It is unlikely the Jonathan presidency took cognisance of the frightening and unpredictable dimensions the postponement of the polls portends; nor did the government apparently bother about international perceptions and derision flowing from the implausible and impulsive excuses given for the date shifts. In the foreseeable future, Nigeria must find ways of grappling with regional and continental contempt for its lack of capacity and innovation in the conduct of elections, writes Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
Two main reasons were given for the postponement of the general elections from February 14 and 28 to March 28 and April 11. First is that more time was needed to complete the distribution of the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs). And second, that the security agencies could not guarantee the safety of polling officials and voters in the four Northeast states of Gombe, Yobe, Borno and Adamawa. Convinced that legally speaking, the electoral body would not be violating the electoral law or the constitution by shifting the polls, the Goodluck Jonathan government put pressure on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to postpone the elections. In six weeks, said the government optimistically, the distribution of PVCs would have been largely completed, and the security situation in the Northeast would have improved considerably to allow polling. Nothing else was contemplated regarding the consequences of the postponement, whether economic, social or political.
Few analysts believe that the Jonathan presidency convinced even itself that the postponement was altruistic, let alone persuade a wary and sceptical, if not cynical, public that the interests of the country were considered in the poll date extension. Indeed, as INEC argued, both the Ekiti and Osun elections of June 21 and August 9, 2014 respectively did not achieve 100 per cent PVC distribution, yet the credibility of the two polls was not compromised. What apparently tilted the decision to postpone the polls in favour of the Jonathan government, which had campaigned covertly but strenuously for extension, was the absolute refusal of the government and especially the military to guarantee the security of voters and polling officials alike in the Northeast. The military would be busy fighting Boko Haram insurgents for the next six weeks, the government said tersely, heaving a sigh of relief that the plans and plots it elaborately laid out have proved devastatingly successful after all.
The two reasons given for the postponement are however widely believed to be a smokescreen. While it is true that PVCs were not fully distributed for a number of reasons, there was nothing to indicate it would have affected one party more than the other. INEC had in fact suggested that if necessary, the cards could be distributed up to the eve of the elections, thereby achieving close to 90 per cent success rate, if not more. While it is also true that the Northeast continues to boil, yet nothing suggested last week, notwithstanding the synergised war against Boko Haram by Cameroon, Niger and Chad, that a sectarian, economic and political revolt that had festered for much of six years could suddenly be pacified in six weeks.
Attahiru Jega, INEC chairman and professor of political science, had the painful duty, after many personal protestations of his bona fides and electoral and administrative probity, of announcing the postponement. He put almost the entire fault on the refusal of the security agencies to provide security for voters and polling officials. But once announced, the postponement was easily seen as the culmination of many weeks of subterranean battles and intrigues by officials of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and presidential aides, if not directly the president himself.
Dangerous fait accompli
The plotters may have presented the country with a fait accompli, but not only was the President not averse to the plot, in which middle he placed himself comfortably and extravagantly, he also rose grandly to become its inspirer and personification. Herein is the crux of the matter. The postponement goes far beyond the ordinary fact of an election controversially delayed either for noble or ulterior reasons, or for baser emotions of sly and wily efforts to cleverly subvert popular will and the constitution. In reality, it actually speaks to far weightier matters and principles, both of which have deeper meanings and impact on the President himself, his image and future, and the polity.
When the United States (U.S.) Secretary of State, John Kerry, visited Nigeria about two weeks ago and held discussions with the two leading candidates, Dr Jonathan and Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd) of the APC, he stressed the need to resist the temptation to either postpone the elections or seek unlawful advantage over each other. The President only managed to give him the assurance of an inviolate handover date, nothing more. Dr Jonathan, it was obvious, knew where he was going, and more importantly how to get there, if necessary, by every act of subtlety, artifice and deviousness. He was not ruffled by any ethical considerations, nor was he perturbed by the American warnings, which he felt he could flout as long as he kept within the larger framework of the Nigerian Electoral Law. He indeed kept to that law; but managed in the same breath to violate something much graver, something more telling, something more destructive of his image and personality, and of country.
Dr Jonathan is probably unaware that the message of the postponement reverberates far wider and much deeper than he imagines. With the postponement, the President now comes across as completely alienated from the nobility inherent in his office, and is uninterested in the rich and enduring legacies that define great rulers. He has voted for expediency, for the ephemeral, for the surface adornments of office, and has moved the country closer to the unpredictable edge of crisis and collapse, where six weeks could become something much longer and complicated, where even the very survival of the country could be at stake. Dr Jonathan is no longer able to hide his desperation to win reelection or, in alliance with others, prevent Gen Buhari from winning, and he will do whatever it takes to achieve his aim in the questionable understanding that no office seeker gives up power without bitterly contesting it or influencing the election of his successor.
By inspiring and embodying the postponement plot, Dr Jonathan exemplifies once again his often problematic engagement with logic and history, not to say his inscrutable perception of reality. Though he is President, and should naturally be intellectually and philosophically endowed, at least a little above the average Nigerian, he ignores both the message of national impotence and incompetence that the postponement communicates to Nigerians and the outside world, and the destruction of our self-esteem that the act portends. The world now sees a Jonathan who is desperately intriguing for power, a President who does not seem keen on making Nigeria different from countries ruled by dictators. They have always suspected his bona fides, but now they can confirm that his private ambitions far transcend his ambition for country, and that his ambition is not to outshine his predecessors, but would not even mind being bested by those predecessors as long as he enjoys the distinction of having ruled Nigeria, perhaps as a two-term President.
There are not many presidents anywhere in the world who can grasp this point, but it needs to be reiterated. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, it can be argued, does not love his country. He loves himself in office far more than the selfless task of setting up a great, inspiring, durable, and workable democratic foundation for Zimbabwe. Could he be certain that the foundation he has refused to lay would be laid by someone else in the near or far future? Muammar Gaddafi did not also love his country; he was a megalomaniac in power, a paranoid and licentious ruler with some dubious fame as the African who stood up to the West, an African with questionable nationalistic and pan-African credentials. Even Yoweri Museveni who gloated over Dr Jonathan’s leadership failings is also failing to lay the right democratic foundation for Uganda. Indeed, most African leaders, excluding Nelson Mandela, have done wrong by their countries. The most notable example in recent years must be ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose lack of depth and wisdom led him both to the self-serving dubiety of interpreting national foundations from the materialistic perspective — unlike the philosophical perspective preferred by America’s founding fathers — and the even more noxious and malicious enterprise of foisting the futile duo of Umaru Yar’Adua and Dr Jonathan on a perplexed country.
If Dr Jonathan were jealous for Nigeria, if he respected, understood and loved her, he would subordinate his private longings to her national yearnings. He would realise the emblematic damage not holding an election on February 14 would cause her. He would recognise that the world would hiss at our incompetence, at our inability to organise a simple election, at our lack of self-respect and ambition as a leading country in Africa. But no leader comes to this realisation without a deep study of some of the epochal transformations that took place in America, Europe, China and other Asian countries, and even deeper study of great leaders:of Julius and Augustus Caesar, of Alexander the Great, of Charlemagne, of Mandela, of Suleyman the Magnificent, of Frederick the Great, of Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Julius Nyerere, Genghis Khan, and a few others who have made a huge impression on history, men and women the heavens would acknowledge their nationalism and mastery of and positive use of power.
Undisguised ordinariness
A leader incapable of inspiring himself by books and by the lives and times of great men can obviously neither inspire others nor even envision the utopia of his distant dreams. Indeed, one of the most striking things in next month’s elections in Nigeria and the ongoing campaigns is the undisguised ordinariness of Dr Jonathan’s presidency. It is surprising that many of those who support him cite the roads he has built, his tinkering with the railways, setting up of poorly-funded federal universities, and what they say are his achievements in agriculture, as proof of his competence and even greatness. They pointedly ignore references to the poor quality of his decisions and statements underscored by his more than five years in office. Here, indeed, is a President who not only fails to appreciate when his actions insult the country he presides over, but who while reacting to the Charles Soludo criticisms of his economic policies rated Cable Network News (CNN), World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists higher than any in Nigeria. A mind of such considerable desuetude, a mind that sneers at and deprecates his gifted compatriots simply because they disagree with him, cannot soar, let alone inspire other minds to walk or run.
Given the central role it played in the postponement of the elections, the Nigerian military will need a long time and huge efforts to reclaim its independence, professionalism, pride and prestige. Quite like President Jonathan, the military is insensitive to the damage inflicted on its credibility by its refusal to secure the polls. As many analysts have pointed out, a number of countries have held elections in time of war, limited insurgency, or intense crisis in a part of their country. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan not too long ago held heavily policed polls. During World War II, Britain held its 1945 poll in July, many months before Japan surrendered unconditionally in September. The war in Europe had barely ended in May, while it was yet to end in other theatres. The popular Churchill went on to lose the poll in spite of the fact that many of the conferences aimed at defining and realigning post-war Europe were still ongoing, including the historically famous Potsdam conference.
Neither President Jonathan nor the Nigerian military seems eager to draw upon the lessons of history, obsessed as they are by their secret plots to subvert the electoral process and democracy itself.
In the thick of the international efforts to rescue the 219 abducted Chibok schoolgirls, U.S. diplomats warned the Nigerian military that their refusal to effectively deal with the Boko Haram menace, particularly their refusal to fight, and the desertions that were rife at the time, endangered their regional and continental reputation. Whether the Nigerian military top brass appreciated this warning is not clear. But in spite of everything, the military has even gone ahead to take a more ominous and precipitous step by announcing to the whole world that they were incapable of performing their constitutional obligation of securing the country against insurgents during elections. That confession, perhaps unknown to them, has wider implications beyond the mere postponement of the polls or the politics enveloping it. It was already clear it would take them time to live down the bad reputation they acquired over the Boko Haram war; now it will take them much longer to live down the more shocking reputation of admitting impotence in the face of threats to poll and national security.
Brewing crisis of confidence
The poor image of the military is not helped by fresh revelations about the role they played in the Ekiti and Osun governorship polls, and the increasing impression formed by many Nigerians that they had become a willing, partisan tool in the hands of the PDP and the Jonathan presidency. Perhaps they already understand that a crisis of confidence is brewing both in the military and in the country. But they seem unable to address these concerns, and they seem helpless in resisting the image of a subservient and unquestioning force foisted on them by the ruling party. Long after the polls are held and won, perhaps by a party capable of engendering greater professionalism in the military, the country may in the coming years have to grapple with the onerous task of reforming, retooling and reorienting the military. The military will have to be purged of its weaknesses, its difficulty in summoning the right character to operate as a professional institution, its inability to understand what a modern military should look, sound and behave like, especially in a democracy, and curbing the daring expansion of its constitutional powers into strictly civil terrains.
The story of the postponement has obviously not ended. It may in fact be the opening shot in a series of battles designed to reclaim and reshape Nigerian politics, economy and society. Nigerians may therefore need to brace for more brutal manoeuvres in the coming weeks. The military and the National Security Adviser (NSA) have asked for six weeks to pacify the Northeast. It is not certain they can achieve their aim. But even if they do, and Boko Haram is defeated, it is still unlikely that that blighted region would vote for President Jonathan or the ruling party. Peace or war, the Northeast may have already thrown in its lot with the opposition. If it did not have other more sinister objectives, for example, tenure extension and the like, would the PDP risk pacifying a region that is almost 100 per cent in bed with the opposition?
This uncertainty may account for why many political observers believe the postponement is just the opening salvo in a high-stake struggle for power, one in which the Jonathan presidency appears determined to contrive a stalemate, no matter what risks that stalemate portends. It is in fact feared that the postponement could easily gravitate towards no election at all, and thence to some unconstitutional legislature-backed solutions. Or worse, that a cabal had seized the levers of power and is determined to ensure that power, irrespective of the electoral wishes of voters, is not transferred to those they describe as unfit for the presidency. We may indeed now be witnessing unconscionable and desperately cynical manipulations, plots and machinations backed by the military and security agencies, plots that could endanger democracy itself.
The greatest losers in the ongoing political shuffles are President Jonathan and the military, the former for his leadership shortcomings and lack of patriotic and nationalistic instincts and reflexes, and the latter for its supine acquiescence to the partisan wiles and counterproductive policies and actions of the PDP and the presidency. Indeed, the weeks ahead will be turbulent. Having bitten the bullet by cajoling INEC to postpone the elections, and having seemingly defied and ignored the West, particularly the U.S., the Jonathan presidency may feel emboldened to take extra-constitutional measures to shore up its slackening hold on power, subvert or neutralise the legislature, inveigle the judiciary into delivering crass decisions or perhaps castrate it like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State has done, muzzle the vocal press, as they did a few months back when they tried to cripple a section of the print media, especially the so-called critical opposition papers, and tamper in a most vicious and brutal manner with the liberties and freedoms of the people.
After these measures are unleashed on a testy, hungry and frustrated nation, as Ukraine’s recent history is showing, it will be impossible to predict the future course of events, or determine how the chips may fall.
