Category: Lekan Otufodunrin

Since 1999, we have always had general elections to elect the President, Governors, federal and state legislators, which have always ended up in disagreements over the results.

Candidates who feel aggrieved usually seek legal redress and election tribunals and courts have in some instances invalidated results declared by the electoral commission and declared petitioners as winners.

Though no petition or court cases at the Presidential level have ever succeeded, defeated candidates have in all previous elections taken their cases up to the Supreme Courts and accepted the verdicts.

However, unlike previous elections, the reactions to results particularly the last Presidential election are turning out to be unprecedented with how the parties involved are going about their claims and counterclaims.

While the first runner-up, former Vice President, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had simply addressed a press conference and issued press statements to express their protest against the result after which a petition was filed at the Tribunal, there have been lots of drama by the from the Labour Party’s end.

Not only have the party’s Presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi and his running mate Senator Ahmed Datti been insisting that they won the election and filed a petition,  their supporters and the ‘Obidient’ group have left no one in doubt that they are ready to go to any length to reclaim the mandate they claimed the Independent National  Electoral Commission ( INEC) has denied their candidate.

Their Local and global online campaigns have been so loud that anyone considered to be opposed to their position on the outcome of the election is not spared.

It has been a battle of ‘war of words’ between them, members of the All Progressive Congress (APC) and anyone who accepts the verdict that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu won the election. For them, suing for peace or advocating for only the judicial resolution of the matter are not regarded as an option for Obi to be declared the winner, though he was third.

The bitter disagreements between individuals and various groups on the election have become worrisome that I had to call for some form of truce during the week noting that the earlier many of us get over the corrosive effects of the outcome of the recent elections the better for our individual wellbeing.

As I noted in my counsel, the election has been officially won and lost, but those who have good reasons to disagree with INEC’s verdict should diligently pursue their cases and await the outcome.

Arguments for and against the election results, abuse and bitter quarrels on social media will not be the basis for the final judgements by the Tribunal and the Courts.

Let’s get our pre-election cordial relationships back and pay more attention to equally important personal things we have abandoned due to the elections.

Let’s stop making unnecessary insinuations and reading meanings to every statement and post.

Let’s stop destroying our personal brands because of one candidate or the other. They can easily reconcile their differences while we destroy beneficial relationships we have built over the years.

Let’s not express our anger and delight in ways the candidates are not doing or saying.

Let’s remember that we have a life to live and careers to pursue when all the controversies over the election are over in preparation for the next elections.

For those who dismissed my call saying that this is a “battle” that must be won or nothing else will do, my reaction is this, like any other crisis we have had in the past, shall pass.

After the 2015 General Elections, I wrote an article titled Ten lessons from election coverage which I urged journalists to take note of, reflect on, and take necessary steps to enhance their careers.

Three of the ten points I wrote on were Politicians are not worth fighting for, Objectivity still matters and the Need for social media policy.

Reading through my 2015 article and reflecting on the just concluded elections, I can say my counsel and observations back then are still valid.

The lessons I will like to harp on from the recent elections are life lessons about what it takes to achieve any goal or come close to it.

You can claim what you think you deserve and work hard to get it.

When the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu made his declaration that it was his turn to be the next president (Emilokan) on the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC), some people felt it was wrong of him to say so noting that the highest office of the land should not be anyone’s entitlement.

However, based on the political ‘investments’ he has made over the years, including spearheading the political alliance that brought President Muhammadu Buhari to power, he was very sure he deserved to be the candidate of his party and went all out to win the ticket despite seeming animosity against his ambition from top quarters within the party.

There are times when you can’t afford to keep quiet about whatever you think you deserve, especially when you sense you may be wrongly denied. However, before you make such a declaration as Tinubu did, you must be sure you have what it takes to get what you think is yours.

The opposition to your desire will definitely be more when you leave no one in doubt that you want to take what you claim to be yours, but if you are strong enough to ‘fight’ for your ‘right’ you can get it as Tinubu did.  A closed mouth as they say is a closed destiny.

Some risks are worth taking

It was a big political risk for the President-Elect to think he could win the presidential election on a Muslim -Muslim ticket in a country so religiously divided between Muslims and Christians.

However based on his political calculation and that of his supporters, they reckoned it will be easier for him to win the much-needed support of the north with large votes than to take the risk of being ‘politically correct’ by having a Christian running mate.

The opposition to his candidacy by Christians was expectedly much which explained why he lost in some states his party have won easily in the past.

In the end, he won the election which is being contested by the first two runner-ups.

In life, success sometimes depends on how much-calculated risk one is ready to take. Not taking risks can be risky, while taking a well-thought-out risk may be worth it.

Dare to win

By the normal political projections, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi was not expected to perform as well as he did in the recent presidential election.

Against Asiwaju Tinubu and the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Abubakar Atiku and no nationwide political structure, his chances amounted to trying to reach for the moon.

As it turned out expectedly, he did not achieve his dream, but his performance impacted the political landscape that he has become a major political force to reckon with in the country.

Despite all odds, there are times when one has to be daring and not easily give up. One may not achieve his or her ultimate goal, but the first attempt may be the stepping stone needed to remain in the reckoning when next another opportunity comes.

I’m glad that Nigerian youths woke up to their civic responsibilities more than ever before in our political history. They not only turned up in large numbers for voter registration, though they took their time until it was almost late, they also showed up massively for the election.

It doesn’t matter if what triggered the interest of some was the nature of the electoral contest in this year’s election, what’s important is that finally, they realized they cannot have the kind of leaders they want without registering and voting.

For once, they were faced with the reality of continuing to pontificate online and paying dearly for their lack of interest in the political process of electing good leaders and ensuring the good governance they are craving and didn’t allow this opportunity to pass.

With the first round of the election over, they should feel free to raise their voices over anything that did not go well that they or their colleagues experienced. It’s their fundamental right to challenge the results of the election if they have enough evidence to show that it didn’t reflect their true wishes through the legal channels.

It’s wrong for any of them to resort in threats, insults or online bullying just because their preferred candidates did not win. No one can decide to take the law into his or her hands in trying to seek redress.

They should rather congratulate themselves on the feat some of them achieved by contributing to the altering the political landscape of the country which the results reflected despite the hitches that marred the election.

Politicians, especially those who lost and some other interest groups will typically want to use the youths to achieve their own goals and they are already doing so.

When some politicians and leaders start claiming that the youths in the country are angry and would not be taken for granted, they are engaging in unnecessary scaremongering.

No group has a monopoly on youth followership or sympathy. Just as there are many youths who did not vote for the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, there are those who voted for him. All the parties had Youth leaders, even if some of them are no longer youths as they claim.

No youth should allow anyone or group to influence them to cause any after-election crisis only to abandon them to their plight when protests go wrong.

They should not accept being given the false impression that they can insist on getting what they want at all costs when they should subscribe to democratic principles at every level of the democratic process.

The way to take over the leadership of the country by any youth groups as some brag about is to learn to fully understand the politics of the country and join political parties to infuse their ideas into the running of the parties instead of staying on the fringe and waiting for election day.

Hopefully, the momentum gained in the recent election and the coming Governorship and State Assembly election will not be lost by being discouraged. Change may not come as quickly as they want, but it will surely happen if they remain committed for the long haul.

Last Monday, I posted on my Facebook timeline: ‘This time next week’ and expectedly I got various responses on what many people think would be the situation in the country on the second day after the election that was held yesterday.

There have been lots of apprehension across the country about the likely outcome of particularly the presidential election and its aftermath. Will the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) live up to expectations as its Chairman promised? Will the exercise be peaceful or will the hoodlums, unknown gunmen and other criminals disrupt the voting? Some have wondered.

Will the ruling party’s candidate, Senator Bola Tinubu win the election or there would be an upset with victory for the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, political analysts and all shades of public affairs commentators have offered their views on the likely results. Some informed, some biased and others clueless though they claim to know.  

Now that the election is over, we can begin to see the various possibilities play out. Below are some of the responses I got to my post and what I think about them.

Someone said the election would have been over……collation continues. Yes, the collation of the results for the presidential election from each polling booth across Local Government council areas and states for final collation at the INEC headquarters in Abuja is on. The results of the National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) would come in earlier, but it promises to be a long wait for who will emerge as the President-elect.

The winner will not only be determined by the majority votes but the required 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds spread in the 36 states of the federation. Where a clear winner does not emerge, there would be a second election between the person with the highest votes and the person with the spread, but not necessarily the second-highest votes scored.

So, when you begin to get snippets of the results in the polling booth you voted, your area or your state, don’t join those who don’t know the requirements in early celebration that may be short-lived.

True as someone stated in the comments, there is already tension over who would be announced as the winner as not only Nigerians, but the world is waiting eagerly for the result of the presidential election. Parties may already have an idea of the possible total result, based on the collation of reports from their agents, but only the INEC declaration will be the authentic result. There is no point in getting unnecessarily agitated or joining those who can sense the loss of their candidate in fermenting trouble. As former President Goodluck Jonathan once stated, no life is worth losing for any election.

Everybody eye go don clear! Indeed, the reality would have dawned on the various aspirants and their supporters on their true strength. Those who claimed to be experienced politicians and those who said there is no need for political structures would have been proved right or wrong based on the available results. Some must have wondered why the election turned out the way it did. Why not the way they projected or the polls indicated it would be?

Parties will be counting gains and losses as applicable.

Yes, they are already counting the outcome of their months of campaigns and spending. Campaigning for an election is not cheap even if it’s to pay polling agents and other officials for transportation, feeding and other logistics.

For those who reaped bountiful votes from their investments, the celebration has commenced, why losers are still at a loss why the assurances they were given have turned out to be baseless. In any election, there are only two possibilities. You win or lose. Better luck next time to the loser, but the winners should be magnanimous in victory. It could be their turn to lose next time.

We will be counting results some will be wailing too.

If only wailing could change the outcome of the vote counting, but it cannot. As the popular saying, it can be too late to cry over spilt milk. The wailers still have the option of contesting their defeat before election tribunals if they have evidence to show the results do not reflect the votes by the electorates, but they will be better off accepting their defeat and spending the next four years preparing for another contest.

When I shared a post on my Facebook timeline last Wednesday, it was meant to express my frustrations and that of many other Nigerians, especially those who don’t live in the cities and are finding it more difficult to cope with the challenges of getting Naira to spend.

In my post, I stated that the currency crisis we are experiencing was avoidable. “Avoidable Naira problem. Did we have to redesign our currency and withdraw the old one when the CBN does not have the capacity to meet the demand for new notes? My people call it Afowofa (self-inflicted problem)”

Instead of accusing anyone of being responsible for the problem, I choose to note the inability of the institution responsible for providing the currency, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to meet the demands that have resulted in Nigerians buying our currency and not the foreign ones at very explorative rates.

A colleague, for whatever reason, was so angry that he accused me of blaming the Governor of the CBN Godwin Emefiele (though I didn’t mention his name) instead of President Muhammad Buhari.

“How you can ascribe what is happening with the Naira scarcity and absolve Buhari is something I did not expect to hear from you. That Emefiele can single-handedly print new Naira notes, hoard them, inflict this hardship on Nigeria and disobey the Supreme Court no matter how absurd the ruling might be is an unbelievable assertion. I cannot understand what all of you are up to with this kind of thinking,” he stated in a shocking response that made me wonder what was responsible for his unnecessary attack on my person.

Even when I bottled my anger and simply asked “How did I absolve Buhari? I didn’t even mention Emefiele,” he still had a pun-intended response.

“Alright. You only mentioned CBN.  Maybe, I mistakenly inferred that Emefiele has something to do with CBN. My unreserved apologies.”

I have no doubt that he had a good point about the CBN Governor not acting without the approval of the President, but he didn’t have to make it seem Emefiele was simply doing the President’s bidding alone on the matter. The President can be blamed for approving and supporting the ill-timed policy, but who came up with the idea in the first place and who has been defending it with all kinds of explanations that do not make any sense to the average Nigerian, who based on the CBN directive deposited their old notes and can’t get the new one to spend?

Who should be blamed for not envisaging the shortfall we are experiencing due to the alleged roles of banks and some influential persons mopping up what CBN claimed to have supplied? Why did the CBN underestimate the hitches that have come up with the Naira swap and are now trading blame with banks?

Nigerians are not interested in the long story about the avoidable crisis which the government and the CBN forced on them, they want the money they have deposited in banks.

I deliberately did not mention Emefiele’s name in my post because individuals who head any institution are not supposed to be bigger than their agencies. They are supposed to take decisions after careful deliberations on policies they want to implement.

Their policies will have several implications on the citizens, like the currency swap is not supposed to be the brainwave of just one person, but a carefully thought out one with how to implement it by the top management.

President Buhari has owned up to approving the currency redesign in his broadcast, but who or which institution sold the idea to him?

What was he told about the preparations for the implementation? Who is assuring him, typically, that all is well and the situation is under control when some Nigerians have to stay overnight in banks to collect sometimes as low as N3000 from the ATM when they are lucky to find one dispensing cash?

There is so much tension in the country over the scarcity of the naira and even other normal banking transactions have been disrupted when necessary steps should have been taken to ensure a seamless swap of the currency within a reasonable time.

Long after leaving office, Buhari’s tenure will not be forgotten for his deeds and misdeeds, the names of officials who aided the shoddy implementation of policies that put Nigerians through unnecessary hassles, as the naira swap, will also be top in the book of remembrance.

In 2014, the former Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh at the end of his second term in office was asked at a media briefing, which was the third in ten years, how he will describe his legacy considering that he failed to act when he should have regarding Indo-US relations.

His response was “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in Parliament.”

Last Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari, also due to end his two-term tenure soon, while on a state visit to his home state, Katsina, without being asked a similar question like Singh, said  “ I have done my best, and I hope history will be kind to me.”

There must be something about history that leaders like to take solace in as a better judge of their tenure than their citizens and the media. They always think that those who assess their performances while still in office don’t give them enough credit for their supposed achievements.

When leaders hope that History will be kind or kinder to them, they imagine that their accomplishments will be better appreciated long after they have left office and there would be the opportunity to rate them against their successors or more information would be available on why they took or did not take some decisions.

While they can hope that History will be kind to them, they need to be conscious of the need to meet the expectations of the people who are in a position to assess them based on their immediate impact.

If a leader does not live up to the expectations of his or her citizens, he or she should simply admit so and offer necessary explanations instead of making it seem like he or she is been unjustly criticised. History is an accurate account of what happened in the past and not an alibi for what should have been done that was not done.

President Buhari wants Nigerians to accept that he has done his best, but not many Nigerians think so based on what they have had to endure despite the high hopes they had by electing him.

He definitely has a number of accomplishments to his credit across various sectors, but history will record against his tenure some major unpalatable developments which are unprecedented in the history of the country.

Admittedly his administration inherited lots of security and economic crisis, but the situation has not significantly improved contrary to his claim and other government officials that he has made much difference.

Despite the best efforts of the military and security agencies, insecurity has remained a major problem in the country with terrorists, militants, kidnappers and unknown gunmen having a field day with many Nigerians killed and maimed.

After scaring travellers off the road, not even the train service is safe with the attack on the Abuja -Kaduna train during which many persons were kidnapped and their families had to pay a ransom before they were released. Another train attack was recorded in Edo state recently and efforts are still on to rescue some of the kidnapped passengers.

The jailbreak in Kuje, Abuja is one of the most daring in the history of the country considering that many terrorists escaped and the buildings burnt. Nigerians are still awaiting the report of the probe of the incident.

The reality that the current state of insecurity in the country which does not spare Katsina State that Buhari admitted is a major drawback which will count against him when the history of his administration is written.

How can history be kind to President Buhari with the economic challenges Nigerians are experiencing? Prices of goods and services have become unaffordable for many Nigerians. Foreign exchange rates are at an all-time high and fuel scarcity is now being experienced nationwide.

As I read the story of President Buhari saying he hopes history will be kind to him at the fuel station where I bought a litre for N320, I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief about how bad the situation in the country has become despite the government’s claim that all is well.