The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Buhari’s delicate victory

    Buhari’s delicate victory

    Even before one ballot was cast in the March 28 presidential and legislative elections, few could resist the temptation to see the election as a referendum on the Goodluck Jonathan government rather than an endorsement of Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate. Gen Buhari is undoubtedly qualified to rule, and he brings into the presidency rare qualities seldom found in Nigerian rulers, to wit, discipline, honesty, reliability and determination. But Dr Jonathan’s weaknesses were even more striking and electorally damaging than the general’s strengths were electorally productive and praiseworthy. Though the APC candidate trumped his PDP opponent by a robust two million plus votes, the winning party must judge the strength of the foundations upon which its March 28 victory is built if it is to finalise the design and construction of the former opposition party, achieve success, and build a lasting legacy.

    As comprehensive as the party’s victory in the North may appear, and as solid as that victory may seem in the North-Central and in the Southwest, APC’s electoral performance, which will most probably be replicated in Saturday’s state polls, may be more tentative than the party may want to believe. While its victory is unprecedented, making it the first time in Nigeria a ruling party was defeated by the opposition at the national level, it is not clear the party’s success is due mainly to the strength of its manifesto or to the voters’ love for the party. The opposition party’s victory is of course not attenuated by fears of future disappointment; but given the scale of the rot left by Dr Jonathan and his team, and the drastic remedies the winner will need to administer very deeply and quickly, the infatuation between the voters and the APC could very quickly turn into frustration or, worse, repudiation.

    If the APC is able to measure the structure and amperage of the victory it secured over the PDP last Tuesday, it will put things in the right perspective. It will easily recognise that the talents and industry it required to defeat the PDP and Dr Jonathan are somewhat fundamentally different from the qualifications and attributes it needs to manage its success and govern well. There is nothing in their short pedigree, having come all of two years, nor in the rapid and drastic manner they secured victory, to suggest they do not have the men to lift the party above the common level, or the tactics and strategies to cobble together a great and successful cabinet.

    The party appears to know already the priorities of the electorate. First is the economy, which decline is indicated by revenue shortfalls and states unable to pay salaries or execute major projects. Second is insecurity, also depicted by the humiliating help Nigeria is receiving from neighbouring countries and mercenaries to fight Boko Haram. On Friday, the Chadian army chief publicly mourned the near absence of Nigerian troops on the frontlines. Third is the abducted Chibok schoolgirls whose rescue and return the country craves badly. And fourth, on the aesthetic level, is the need to build the support pillars of Nigerian politics and democracy, a task the PDP forsook for 16 years.

    The APC made history last week by winning the March 28 polls, and changing the face of the incoming National Assembly; it stands on the threshold of a much bigger history if it manages against all predictions to assemble a competent multicultural and multidimensional cabinet to right the wrongs of decades past. It will need the disciplined commitment of the president-elect himself, the energy and vision of men like Bola Ahmed Tinubu, guardians of the constitution and civil rights like the incoming vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, and the maturity of party elders like John Oyegun and Ogbonnaya Onu. Atiku Abubakar will have a say, though he had often showed a willingness to run with the hare and hunt with the hound; and so, too, will former president Olusegun Obasanjo, notwithstanding his imperiousness and messianism.

    Though he is a man of few words, yet even in his quietude, Gen Buhari has given the impression he is loth to inquire into the financial and probably also political madness that unhinged the country and predisposed it to disequilibrium. However, he really has little choice but to probe the past, for the scale of the madness must be investigated and requited if similar malfeasances are not to be repeated. There was hardly any election in much of the Southeast and South-South last month; even if the APC will not head for the tribunal, it must document what went wrong, and in the case of criminal acts, such as were orchestrated in Rivers State before and during the presidential poll, those indicted must without fail be brought to justice. Dr Jonathan appears to have got some soft landing; but everyone knows he opened the country’s financial tap and let loose a gale of subversion of the people’s will through unrestrained inducement. Surely, the money came from somewhere. The country needs to know, if not immediately, then sometime in the near future, how and why institutional controls failed so woefully. If perpetrators are not called to account now, nature itself will withhold its goodwill. The blood of the innocent must be avenged in Rivers State and elsewhere.

    The nature and dynamics of the APC victory is in many ways instructive of the present and the future. The Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, actively campaigned for Dr Jonathan on the dubiety that voting for APC was an endorsement of the enslavement of the Yoruba by the North. But both the results of the 2011 and March 28, 2015 polls showed clearly that the nature and dynamics of Nigeria’s electoral politics had changed considerably. No zone, let alone a cabal, can win elections without an active alliance with some other zones. Dr Jonathan realised this in 2011 but strangely failed to nurture and sustain the alliance that brought him to power. Gen Buhari failed in 2011 because he embraced the old politics of dominance, but succeeded last month partly because he embraced the new politics of accommodation. If its victory is not to be a fluke, the APC must recognise and nurture these new dynamics. Despite the shape of its electoral performance, especially its near zero impact on the Southeast, it must not fail to bring into the cabinet great minds from that protesting or absentminded region, men and women like Charles Soludo, Pat Utomi and Victoria Ezekwesili. There is no room for the bitter, malicious and acrimonious politics of the past, the kind still risibly and anachronistically subscribed to by Afenifere.

    Above all, the APC must assign itself the legacy responsibility of laying a solid foundation for democracy, the best in Africa. The PDP failed disastrously to carry out this responsibility. Now is the time for real democratic and structural change. To this end, APC must reform the system fundamentally and build and defend national institutions, including the security services bastardised by Dr Jonathan. It must also ensure that subsequent elections improve on the use of technology as well as neutralise violence in politics. The party won a historic election; after April 11, it must now settle down to its historic duty.

  • Closure, and a new beginning for Nigeria

    Closure, and a new beginning for Nigeria

    At a critical point during the Second World War, Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest Englishman of all time, told his embattled compatriots: It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning.”Last Sunday, as the results of the closest, truest and most modern presidential election in the history of Nigeria began to tumble in, a great blast of fresh air coursed through the entire length and breadth of Nigeria. History was being made before our very eyes.

    Throughout the preceding night even before the voting booths officially closed, bush exit polls had been predicting a landslide victory for the opposition candidate, General Mohammadu Buhari, the once and future ruler of Nigeria. To be alive at this very moment and in Nigeria is to witness the bounteous blessings of history. It has never felt better to be a Nigerian. God is probably a Nigerian. No other profligate country had been this promiscuously pampered by the forces of history; or has been this invested with such a legendary run of good luck.

    Lenin famously noted that while there are decades when nothing happens, there are weeks when decades happen. It has been such a week in Nigeria, when contradictions germinating and maturing for decades are suddenly resolved by the people themselves, opening the vista for fresh contradictions and conflicts.  Stuff happen all the time, as they say in America. It is not historical contradictions and political conflicts that we must fear, it is the lack of will to resolve them.

    Yet when all is said, it has been a close run thing. Nigeria loves to live permanently at the edge of the abyss of chaos and anarchy. And just when it is about to tip and topple over, common sense intervenes until common sense becomes uncommon and senseless all over again. The political class, a grand oxymoron by Nigerian standards, begin to work their wonder again and an edgy nation is returned to the edge. The journey of the national and international magi commences all over again.

    It is not entirely surprising then that by last Monday, the great surge of fresh air had been superseded by an eerie and edgy calm. There was a razor-edged tension in the air. People began deserting the streets in droves. Rumours circulated of an imminent truncation of the electoral process reminiscent of the June 12 1993 abridgement of the will of the Nigerian electorate. There was a sense of déjà vu in the air. We have been through this pass before.

    The silence from Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power, was as profoundly eloquent as it was profoundly disturbing and unsettling. Something nasty was definitely going on. Perhaps there was an attempt to circle the wagons in one final last ditch standoff to retain power that has been so flagrantly thrown away. Then the international community rumbled, noting ominously their displeasure about attempts to prevent the will of the Nigerian people from prevailing and hinting darkly about the dire consequences of any attempt to terminate the electoral process.

    Tuesday stole in and by then it was already too late. The democratic genie and the spirit of a new Nigeria powered by the sovereign will of the electorate had already been let out of the bottle. You cannot abort a flight already on cruise speed, or as Abiola, an earlier martyr of electoral shenanigans would put it, you cannot terminate a full pregnancy. In this respect, Godsday Orubebe’s temperamental buffoonery and well-rehearsed ploy to disrupt proceedings amounted to nothing but the last sigh of political swamp dwellers.

    After that, a powerful ray of light began forcing its way through the dark clouds that had enveloped the nation. The gale of fresh air returned. Optimism filled the air again. By that time, the tallying of votes had reached such a state that any rational person must conclude that there could be no come back in this one for even the greatest comeback kid, shoes or no shoes.

    By then sheer electrifying drama and typically Nigerian political magic took over. The streets which had dramatically emptied in anticipation of millennial mayhem began filling once again miraculously. The scent of victory was in the air, and the people could smell and sniff its sweet perfumed fragrance. Yet there was still an underlying tension.

    Then at about twenty minutes after 5pm, the television screen began flashing what is perhaps the greatest news and miracle of the Fourth Republic. At first, it looked like a great hoax. It was too good to be true. In a dramatic intervention of lucidity and enlightened self-interest, Goodluck Jonathan dismounted the high horse of power and shamed the hawks that had held him hostage by conceding victory to General Mohammadu Buhari.

    The entire country minus one or two sections erupted in wild jubilation. Car horns honked with manic rapture. It was a great moment to be a Nigerian. Yours sincerely joined in the wild celebrations and it was a bleary-eyed columnist that crawled into bed on Friday morning. Once again, Nigerian has been granted a dramatic reprieve from the hangman’s noose.

    Whatever his legendary foibles and defects of character, Goodluck Jonathan has redeemed himself by showing character and a great sense of an ending when it mattered most. Many commentators have called this his finest hour, and we are not about to take this away from him. It surely takes an uncommon nobility of spirit to withstand the temptations to plunge your country into anarchy and chaos for the sake of personal ambition. Alas, had Jonathan demonstrated this steeliness of character and patriotism much earlier, the course of Nigeria’s history and his own public record might have been the better for it.  The rest is for historians.

    By this victory, General Mohammadu Buhari has made history, with echoes of old Abe Lincoln, a fabled serial loser who became a sure winner by sheer force of personality. But history is also a remorseless and implacable continuum. The Lincolnian mystique is made of legendary sternness, backbreaking personal discipline, forthrightness and steeliness of character leavened by compassion, kindness and a sense of justice and fair play. Historical greatness and this Lincolnian ideal of immaculate statesmanship are waiting for the Nigerian general.

    When Buhari survived a mysterious assassination attempt sometime ago, this column noted that he was on the cusp of history. That prediction has now been fulfilled, despite the aspersions cast on the column by some primitive tribesmen who have refused to be fully socialized; who confuse bovine rudeness and incivility with sociological emancipation.  The Buhari ascendancy represents a divine closure and a miraculous new beginning for Nigeria.

    General Mohammadu Buhari is the last born of his mother after a long string of children from a successful womb and was adoringly referred to as “Auta” or last born by his beloved mother. In Hausa culture, the last child of a mother in advanced years is known as “Auta”. It is a profound metaphor for gynecological closure. Abidakun, the Yoruba call it. In the astral political circuits in which Nigeria is currently orbiting, Buhari represents closure as well as the possibility of a new beginning.

    It seems strange and confounding that history can appear so seamless in its impossible symmetry. Thirty two years after forcibly terminating a manifestly corrupt and dissolute civilian dispensation, General Buhari has returned as the democratically elected president of Nigeria. As it was thirty one years ago, so it is if not worse for Nigeria.  In the interim, military messianism has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.

    And you cannot step into the same river twice. Thirty one years ago, Buhari rode into town in a military tank. This time around he is coming on foot. The proverbial soldier on horseback has now been replaced by a civilian waving a broom. It is a poor talisman for a nation in acute distress. General Buhari inherits a country polarized and badly divided along ethnic, religious and regional fault lines. A vicious insurgency has completely devastated the north eastern fringes of the nation. To compound matters, the economy has virtually collapsed and the treasury badly burglarized.

    Thirty one years ago, General Buhari and his military colleagues thought they were on a rescue operation. This time around with a motley crowd of ill-assorted politicians, the retired general is on a salvage mission. No Nigerian leader has been saddled with a heavier burden and responsibility amidst great expectations. If the euphoria that greeted his victory is anything to go by, the nation may soon find itself engulfed in a crisis of expectations.

    The pains are real and throbbing. Virtually all the federating sections of the country are hurting and complaining about their lot in the forced union of disparate nationalities. Every significant segment of the nation has had its comeuppance. There are those who are still suffering from the trauma of the civil war.

    There are those who believe that Nigeria owes them a decent rehabilitation and succour having devastated their homestead while prospecting for oil. There are those teeming northern masses who are victims of a pernicious social system of exclusion and enslavement. In anger and disillusionment, many of them have taken up arms against the fatherland. The Yoruba people tend to rue the loss of their destiny.

    This is a situation of dire emergency. President Buhari must learn how to think out of the box of normal amelioration and conventional development. He should come up with a Bureau of Higher Culture and National Integration. Officials of this agency acting in concert with economic experts must come up with an organogram for the vertical and horizontal integration of our people, taking into consideration the cultural uniqueness of the constituting units.

    A vertical integration will involve nothing less than the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for the north of the country and a National Recovery Economic Blueprint for the whole of the country which will accelerate economic growth without encouraging corruption and criminality. In the circumstances that we have found ourselves, it is impossible to achieve a horizontal integration without taking a look at the structural configuration which has turned Nigeria into a warring camp of enemy nationalities.

    One thing General Buhari had going for him in his first coming was a burning nationalism and a sense of duty and responsibility, Thirty years after being ousted, there is nothing to suggest that Buhari’s passion for his country has in any way diminished. As his opening speech clearly and touchingly demonstrates, these are redemptive resources for a new beginning for the nation.

    As we have noted, General Buhari’s renewed ascendancy represents a powerfully symbolic closure for the Nigerian nation and the possibility of a new beginning. In human history, it is rare to have a person come back to power twice and after a thirty year interval. But given the provenance of the party, the circumstances of its formation and the specificity of its insertion into the political process, it may amount to asking for too much to expect a radical rupture with the past.

    No government can solve all the problems or meet all the aspirations of the people. If only General Buhari can set the nation on the path of righteousness and rectitude despite the entrenched forces and vested principalities of reaction even in his own party who will try to take him hostage, he would have met his historic obligations. This is the meaning of closure and a new beginning.

    As MD Yusuf departs…..

    Snooper mourns the death this past week of a senior friend of columnist, avid reader of column, occasional intellectual sparring partner, Katsina nobleman, former Inspector General of the Nigerian police, iconic spook and constant northern star, Mohammadu Dikko Yusuf aka “MD”. Oh papa, why now? Why not tarry awhile to witness Nigeria on the cusp of momentous changes?

    The last time snooper met the great man at the precincts of the Eko Suites in Lagos, he was battling age related infirmities: limping and horribly hobbled. It was a painful sight. But MD remained as cheerful and witty as ever, casting sublime jokes about the state of the nation. There was always something about this illustrious scion of the Katsina Fulani aristocracy which reminded one of the saying that nobility must have its obligation.

    A refined and supremely cultured man of great kindness and courtesy, MD was one of the most remarkable and accomplished Nigerians of the post-independence epoch, rising from the relative obscurity of the Northern Nigerian bureaucracy to national superstardom as the Inspector General of the police. Northern Nigeria has never produced a more cerebral cop.

    Despite his princely antecedents, MD in his youth was a flaming radical and supporter of the Socialist principle of human development, just like his cousin, the late Usman Bala Yusuf and his distant kinsman Umaru Yar’Adua.  Kai, there was always something about these katakata Katsinawa. What if Ekaterinburg had come to Katsina? It was a contradiction which once prompted snooper to dismiss the old man as a purveyor of polo socialism.

    A man with the memory of classic undercover agent, MD quietly and with avuncular bonhomie reminded snooper of this impudent infraction after yours sincerely had delivered the eighty fifth anniversary lecture of the Yoruba Tennis Club on September 11, 2001. Needless to add that MD was the only civilian with the balls to squarely confront General Abacha in the darkest hour of military despotism. It was so surreally foolhardy that many thought it was a hoax. But it seems that even a mad dog must recognize a raging furnace.

    MD was so humble and unassuming that as Inspector general, he was once arrested for wandering while taking a leisurely evening stroll around Ikoyi by an impudent cop and was taken to a station in Obalende. For a moment, the presiding officer was too consumed by self-importance to look up. When he finally did, he jumped up in frozen and derelict attention.

    “HAIGEEEE”, he moaned. The rogue cop sensing that his evening meal was a coiled cobra threw his gun away and crashed through the window. Almost forty years after, they are still waiting for him to come and collect his police pension. May the noble spirit of MD rest in peace.

  • Dressing Jonathan in borrowed ‘statesman’ robes

    Dressing Jonathan in borrowed ‘statesman’ robes

    For conceding defeat to the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in the March 28 poll, President Goodluck Jonathan has been lavishly described as a statesman. The word is debauched. Nigeria was doubtless on edge shortly before and after the poll, with many people stockpiling food and provisions and relocating from towns and cities they feared could erupt in violence if the poll results did not favour one of the contestants. But by placing a call to Gen Buhari and conceding defeat, the unbearable tension was instantly relieved. A grateful nation, it seems, could not have enough of the new Jonathan, whom they immediately dressed in the borrowed robes of a statesman.

    A stupefied Abdulsalami Abubakar, former military head of state, ran breathless, together with his new National Peace Committee, to the president to thank him for his kind consideration and understanding. World leaders, awash in emotions, also sent word appreciating the new Dr Jonathan for placing country above self and ensuring post-poll peace. Even the APC itself, the main beneficiary of the electoral revolution that took place seemingly against the run of play, gushed to the president in coded language that all was forgiven. The president’s friends, hangers-on, and the media he dedicated to himself for the reelection race, have all painted him in glowing statesmanlike colours.

    It is apparently so soon forgotten that Dr Jonathan, more than any other person, politician or unprincipled security agent, was responsible for the tension that convulsed the country weeks before the fateful race. He destroyed the security services, disemboweled them, and turned them into his party’s enforcement arm, to the extent that the world scorned what had become of Nigeria, and neighbouring countries ridiculed its armed services. It is also forgotten that the president was directly and solely responsible for creating and fostering religious and ethnic divisions in the country, and aggravated his irresponsible behaviour by condoning the threats and sabre rattling from Niger Delta militants and larcenous political elders sworn to his protection.

    Moreover, though he was unable to deploy troops for counterinsurgency duties in the Northeast and had had to rely on Chadian soldiers and other heavily paid mercenaries, Dr Jonathan found the temerity to deploy soldiers for election duties in Ekiti and Osun States, and then finally on March 28, all over the country. Together with the police, the troops undermined balloting in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Delta States. Such mindless intimidation never occurred in these parts before, let alone on that sickening and humiliating scale.

    And finally, who could fail to notice that after securing postponement of the polls for six crazy and indefensible weeks, Dr Jonathan then sidelined his campaign organisation, opened the vaults and proceeded to seduce and induce those he identified as opinion moulders and grassroots mobilisers in the Southwest and a few other parts of the county. In any other country, the insane spending that closed the last week or so of electioneering, which the president unconscionably masterminded, should be enough to get him locked up for life.

    Yet, after Dr Jonathan spent more than four years nurturing these horrifying malfeasances, he is today dressed as a statesman by public commentators, many of whom are satisfied with low public morals and standards. Everyone is lining up in the shrine to pour libation to the new statesman. Palladium will not, even though he recognises that Dr Jonathan redeemed a little of the damage he had done to the polity by calling Gen Buhari and conceding defeat. If Dr Jonathan’s expiatory afterthought is what it takes to be a statesman in Nigeria, the country must begin to mourn the loss of its future, and in particular the loss of the great values that undergird every sane and stable society. A nauseous culture is seemingly being bred — indeed as the cult of former heads of state already indicates — whereby a leader propitiates his misrule by the simple act of vacating power.

  • Lagos’ll vote APC governor

    There are fears in some quarters that Lagos State, given the more than 600,000 votes it gave the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the recently concluded presidential election, would vote for the defeated party in the state governorship race. The possibility does not exist. The PDP got that number of votes because the voters hoped Dr Jonathan would win at the centre, and then instigate a stupendous and unprecedented win in Lagos on April 11. Now that he failed, who thinks Lagos would ignore the pains it had endured for about 16 years while in opposition to the ruling party in Abuja, and now foolishly vote to enter into another slavery and opposition to the (APC) national government? Are they sadists or gluttons for punishment?

    For 16 years, Lagos was abandoned by the federal government to rot and pine away in hopelessness. No one said a word in its defence, and no one came to its help. Without doubt, on April 11, the state will vote APC governor in order to get the help its beleaguered people have richly deserved since the federal capital moved to Abuja. It had consistently craved more local governments and a special status. This is the state’s finest chance to land both prizes. Those who hazard APC’s loss in the Lagos governorship race should instead prepare themselves for the election of an APC governor by a healthy and irresistible plurality, and not only in Lagos, but perhaps in states like Imo, Rivers and Akwa Ibom.

  • The war that never was

    The war that never was

    The world had expected a bitter presidential poll but Jonathan saved the day by conceding defeat early 

    As a journalist, I should be one of the last persons to want a Buhari presidency. I was a few months to my graduation in the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, when the then Buhari/Idiagbon junta promulgated Decree 4 in 1984, under which even truth was inconsequential. But, if 31 years down the line I now find myself making a strong case for a Buhari presidency, then something must be gravely wrong with the existing order. If millions of Nigerians today find Buhari alluring, President Goodluck Jonathan is to blame. It simply tells of the rot that his government represents which, unfortunately, those in the government and their friends do not want to accept. Many people in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who say things are not bad under the Jonathan administration are only fooling themselves. But Nigerians who are feeling the effects of the ineptitude and massive looting in government know better.

    How can any sane person say that a government that could not do much when the naira was strong will do better now that the national currency is weak? How can any sane person say that a president who until his defeat at the polls still did not believe corruption has reached a crisis dimension in the country despite the global concerns about it, will tackle corruption? How can a president who came into power partly because of people’s feeling that being once upon a time a shoeless boy, he would empathise with the poor, say there is no poverty in the country simply because a few Nigerians own private jets?  Obviously, President Jonathan became disconnected with the people on getting to Aso Rock. His cause was not helped by the sycophants who surround him and are giving him the impression that all is well.

    The full story of what led to the president conceding defeat to General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not yet out; but I suspect he did not consult widely before taking that decision. Otherwise, the Edwin Clarks, the  Elder Godsday Orubebes, the Femi Fani-Kayodes, the Doyin Okupes,  the Ayo Fayoses, the Segun Mimikos, not to forget the Akpabio Akpabios, the Tompolos, the Gani Adams, the Frederick Fasheuns, etc. would have told him not to surrender because of what they will eat. Orubebe had to mess himself up in the full glare of the world because he could not imagine that the honey pot from where they have been making money was about to be taken away just like that. So, how could such people want the president to concede defeat?

    But personally, I was not surprised that President Jonathan lost. I had always told those who cared to listen that he would lose and that was obvious even in my write-ups. It could not have been otherwise for a president with the record that I have painted. Moreover, as at the time of the election, virtually all the party’s founding fathers had abandoned it. Many of its leading lights, including governors, had decamped to the opposition APC, yet, the remaining people kept deluding themselves that those who left had little or no value to add to the party’s fortune at the polls. The only surprise element for me in the defeat therefore was conceding defeat by the president, even before the result was officially announced. And that is where the spiritual dimension comes in.

    Even atheists among us must be seeking explanations as to why an election that we all thought was going to be  won or lost at the ‘war front’ and not at the polling booths ended on the peaceful note that it did. Many people had besieged the banks days before the election to get enough money that could last them for some time; many had done the same for foodstuffs. As a matter of fact, many of those with the means had left our shores, hoping to return after the ‘Jonathanian Wars’.

    Our gratitude should go to those behind the postponement of the elections who must have thought they had done an unimpeachable job that would allow the government to rush what it had left undone for years in six weeks. But God, as usual, caught the wise in their craftiness by making them push the elections into the Lenten season. Take it or leave it, a lot of spiritual fireworks went into the elections. Even Muslim clerics did a lot of prayers in the mosques whilst the Christians did theirs alongside their annual fasting. By now, President Jonathan must have known the difference between Father Ejike Mbaka of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, and the other men of God who might have kept telling him that he had any chance in the election. The president must have known the difference between a man of God properly so-called and people who were not called by God but who called themselves, or those who were called but derailed along the line for pecuniary gains.

    One major factor President Jonathan did not reckon with is the fact that he is from a minority region. I guess that reality dawned on him when the votes from the north started coming in and most of them went to Gen Buhari. I had told my friends who had believed that the president would get so so number of votes from the north central, so so number from the north west, etc., that they would be roundly disappointed; in other words, that the average northerner would not abandon Buhari at the critical moment to vote for President Jonathan. Thrice that Gen Buhari ran a solo presidential race, he polled about 12 million votes on each occasion. With the ‘coalition forces’ now with him, it would not make sense for an average northerner to abandon him because they could never tell when another northerner would have the kind of support that Buhari had from  a critical region like the south west. Performance was the other thing that could have made the average northerner prefer Jonathan to Buhari but this was missing in the Jonathan administration. Not only was the government incompetent; it was also monumentally corrupt.

    It would therefore have been a disaster of equally monumental proportions if President Jonathan had won because that would have told us that the values that he and his ruling party have been inculcating in Nigerians over the years have gained ascendancy. That would have meant a general approval of impunity, of corruption, of lawlessness and what have you. That would have set Nigeria many decades back. You can imagine a Nigeria where the likes of the people I earlier mentioned would be the ones calling the shots!

    Then, consider what was spent by the president on the election, especially during the six weeks. It is doubtful if President Jonathan himself can recollect how much of hard earned foreign currencies he wasted on ‘the polls. In the end, he lost. Although, in a sense, this gladdens my heart because it tells us that more Nigerians are wiser. I have always urged people whose conscience can take it to take bribes from politicians that choose to bribe rather than perform, and still vote according to their conscience. No one with good intentions would do such a thing the president did. If the president had won with the bribes, it is good governance and ultimately Nigerians that would suffer. There would not be any incentive for politicians to work hard in power if they know that everyone has a price and that once the price is right, they would always win elections.

    Then, the president’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan! She was simply an irritant and a pollutant to many Nigerians. She threw caution to the winds; and was speaking as someone campaigning for her husband in the race for the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) chairmanship. That was how low she dragged the exalted office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Indeed, if the president lost in Aso Rock Villa polling units, we may have to situate that within the context of the failure of the woman of the house to worm her way into the hearts of her immediate constituency. Regrettably, President Jonathan’s friends too only showed him as a shade better than his wife during the electioneering. Obviously, neither of them realised that the PDP that they went into election with had been so mortally wounded that it could no longer perform the ‘feats’ it used to perform in elections.

    All said, the good thing is that President Jonathan knew when to beat a retreat and he did. It is good that he realised that should anything go wrong, he would be the main culprit. All the others are mere footnotes. The beauty of the presidential election, for me, is the fact that an incumbent president can be defeated in an election. This is the way it should be and that, as a matter of fact, is the sermon many of us have been preaching; that Nigerians should be able to fire any elected officer that is not doing well. In other words, votes must count. Gen Buhari too and the APC must be guided by this fact.

  • Democracy reached a new and higher level with the elections, but at what cost and who bore the scars of the trauma?

    Democracy reached a new and higher level with the elections, but at what cost and who bore the scars of the trauma?

    We have to admit it. President Jonathan surprised everyone in Nigeria and across the world with the readiness and the grace with which he conceded defeat and called Buhari to congratulate him on his victory. Just the day before this happened, Femi Fani-Kayode, the megalomaniacal and evil-tongued Director General of the Jonathan Campaign Organization had been saying that the results being cumulatively and unofficially announced by local and international media organizations that put Buhari well ahead of Jonathan were all false. He had vigorously and falsely claimed that Jonathan and the PDP were in fact more than two to three million votes ahead of Buhari and the APC. And as if that was not enough, Fani-Kayode added that the internal figures collated by PDP field operatives showed that the party and Jonathan had won in 23 out of the 36 states in the country. Moreover, one so-called Elder Orubebe, PDP’s representative at the national election results collation centre in Abuja, had on the final day of the release of the election results and with extremely violent language, attacked the INEC Chairman, Jega for an alleged bias against his party, threatening that the PDP would not accept INEC’s figures for the results. These and other actions and words of PDP hawks gave a clear indication that Jonathan and the PDP would perhaps not accept defeat and that in all likelihood, the country was once again being deliberately set on the path of a debacle of post-election paroxysm of bloodbath and nation-wrecking mayhem.

    It is against the background of such actions and words from key figures in his campaign organization that Jonathan’s speedy and gracious concession of defeat caught most people and news organizations by total surprise. And let us bear in mind also that on the day of the election, Saturday, March 28 when the electronic card reader in the polling booth at his hometown failed to authenticate his encoded biometric identity, Jonathan had asked for patience; he had asked Nigerians to recognize that the card reader hitches were just that – hitches that did not amount to an overall condemnation of the elections. Finally, still on that same day, Jonathan had urged Nigerians to accept the results of the elections regardless of who won or lost.

    Those who are familiar with the extremely negative profile that this column has painted of Jonathan and his administration over the years would no doubt be surprised by the fact that I am hereby joining my voice to the voices of the great number of people that have given the President high praise for the magnanimity of his acceptance of defeat rather than following the inclinations of the fascist hawks in his party to plunge the country into chaos and bloodshed by a rejection of the will of the Nigerian people as expressed in the decisive victory they gave Buhari and the APC. So why then am I myself now singing the praise of Jonathan? Have I, like my good friend of many, many decades, Odia Ofeimun, seen the light and have come to realize that, as Odia put it, Jonathan is the very best president we have ever had in this country? Absolutely not! My reason for sincerely acknowledging and praising the generosity and maturity of Jonathan’s repudiation of the nation-wrecking desperadoes in his party and campaign organization is precisely to do just that: give the man his due and acknowledge that he will perhaps always be remembered for this extremely gracious final political or electoral act of his time in power. But there is another reason for joining the chorus of praises for the president on this one decisive act and it is the fact that I want to use that acknowledgment to raise the wider question what it cost Nigeria and Nigerians to be taken through desperation of national survival of such extremity that only Jonathan’s gracious act and nothing else could have averted great catastrophe. Moreover, I wish to raise the issue of who paid the price and will in future bear the cost of the kind of post-election trauma that we have just gone through. Is it likely to happen again? If not, what should we do to make its recurrence unlikely or perhaps even impossible? So while we all give praise to Jonathan for that act of great maturity and statesmanship, these are the sorts of issues that we must not ignore, that we must not bury under the psychic weight of relief that we all felt when Jonathan chose not take the preferred destructive path of the Fayoses, the Fani-Kayodes, the Orubebes and the Obanikoros of his party.  I think it is best to explain what I have in mind here by using the analogy of what the costs are and what is at stake when a patient survives a life-threatening surgical operation for a deadly cancer.

    The hope of all cancer survivors is that the survival will last and that the cancer will not come back. For this, the lucky patient must do everything possible to avoid carcinogenic agents and lifestyle habits that encourage cancer. And of course he or she must continue to take the prescribed medications. Now, it takes no great act of wisdom or perceptiveness for anyone to see that it has been a deeply and widely cancerous democracy that we have been having since the return to formal democratic governance in 1999. In the present discussion, I will limit myself to only the electoral process.

    We all remember the elections held under the supervision of the previous INEC Chairman, Maurice Iwu and his boss, Olusegun Obasanjo. In that evil collaboration, there was a crucial division of labor between the two men. Obasanjo’s part was to use money and the police and the army to either buy votes or intimidate opponents and the electorate into fear or submission. For his part, Iwu’s role was to deliver the votes and deliver them big. Now let us be clear that Jonathan not only continued this party tradition of using funds from our national coffers to buy votes, but he took the practice to absolutely new and unprecedented levels. For instance, most of the 2.53 trillion naira oil subsidy mega-scam of 2011 went to the slush funds for Jonathan’s 2011 election campaign. In the current electoral cycle of 2015, it appears that the President went far beyond that already extraordinary scale of 2.53 trillion naira since dollars, not the depreciated naira, was the currency of vote buying. Now my central point here is, regardless of the praise for Jonathan for his post-election magnanimity, we MUST know how much of our money he spent this time around. For not a kobo – or cent – of that money is his father’s money; it is yours and mine and we have a right to know. In the exercise of that right, perhaps we might finally come to a constitutional ban on the use of public funds by all present and future incumbent governments to buy votes. This practice of the unrestricted use of public or state funds for election campaigns is without doubt one of the most carcinogenic agents afflicting or threatening our fledgling democracy. And the cost to the economic and social wellbeing of our peoples is incalculable.

    Equally carcinogenic is the use of the police, the army and all kinds of quasi-official militias by Jonathan and the PDP to intimidate and cow both opponents and the general electorate. The scale of this abuse of incumbency for political or electoral advantage must be fully revealed. There is the specific case of Ekiti-Gate. That case must now be formally opened and brought to a conclusion that will serve to strengthen our democracy. The incoming administration must not be blackmailed by charges of witch-hunting or revenge mongering, especially when and if such charges are couched in the form of accusations of bad or mean spirited recompense for Jonathan’s act of magnanimity in that swift and decisive concession of victory to Buhari. The one does not cancel the other: yes, we must praise Jonathan for that one act; no, we cannot, we must not let any incumbent government ever again use the police and the army to pervert and distort the electoral process. Let us not forget that it is the people, in their tens of millions who bore the brunt of the state sanctioned violence that the PDP, in the years of its rule, routinely used as one of its choicest means of staying in power.

    The thing that personally nauseates me the most is the use by Jonathan and his campaign hawks of hooded paramilitary operatives side by side with the regular units of the army and the police. I do not know if these spectral and sinister forces were used in the elections of last weekend, but they were widely used in the 2014 gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun States. Hooded paramilitary operatives? It seemed to have come from the lowest common denominator of the melodramatic imagination of Nollywood scriptwriters and film directors. But it was real enough and it came from Jonathan’s Aso Rock.

    These are all preliminary observations and reflections on the presidential elections of 2015. We are all greatly relieved that it ended well and there are no looming specters of bitter and divisive verbal and physical warfare on the horizon. In the weeks and months ahead, there will be time enough to turn our attention to the more weighty problems and challenges that the change from one ruling party to another will bring to our country and our peoples throughout the length and breadth of the land. I cannot end this piece without saying this: for me the real heroes of what happened last weekend are not Jonathan or Buhari; they are the millions of Nigerians who resisted intimidation, force, coercion and bribery to send the PDP packing. Let APC take note of this. What has been done to the PDP may or can be done to the new ruling party if no real or meaningful change takes place in the years ahead.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The change Nigerians want

    All proceeds of corruption must be retrieved; all scammers –oil subsidy, pension etc must be listed, publicly displayed and made to return every penny stolen

    In a 3-part article: Periscoping  The ideal APC presidential candidate, which graced these pages between Sunday, 21 September and  12 October, 2014, and  in which I concluded that Nigeria needs General Muhammadu Buhari, the president-elect, more  than he needs Nigeria. I also quoted The Nation’s columnist, Gbogun gboro, as observing that Nigeria is now one of the foremost contributors to poverty in the world and that according to a World Bank Report, it will by 2030 be one of the main contributors to global poverty.  I followed that observation up as follows: ‘No thanks to a kleptomaniac PDP government which, rather than deal decisively with corruption prefers to romance it, serially dropping corruption charges against its members. Although the government has been touting its annual growth average of over seven percent, I think it needs be told that with the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and over dependence on oil, massive youth unemployment and, with between 60-70 percent of the population living below the poverty line, there is absolutely nothing for the Jonathan government to gloat about despite those voodoo statistics by the likes of TAN’.  Concluding, I wrote: ‘fifteen years after the PDP  took over the reins of government, Nigeria  now generates far less than the 4000 MW of electricity it generated in 1999 after having most of the 20 billion dollars it allegedly  spent on the sector stolen. It will be interesting to see which sane people would vote more of the same at the 2015 elections, and thereby consign Nigeria to purgatory’.

    Please come with me briefly to see the comments of some well connected Nigerians who did not agree with my views, going by their publicly stated positions:

    Buhari will die before the election –Fayose

    Buhari is brain dead –Mrs Patience Jonathan

    If APC survives till October 2014, call me a bastard –Doyin Okupe

    Mark my words, it will not happen for Buhari to rule Nigeria –Doyin Okupe

    If APC wins, I will go on exile – Bode George

    Buhari can never win in Yoruba land – Gani Adams

    Jonathan will shock APC with defeat –Femi Fani Kayode

    If Jonathan loses, we would set Nigeria on fire –Asari Dokubo

    We instigated the 6 weeks’ postponement so that Jonathan can win –Faseun

    I will deliver one million votes to Jonathan in Ondo State –Mimiko

    We shall deliver the South West vote to Jonathan –Afenifere

    Tinubu is no longer a force in the South West –Odumakin.

    Now all these would have been hilarious if they were not uttered in moments of excessive arrogance of power by persons you will reasonably call advisers to President Jonathan and those he, unfortunately, depended upon for victory.

    And while at this, even as President Jonathan may have saved lives, limbs and property by his telephone call to the president-elect, it would need some effort to convince many Nigerians that the call was not induced by the likes of Washington and London on the grounds that Nigeria might descend into an orgy of bloodletting if the election was called.  I suspect this was what led to the proactive telephone call. I say this because the president has shown severally that he is only a skin-deep democrat.  Here is a president who did not utter a single word when a rogue parliament took over in Ogun State under Gbenga Daniel just as he has not deemed it right to caution Fayose under who the same has now subsisted for four months in Ekiti. Worse is the many references both Fayose and Obanikoro made  to him as the master mind of the army-led  rigging of the Ekiti governorship election of 21 June, 2014 as a bewildered world has come to know from the Captain Sagir Koli’s secretly recorded  Ekitigate tapes.  For the sake of posterity, it is important that these things be put in proper perspective

    Given that the president-elect had  once opined that the PDP has, since 1999, presided over our country’s decline, leaving  Nigeria divided and  polarised  as never before; this by an unthinking government hell bent on ruling and stealing everything, it is obvious that the change he and the party  envisage must be  a total rescue mission of a country already  humbled by insecurity, corruption, an economy  worse than he inherited  in ’84,  massive unemployment, a  shambolic  electricity, a ballooning cost of governance; a  decrepit  road infrastructure especially in the Southern parts of the country,  a declining  standard of education and a people whose circumstances is worse than that of Europeans coming out of World War 11. The task is therefore daunting but Nigerians are trusting General Buhari to hit the ground running.

    Security concerns should immediately concentrate his mind because, without peace, we cannot claim to have a country and given that Boko Haram, which has accounted for over 15,000 deaths, is only the worst of the demons of insecurity tormenting our country, urgent steps must be taken to tackle insecurity. The administration must, therefore, aggressively continue the current push against Boko Haram in conjunction with our neighbours.  Multilateral strategic assistance should also be sought from friendly overseas countries with hands-on experience in the fight against terror just as our men under arms must be adequately kitted and properly looked after. If the outgoing president could not deliver our Chibok girls before he exits on May 29, President Buhari must consider it a top priority of his government. With the help of hindsight, it is gratifying to know that the era of graft in our armed forces will be a thing of the past the minute General Buhari takes over as Commander-In-Chief.

    That corruption has become a way of life in Nigeria is beyond doubt and government must approach it from two ends: a long term, fundamental re-orientation of the citizenry to the ends that corruption diminishes us all, and a short run that must be punitive. All proceeds of corruption must be retrieved; all scammers –oil subsidy, pension etc must be listed, publicly displayed and made to return every penny stolen. Impunity must stop and everybody held accountable for his/her actions.

    It is no longer rocket science tracing the proceeds of corruption. It has become one of the major ways the world is now confronting terror. Once they pay up, cases against them should be withdrawn as we profit nothing by their going to jail. We need the billions, even trillions, to upgrade infrastructure in all facets of the Nigerian economy.

    Concerning the economy, a friend, Biodun Adu, a London-based consultant gynaecologist, has suggested that the starting point should be the sale of at least nine of the eleven planes in the presidential fleet. Nigerians expect to see the back of the coordinating minister and, ipso facto,  what Dele Sobowale  of  Vanguard  describes  as  Mrs Okonjo-Iweala’s “ abandonment  of  planning and forecasting for mere allocation of revenue and (mis)management of the Excess Crude Account”.

    From my layman’s point of view, the incoming government should do everything to increase the quantum of electricity available in order to stimulate economic activity at all levels. To begin to chip off from the huge unemployment numbers, government must immediately discontinue statutory allocations to revenue generating agencies and use savings there from to almost double the staff strength in the police and immigration. Skill acquisition centres should immediately be established to retrain the hundreds of thousands of our graduates of higher institutions and enterprising ones amongst them should be given seed money to start off their own small scale businesses.

    Working harmoniously with the APC majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the government must ensure that it cuts to a reasonable level, the embarrassing allowances our legislators are paid. This must be reduced by about 60 percent while retaining the salary which was fixed by the RMAFC. It is mandatory on the Buhari government to reduce the cost of governance in the country. At the beginning of its second year, the government should begin serious work on restructuring the federation. It should set up a committee of not more than 33 experts – 5 from each geo-political zone and 3 from the FCT – and task it with the responsibility of coming up with recommendations that should be approved, after appropriate constitutional amendment, only through a national referendum. The committee, in my view, should have at least 12 months to do its work, with the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference serving as its primary working paper. The committee should, however, expand the recommendations to arrive at a true federal system, anchored on the principles of fiscal federalism. Space constraint does not permit discussions on how to revive our education, make suggestions on a welfare programme for the elderly as Dr Kayode Fayemi did in Ekiti but now, unfortunately, cancelled; as well as proffer ideas on a robust youth policy. Without a shred of doubt, Nigerians can rest in the sure belief that the Buhari government shall work for them as the president-elect has promised. It is a new day in Nigeria. The change is here.

  • 2015 electoral verdict and Nigeria’s destiny 1

    If APC had not functioned as an opposition party, it would not have been possible for citizens to choose it to govern them when citizens became dissatisfied with the PDP that had ruled for the past sixteen years

    This column observed last week that if the 2015 presidential election turned out to be free, fair, and credible, Nigeria would have moved  noticeably close to its destiny. After the verdict of the presidential and federal legislative elections have been released and accepted by the two leading candidates in the presidential election: President Goodluck Jonathan and General Mohammed Buhari, it is safer this week, than it was last week, to say that Nigeria is finally at the door to the room in which the country’s destiny has been imprisoned for decades. However, the elections left some areas of concern that all stakeholders: electoral candidates, political partisans, the citizenry, and our international friends need to pay urgent attention to as they all prepare to enter a new era in the history of the country.

    The pattern of voting in the various regions indicate that the country is a divided one. Votes from the Southeast and the South-south, the two regions of origin associated with President Jonathan, voted almost 95% for him while the president-elect also got about 89% of the votes from the Northwest and the Northeast, the two regions that he can also claim as ancestral homes. It is only in the Southwest and the Northcentral that both candidates actually split votes in a manner that suggests that the voters give considerations to the campaign messages of the two leading presidential candidates: change or continuity.

    As many commentators in the social media and the traditional one have already acknowledged, the division existed before the election and is traceable to the rhetoric of antagonism among believers in the principle that federal power should be determined solely on the basis of geopolitical considerations, especially by many political and cultural leaders in the Northwest/Northeast and in the Southeast/South-south who did not have the courage to contest elections on the basis of  allocation of national political power to specific regions but had the capacity to serve as leaders of thought for their people. It is thus not surprising that ethnic or regional ideology has left its mark on the ways people voted in the ‘far north and the far east’ of the country. However, this gulf cannot be left unclosed if the Ideology of Change, which is not an ideology based or derived from ethnic bias, is to spread evenly across the nation.

    One challenge for the new president is setting in motion processes for healing of the nation, particularly after the intense campaign of calumny that prevailed in the last three months. It is re-assuring that the healing process has been kick-started by outgoing President Jonathan and incoming President Buhari. In addition, many of the gladiators of the last six weeks, from Afenifere, members of the two factions of Odua People’s Congress (OPC), leaders of Niger Delta militia, to governors and party spokesmen who provided leadership for propagation of dirty  and hate campaigns (capable of bringing disunity to the country) have also started to pledge support for the president-elect. Although no word has come from traditional rulers who joined the fray of partisan politics openly a few days before the election, it is likely that sooner than later such traditional rulers would use their Praying Rods or Walking Sticks to pray for Buhari and unity of the country.

    More specifically, the job of healing the nation rests on the new party in power. While General Buhari focuses on governing the country properly as from May 29, his political party needs to redouble its intellectual and political energy to post-election selling or the ideology of change or progress to every nook and corner of the country, especially now that political and cultural leaders from across ethnic and regional divides have declared unequivocal support for the new president. Messages regarding the imperative of change in a country that has been in the wilderness of progress for decades are more likely to sink into citizens, now than a few months ago, when the political price was high enough for many politicians and their supporters to want to kill or maim others for it.

    In trying to heal the nation, messengers of peace and inter-regional cooperation must avoid the escapist measures that almost drove the country into crisis a few weeks ago. Before the election, several pundits overreacted to the tension in the air. Some of such opinion leaders called for an Interim government and a government of national unity or stability, contraptions that are essentially alien to our current constitution. The dare-devil ones even asked for a military government as one of the ways to avoid crisis in the polity. But the citizens had finally spoken with patience and clarity; the INEC that was identified by many for axing had also done a better job than it did in 2011 nationally or in Ekiti and Osun states in 2014; and the country’s international friends had stood solidly for free and fair election as the best option for peace and stability.

    It is, therefore, distracting for anyone to start calling for a government of national unity after citizens had chosen the candidates and political party they want to govern them for the next four years. The constitution already requires the president to pick his cabinet from every state of the nation. Furthermore, the constitution does not forbid the president to invite persons from other parties or even non-believers in partisan politics to his cabinet if he believes such persons have value to add. But nothing in the country’s Basic Laws requires any president or party to form a government of national unity. It was the fear on the part of some people to face the challenges of electoral democratic elections that led them to call for Interim government or government of national unity before the election. Now that the election is over, the constitution must be given a chance to work until it is changed or amended.

    Apparently, most of the masses who voted last week were more concerned about who to govern them in a way that is beneficial for them and their dependents, rather than in the appointment of ministers and board chairmen and women. It is the fixation of the ruling elite on distribution of largesse as the end of electoral politics that made the election campaign in the last few months life-threatening to individuals and even to the nation. This is the time to move away from reducing matters pertaining to rule of law and good governance to personalistic and patrimonial politics.

    Government of national unity may harbour more danger for the polity than we can immediately apprehend. The joy of multiparty politics is in the possibility of changing from one ruling party to another. This aspect of electoral and representative democracy puts all political parties in check, as it reminds both the electorate and politicians of the importance of doing what is likely to make citizens choose their own parties at elections. Nobody should have morbid fear about political opposition. Government of national unity has the tendency to stimulate one-party rule and thus suffocate oppositional politics. The new ruling party should exercise caution with respect to welcoming professional ‘decampers’ or addicted ‘carpet crossers’ into their fold. The Buhari APC government should remind all citizens that it is in the interest of the country for opposition parties to grow and thrive. That is part of the checking and balancing process in functioning democracies. If APC had not functioned as an opposition party, it would not have been possible for citizens to choose it to govern them when citizens became dissatisfied with the PDP that had ruled for the past sixteen years. Our political culture must always leave space for opposition parties that can challenge the ruling party every time there is an election. Removing the door to the recruiting room of APC in order to welcome those that the electorate rejected after ruling them for sixteen years, in the name of government of national unity or politics of inclusion may be another ploy to destroy the gain of last week’s election: a political culture that provides options for voters.

    The world has become more complex than when Buhari first ruled Nigeria. The impact of global political ethics on so-called third-world countries now grows by the day and has now become evident in Nigeria. If there is anything that has become obvious from the election of last week, it is that it is citizens that can protect Buhari and his government, not power and positon-seeking men and women who would not want to be outside the corridor of power for any period of time, and for that reason, are already clamouring subtly for ‘government of national unity.’

    • To be continued

  • All hail the Nigerian electorate!

    Yes, said someone to me rather violently, Nigerians have now become enlightened. They now know their rights (and lefts too) and no one can come again and think the presidency belongs to his father and stay there permanently. If anyone messes up, we vote him out!

    Congratulations, Nigeria! No, no. I am not congratulating us on electing a new president; I am felicitating with us on our new found voice. Last Saturday, we all went out to make our statements: oh no, we do not want Jonathan – we want Buhari; or oh yes, we want Jonathan – we do not want Buhari. Resolutely, Nigerians went out to choose for themselves someone whom they hoped would lead them at least somewhere towards the Promised Land. One of them did emerge, but only because we all agreed to disagree gently. Honestly, it was a very gratifying thing to hear Nigerians speak with one discordant voice and still hear each other.

    Normally, one would not expect Nigerians to ever be able to speak with one voice on account of the very sharp lines of division. To hear each other hitherto, you had to be of the same ethnic or religious or family or spousal or eating group. Only twice have our voices crossed these boundaries. One of them was when we decried Jonathan’s subsidy removal plans. Now, that plan stung so much we all collectively shouted, ‘what the heck!’ I think that was why we stood up together. The polls however were another challenge. When we voted Jonathan in, we all did stand together after a fashion; I remember that a part of the north was not altogether standing the way the rest of us were on the matter; they were sprinting and shouting war hooplas. Unfortunately, many died.

    So yes, the previous experiences of Nigerians at the polls did not quite prepare us for last week’s surprise. Quite previously, whoever could among the political contestants found ways of snatching ballot boxes, stuffing ballot boxes or got someone to do some dirty tricks for him for some hefty sums. I think people generally call that rigging. By hook or by crook (often by crook), the payer found himself smiling to the polls as it translated to smiling to the banks, courtesy of the payee. He didn’t care that it was usually not courtesy of the electorate. The reason was that the numbers that ‘declared’ him winner of the ‘election’ often exceeded his expectation, and the voting population. Now, who can argue with that?!

    That meant of course that all the while he got to enjoy his illicit time, purchased at a price, the politician did not care a hoot about the electorate whom he did not need in the first place; so why serve the blighters? That was the trend before in Nigeria until last week. Last week, Nigerians spoke; and when the deaf and dumb speaks, there are bound to be some surprises.

    First, there was the surprise of number. People really did turn out, including reluctant ones like me. And they came prepared. The reports say people brought their chairs and mats. Well, I saw the mats. I saw the chairs. I even saw the kind they roll up and when you unfold them, you are not sure a tent or house will come up. I saw the water coolers, the soft-drink coolers, the lunch boxes… When the polls were really delayed in my polling unit, one woman told the security personnel that she had finished her breakfast and lunch on the queue (she showed them the plates), and the time for her dinner was fast approaching; so they had better let her vote or else they would be in real trouble. They let her in. In my unit, the queue appeared endless, with me bringing up the rear of course, until one gentleman courteously stepped in. So you can imagine how many meals I required that day in order to vote…

    The greatest surprises were the results, real and doctored. But who is to tell? I think we can safely leave the detecting to the forensic experts and calmly get on with our lives in the mean time. Up till this morning, the radio was still singing many people’s swan songs – Aliyu’s failed senatorial bid, Suswan’s failed senatorial bid, Adeyemi’s failed senatorial re-election bid, and on and on and on.

    These things used to be automatic. Whatever a politician wanted, he got. Many writers have noted the political culture around here that allows a ‘winner’ to jump into the treasury and roll around in it like a cockroach in a flour bin. This motivated many otherwise innocent people to become politicians and transmute into unrecognizable monsters who preyed on the people’s low interest level. So, an individual would leave the state assembly for the House of reps then to the senate then to the governor’s chair then back to senate, ad infinitum, without anyone challenging him in the state. Talk of recycling oneself.

    Then, of course, there were the successful bids topped by that of Gen. Buhari’s in his fourth bid. Unfortunately, the guy hardly smiles; if he did, I would have said he would be grinning from ear to ear by now. Imagine, FOURTH bid! When I tell my dog to come for his food once and he doesn’t, I generally just give up on him. Now, I think I’ve learnt to be a little more patient: I will call him a second time, but I doubt if I can call him four times.

    Many people have commented on the portentous fact that Nigerians did not only go out to vote, they had begun a new culture: trying out one president at a time. If they liked him, he would stay; if they did not, he would go. They say it like they are talking about trying on dresses. Come on! Yes, said someone to me rather violently; Nigerians have now become enlightened. They now know their rights (and lefts too, I might add) and no one can come again and think the presidency belongs to his father and stay there permanently. If anyone messes up, we vote him out! Excellent!

    I find the fact that an underperforming president can be voted out rather thrilling, you know, like a drunk feels tremours course down his body when he sees a bottle of beer. I say I rather like it. However, this election has brought out a troubling fact: Nigeria’s persistent bad voting pattern.  I don’t know if you noticed that most of Jonathan’s votes came from his kinsmen, the south-eastern part of the country, while the larger chunk of Buhari’s votes came from his kinsmen, the north. It left the third part of the country, the south-west, to break the tie. I am so buggered about it I keep thinking: when will these primordial ethno-religious cleavages stop? What will happen if the third factor is itself divided down the middle? When will we consider a man’s worth more than his money, tribe or religion? I take solace in someone’s consoling words: we are still young and growing in this democracy thing; it is enough for now that we can elect someone with a clear majority. Leave the fine things like personal integrity for later. Ok, I reply, I will leave well alone.

        For now, it is enough that Nigerians have learnt to speak with one determined voice; so people of the world, Hail the Nigerian Electorate; it is growing up! The upside of growing up, to use a foreign terminology, is that people tend to know their minds; and the downside is that it is never good for the parent’s blood pressure. The political parties, particularly the PDP and the APC, would do well to learn this lesson and grow up quickly too. NIGERIANS ARE NO LONGER WILLING TO SIT, GRIN AND BEAR IT. THEY NOW FIGHT BACK, WITH THE BALLOT, EVERY FOUR YEARS. Congratulations, Gen. Buhari.

  • Sai Jonathan

    Sai Jonathan

    When in 2012 TIME magazine listed President Goodluck Jonathan as one of the most influential 100 persons in the world, I wrote a column titled ‘Have you been influenced by Jonathan?’

    I was amused about what could have informed the choice of our president, considering the largely negative perception about his leadership style which did not seem to make him suitable for such listing, which, according to the magazine includes “the people who inspire us, entertain us, challenge us and change our world”.

    The citation by Liberian President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf,  in which she stated among others that “with leaders like President Jonathan, Africa is sure to move toward prosperity, freedom and dignity for all of its people”, didn’t also sound true based on what the situation in the country was.

    My reaction to President Jonathan’s inclusion on the Influential persons list then was not because he had not made any impact that deserved to be acknowledged, but I felt he had not done enough to deserve such recognition.

    I would probably not have been disposed to any similar recognition for President Jonathan even up till last week, until he did the ‘unthinkable’  by calling his main opponent, General Muhammadu Buhari to congratulate him hours before the announcement of the final result of the presidential election.

    When both President Jonathan and General Buhari renewed their pledge to the peace accord ahead of the election, not many took them seriously. As far as many Nigerians were concerned, the commitment of the two gladiators was not worth more than the document they signed.

    Given the intense hate and acrimonious campaign for the presidency, it was almost certain that despite the pretence of the candidates and their followers, the contest was a ‘do-or-die’ one. This explains why it was feared that violent protests may follow the announcement of the result either way it goes.

    However, as it turned out, not only have we held the election using the controversial card reader anywhere it worked, but the loser has uncharacteristically accepted defeat while the winner has been magnanimous in victory.

    Such was the envisaged crisis that the peace that has followed is still a surprise to all. It still seems like a dream from which some people are yet to awake from. But it is real and we have no other person than President Jonathan to thank for his willingness to put the country above his personal interest.

    Notwithstanding the massive support for General Buhari which gave him a landslide victory, there are still grounds for President Jonathan to fault the election and give room for the expected violent clashes. But by conceding defeat easily, he proved that his claim that his election is not worth the blood of any Nigerian was not mere rhetoric.

    Even when he could have made an issue about the embarrassment he suffered at the polling booth when he and his wife could not use the card reader which his party had said should not be used, Jonathan pleaded for patience.

    Notwithstanding his shortcomings as President, history, as Senate President David Mark rightly said, will be kind to Jonathan for proving not to be as clueless as many of his critics think he is.

    I agree completely with the statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives  Congress (APC), Alhaji Lai Muhammed on the significance of President Jonathan’s action.

    “By that singular act, which went a long way in dousing post-election tension, the President has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, written his name in gold in the annals of Nigeria’s history and catapulted himself to a statesman.”