By Dayo Sobowale
The November 3 Presidential elections in the US engage our attention today especially as the usual party conventions for Nomination of the two candidates ended this week with that of the Republican Party. I take issues with some events and utterances from the politicians at the conventions and make some comparisons with similar situations in Nigeria moreso with the use of the word ‘rigging‘ by the US president as a possibility in the election.
Rigging of course is a familiar word in Nigeria’s democracy and politics and has dogged every election here except that of the June 12 election won by MKO which was truncated by the IBB military regime. It is an unfamiliar word in American or indeed European politics because it is as unthinkable as it is unexpected, and I am talking strictly of EU nations and not nations like Russia or Belarus where protesters are still on the streets protesting as rigged, the election of their president in the just concluded presidential elections.
Let me start with the observation about Nigeria on rigging and note clearly that even if a party in Nigeria knows it has the majority and goodwill to win, it would as a matter of course still rig or pad the figures. Consequently and inevitably, the number of votes returned will be more than the number of registered voters on the electoral roll. The rationale for rigging in such a safe constituency is to make assurances doubly sure. So you can imagine the fierceness and zeal to secure the majority in a highly competitive environment and electoral zone. The import here is that rigging, like budget padding in our legislature, is a way of life or culture in Nigeria’s politics and democracy. Just as it is a stranger in American politics and democracy, into which rigging is about to make a grand entry, as proclaimed by no less a person than the incumbent President Donald Trump, seeking reelection in the same November 3 Presidential election. Indeed it is necessary to make this distinction in the nature of politics in both Nigeria and the US because Nigeria’s politics of presidential system was borrowed from the Americans by the military. Which so admired America’s presidential politics such that we have had two military presidents elected as democratic presidents as civilians, in elections that were naturally coated in rigging but were accepted as clear victories; but always characteristically contested as rigged by-election losers who ended up as losers too with the subsequent Supreme Court judgments affirming the victory of the winners of the presidential elections.
It is clear then that there is an umbilical chord between Nigerian and American political systems which is the presidential system of government. With this in mind let us identify the utterances that provoked today’s ruminations from the conventions of the two parties in America this week. The first was by US Vice President Mike Pence who warned that the US will not be a safe place if Trump loses and that his opponent Joe Biden did not mention a word on the violent protests rocking the US on racial killings and vowed that the rule of law will be maintained at all costs if Trump wins. The second utterance or warning was from the presidential candidate that Trump defeated in the last presidential election of 2016 Hillary Clinton who ominously asked Biden not to concede defeat if the election results are close and he loses . These two positions advocated on the coming US presidential elections form the kernel of the comparative politics we embark on between Nigeria and the USA today .
It is a good point that Trump’s running mate pointed out that Biden did not mention the protests in his speech accepting his party’s nomination. But that could be an oversight rather than a condoning of the violent street protests . While the Democratic Party has branded the Trump Administration as reckless and incompetent in handling the pandemic, the racial killings and the economy there is no denying that blacks in the US favour the Democractic Party more than the Republicans and those being killed by the White Police are blacks. Hence the Black Lives Matter dominance of the protests hijacked by arsonists and anarchists that Trump and the Republicans are denouncing and invoking the rule of law. However what is good for the goose should be good for the gander. The Democrats should equally call on the GOP to condemn police excesses and make proposals to put blacks in police jobs and change the orientation of American white policemen that blacks are disposable criminals to be shot like wild life and randomly, in a republic that brags historically that all men, regardless of their colour are created equal.
In comparison with Nigeria however, Nigeria needs the sort of promise and dedication to the maintenance of law and order that the Republicans are offering the American people in the face of police killings of blacks and the hijacking of the protests by lawless arsonists. The killings in the North west and NE of Nigeria and the terror of Boko Haram and its bloodletting existence should become a thing of the past .We need the sort of news that the Nigeria Army in OperationWhirl Stroke overcame the terrorist group Darul Salam in Nasarawa state such that 410 of its members surrendered and the army destroyed their bomb making site and drove them out of their forest. The army then warned that it is ready to flush out all terrorists group in the North Central. We pray for such decisive victories in the NE, NW and more importantly against Boko Haram sooner than later.
This is because the Republican Party promise on law and order to Americans is similar to the APC promise on security and Boko Haram elimination and it was on this platform that the Jonathan Administration was weeded out in the 2015 presidential election and the APC gained power and was reelected in 2019 on the same promise which is now proving difficult to fulfill. Government should crush any insurgency that stands in the way of its fulfilling its election promises as the Republicans have promised Americans on law and order in the coming November 3 elections in the US.
On the advice of Hillary Clinton to Biden not to concede if he loses narrowly that is an invitation to chaos similar to Trump’s shouting wolf of rigging on the coming elections. It is clearly un-American. But maybe Hillary is lamenting that she conceded too easily to Trump in 2016, or that the Republicans controversially claimed victory for George Bush Jnr in the close election of 2000 that Al Gore lost. Either way, the Americans have a lesson to learn from Nigeria’s 2015 election when power changed smoothly and President Goodluck Jonathan, now the peacemaker of Mali conceded defeat to the man who recently sent him to Mali to get the army out of the power they recently seized in that nation. Jonathan’s swift conceding of power is a high point of Nigeria’s democracy and presidential system similar to what obtained in American politics hitherto. Such goodwill between a leader who lost power and his successor, is totally impossible in the present climate of the American presidential election and presidential system. I am certain that if Trump loses, the Democrats will surely send him to jail, given the bitterness of this US presidential campaign and election. Once again, long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria and From the fury of this pandemic Good Lord Deliver Nigeria.
Leave a Reply