by Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State constituting a powerful opposition to Atiku’s aspiration within the party, Atiku would have been exceedingly difficult to defeat in the election. As for Peter Obi, with a massive victory in the South-East, a modest triumph in the South-South and fair performances in Plateau and Nasarawa states in the North-Central, he ought really to be celebrating the unexpectedly strong showing of his party, a performance that underlines the substantial credibility of the elections, and going back to the drawing board to conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis in preparation for future elections.
Obi campaigned massively and relied on massive Igbo votes in his South-East enclave while also depending on the South-South’s geo-ethnic and Christian religious affinity with the South-East to win considerable votes in the South-South. He also concentrated on winning large constellations of Igbo and Christian votes in Lagos, Plateau and Nasarawa states as well as the FCT to perform well in these areas. This could not however pave a path for him to the presidency in a situation in which he won only in two regions – South-East and South-South – and posted an abysmal performance in the vast North-East and North-West, regions in which he did not score 25% of the votes cast in any state.
In a similar vein, Atiku won in only Osun in the South-West as well as Akwa-Ibom and Bayelsa in the South-South losing the two regions to Tinubu and Obi respectively. Atiku campaigned as an unrepentant northern candidate and did quite well in the region even though he won an outright victory only in the North-East and lost overall votes in the North-west and North-Central to Tinubu. He did not record an outright victory in any of the three zones in the South. Obi too did not win an overall totality of votes in any of the three regions in the North. It is impossible for a sectional candidate to win a presidential election in Nigeria. That is the reality of the outcome of the presidential elections no matter how the supporters of losing candidates choose to delude themselves.
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Caging the beasts at NPFL venues
The urchins are back at match venues. No surprises. The league matches are grinding to a halt. Clubs are becoming more desperate in their search for points either to strengthen their quest to be part of the Super 6 or fight for their lives to escape being relegated to the lower rungs of the game in Nigeria. So far, the officiating has improved going by the increase in the number of away victories secured by visiting teams unlike in the past when the domestic league was characterised by home wins aptly tagged win at all cost syndrome. Shame on the club owners who instigate their thugs who masquerade as supporters to cause mayhem at match venues across the country.
What happened in Remo penultimate weekend was unfortunate given the fact that the proprietor of Remo Stars Soname has been an incredible supporter of the beautiful game in Nigeria, not only in words but in deeds given the moral and financial contributions which predate being a member of the IMC. If it were possible to plead for a reprieve on this dastardly act, one would have done so. The punishment meted out to Remo Stars was appropriate since it was meant to serve as a deterrent to any club whose supporters love to take the laws into their hands – wreaking havoc on innocent fans who have chosen to watch the game here.
The match of Sunday, April 2 was concluded the next day after the Referee was assaulted in the dressing room at half-time as a result of Remo Stars’ failure to provide adequate security for the match Officials.
”The IMC in a Summary Jurisdiction notice signed by Davidson Owumi, the Head of Operations said the sanctions followed a review of findings of the official match report.
”In the charge, Remo Stars was found in breach of Rules B8.21, B13.21, C11 and B13.52. For breach of Rule B8.21 which is failure to adequately secure match Officials before, during and after the match leading to the assault on one of them, the club was fined N500,000 and also directed to pay N250,000 to the said Official, Ukah Ndubuisi as compensation.
”For breach of Rules C.11, three points and three goals were ordered to be deducted from the total points and goals accrued to the club for the assault on the match official while Mr Ekene Adams identified as the attacker has been banned from all NPFL activities for the rest of the season.
‘’Remo Stars is also to ensure diligent prosecution in the law court, of Mr Adams who is the Club’s, General Manager.”
Remo Stars’ management has appealed the decisions against them, with many lovers of the game pleading with the Appeals Committee members to treat the matter on its merits and not on sentiments. One would want to see how the big man who was also punished would escape the full wrath of the law, having been recognised by the referee to have assaulted him. The big question to ask is why the referee would choose to implicate the big man, if he wasn’t at the stadium, let alone have beaten the referee groggy.
What stands out clearly is that Soname is a man of honour. Some other Nigerians would have cried wolf where there isn’t. Soname has chosen the path of honour by following the procedure of asking for a superior body to take a second look at the unfortunate incidents on April 2. Other Nigerians would have caused tantrums, throwing their weight around. No so for an internationally exposed Soname. The way to go, sir.
Sadly, Ikenne has become a hotbed of league violence with the fixtures between Remo Stars and Bendel Insurance FC of Benin City being a seasonal drama of crowd encroachment of the field seeking to interpret the rules of the game as the exclusive prerogative of the centre referee and his two assistants. One of the games between these two teams was reminiscent of a war zone with the Benin lads running for their dear lives such that they flew over the walls in the stadium. It was that scary, leaving weaklings among them being victims of cudgels flung on their heads.
One hopes that members of the IMC make it mandatory that they watch this red-lettered game to avert another dastardly act by the home fans, It won’t be out of place to televise that game between Remo Stars and Bendel Insurance on Sunday in Ikenne live for Nigerians to see live in their living rooms. Top-notch security architecture should be provided by the IMC by ensuring the home team’s management sticks to the rules on security before, during and after the game this Sunday.
I have always advocated here that such red-lettered matches are handled by the best set of referees and match commissioners with several independent assessors. Indeed, the coaches and players sitting on the bench should be warned to be of good conduct before, during and after this Sunday’s game. The referee should be told categorically that anyone of them sitting on the bench who constitutes a nuisance on Sunday, including those whose theatrics on the touchlines could incite irate fans at the stands to wreak havoc should be sent off the pitch. It would be a shame if this game witness any form of violence with IMC’s top men watching. I digress!
If you thought, dear readers that the Remo Stars’ punishment would serve as a deterrent, then what happened in Bauchi less than seven days portrays the level of decadence in the domestic league under the sacked LMC, where anything goes. This followed a review of the findings of the official reports for the MatchDay 13 fixture between Wikki Tourists and Bayelsa United on April 9, 2023. The interesting hing about the two judgments against Remo Stars and Wikki Tourists was that there wasn’t any form of favour in the application of justice on two similar offences. What is good for the goose should also be good for the geese. Besides, the swiftness with which both decisions were taken against irritants in the league here is highly commendable. It is no longer business as usual where disciplinary committees give a slap on the wrist decisions for heinous crimes by criminals.
Interestingly, the window for appeals lapses after 48 hours as stated in the communiqué. It is quite laudable that the IMC’s decisions have been timely, but it raises the poser why the league body hasn’t contacted the State Commissioners of Police in the States where the games are played for them to watch over the different stadia to maintain public peace. Of course, where the police or security operatives are present in the stadium, beasts who have flouted the law are immediately arrested and handed over to them for prosecution. It isn’t enough for the body to make pronouncements or ask the criminals or offending clubs to pay fines and treat injured referees.
These injured referees and fans should be made to be part of the criminals’ prosecution in court where they can narrate their close shaves with death, and the pains and mental torture they went through. Their accounts may further embolden the judges to strike out any pleas from the criminals’ lawyers of them being first offenders. The court proceedings should be covered massively by the media. The news stories from the courts should be published m all the newspapers and in the electronic media. Shouldn’t the IMC members insist that venues hosting the domestic league games should have closed-circuit devices to fish out such miscreants?
When I raised the question of the television coverage coming back on stream soon, an ardent follower of the domestic game looked at me cynically and sighed: ‘’Are you sure there is a television deal in place for the league? If there was a sponsor, shouldn’t the organisers have unveiled them? Smaller African nations have their leagues covered by Supersports, for instance. Yet we had the South Africans as our sponsors, we let them leave.”
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May 29: And Fani-Kayode goes spiritual
Ahead of the May 29 swearing in ceremony for President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his fellow party man and former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has gone spiritual as he a envisages better life for Nigerians under his leadership.
Fani-Kayode, a member of APC presidential campaign council, in a lengthy post on his verified Twitter handle, @realFFK, on Friday, said “after the swearing in of our President-elect, @officialABAT, it will be a time for healing our land, building bridges between our people, showing love to our adversaries, re-building our nation, establishing eternal peace with all men of goodwill and putting an end to the hostility and acrimony that exists between us all.”
Waxing even more spiritual, the ex-Minister added that “the new dispensation will usher in a new and refreshing era in which our beautiful and great nation shall excel and go from strength to strength. Nigeria must and will play her expected role in the emerging new world order. She must and will take her rightful place in the comity of nations. She must and will rise and shine in her God-sent power and glory.
“She must and will become who and what the ancient oracles of the Living God have said she is: the Giant of Africa and the hope of the black man. We are Nigerians, sons and daughters of a great and powerful nation boasting of no less than 250 million God-loving and God-fearing people of different ethnic nationalities and religious faiths and bound together by destiny, faith and hope.
“Our diversity is our pride and joy and our faith in God is our strong defender and our shield and buckler. Our collective travails, trials and tribulations are the fiery furnace in which our unity has been forever forged. The labours and sacrifices of our heroes past shall never be forgotten or in vain. They toiled, struggled and suffered and established a great and noble foundation that we may have a better tomorrow.
“Our singular and sacred obligation and honorable duty before God is never to forget their sacrifices and to honor their memories by keeping hope alive and building on their great and noble legacy.”
FFK’s supplications attracted a lot of feedback. While many respondents applauded his ‘spirituality’ and endlessly said ‘amen’ to his prayers, his critics didn’t spare him as they called him names and jeered at him.
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Ex-senator’s governorship ambition under threat
The governorship ambition of a former National Assembly member in one of the states due to hold their off-season elections soon may be dead on arrival if feelers from his constituency and political associates are anything to go by.
Sentry gathered that the former lawmaker is finding his governorship ambition very hard to sell on account of character, antecedents and failed promises he made to his constituents before winning elections into the National Assembly, first as a member of the House of Representatives and then as a senator.
In the warm-up to the election that took him to the House, the ex-Senator was said to have struck a deal with opinion leaders in his constituency to ensure the reconstruction of a section of the Kabba-Ilorin highway and ensure the conversion of a big river within the constituency into a dam that would meet the water needs of the local population.
But while the ex-senator gave his word that the two projects would be achieved once he was voted into the House of Reps, he did nothing about them in the four years he spent as a federal lawmaker.
His constituents, it was gathered, were not only miffed by the disappointment the ex-lawmaker meted out to them, they felt highly embarrassed at the cantankerous manner he conducted himself during official sessions at the lower chamber of the National Assembly.
“We were always highly embarrassed to have him as our representative each time he engaged in physical combat with other members of the House and generally spearhead the rowdiness for which the House became known while he was there,” a member of his constituency said.
“He managed to return to the National Assembly as a senator after all the embarrassment he gave us because he practically bought his party’s ticket and deployed his thugs to scare voters away with guns on Election Day.
“But as fate would have it, the way elections are conducted now is different. With the invention of BVAS (bimodal voter accreditation system), it will be difficult for him to win elections with the use of his thugs to snatch ballot boxes.
“I believe that his governorship ambition cannot fly because many of us believe that it is payback time. Even if he picks his party’s governorship ticket by any stroke of luck, the voting population will be waiting to have their own pound of flesh.”
The source added that many of the ex-senator’s constituents are also not happy with him because of the way he openly antagonised the President-Elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, before, during and after the just concluded presidential election.
“He knew quite well that Asiwaju (Tinubu) was the popular choice of his kinsmen, but he seized every opportunity at his disposal to rubbish Tinubu’s person before and after the election as he turned himself into the attack dog of another presidential candidate.
“We will now see how he will become governor in Kogi State without the support of the people that voted massively for Tinubu in the state,” the source added.
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Wanted: Credible Senate President and House Speaker
Never has the jostling for Senate President and House of Representatives Speaker been so intense. Nine popular senators, including the incumbent, are scheming to be elected as chairman of the 10th National Assembly. No fewer than 10 representatives are competing for Speaker.
Opposition parties and lawmakers are watching the unfolding drama with keen interest. The contestants know power is not served a la carte. Thus, they are throwing their strengths, connections and resources into the crowded race.
There are fears that their struggle, which is legal and legitimate, may put the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on edge, in the interim. That was why the party’s national chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, had cautioned the contenders and pretenders to desist from creating tension.
To observers, a crisis might be in the works. The ruling party’s national vice chairman (Northwest), Salihu Lukman, recently cried out about the desperation of those aspiring to become presiding officers.
He said the senators and representatives were monetising their campaigns. Unlike what happened during the general election, old (and may be, new) notes are now in circulation. While seeking endorsement, aspirants are said to be wooing their colleagues with big cash, cows, rams and other inducements, particularly during the fasting period.
Lukman, who expressed concern about the consequences of a monetised campaign, said the same gestures had been extended to many party leaders who savour the gifts as fruits of their political labours. To most observers, this is bribery and corruption cloaked in sartorial allurement.
Esteemed party leaders, including members of the National Working Committee (NWC), past and current governors, ministers and other influential party stalwarts, receive aspirants, accompanied by their supporters, on daily basis. The logistics is costly.
The fear is that as the contenders spend so much to get the numbers Three and Four positions in the country, the likelihood exists that they will perceive their campaigns as an investment. Like businessmen, they may believe their investment should equally generate returns. The party’s general vision of service thus becomes automatically eroded.
No doubt, the search for appropriate presiding officers is the first major task of the incoming APC administration, led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, when it assumes the reins on May 29.
The contest for choosing the leadership of the legislature has generated some controversy. A few factors have been thrown up. The ruling party has to manage these issues to avert a crisis.
The President-elect and Vice President-elect are Muslims. Some believe that the Nnumber Three Citizen, at least, should be a Christian. There is a solution to this question if the Senate Presidency is zoned to the South east or Southsouth. If this is done, it may douse real or imaginary religious tension, or a fabricated tension by some religious bigots.
Apart from this, the distribution of the offices will satisfy the requirement for some kind of ethnic balancing.
If a Christian senator from the North, especially from the Northcentral, is picked as Senate President, would it assuage the feeling of the Southeast and the Southsouth Christians? It is doubtful. It may lead to a clash of ethnicity and religion. The unity of political Christians is a farce.
The next question is: which part of the Southern zone – the Southeast or the Southsouth – should fill the slot? This may lead to another political permutation. The Southeast APC tried frantically to contribute to the party’s electoral victory during the presidential election, but its effort was futile. Yet, it tried to regain strength during the governorship and House of Assembly polls in the region. In the APC-controlled Imo State, the party won 25 of the 27 state legislative seats. In Ebonyi, it installed an additional governor, three senators, including Governor Dave Umahi, and won majority in the House of Assembly.
These feats never dwarfed the performance of APC in neighbouring Southsouth where the party installed two senators in Edo, Senator Godswill Akpabio in Akwa Ibom, a senator in Delta, a governor in Cross River and the overwhelming votes at presidential election in Rivers.
If the Senate President is zoned to the Southeast or Southsouth, then, the House Speaker should go to the North, comprising the Northwest with seven states and the Northcentral with six states.
If the North will retain the Senate President, then, the Speaker will be retained by the South. In that wise, the Southwest should be excluded, being the base of the President-elect.
Vocal voices from the Northwest keep reminding everyone that the APC got the highest number of votes from the region. Therefore, their demand for either of the two positions seems to have a justification. The claim that a Muslim Senate President from the North is impossible does not hold water. Majority of Northwesterners who voted for APC were Muslims.
It is better to resolve the zoning hurdle by announcing a comprehensive and all-encompassing conventional zoning formula at the level of National Caucus of the party. The way to go about it is to distribute the remaining top three positions of the Senate President, the Speaker and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to three zones, excluding the three zones that have produced the President, the Vice President and the APC national chairman. This will be in tandem with the old PDP formula of zoning the six positions to six different zones.
Following the equitable distribution of positions in the party, other principal offices of the National Assembly could also be shared, with the additional promise to also equitably distribute ministerial appointments among the six regions or the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
While zoning is essential, it should be borne in mind that the option is not superior to constitutional provisions which allow any member from all the zones to declare interest. What the party should do is to appeal, persuade and convince the contestants to toe the party line and elevate group interest over personal agenda.
But, beyond zoning is the factor of competence. A competent Senate President will be in a position to drive the Upper Chamber to make law for the resolution of challenges confronting the country. At a time President Muhammadu Buhari has set the ball rolling for restructuring and devolution of power, Nigeria looks forward to the choice of a reform-driven chairman of the National Assembly who will be disposed to the resolution of the lingering National Question.
Related to the factor of competence is credibility. The next Chairman of the National Assembly should be a man of honour and integrity. He should be without blemish, to a large extent. He should be someone with a record of firm loyalty to the party, the constitution and the country.
The mismanagement of the contest in the past was costly. The Executive and Legislature never enjoyed harmony but were locked in antithetical relationship; they were always at loggerheads, to the extent that the last budget presentation by the president during his first time was almost disrupted by aggrieved legislators.
A repeat of the 2015 scenario, where, in desperation, APC lawmakers sought an unauthorised alliance with the opposition, thereby conceding the Deputy Senate President to the PDP, should be avoided.
The ruling party should learn from past mistakes and put its house in order. All the contenders need to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship: let the winners be magnanimous in victory and the losers gallant in defeat.
The incoming dispensation should be a commendable departure from past experiences which largely hallmarked the fight over ego and self-centredness in place of sacrifices for national interests and progress.
The leadership of the 10th National Assembly should practicalise the zeal for national healing and the rebirth of a more progressive administration. This way, all citizens, irrespective of ethnic, religious, and political affiliations, will be proud to call this country their fatherland. This is the summation of the yearnings of Nigerians, young and old. The calibre of people who preside over both chambers of this arm of government should drive this renewed hope for a new Nigeria.
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The voter as hero of 2023 elections in Nigeria
THE 2023 elections in Nigeria has come and gone and winners have emerged. Plans are in top gear to swear in the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other elected candidates across the country on the 29th of May, 2023. For women in Nigerian politics, it’s still a far cry from gender justice on the political field. The number of women elected into positions seems to have dwindled especially at the national assembly. There is not a single female governor-elect yet but there are certainly a number of female deputy governors.
The history of Nigerian elections has been replete with pre and post-election petitions and legal judgments some of which had lasted for years and disrupted governance and prevented the people from enjoying the full dividends of democracy. In fact, some analysts insist that Nigerian elections are the most litigious in the world. The reasons are not far-fetched, the Nigerian political party structure seems very flawed in ways that internal party democracy seems a herculean task in most cases. This has led to the emergence of some wrong candidates either due to personal flaws or due to non-adherence to electoral laws.
When political parties flout the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) guidelines or the constitution, the courts are often called in and this has led to some candidates being disqualified either before elections or legally sacked from office. Most of the post-election litigations derail and distract the litigants on both sides. The losers are always the people who become the axiomatic grasses that suffer when two elephants fight.
However, the 2023 elections had its problems but in many ways the Nigerian democracy is the better for it. There was evidently better awareness by voters. Every voting demographic had ample time to make their choices. The Independent National Electoral Commission through the improvement in technology surreptitiously created more awareness amongst the voting public. The Permanent Voter Card (PVC) gained the pride of place as the golden ‘passport’ to a voter’s right to vote. The publicity around voter registration, biometrics capture and actual collection of the PVCs and the promise that the employment of the new Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) would be a game-changer galvanized voters who had hitherto shown apathy during past elections. Many first time voters were excited. There was a pre-election frenzy that almost seemed very addictive and most voters keyed into the moment.
Despite the difficulty voters encountered in the process of registering for their PVC and even the collections, voters showed tremendous resilience. The social and orthodox media were awash with pictures and videos of prospective voters spending productive hours to collect their PVCs but despite some disappointments, most of them persevered and even though not everyone succeeded, those who did were able to cast their votes in areas where there were no violence or clear suppression of voters. In some areas too, voters stood their grounds and defended their votes by fighting off intruders or refusing to let some INEC staff to flout the electoral laws.
This year’s election campaigns seemed to have been very exciting because for the first time in the country’s democratic journey since 1999, the Presidential election was a three-horse race involving the All Progressive Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP). Iin 2015 and 2019, it was largely a two horse race between the APC and the PDP. The entrance of the LP changed the campaign strategies of the two former contenders in ways that were not predicted by book keepers either within the political parties or by the media.
So the Nigerian voters suddenly became the proverbial beautiful bride being wooed by the three main contenders given that the other fifteen political parties seemed very lethargic in soliciting for votes or as some people comically suggested, were either intimidated by the three major parties or lacked the financial muscle to pull through. At the end, it was really a tripartite contest and the voters were wooed with all the political strategies in the books.
While winners have emerged and despite the myriad of election petitions at the different tribunals, the Nigerian voters seem not to have in the public space been given the credit they deserve. Given the experiences of the Nigeria voters since 1999 at all levels of governance in the country, the 2023 elections produced very interesting results. There were many upsets in many states as new political blocs emerged. It was also evident that despite the efforts of some politicians across the country to divide the people along ethnic and religious lines, we still saw a people taking their destinies in their own hands.
Some voters in some states defied the political elite conspiracy and realized that even when they were of the same ethnicity and religion with their governors and legislators, their lives were not better. Not less than seven incumbent governors lost their bid to go to the Senate which had hitherto been referred to in comical local parlance as ‘a retirement home for governors’ seeing that repeatedly many ex-governors had used the power of incumbency to manipulate both the party delegates elections to their favour and used the instruments of force and coercion to manipulate the outcomes of elections .
So before 2023 elections, it was not the norm for incumbent governors to lose elections to the senate or for their cronies to lose at other elective positions that they had used their power to almost single handedly install especially their successors in office.
Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia state and Samuel Ortom of Benue state are very apt examples of those who got the lessons that the Nigerian voters are now more empowered to understand that religion or tribe has little to do with selfless service. Both governors are of the same tribe, both are of the same religion like more than half of the population. Both lost their senatorial bids and their candidates for governorship equally lost. Their records in office especially of unpaid salaries and infrastructural decay did not escape the assessment of the people
Both the APC and the PDP lost elections in their strongholds. APC lost the presidential election in Lagos and Osun, PDP lost in Rivers and Sokoto states even when incumbent governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto was the Director General of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council (PCC). The APC chairman, Abdullahi Adamu lost his home state or Nasarawa.
The Nigerian voters in many instances reminded the old politicians that service is not about them, it is not just about their welfare but the greater good. A cursory analysis of the national assembly records has not shown any outstanding former governor in the Senate since 1999. If anything, their presence in the hallowed chambers has been very insignificant in terms of their legislative contributions. Not one ex-governor has had an outstanding presence in terms of being remarkably influential in terms of any of the three pivotal duties of a legislator.
The legislature has been largely ineffectual and been a seeming appendage of the executive as they meander under the veil of executive-legislative harmony or party loyalty while shortchanging the people. The economic situation in the country with 133million people living in multi-dimensional poverty happened in part because the legislative arm at both federal and state legislative levels have failed in their strict oversight functions on the executive, government ministries and agencies.
The average Nigerian voter came out for the election wanting to tell the governors some of who exercise almost imperial powers that the mandate givers are the people. Many governors would be ordinary people after May 29. The idea of seeking a permanent ‘privileged’ life by cushioning their lives with stupendous and extravagantly vulgar pensions and gratuities from one political position to the other seems to have rubbed the voters the wrong way.
The Nigerian voters might not shout uhuru yet but there has been steady progress. The closer engagements from politicians seen during the campaigns were clear departure from the past where politicians felt victorious after party primaries because the votes of the people didn’t really determine who won or lost the elections. It was almost always a given that the candidates of the incumbent governments at either federal or state levels were declared winners after elections. We saw a seeming grassroots engagement for whatever it was worth. There were more rallies and the candidates at both federal and state levels tried to get to the different demographics.
Despite the efforts of the various Spokespersons to divert attention of the voters through some very diversionary tactics, the voters seemed to have had their eyes on the ball. The voters seemed to focus on the antecedents of candidates and with the help of the social media, information was on the fingerstips of most voters.
It is very important to note that Nigeria has not gotten to a desired destination politically but the just concluded elections had its flaws but we must not fail to hail the Nigerian voter that braced the odds. There were institutional and agency huddles that totally disenfranchised many voters like INEC logistics and tech challenges and the Naira change policy that further impoverished the people just weeks to the election.
The mental exhaustion from the trauma of the poorly executed financial policy made many stay away from the polling units. According to INEC, more than 93.4 million people registered to vote but just about 87.2 million collected their PVCs. A mere 29 percent turned out to vote.The good news is that democracy is work in progress and the Nigerian voters now acknowledge the power they wield. But the system must interrogate the reason for the small percentage of voters in the last elections impactful as they appeared to have been.
The dialogue continues…
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On rising food prices
Nigeria is presently facing its biggest rise in food prices as inflation continues to clamber up all over the world even as the global economy slowly recovers from the coronavirus pandemic with a number of consequences for the nation.
As we speak, the price of staples such as rice, beans and garri has moved up by a huge percentage against the real incomes of the average Nigerian which has continued to shrink by the day while the country continues to wriggle itself out of the twin problems of low oil prices and the pandemic. Such price rise of staples which are required by a majority of households in Nigeria for their daily nourishment not only takes such staples away from their reach, dealing a blow on their nutritional needs as well as pushing millions of Nigerians ( About 6 million Nigerians) below the poverty line.
Understanding the impact of such price rise is simple economics not requiring the ponderous personalities of doomsday economists to tell us in that Warri parlance “E don Red” ( Which means it is that bad) With food prices galloping to more than 23 percent since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, the challenges of feeding oneself and it becomes worse if one has a family is indeed a monumental one, it is thus important for us to sound the alarm and perhaps wake up those in charge of the numerous policies that may impact positively one way or the other and help arrest such hikes and perhaps bring down the prices.
Within the earlier mentioned challenges, we would have more children suffer from malnutrition as providing three square meals would be a daunting task and worse more such meals could lack the basic nutrients meant to stave off malnourishment among children. As it stands now, it is bad enough that over 17 million children in Nigeria are malnourished and suffer from a number of ailments that can be traced to such malnourishment, it is thus a given that with such a hike in prices of such staples and the absence of other alternatives many more children will join such numbers, sad indeed!
The price of beans, a major staple which is the nation’s chief supplier of plant proteins has gone up for example by 62 percent forcing a number of families to reduce its consumption. For rice, the story has not much been different with the staple doing a 15 percent rise in price despite the fact that a majority of our rice consumed here is locally produced as whatever rice that is allowed to be imported must do so through the ports with a tariff rate of 70 percent slammed on such imports to discourage the business while a subsisting ban hovers over the importation of rice via our borders. One wonders why despite the long run as well as the increase in rice farming in states like Kebbi, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Ekiti and Kano the much needed push in the demand for the staple has not readily provided the much needed investment in the sector as well as allow for price stability since a majority of our consumed rice is no longer subject to our exchange rates.
Other staples such as yam, maize and plantains have also tanked north causing a majority of Nigerian households to increase their spending on food or at most reduce the quality of food consumed. What this means is that Nigerians will reduce the amount they spend on other aspects such as rent, education, healthcare and lastly leisure thus stifling these sectors from recording any meaningful growth.
What bothers me the most is that the reasons for such food price increases is not driven alone by global factors or the pandemic: Nigeria’s rise in food prices is largely caused by the fact that a number of policies meant to ensure that 40 percent of our food is not wasted owing to the lack of proper storage facilities, our transport system is still in dire straits and policies that are meant to improve the agricultural value chain in Nigeria are either lacking or are not fully implemented.
Worse still is the growing insecurity situation in Nigeria that has seen herdsmen clash repeatedly with farmers over access to land. In farming areas in a number of states, people are scared to go to the farms for the fear of been slaughtered in their own farms by suspected criminal herdsmen, this naturally has affected the level of production of these staples creating a form of supply induced scarcity which in turn has led to an increase in such prices of staples.
These have been worsened with the continuous war against terrorism, the rise in banditry, kidnapping as well as ethnic wars between communities in Nigeria.
The truth is that such food price increases makes a mess of the exploits in agriculture by this present administration. This should serve as a clarion call to the ministers of agriculture as well as other coordinating bodies to begin to do the needful as Nigerians have no business with been hungry otherwise soon, the chickens will begin to come home to roost!