The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • 2015 elections and Southwest’s silent majority

    2015 elections and Southwest’s silent majority

    Yoruba masses are not worrying about ministerial appointments but about jobs and infrastructure that can make their life meaningful

    Most Nigerians will find it hard to believe that the Yoruba have a silent majority or minority, given the folk belief in the country that the Yoruba are the noisiest political animals on Earth. But having observed the political behaviour of the Yoruba as an adult for over half a century, I make bold to say that most Yoruba are silent voters while many of their political leaders are noisy campaigners. The presidential campaign events in the Yoruba region by aides and supporters of President Jonathan are reminiscent of the campaign culture of 1965 in Western Nigeria, especially in the frantic character and tone of campaigns by individuals and groups that choose, in the character of asunrara (professional mourners) to cry more than the bereaved.

    Although the level of desperation today in pushing the case of preferred candidates by supporters is as palpable as what obtained during the electoral contest between Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro and Chief Ladoke Akintola, campaign on behalf of PDP and its presidential candidate in the Yoruba region in 2015 evinces significant traits of cultural decline that makes the bizarre electoral campaign of 1965: “Whether you vote for us or not, we have already won the forthcoming election” a child’s play. One thing that was in vogue in the 1965 NNDP campaign and that is more pronounced in 2015 is targeting campaign messages at the elite and with little consideration for the masses, which was the sole focus of Action Group campaign in 1965. For example, President Jonathan and his aides in the Yoruba region have given more attention to elite groups such as the Yoruba Council of Elders, Old Afenifere, and assemblage of Yoruba Obas.

    On the part of Yoruba Council of Elders, the decision to support Jonathan’s candidacy is hinged on his readiness to sign a memorandum of understanding with the council on how he would include Yoruba people in his distribution of the largesse of office in his second term. No date and time have been set for the signing. As it was in the days of Obasanjo, so is it now with YCE. The Council of Yoruba Elders is more interested in extracting concessions from Jonathan in terms of how many ministers or board chairpersons he would allocate to the Yoruba region if he gets elected. Nobody in the council seems to be interested in asking why an Ijaw man from a region of the country that used to be a part of old Western region would marginalise Yoruba people in the last five years, despite the contributions made by Yoruba activists to his emergence as president after the death of UmaruYar’Adua and votes from Yoruba states for his bid for the presidency in 2011. It is not clear if YCE is aware of the worries of silent Yoruba voters who have been trooping out to welcome Buhari from Akure to Lagos. Yoruba masses are not worrying about ministerial appointments but about jobs and infrastructure that can make their life meaningful.

    Still on elite politics, whatever is left of Afenifere has chosen to hoodwink Yoruba voters by trying ‘to call a dog a monkey.’ Harping on the Jonathan national conference of appointees, Afenifere has chosen to focus on its belief that it is only President Jonathan that can implement the recommendations of his conference. Assuming that there are significant recommendations from the conference, it is wrong to claim that it is President Jonathan or any other person as president that can implement such recommendations. Restoring federal provisions to the constitution is not an executive matter. It is the legislature at the federal and states that can do this. It is thus dishonest to keep harping on the issue of allowing President Jonathan to come for a second term for the purpose of implementing re-federalisation of the country.

    Ironically, it was only during Jonathan’s visit to Yoruba region that he himself spoke of the national conference. He did not mention anything like this during his visit to the North nor before his own people in the South-south. Given the President’s selective mention of the national conference and Afenifere’s obsession with the recommendations of the conference, silent Yoruba voters are now put in a position to accept the charge at the beginning of the 2014 conference that the national dialogue was convened principally to divert attention from Jonathan’s accomplishment or lack of it during his first term and to focus on a mirage or a ploy to cultivate Yoruba voters.

    It is true that as a leading member of EgbeOmo Yoruba, Action Group, and Unity Party of Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his political associates struggled for enhancement and sustenance of federalism in the country. It is also true that Yoruba people since the 1980s have called stridently for return to federalism. But Awolowo and others have not asked for a federal system that denies federating units the power to raise revenue with which to fund their development. Chief Awolowo called for a federal constitution that would allow each federating unit to have an education system that is linked to its culture. The 2014 conference did not consider this aspect of federalism as well, despite several papers sent to Yoruba presidential appointees to the conference. The conference was pleased with the status quo of federal government interfering in education at all levels. Chief Awolowo and other Yoruba federalists did not at any time call for continuation of a judicial system that had grown out of decades of military dictatorship and distortion of the judicial culture of the country, but the 2014 national conference, now being referenced as indispensable to federalism by Afenifere elders, did not see anything wrong with a judicial system in which the federal government is the be-all-and-end-all of judicature in the country, in contradistinction to what obtained in the years before the first coup d’etat in 1966.

    Is it not curious that the PDP as a party did not openly support the Jonathan conference in 2014? Even now, the PDP as a party has not joined the Afenifere group in using the national conference as a talking point in the campaign for a second term for the incumbent. Given the fixation of Afenifere on recommendations of the national conference, it is not out of place to ask if there are other things about the national conference report known only to Afenifere elders and that are unknown to President Jonathan and the party for which he is the flag bearer.

    The immediate task before Yoruba voters is not implementation of recommendations for a new federal system that invokes the principle of federal legislative supremacy for every item on the Concurrent list. The failure of the conference to touch the principles of fiscal, cultural, and judicial federalism, all hallmarks of shared governance and sovereignty that set federal systems apart from other governance models is obvious to Yoruba voters most of whom may not have the means to call press conferences.

    This is the time to push each candidate to tell voters how he would provide leadership for the project of re-structuring the polity in a way that citizens can own the process, rather than just 400 appointees of the president. Yoruba voters also know that not all the 400 appointees share the optimism of Afenifere elders about the outcome of the conference, and this includes people from President Jonathan’s region of Nigeria. As it is, it appears that it is only Afenifere and its cheer leaders that are pleased with the conference. But Yoruba federalists have reasons to suspect any conference recommendation that responds, in the words of Afenifere to just Yoruba demands. This may be why President Jonathan himself shies away from raising the issue of the conference in his campaign outside Yoruba land.

    Afenifere elders, like any other Nigerian citizen, have a right to associate with any candidate and party of their choice. What they do not have is the moral right to hoodwink silent Yoruba voters by claiming to think and act on their behalf on the issue of bringing federalism back to the country, an exercise once described by Sir Olaniwun Ajayi (a conference participant and a federalist in thinking and scholarship) as game playing. Afenifere elders must remember the character of the political dynamic during the campaign of 1965. Yorubaland was split between elite politicians as forces for the status quo and mass political movements represented by the silent voters who often sang Bo o r’owo mi o orinu mi (what you see is not what you get). Silent Yoruba voters today know the difference between functional and cosmetic federalism, just as their counterparts in 1965 knew the difference between power politics and welfare politics.

  • Towards our date with destiny 3

    Towards our date with destiny 3

    It is therefore wishful thinking if those behind election postponement plan or hope to benefit in terms of electoral support from change of election dates

    We said on this page last week that Nigeria’s date with destiny has been delayed by six weeks as a result of the decision the country’s security chiefs made to devote the time allocated for the presidential election of February 14 and 28 to fighting the menace of Boko Haram in the northeast corner of the country.  Arising from last week’s postponement of the presidential election is an episode-by-episode examination of the political campaign that signalled a decision of majority of citizens to resist continued collapse of their dreams into the economic and social problems thrown up by decades of substandard governance.

    As this page has observed several times, Nigeria’s malaise did not start with the incumbent president; it only got compounded under his presidency. The persons who have been helping the incumbent to govern have also perfected tricks (used by military governments in particular) to hoodwink citizens to believe that the government, like several governments before Jonathan’s, has been doing its best on account of which citizens should use their vote to retain Jonathan for another four years. Using the case of national security to justify sudden postponement of the election is a game that Nigeria had experienced before, especially during General Babangida’s military dictatorship.  Primaries and elections were cancelled by Babangida, citing national security as excuse, and most Nigerians accepted to give Babangida the benefit of doubt until the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

    From military to post-military era, the power of the federal government has been so enormous that anyone in control of such power who is willing to use the power to his or her advantage can do so and hope to get away with such impunity. The postponement of the election is one such use of power to give advantage to the incumbent president and several invisible characters in and out of the corridor of power who are afraid of what emerged as the Buhari Phenomenon or Effect during the four weeks of campaign after the emergence of Buhari as APC’s presidential candidate and of Professor Osinbajo as his vice presidential candidate.

    When President Jonathan said in his recent media chat that he had contested election against General Buhari before and that the situation was not as filled with tension as the 2015 one, made to be so largely by the “people that surround Buhari,” he too must have recognised the high voltage of the Buhari Momentum. What those who clamoured and still defend the postponement of the election by six weeks are missing is the meaning of the Buhari Phenomenon. It should not be hard for watchers of the campaign to recognise that it is not the impact of the campaign per se that has produced the electrifying effect of APC’s presidential campaign in particular. It looks more like the decision of individual citizens to stop the collapsing of their dreams into the mess that Nigeria has meant to them.

    Just like President Jonathan, this writer has also seen a major transformation in General Buhari and in the character of citizens who follow him during his campaign in different parts of the country. The picture that emerges from Buhari’s campaign, in contrast with that of President Jonathan, is also different from what obtained in 2011. In 2011, Goodluck Jonathan was the darling of the people just as General Buhari has been during the 2015 campaign. Citizens seem to have made up their minds to chart their own destiny by giving their trust to Buhari, as far as the near fanatical followership of Buhari in different parts of the country has suggested. The 2015 campaign is not just about Jonathan versus Buhari. It looks like a contest between Jonathan and a new idea and vision of and for Nigeria on the part of citizens.

    It is therefore wishful thinking if those behind election postponement plan or hope to benefit in terms of electoral support from change of election dates. The evidence before our eyes about Buhari as the personification of an Idea is not likely to be eroded by years of postponement of the election that is to give citizens the opportunity to choose who they want to govern them beyond May 29. It may not be clear to Buhari himself and to his ardent supporters that Buhari has become an instrument of change in the hands of citizens who throng his campaign rallies. It is the magic of the fusion of a new idea and a candidate with respect to Buhari that appears to be missing in the campaign rallies of the PDP and the incumbent president.

    The evidence before citizens’ eyes is the maturation of an idea believed or perceived by citizens to have been embodied in the persons of Buhari and Osinbajo. Those currently governing Nigeria need to pay more attention to the nuances of the thronging around of Buhari and Osinbajo of voters. I have witnessed all the elections in this country since 1959. I have not seen anyone in which the desire for change acquires the high wattage of the 2015 campaign. The closest to this is the election in Western Nigeria in 1965 when the people of the region wanted to use their votes to put to shame a federal government that they believed had set out to destroy the dreams of the region. For those around then, it was not surprising when citizens reacted against the rigging of that election.

    Thus, it is advisable for those handling the 2015 elections (whenever they are finally allowed to take place) that the elections are free, fair, and credible. When citizens mass around a presidential candidate the way they have done in the last five or six weeks, it becomes dangerous for the society if such citizens are prevented from expressing their real choice through the ballot box. It will not matter who at the end majority of citizens vote for; what will matter is that citizens are given free choice to use their vote and that such votes are allowed to count.

    Those who are now calling for the use of Temporary Voter Cards, need to realise that it is too late in the day to do this. We said several times in this column at the beginning of the discussion of permanent voter cards by the National Security Adviser and all the political parties that temporary voter cards should be used if distributing PVCs became impossible before February 14. But now that candidates and citizens have accepted the delay of the elections for six weeks, it is illogical for any political party to call for the use of TVCs. It is also illogical for any political party to campaign against the use of card readers. Using card readers does not amount to electronic voting. An electronic card reader is only a device to confirm the authenticity of the PVC being presented at the poll. It does not make sense to revert to the use of TVCs that cannot be verified, especially after citizens have accepted to wait for additional six weeks before exercising their fundamental rights to choose their leaders. Reverting to use of TVCs is more prone to rigging than using PVCs that can be verified.

    INEC needs to pay more attention to the fact that the Southwest region is lagging behind other regions in the distribution of PVCs. Voters in the Southwest should not be denied the opportunity to use their votes to negotiate a new destiny. So far, too many citizens are having problems collecting their PVCs in the Southwest and this is evident in the latest release of numbers of cards collected across the country. In my household of four, I am the only person that has been able to obtain PVC in Alausa. My wife whose photograph was pasted on the wall has not been able to obtain her card. On the three occasions we went to MKO Abiola Gardens for this purpose, the staff there have not been able to find the PVC of my wife and two other family members among the mountain of cards on and under their table.

    While the country’s security chiefs use the next five weeks to fight Boko Haram terrorists, INEC should double its efforts to bring out the PVCs of citizens duly registered to vote. INEC needs to know that South-westerners have the same right as residents of other regions to dream anew about Nigeria. They also have the same right to use their votes to bring a new Nigeria into being or keep the old one. This right can only be exercised by those with their PVCs in their hands by election time.

    To be continued.

  • Towards our date with destiny 2

    Those who lead and those who aspire to lead us need to know that the magnitude of lawlessness in our governance system and political culture embarrasses and demeans most citizens

    Last week, I was so optimistic that I started a series under the title overleaf. I seek the indulgence of my readers to continue today under last week’s title, despite the fact that the hope raised last week had been diminished by the sudden decision of the military under the inspiration of the president and the ruling party to postpone the election by six weeks. Within Nigeria and the international community, the postponement has done a lot of damage to the cause of democracy but it has not succeeded in destroying the possibility of a date (other than February 14) with our destiny as a nation-state.  This is despite the fact that the postponement and other  uses of federal power by the ruling party in the last four weeks and the disjunction between official rhetoric and actual deployment of power smacks of besieging democracy in the fashion of the violation of citizens’ right to choose their leader 22 years ago.

    How many of the individuals who sacrificed themselves or loved ones or had to go into exile in order to fight General Ibrahim Babangida’s annulment of  the June 12, 1993 presidential election ever thought that after  the exit of the military in1999 they would experience another military-style abrogation (more accurately, suspension) of citizens’ right to choose their leaders at the appointed time at the hands of an elected government? So much water had passed under the bridge of Nigeria’s democracy in the last four weeks and to the extent of reminding citizens that the annulment of 1993 was not an aberration that many patriots thought it was and thus chose to fight to the hilt.

    Just before our eyes again, a civilian government had raised and dashed the hopes of Nigerians by approving an electoral calendar and altering that calendar just one week before an election scheduled to give citizens a once-in-four-years opportunity to choose their leaders. Several years after the military had  publicly pledged to work under military supervision, as is the case in all democracies, the military (now answering the name of security forces) ordered an independent electoral agency to postpone a properly scheduled election on account of the decision of the military to engage Boko Haram  insurgents. Instead of the civilian government reading the riot act to such military officers, it has preferred at the instance of the president to urge citizens to take the postponement of election in good faith.

    While the president chooses to plead with citizens to accept what looks like a military fiat with equanimity and without questioning the reasons given by his security chiefs, the ruling party, PDP, on the other hand, chooses to further hoodwink citizens by changing the narrative of the postponement.  While the INEC Chair was clear in his message to the nation about how INEC was given a strong advice about the need to postpone the election because the military would not be available to provide security for the elections, the Presidential Campaign Organisation chose to tell citizens that the election was postponed because of problems of logistics.

    As if it was not bad enough to treat Nigerian voters as subjects instead of as citizens, soldiers were deployed to harass and intimidate citizens shortly after the announcement of the postponement, in a way to suggest that the military was available to silence citizens the way General Abacha did in 1993. Even leaders of the other party contesting for the presidency also had their houses surrounded on and off by military men in Imo, Lagos, and Abuja since the change of the electoral calendar.  Using soldiers to surround the houses of leaders like Tinubu, Okorocha, Shehu  Garba, the spokesman for Buhari Campaign Organisation (and who is next?)  is tantamount to warning ordinary citizens that their rights to free movement can be curtailed at the whims of those in charge of the levers of federal power.

    Those who are blaming the National Security Adviser for inducing the postponement with his speech in London about INEC’s failure to supply permanent voter cards to all registered voters appear to be deliberately playing the ostrich. There is no doubt that the military had done a lot of damage to the country’s politics, economy, and culture in the  past and up to the last elections in Ekiti and Osun, but no Security Adviser can act in any way that the person who appointed him does not favour.  In all political systems, an adviser does not have the power to order any action, only to advise his boss. It is the civilian regime in place that has brought the nation to the embarrassment of postponing an already scheduled election on account of the need for the military to fight Boko Haram insurgency.  Moving from the issue of inadequate supply of PVCs to the imperative of fighting Boko Haram full-time after several years of the existence of the terrorist sec shows a puerile or pedestrian thinking that cannot but make intelligent persons chuckle or hiss.

    All over the world, elections had been held in many countries that were at war. Abraham Lincoln won his re-election during the American Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt got re-elected for the fourth time during the Second World War. George W. Bush also got re-elected during the Iraqi war, just as Barack Obama got re-elected during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  What is puerile about the argument for postponing the election in Nigeria is the thinking that the country is planning to go to war with Boko Haram insurgents, not that the country is already at war, and thus needs the stability to finish the war in order to bring peace and stability to the country. Now that President Jonathan has assured  the nation during his recent radio chat that most of the things being done and said by his advisers and even his campaign organisations are done without his knowledge, Nigerians need to rest assured that the latest call by the ruling party that INEC should revert to temporary voter cards and forget about PVCs, the basis for asking for postponement in London in the first place,  is null and void, just the ranting of political aides more interested in embarrassing the president.

    With respect to psychological assault of citizens, the postponement has already done the damage it is capable of producing. Citizens who are genuinely interested in democratic governance just need to take note of the fact that sixteen years after the end of military dictatorship, Nigeria is still being run by politicians with a primitive military mindset. Federal roads are being used as roads belonging to the ruling party. There is no better way to demonstrate intolerance of the other than the monopoly of the third mainland bridge by posters of the incumbent as if he is the only candidate for that office. Whatever belongs to the federal government, such as federal roads, does not automatically belong to the individuals in government and not by any stretch of imagination to members of the ruling party at every level of government.  Those who lead and those who aspire to lead us need to know that the magnitude of lawlessness in our governance system and political culture embarrasses and demeans most citizens.

    Responding vicariously to the Suggestion Box erected in Ajegunle by the APC vice-presidential candidate, the Change manifesto has to include a commitment by General Buhari’s government to consolidation of democracy in the country. Any ruling party that is besotted to the impunity that power bestows in a nascent democracy cannot but lack the culture of tolerance, debate, and compromise that sustains democracy. Even below average individuals should have no problem identifying the magnitude of democratic deficit in our polity. Reducing the power at the centre is one area that can reduce the culture of impunity, such as we have witnessed at the hands of a party cobbled together by departing military dictators and given to hirelings that are ready to turn the political landscape into a stage for the play of brigands. Another thing that needs to be added to the platform of change is the commitment to plant and cultivate democratic culture at every level of governance with effect from May 29. A situation in which advisors and political aides do things that affect the president and citizens without the president’s knowledge is not democratic and not sustainable.

    The postponement of the election originally scheduled for yesterday is not capable of dashing voter’s hopes; it has only delayed the country’s date with destiny.

    To be continued.

     

  • Towards our date with destiny 1

     Citizens just do n ot want the 2015 to be better than the 2011 election; they want the 2015 election to be free, fair, and credible by world standards

    The thing on the tongue of the average Nigerian these days is that the country is poised for a rendezvous with destiny on the fourteenth day of February. When asked to comment on the 2015 election, many citizens across the social spectrum tend to rephrase in various indigenous languages Victor Hugo’s famous quotation: “There is something stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”  This is how citizens perceive the palpable enthusiasm of citizens about the ongoing political campaign for the 2015 national elections.  Many even say that the electrifying political energy in the atmosphere is more of a movement than just about any political party, suggesting that it is the new awakening of Nigerians to put in place a government that reflects their wishes that is in evidence more than the sophistication of any political party in particular. In short, citizens are saying in every corner of the country that it is about time for the country to have a date with destiny after more than six decades of wandering in the wilderness.

    The growing enthusiasm about the election, despite growing lack of interest in some political quarters about holding the election as scheduled, appears to be about the resolve of Nigerians to rid the country of decades of conspiracy at the level of government against genuine unity of purpose and sustainable nation-wide development. To a first-time visitor to the country, the first impression is that Nigeria is a country that is about to experience electoral democracy for the first time. Never in the history of the country has election been perceived as the panacea to myriads of problems facing the country for over half a century.  Not even when Alhaji Abiola and Alhaji Tofa contested for a government to replace Babangida’s eight-year military dictatorship did citizens show so much monastic faith in going to the poll. What is at stake is not so much the victory of any particular candidate (despite the obvious crowd that follows Buhari in different parts of the country) as it is the desire of the average Nigerian for a free, fair, and credible election that can change the traditionally cold or lukewarm relationship between government and the citizenry over the years.

    Informal chats with first-time and experienced voters suggest that the average Nigerian is inspired by the promise of a free and fair election, interpreted as an unfettered opportunity for citizens to exercise their right to vote in an atmosphere that is devoid of intimidation and with certainty of getting reliable results of their votes, to ensure that their ruler as from 2015 is the person that majority of citizens have voted for. When probed further, citizens who had voted in previous elections respond that they have hardly experienced any free and fair election in the country, apart from the presidential election of 1993.

    The general feeling is that Nigeria has been captured since 1959 by rulers who had not been freely and fairly chosen to lead the country. In the decades of military rule, the country was literally hijacked by coup makers who used their ownership of the power of coercion to rule the country. With respect to the so-called democratic elections in 1959, 1979, 1983, 1999, 2003, 2007, and even 2011, many citizens perceive these elections as manipulated by political authorities in charge of the elections, adding that the free and fair election of 1993 was annulled because it did not go the way preferred by the government in power and then in charge of the election. If there is any promise by President Goodluck Jonathan that citizens want to hold him down to, it is the pledge to make the elections of 2015 noticeably better than that of 2011, just as the 2011 election was seen to be better than the 2007 poll, known all over the world as the country’s worst election. Citizens just do not want the 2015 to be better than the 2011 election; they want the 2015 election to be free, fair, and credible by world standards.

    In short, the crowds in evidence at election rallies are about the desire and resolve of Nigerians to use the 2015 election to liberate the country from the grip of manipulators that have ruled the country via military power or rigged elections since 1959. It is not the possibility of the forthcoming election to unseat the incumbent government or retain it that many citizens are concerned about as much as it is the effect of a free, fair, and credible election on the psyche of the nation. Nigerians, particularly those at the grassroots, feel that they have been imprisoned by  various governments in the past and show the desire for a government that is of their choice and that will thus be answerable to them, and not to vested interests of former military or civilian rulers.

    Nigeria’s date with destiny may not be tied to the emergence of any particular candidate (despite the growing visible support for General Buhari). It seems to be tied to the fact of free, fair, and credible electoral process. Those who are sold on ‘electoral business as usual’ may alter the nature of the engagement of citizens with the nation’s destiny by thinking that they can take voters for granted this time. Voters show in what they say, more than ever before in my participation in elections in the country since 1959, that they are ready to move the country into a full democratic culture by ensuring a free, fair, and believable election. To the average voter, conducting a free and fair election will put the country in a good stead to move the country to full democratic governance that ‘electoral panel beating’ over the years had  ruled out, as elections have been turned into a primitive warfare in which every method is acceptable once it leads to desired results for the warriors.

    Election is not a war between contestants for power; it is a contest between the political class and the class of voters, citizens that want to freely choose those they want to govern them. This view of election appears to be what the electrifying energy among potential voters is about, much more than the victory of any particular candidate. Those who misread the handwriting on the wall are likely to make an egregious mistake that can incense citizens if they continue to press for cancellation or postponement of the elections, for whatever reason. Nigerians want a smooth transition between one government tenure and the next. They also want to ensure a smooth transition with their votes. They do not want to be made politically impotent on account of any of the two leading candidates asking for their votes. They want to have the freedom to choose the candidate they prefer, because they feel that the ability of the country to move towards development and unity of purpose depends solely on free, fair, and credible elections on February 14 and 28.

    As the country inches towards these dates, there needs to be a separation between the voice of the media and the voices of public relations officers for political candidates. Citizens want and deserve to see and hear themselves in the media, not any less than they see and hear public relations men and women functioning as campaign staff for candidates.  This moment calls for more interpretive reporting than mere presentation of what candidates and their image makers say or do. Nothing else is capable of accelerating the country’s rendezvous with destiny more than a free, fair, and credible election conducted as and when due. This is what citizens are yearning for, not just the victory of Buhari or Jonathan. The incumbent government and whichever government succeeds it are both going to gain from free, fair, and credible elections, believed by many citizens as the only safe gateway to democracy, development, and unity of purpose in the country. Any attempt to toy with people’s choice is dangerous for everybody and the country’s destiny.

  • From politics of promise to blackmail?

    Let us stop using the ritual time set up for making promises to citizens

    The propensity for violence in the country during the season of political campaign has reached a height that cannot be ignored by civilized people. This must have been one of the reasons behind the recent unusual emissary of President Obama to Lagos.  Secretary of State John Kerry’s unequivocal advice to the two leading presidential candidates to prepare their supporters for a violence-free election fits into the paradigm of early sensitivity to the ‘night cough’ of neighbors. But despite assurances from the two leading contestants for the country’s highest office, there is no evidence that communities and individuals that threatened war before the coming of Kerry have had a re-think. Instead, new and more subtle forms of terrorization of voters have taken over the space of public communication in the country.

    Just 48 hours before the arrival of President Obama’s chief diplomat, leaders of Nigeria’s fourth largest ethnic nationality assured the nation of the preparedness of Ijaw militants to declare war on Nigeria, should voters choose to vote for presidential candidates other than their kinsman, President Goodluck Jonathan. One of the leaders of ex-militants, Boy Loaf, has been reported to have said: “We are Nigerians but not one Nigeria; what brings us together is oil. The North wants to use insecurity to push out our own….If they take power back from us, we will take back our oil. Let us fight this last fight and I tell you the Devil is a liar.”

    As some pundits have already argued, the threat by Boy Loaf, Tompolo, Dokubo and others is not to declare war on Nigeria but to take the oil that they all believe holds the constituent parts of the country together away. In other words, leaders of the Ijaw nation plan to secede from Nigeria, an act that has the likelihood to lead to war in a country sutured essentially by oil. As the present moment is too significant for hair-splitting argument, it is necessary for citizens to recognize  clearly that Ijaw militants have given notice of their intention to break the country, should majority of the electorate vote for candidates other than Jonathan.

    Again, just a few days before the visit of Kerry, the National Security Adviser suggested that the election be postponed in order to allow the election agency distribute permanent voter cards to all registered voters: 68.8 million. This must also have informed the advice by Kerry that the election should hold as scheduled and in a manner devoid of violence and replete with fairness and credibility. Fanatics of Nigeria’s national pride with a bent for partisanship have since the departure of Kerry used the social media to argue that no country has the right to dictate to other countries in the modern free world on how it chooses to run its affairs, more so an independent country like Nigeria. The time is also too short for hair-splitting academic arguments. President Obama must have sent Kerry to warn Nigerian leaders and their citizens of the danger of taking the wrong course of action. This warning is similar to the warning usually given to neighbours in many African communities when they set out to do the wrong thing. Such neighbours are generally told in image-laden language ” not to eat vermin, in order to guard against stretching cough infection to neighbours.” Should there be any serious post-election violence in the country on account of any tampering with the election, it is certain that it is the United States, more than the other countries including our former colonizer, the United Kingdom, which would be called upon by the international community to provide the greatest assistance for damage control. It is better for the U.S. to warn Nigeria against knowingly ‘eating vermin.’

    The report from a recent (after Kerry’s departure) INEC meeting with stakeholders is that the ruling party and many other mushroom political associations are also threatening to boycott the election, should INEC go ahead to conduct elections as originally scheduled, despite the preference of these parties for postponement. The argument is that voters who are unable to receive their PVCs are going to be disenfranchised and that the integrity of the election will diminish unless all the 68.8 million voters receive their permanent voter cards before the February 14 presidential election. Since there is no law on the books that insists that voters cannot vote with temporary voter cards, is it not more peace-enhancing for all the political parties to urge INEC to stop wasting otherwise valuable time on distributing PVCs and just allow voters with temporary voter cards to vote with them on the dates scheduled for election?

    Even, the few remaining members of the Afenifere, once chaired by late Chief Adekunle Ajasin and Chief Abraham  Adesanya, two leading members of the organization that led the struggle for restoration of democracy after the annulment of MKO Abiola’s presidential election, have added their frail or enfeebled voices to what looks like well orchestrated blackmails in different parts of the country. In a recent communiqué issued at the end of a meeting of Afenifere (Traditional not Renewal) in Akure during President Jonathan’s campaign visit to Chief Rueben Fasoranti, Afenifere also called for shift of the elections. The group stated pointedly: “We (Afenifere leaders) want to warn that any election conducted on the basis of disenfranchising almost half of the electorate, the outcome will not be credible or acceptable.” Another threat, despite the fact that Afenifere members no longer have the capacity to fight wars, like Ijaw ex-militants. In response to the threat, many people would argue that in the days of Ajasin, Adesanya, and Bola Ige, elders of the socio-cultural group would have called on INEC to stop wasting the nation’s time with PVCs and allow voters to use the cards with which they elected President Jonathan in 2011, instead of calling for postponement or boycott of elections.

    There are many inferences that can be made from the division of the electorate into two groups: 1) Those who want the election to take place as originally scheduled while wanting citizens to choose whichever candidate they believe in; and 2) Those who want the election postponed and to lead automatically when it finally takes place to re-enthronement of the incumbent president. We may be guilty of over-simplification if we conclude that the two groups only stand for pro-Jonathan and anti-Jonathan forces or voters. What is at issue is the depth of commitment of many Nigerians and organizations with military prowess (like Ijaw militants) or historical prestige (like Afenifere) to democracy and the ethics and deliberative imagination that sustain this form of government.  So far, the most frank of those putting pressure on the electorate is the Ijaw militant group. The organization’s members are straightforward in their demand about democracy in Nigeria: it must result in Jonathan’s election or nothing. It is Jonathan’s way or the highway.

    With the Ijaw militants’ mindset, there should be no reason for any election. We should just decide how to rotate power among ethnic war lords and enthrone as president whomever ethnic war lords choose on behalf of their nationality. There seems to be nothing that INEC can do about the demand of Ijaw ex-militants. Elections are not designed to achieve what Ijaw militants prefer; they are designed to enable citizens choose with their votes any of the alternatives thrown up for office by their parties. The non-negotiable aspect of electoral democracy is Citizens’ Choice. Once citizens are terrorized to vote for any candidate, such exercise is no longer democratic.

    On the Afenifere side, the argument is premised on protecting the right of  every citizen to vote, even if doing so has to lead to preventing all citizens from voting as and when due. One good part of Afenifere’s threat is that there is no promise of violence against Nigeria or of secession of Afenifere people from Nigeria with or without their oil.  More reassuring is the fact that unlike the Ijaw, Afenifere does not have any space that it can threaten to take out of Nigeria. Another good part of the group’s demand is that Afenifere’s love for democracy, manifested in the association’s pre-occupation with the right of each citizen to vote, can still be achieved without calling for change of dates and disruption of four-year old arrangements for the 2015 elections. Nigerians (including Yoruba voters being claimed to be Afenifere’s own constituency) voted Goodluck Jonathan into power in 2011 with their temporary voter cards. There is nothing sacrosanct about the use of permanent voter cards by every voter. Citizens without PVCs should be allowed to bring their TVCs to the polling stations to cast their votes for candidates of their choice.

    Let us stop using the ritual time set up for making promises to citizens about the future to mount blackmails on voters.

  • Not violence, just free and fair elections 2

    Allowing millions of uncollected PVCs to be in limbo by the day of election is dangerous, as doing so can lead to fabrication, distortion, and  manipulation of election results

    Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country directly or through freely chosen representatives… The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. — Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

    On this page last week, we promised to examine today advantages of free, fair, and credible election for a country, its citizens, its government,  individuals engaged in electoral contest, and the international community, especially adjoining countries. But before we go to benefits of free and fair elections, let us briefly remind those in charge of conduct of elections of actions that can derogate from fairness and credibility of elections.

    Reports and eye-witness accounts by eligible voters regarding increasing frustration of citizens in acquiring their PVCs suggest additional alertness and responsiveness on the part of INEC officials and even political party leaders. It is not enough for INEC chair to assure citizens that PVCs can be collected at the ward level or for party leaders to complain about the importance of PVCs. My own personal assistant had gone to his ward in Ojodu Local Development Council in Okeira in Ogba two times: Monday January 19 and Thursday, 22. On the first day, he did not meet anybody at the ward at 9:30 am and was told by passers-by to return at 11am. He did and nobody showed up on that day. He took time off work again on Thursday to go back to Okeira at 12 noon. He met some staff there but none of them was able to locate his PVC even after he had presented his temporary voter card with Vin: 90F5B2180A296384625 90F5 issued on January 30, 2011 and with which he voted in 2011. The most dispiriting part of the young man’s experience is that the staff that attended to him told him they did not know of anything he could do to get a card before February 14.

    A female cousin of mine who registered at Yaya Abatan ward experienced a similar frustration at Africa Church Primary School, Idiagbon under Ifako local authority. She went to Idiagbon on two days to collect her PVC. After presenting her temporary card with PU: 24/10/03/42 and Vin: 90F5B167EA295617104, she was told that any card with PU that ends in 42 was not at the centre and nobody at the centre could tell her where else to go and what else to do, to be able to vote in February. In addition, a childhood friend of mine and an accomplished author of children’s literature and a widow of a former general in the Nigerian Armed Forces is still experiencing frustrations similar to those of my non-graduate relations.  She registered to vote in Bode Onifade and had been told by INEC to go and collect her permanent card at the ward where she registered. Upon getting there, she was told that the cards being given out at Bode Onifade were cards from Shogunle. Nobody has been able to tell her and many of her neighbours, all of them upper middle-class Nigerians, where to go and collect their cards.

    If a regular citizen like me can identify three family members with difficulty collecting their PVCs in the country’s cultural and commercial capital less than four weeks to the first election in February, INEC and political party leaders should be worried about the threat of disenfranchisement of voters against which President Jonathan has warned sternly. The danger is that less educated and less materially endowed citizens in Yaya Abatan, Okeira, and many other remote areas of Lagos, who have to take rickety public transport to move from one ward to the other in search of PVCs than the average middle-class voter in Ewutuntun area of Ikeja, are likely to get angry faster than members of the elite class in Ikeja. When citizens under social and economic pressure get angry over PVCs, this increases the danger of avoidable violence. INEC needs to get more serious about ensuring that right cards are sent to each ward or allow voters with permanent or temporary cards to vote on scheduled election days. Time is rather too short for inordinate release of PVCs, which is what the latest suggestion by the National Secruty Advisor implies: move the time for distribution of PVCs forward in order to justify disrupting the election calendar.

    It may not be enough for citizens to assume that once the president had spoken and INEC boss had given directives to his staff all problems regarding acquiring their PVCs are solvable. The experiences of the three persons mentioned in this piece is a clear illustration that there are still challenges that INEC has to address urgently and about which the commission needs to make public announcements about how citizens can obtain their PVCs before it is too late. In addition, political party leaders need to join more aggressively in political education of the masses. Indeed, they need to provide assistance in terms of logistics to citizens who are being made to go from pillar to post in their efforts to obtain what belongs to them: permanent voter cards. In other countries, political parties facilitate collection of voter cards where electoral commissions are unable to mail them to registered voters. Disenfranchisement, no matter the cause, is a recipe for de-legitimisation of any government arising from badly conducted elections, apart from being a cause of post-election violence.

    With the mountain of PVCs that I saw at Idiagbon and Okeira, the chances that millions of voters are yet to collect their voter cards across the country are very high, thus putting INEC at risk of being seen as knowingly or unknowingly discouraging citizens from collecting the instrument for voting. Just as political parties have good reasons to meet with INEC on whether internally displaced persons should vote, so do they have the duty to discuss with INEC what should be done to PVCs which are not collected by the deadline for collection. Allowing millions of uncollected PVCs to be in limbo by the day of election is dangerous, as doing so can lead to fabrication, distortion, and  manipulation of election results.  Citizens need to be assured of the numbers of cards that cannot be presented at polling stations and the exact number of voters with PVCs in their possession. Such announcements by INEC can help to make a free and fair election also look so to citizens.

    But the breaking news regarding the suggestion in London of the NSA about postponing the election is like trying to cure headache by cutting off the head that aches. His argument about INEC needing more time to distribute PVCs does not answer the question: Why bother about getting additional one month to distribute PVCs that INEC has not been able to distribute effectively in the last three months? The easiest way to ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised is to allow those with permanent cards to use them and those without to present their temporary voter cards at the polling station.  Fortunately, temporary cards also carry the pictures of owners. Postponing an election for which citizens have mobilised since INEC announced election dates about one year ago smacks of the lack of respect for citizens displayed by those who annulled the 1993 election and then encouraged citizens to prepare for another round of elections. The neatest way to ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised is to allow those without permanent cards to use their temporary cards on February 14 and 28. Once the election is postponed, the disruptions in election-related logistics may make it impossible to conduct re-scheduled election on time to avoid breaching provisions of the constitution and the electoral law.

    There are ample benefits that can come to the country by way of free, fair, and credible elections. Candidates in the election are more likely (than not) to feel satisfied with their victory or defeat, to the extent that they all can hold their heads up and push their chests out that they have contributed to consolidation of democracy in the country. Whatever government is in place after a free and fair election is bound to have legitimacy, without which any government cannot function properly. Similarly, governance is likely to be facilitated by citizens’ trust in the government that results from a credible electoral process. Nigeria’s neighbours are also likely to be put at ease by free and fair elections to comfortable in seeking opinions of the country’s leaders on similar matters in their countries. Finally, the international community is more likely to be at peace that Africa’s most populous nation is not pushed into a post-election crisis that is capable of throwing the West African region into chaos and regional instability arising from displaced persons seeking asylum.. Like justice, election delayed is credibility compromised.

  • Not violence, just free and fair elections 1

    The consequence of rigged elections in the course of the country’s history is that most of the governments in the country have been considered for decades by many citizens to lack legitimacy.

    After the hyperbolic reaction to the emergence of Buhari and Jonathan as the two leading presidential candidates, marked by pre-campaign high fever and infectious fear mongering at the instance of both priests and politicians, technocrats and academics, the events and pronouncements of the last few days confirmed that emphasis has shifted to making the only right demand at this moment in the country’s political history:  free, fair, and credible elections.  Just as it has been in mature democracies across the globe, elections are not supposed to be automatic causes of heart attack or convulsion to citizens, but merely an opportunity for national political renewal  and for reinforcement of citizens’ belief in the claim that citizens are the real owners of modern nation’s sovereignty.

    Just a few days after strident calls for postponement of election and installation of Interim governments, the nation was made to witness expressions of commitment to violence-free polls by major stakeholders in the electoral process. Rather than join the forces calling for the end of history in Nigeria, President Jonathan, General Buhari, and other presidential candidates pledged    that as candidates they eschew violence and would discourage their supporters from getting violent before, during, and after the elections. In other words, those who may gain or lose from electoral violence have opted for peace and unity of purpose: credible elections. It is not clear whether the agreement among presidential candidates includes avoiding the kind of intimidation of voters by state security that characterised recent gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun.

    On his own part, President Jonathan openly acted statesmanlike by calling on INEC to ensure that no Nigerian is disenfranchised as a result of inefficient and ineffective release of permanent voter cards to citizens. Correspondingly, the INEC chairman also publicly ordered that the current process of releasing PVCs be changed, to ensure that all citizens, duly registered to vote, are given unfettered opportunity to collect their voter cards, without which they cannot exercise their rights as citizens on February 14 and 28. In addition, the INEC boss released important information regarding the plans to conduct free, fair, and credible elections. He put the total number of registered voters (not the number of voting age population) at 68.8 million. He announced that his commission will use card readers to verify the identity of voters presenting PVCs on election days, adding that 130,000 card readers had already arrived while his commission is waiting for others scheduled to arrive before the presidential election. The troubling part of the information given by the INEC chair is that 30 million PVCs are still to be collected. But the quick assurance by the commission’s leader that distribution of PVCs will henceforth be decentralised must be uplifting for those yet to collect their voter cards and other believers in the view that Nigeria’s destiny as a nation-state depends on its ability and capacity to make democracy work in the country, principally through free and fair elections.

    Even at the risk of re-stating the obvious, it is necessary to remind INEC of a few steps that have to be taken, if the decentralisation of distribution of PVCs is to have a salutary outcome. The agency needs to repeat to citizens through mass education and publicity the total number of days available for collection of the cards.  Print and electronic media need to be engaged to do this job ad nauseam, as this may be the only way to take advantage of repetition as a public communication tactic. It is re-assuring that INEC boss has told citizens that the presidency has done its own part by making all funds needed for credible elections available.

    Now that funding (cash, to use the word employed by Professor Jega) for the electoral process from now till announcement of results is no longer a constraint, the onus of conducting free, fair, and credible elections rests principally on INEC. The latest announcement that distribution will resume in all wards as from Friday, January 16 for one week is good news. But one week may not be adequate to distribute 30 million, if the commission has been able to distribute just 38 million since the exercise started weeks ago. It is more cost-effective to invest in ensuring that   registered voters are able to collect their PVCs. The wards, except those that have given out all cards in their charge should be open till the end of January. Citizens that have jobs may not be able to get to the wards on week days, since transportation in the country’s urban areas is habitually chaotic and ineffective. Realistically, most working citizens have just Saturdays to spare for this exercise. This is the reason most democracies mail voter cards to registered voters’ homes.  INEC needs to take into consideration   constraints of working citizens, particularly those in the urban areas.

    As we observed in this column a few weeks ago, it will be important for INEC to tell citizens by the end of January how many cards are yet to be collected and how INEC plans to disable such cards for this year’s elections.  Uncollected cards should be invalidated and the numbers of invalidated cards should be published in national dailies after the deadline for collection and well ahead of the first election, for citizens to be assured that such cards would not be a source of tension during polling. Citizens also need to be informed about the delivery of the remaining card readers, as voters need to be assured that every voter will be subjected to the same procedure and that card readers will not be used selectively.

    Given the state of infrastructure and facilities in our country, the average voter recognises the challenges facing INEC staff. Conducting election for a voting population of almost 70 million in a country without constant electricity, good roads, proper mass transit within towns, and low level of productivity or efficiency of the average worker must be a major challenge. But four years should be long enough for INEC to overcome challenges thrown up by these factors. Efficiency is of utmost importance in this national task of conducting an election that is free and fair and is seen to be so.

    Conducting a successful poll in 2015 is not only a good way to discourage violent citizens from putting Nigeria’s peace, stability, and unity at risk. Citizens know through reading or primary experience about the failure over decades of the country’s leaders to conduct free and fair elections or to sustain such elections when they happened as was the case in 1993.  The consequence of rigged elections in the course of the country’s history is that most of the governments in the country have been considered for decades by many citizens to lack legitimacy. The feeling that most governments in the country have been illegitimate either because they were imposed via coup d’etat or through rigged elections has had knock-on effect on the culture of corruption and impunity in the country over the years.

    From the excitement that has been shown so far about the 2015 elections, it seems that citizens are already yearning for an end to government by rulers perceived to have been put in power by rigged or manipulated elections. The task for INEC is complex but doable. INEC officials must know that citizens believe that INEC is the only agency that is charged with the task of keeping the country stable,  united, and democratic at this point in the nation’s history. The advantages are legion for the country and even for those seeking elective offices.

    To be continued

  • Transition government and other shadow chasing efforts

    Postponing election for two years is another form of annulment, regardless of how much it is packaged as a national security scheme

    Just a few days after The Vanguard published a story which insinuated that General Olusegun Obasanjo has been calling (to no one’s hearing) for an Interim government, another call came from what many activists and believers in the possibility of a Nigerian variant of liberation theology would readily call a most unexpected source: one-time leader of Save Nigeria Group (SNG) and Senior Pastor of the Church of Latter Rain Assembly. The call, put simply, is for postponement of national elections for two years and  installation of a Transition Government to be headed by the incumbent president and assisted by specially invited or anointed citizens to prepare for postponed elections when the term of the special regime lapses. In other words, the call seeks national consent for suspension of the most important aspect of democratic governance: elections.

    Had Obasanjo’s call for Interim Government been audible to citizens, most citizens would not have been upset by this, given the general assessment of General Obasanjo as having no fear to say whatever he chooses to say about persons and institutions. This writer would also not have been surprised, knowing that General Obasanjo comes from a professional background that is popular in the country for preferring interim governments manned by members of the military or headhunted civilians.

    But the call from a man who led hundreds of Nigerians (including General Alani Akinrinade, Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, and hundreds of citizens including this writer) under the aegis of SNG on protest marches in Lagos and Abuja on behalf of due process and rule of law is hard to dismiss, the way such calls from Obasanjo (if actually made) would have been ignored by citizens who define themselves as lovers of democratic culture. Having worked with Pastor Bakare for a few years on various political issues, I am not impressed by the noise in the social media that he is preoccupied with assisting President Jonathan to enjoy the eight-year tenure allowed by the constitution without necessarily having to go through the rigor of election. I make bold to say that I know him well enough to know that he does not need  to stake out his neck for any president on account of favour seeking, not after he had served as vice presidential candidate of General Mohammed Buhari in the bid to unseat President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, about two years after he mobilised Nigerians to struggle for respect of the constitution with regards to appointing Jonathan  as substantive president after the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

    But it is necessary to ask for more details of the proposal to bypass election and appoint someone who was elected four years ago to the same office, in order to avoid any threat to peace and stability in the polity after an election that was scheduled four years ago. Without doubt, there is no better time for the Cassandra syndrome to afflict citizens than the current election season.  Since the announcement of the candidacies of Buhari and Jonathan for the highest office in the land, the polity has been unduly heated. Security agencies have been promising fire and brimstones against politicians who make whatever security experts consider to be inflammatory statements. Party spokespersons and even professional prayer warriors have been warning and praying against violence and disintegration.  Even leaders of political parties that no longer appear on the political radar have been screaming about their chances to win elections and warning against post-election violence. What could have been a moment of excitement for citizens of other democracies have become a source of worry to citizens, largely because many people have become scared that the forthcoming election is not likely to be free and fair to the point that reasonable party men and women will accept the will of the electorate.

    It must be the tension in the air that has pushed otherwise well-meaning people to make proposals that are likely to deny citizens of their political and civil rights to choose the leader they want at elections. On one hand, a former minister called for a memorandum of undertaking between Buhari and Jonathan on an irrevocable pledge to restrain their supporters from becoming violent after the election, regardless of whether the election was free and fair or not. In another instance, a national leader in the movement for justice and democracy in the land and one-time presidential candidate called for cancellation of the 2015 election and coronation of the incumbent as president for two years.

    The proposal to cancel or postpone the 2015 election for another two years shows very little respect for citizens. Millions of citizens had made so much sacrifice to obtain their permanent voter cards from grudging distribution centres in the last few weeks in preparation for a chance to assess their leaders. Other millions are losing sleep for INEC’s decision to dole out PVCs that constitutionally belong to citizens by right, all in an effort to exercise their right to vote and their duty to the State. What makes the need for President Jonathan to have an eight-year tenure so crucial that citizens’ rights will have to be abrogated? What verifiable evidence does anyone have to suggest that there will be violence after a free and fair election?  Or, are those that have fallen victims of fear mongering sure that the election will not be free and fair to the point that it will induce violence?

    The country had gone on this road before. Many military rulers had shifted election dates on account of national security. General Babangida cancelled party primaries all in the name of national security. He even annulled the 1993 presidential election in order to ensure the country’s peace and stability. It is too soon to forget the huge sacrifices made by citizens after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Hundreds of citizens died at home and some in exile as a result of government’s repression of citizens who chose to protect and defend their votes after the annulment of 1993.

    Postponing election for two years is another form of annulment, regardless of how much it is packaged as a national security scheme. The only person to gain from such proposal is the incumbent president. All citizens and other contestants for office are losers. Are governors and legislators also supposed to enjoy tenure elongation? Which of the agencies in the country are to determine members of the Transition Government at federal and state levels?  If the country is so much at risk because of conducting the 2015 election, what evidence do we have that arranging a transition government will not be more risk prone than the arbitrary arrangement?  Should the proposal of the founder of SNG be adopted, the country stands the risk of failing to achieve peace and stability and lending credence to the Yoruba saying: Ole baa ti o bere fun odo nla (a lazy person is unable to do the simple task at hand and asks for something more complex).

    Whatever may be the flaw of the 1999 Constitution and the electoral laws, they both provide for straightforward ways to enable citizens choose their political office holders from president through governors to lawmakers. Opting sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship for annulment and suspension of elections in the name of national security is sheer escapism. What is needed at this stage is for all patriotic citizens to struggle for free, fair, and transparent elections that are capable of making post-election violence unnecessary for voters.

  • 2015 Politics: Oh God our help in ages past…

    2015 Politics: Oh God our help in ages past…

    As we pray for divine help in relation to the 2015 presidential and other elections, let us not forget that choosing a leader through elections is basically a terrestrial and not a celestial endeavour

    For a society that is world famous or notorious for having more prayer warriors than any other country of its size on the planet to have gone in the last few weeks into a higher praying gear must mean  that citizens are more apprehensive than they normally are. The source of apprehension appears to be the polity, particularly the conflict between the politics of tradition and change. So manifest is the perceived threat to Nigeria’s peace and progress that even the Pope found time to ask for a special prayer for Nigeria.  Obasanjo has also called for special prayers and fasting for Nigeria. Political and religious leaders and their followers are calling for divine intervention from various corners of the country in matters that are essentially human constructs. Those with the courage to recognise separation of church/mosque and state are calling in their own recommendations for caution and restraint on the part of politicians, as a way to save the country from the abyss in 2015.

    Given the stridency of calls on God to save the country, first-time visitors to the country would have thought that Christianity and Islam had just come to the country and that those in positions of leadership in the country have just known Jesus or Mohammed. Such people would not realise that there had been no time since 1960 that the country’s leaders had not been persons of Christian or Islamic faith. Even during the decades of military rule, all the dictators from Gowon to Abacha and their assistants were Christians or Muslims. Nothing is new about the current enthusiasm of political and cultural leaders to push political issues to God. This practice is in consonance with the habit of the average Nigerian to give unto God what is Caesar’s. Buck passing is an aspect of the proverbial Nigerian Factor.

    There seems to be no cogent reason for the palpable fear and tension that have enveloped the nation since the emergence of Buhari and Jonathan as presidential candidates of the country’s two major political parties. It is hard to find any reason for the panic that has become manifest in all sections of the polity, particularly among direct and indirect spokespersons for the status quo. Many young people are wondering why elders and adults in public life are worried stiff about 2015,  to the extent that those not calling frantically for prayers seem compelled by the look of things to call for  special protocols to replace the constitution.

    Just recently, a one-time minister of foreign affairs called  (apparently out of concern for peace and stability in the country) on presidential candidates and their parties to sign a special memorandum of  understanding in which they pledge not to allow their supporters to get violent after the presidential  election. One wrong assumption about post-election violence is that it is candidates and party leaders that allow voters to protest against election malpractice when citizens perceive that their votes have been stolen. In all the elections that had led to violence on account of rigging in this country: 1965 Western Nigeria’s parliamentary election; 1983 Ondo State gubernatorial election; and the spontaneous one at the end of the 2011 presidential election; there was no evidence that it was candidates or party leaders that instigated voters to get on the streets to defend their votes.  A more realistic and dependable way to prevent post-election violence is for INEC to ensure that the elections are not only free and fair but are also seen by members of all political parties to be free and fair. This is a surer way to prevent any violence than making candidates sign special Memorandum of Undertakings.

    It is INEC that is charged constitutionally to conduct free and fair elections.  It is not the job of the president to promise free and fair elections.  All encouragements should be given to INEC to do its job in such a way that it does not throw Nigeria into avoidable crisis on account of poor or substandard performance of a task that is crucial to the country’s peace and stability. The constitutional responsibility of the president vis-à-vis election does not go beyond ensuring adequate funding of the agency charged with conduct of election. It is not the job of the president to conduct election; he only needs to guarantee the independence of the electoral body. President Jonathan also has no reason to be promising that the election will be free and fair, as doing so implies that there is a role for the president in conducting an election constitutionally assigned to an independent electoral commission.

    Given the erratic nature of release of PVCs to registered voters, INEC does not appear to be doing enough to give citizens time to collect their PVCs.  The system of giving out PVCs on and off in different parts of the country at different times does not make for the efficiency required for the important task of ensuring that no duly registered citizen is disenfranchised. Part of the tension in the air must be related to the fact that there are still thousands or even millions of voters who are yet to collect their permanent voter cards six weeks to the election. For example, Elebu in Iddo Local Government area of Ibadan still had at the beginning of this week thousands of permanent voter cards waiting to be collected by their owners. There may be many more of such wards all over the country that are yet to release PVCs to potential voters.

    Instead of asking for memorandum of undertaking from candidates, efforts can still be made to ensure that INEC is able to give out all permanent voter cards before the elections. PVCs that are not collected by the end of January should be invalidated and their numbers published in national dailies. In other words, the best way to assure Nigerians that their votes matter is to ensure that INEC is able to conduct free and fair elections in an atmosphere that is devoid of any form of intimidation of voters. What happened in Ekiti and Osun States earlier in the year should not be a model for the 2015 elections. It is reassuring that President Jonathan had promised in his New Year message that INEC would be given all the support it needs to conduct free and fair elections in 2015.

    Our democracy must be prepared to experience whatever difficulties are part of electoral democracy. We should do everything to organise a credible election and have the courage to abide by citizens’ verdict at the polls. The strength of democracy is that candidates-be they incumbents or not-have the same chance to persuade citizens to vote for them at elections. And once an election is free and fair, any party that becomes violent then becomes an enemy of democracy and the country. And citizens should be up to the task to resist any senseless violence driven by any individual’s inordinate ambition. In other words, what needs to inspire pundits and citizens about the elections of February of 2015 is the imperative of free and fair election.

    Furthermore, media pundits need to avoid misleading the average voter through sensational headlines about perfect candidates for the presidency. There is no candidate anywhere in the world that is perfect for any office. It is not part of the culture of democracy to look for perfect candidates or messiahs.  Let our media assist our people to do what people do in other democracies: choose the best fit for the job at hand out of the many candidates presented by political parties. As we pray for divine help in relation to the 2015 presidential and other elections, let us not forget that choosing a leader through elections is basically a terrestrial and not a celestial endeavour. Putting electoral matters in hands of God may not be enough to guarantee free and fair elections.

    Let us remember that our responsibility as citizens and leaders is to ensure that the election to choose the next set of leaders to govern the country is transparently free and fair. Once an incontrovertibly free and fair election is assured, we can be sure that all the gods that 160 million Nigerians worship in different ways will be around to help shame anyone who opts for violence.

  • Buhari & Osibajo: the road to fixing Nigeria

    Buhari & Osibajo: the road to fixing Nigeria

    Each village meeting concluded that Buhari is not coming back to rule as a representative of the military, should he get elected, but as a member of All Progressives Congress.

    Finally, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has given the Nigerian electorate the other side of the electoral equation to consider in its search for the right presidential ticket to govern Nigeria in the next four years. Many APC members are already calling the Buhari-Osibajo ticket the ‘Dream Team’ to fix Nigeria. As expected in the marketing of candidates that electoral contest engenders, PDP spokespersons are quick in telling voters that this team is not formidable enough to unseat the incumbent. The interest of today’s column is to share reservations and recommendations of folks in many Yoruba towns and villages (which I had visited in the last four weeks) with regards  to the two teams; one old and the other new, asking for citizens’ approval in the next presidential election.

    On questions about the incumbent team, citizens did not have specific comments. They told me that they know enough about the Jonathan-Sambo ticket already, having had the two leaders in power for close to six months. They rather threw their own questions to me: “Are you sure Buhari can fix the country better than he did in 1984?” I answered that I was there to find out what they thought as voters, not to express my thought as a commentator wanting to feel the political pulse or temperature of the masses with respect to leading contenders for the APC ticket. I insisted that I was in every town or village visited in my personal capacity to listen to indigenes and residents, not to persuade anyone with my own feeling on the important matter of fixing Nigeria.

    At a bar in Osogbo, one young man clad in a mechanic’s blue overcoat kicked off the discussion: “Should Buhari win the primaries, does anyone think that he will be in a position at 72 to fix Nigeria any better than what he did at 42?” Many okada riders in the room said between sips of beer that Buhari was too obsessed with unity and discipline in 1984 for him to be able to fix today’s more complex Nigeria. Others shouted them down that they were too young to know what happened in 1984 and should not waste the time of the visiting newspaper columnist by re-casting the prejudice of old UPN members. I quickly interjected, urging everyone to respect the view of the other and called for ground rules for the bar seminar. We all agreed in Osogbo as we did in Ipetu-Ijesa, Ile-Oluji, Ondo, Okitipupa, Inisa, Oyan, Ilese, Sagamu, Ikorodu, Ilorin, Offa, Ajase-po, Oyo, Fiditi, Ote, and for Lagos area in Ipaja, Festac, Alagbado, Mushin, and Ibafo. We agreed that each person would be allowed to air his or her views on each candidate and we would cast a vote at the end of each evening’s road-side political seminar on each issue discussed.

    If votes recorded in the informal seminars were anything to go by, Buhari’s emergence in Lagos last week as the APC flag-bearer would not have surprised anyone in many of the bars visited. Most of the discussion in various towns was about his presidential candidacy. He was the candidate most favoured and also the most scrutinised. There was no session at which the issue of his need to explain why he made certain choices during the eighteen months he was military head of state. The negative questions were many: “Why did he stop the Lagos Metro Project; why did he keep UPN politicians in jail when nobody had accused them of stealing from public till; why did he ask citizens to wait in straight lines like soldiers at bus stations; why did he order that people who threw litters on the streets be flogged by WAI brigades?” One person in Okuku even asked why Buhari wanted to bring two leading southern UPN politicians; Dikko and Akinloye, back from London in crates to come and face trial for corrupt enrichment in Lagos. But there were older persons in the room who quickly put the last question to rest by saying that Dikko was Fulani like Buhari and that Akinloye was a leader of NPN, not UPN. One matter that came up in each session was the readiness of Buhari to do the needful: re-structure the polity and allow each region or state to develop at its own pace.

    From one town or village to the other, the beer-parlour seminar was characterised at the beginning by boisterous discussions, but each ended on a sober note of philosophic reflection that many pundits would not associate with bar discussions. Many issues that could have been raised by PDP campaign managers were raised pointedly and not necessarily to damage Buhari’s campaign but to let him have the benefit of the interaction between the Yoruba political memory and electoral behaviour. One of such revelations was the point that a man’s deeds at 40 should not be used to disqualify him from any race that he joins at 70 and that thirty years should be long enough to change a man or woman that is not retarded. I was told by a clearly ‘lumpen’ group that doing something that made people uncomfortable thirty years ago is not as bad failing to grow with time to see things differently thirty years after, but that such leader must be ready to explain the reasons for his actions thirty years younger. A young woman, moving from serving beer to drinking Guinness stout, said: “It is the vision of the leader regarding the future that matters, not what he did not do to the satisfaction of everybody thirty years ago.”

    I was told that Buhari in 1984 did not do anything with a mandate. Nigerians had no power over his choices of what to do, as he was responsible to his fellow military men who picked to replace Shehu Shagari, whom citizens voted for but who was apparently unable to govern the country properly while citizens who gave him their mandate to rule were also unable to call for his impeachment. Some blue-collar workers even said that Buhari was in 1984 a loyal member of a pack, the Nigerian military class, not a party with the overarching slogan of Change. The military-ruling class was described as one that from the beginning of military rule in 1966 to its end in 1999 made too many mistakes about how to fix Nigeria. Some persons even pontificated that if we are going to hold Buhari’s performances in 1984-85 against him, we should have done the same to Obasanjo who later came to govern Nigeria as a civilian president for eight years through the proverb: “Bawoni obo se s’ori ti inaki ko se?” (What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander).

    I also heard that voters should hold Buhari and his running mate down to electoral promises they are able to make. One woman said several times at the top of her voice that Buhari has been saying since 2007 that he would restructure the country if elected, an indication that he was not going to be satisfied with addressing the symptoms at the expense of the causes of Nigeria’s problems which have been festering for over half a century. Nobody knew at that point that Buhari was going to choose a running-mate, YemiOsibajo, who also spent so much of his legal mind defending and protecting the vestiges of federalism in place during his eight years of serving as Lagos State’s chief legal officer.

    Soldiers in their one-dimensional thinking, one Danfo driver said, “misread the country’s political signs. They thought federalism was the enemy of the country’s unity and all of them in power worked hard to dismantle the country’s federal system, only to realise that the unity for which they broke the country into mini-states designed to survive on life support from petro dollars has remained elusive, even sixteen years after the exit of military rule. If the groups in the discussions were big enough to justify any generalisation, one would have paid substantial attention in this piece to a school teacher’s advice to Yoruba voters: “It is not enough to vote for Buhari and abandon him to his own devices; it is important to remind him at all times that he is the candidate of a party that in Yorubaland is seen as standing for Freedom for all, Life more abundant. Each village meeting concluded that Buhari is not coming back to rule as a representative of the military, should he get elected, but as a member of All Progressives Congress.