As this column was being written, Kogi State was heading to 91 polling units in 18 local government areas to vote in the December 5 controversial supplementary election ordered by a vacillating Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The electoral body had declared the November 21 governorship poll inconclusive on the grounds that the registered voters in the disputed polling units exceeded the difference between the ballots cast for former All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Abubakar Audu, and Idris Wada, governor and Peoples Democratic Party candidate. INEC ignored the more definitive statistics that the permanent voter cards collected in all those units were less than 38,000, implying that there was no arithmetical miracle by which the APC could have lost the election. Sources in INEC, however, indicate that in declaring the election inconclusive, the electoral body was simply fulfilling the letter of the law.
No one will, however, dispute the fact that INEC fostered the stalemate and opened the doors to the controversy ravaging Kogi State. Why they did it, and whether they were externally influenced by those dead set against both Prince Audu and Hon Faleke for political and religious reasons will be hard to say at the moment. There are only indications that INEC was not surefooted, and that it appeared to have surrendered its independence to certain elements, including the Attorney General. If INEC behaved most uninspiringly, the presidency, which behaved most depressingly conspiratorial, is even worse. The presidency’s cavalier attitude towards the poll gives plenty of room to suspect its motives, especially the mala fide manner it distanced itself from the candidates and the poll. The first impression created was that the APC candidate, Prince Audu, was tainted, and as the PDP suggested and campaigned, it would be counterproductive for the president to identify with him. But not only was the corruption case yet to be proved, even the president himself was tainted with religious and ethnic fanaticism; yet a majority of Nigerians ignored the campaign and rallied to his side.
Closely leashed to this is the presidency’s appalling misconception of party politics and supremacy. Even in the best of times, the Buhari presidency never quite showed a grasp of what a party is and what it stands for. Now, with the contempt demonstrated by the president for the Prince Audu ticket, it was not surprising that he declined to campaign for him before he died. The APC on the whole did not even mourn their standard-bearer in the truest sense of mourning. Not only were they eager to move on, they were joyous in betraying the Audu/Faleke ticket and rubbishing it on flimsy grounds. Some analysts have however accused the party of being influenced by religious and ethnic considerations, inadvertently corroborating the longtime argument of politicians like Femi Fani-Kayode who suggested that the party had an underlining religious and ethnic agenda.
The betrayal has also permeated, for now, two of the state’s senatorial districts. Kogi Central, constituted mostly by the Ebira, and from among whom the APC picked Yahaya Bello as the substitute for Prince Audu, has ignored the cause of justice and rallied enthusiastically to the side of their son. Justice be damned, they seem to say; after all, they were not the ones who inspired the initial unjust manoeuvre by INEC, nor were they the ones who pushed a deliberately malevolent APC to rubbish the Audu/Faleke ticket, nor still were they the people who turned the president against the APC’s democratically chosen ticket for the November 21 poll. As far as they were concerned, they had no reason not to profit from the massive betrayal of the APC ticket and the wholesale repudiation of political ethics mindlessly engineered by certain APC bigwigs.
Kogi West, Abiodun Faleke’s senatorial district, is also believed to be desperately asking their son to take the consolatory position of running mate in the APC ticket so that they would have something to show for their efforts. It does not apparently matter to them that they would be forsaking the principles and the cause of justice they have been known to fight for over the decades. Their elders unwisely fought for and embraced the idea of Kogi State only to end up holding the short end of the stick. Now, their children are on the edge of repudiating the values their great ancestors fought for, their fortitude in the face of injustice and unfairness over the centuries, and the great and ennobling achievements they made as a people in the fields of culture, education, politics and even religion. It is expected that Mr Faleke will stand pat, even if he remains the last man standing, and that he will be prepared to lose the governorship seat rather than abjure the values and principles he has campaigned for, even if everyone around him, including his party, surrenders to infamy. He will not be part of the immorality of transferring the Audu/Faleke victory to the party’s favoured interloper.
It is not clear how Kogi East, where Prince Audu hailed from, would have responded had the entire process been voided and fresh primaries ordered, especially considering how they had over the years resisted power shift. But for now, having apparently lost to their bitterest rival, the Ebira, and are about losing everything except the courts say otherwise, it is expected they will stay the course and stick to the Faleke inheritance.
The most important lesson in the serial betrayal gnawing at the liver of Kogi State is that the APC was never really a party, and that whatever pretence it still has to being called one is only to the extent that a few people in the party, having hijacked the levers of party power, are now striving to foist certain primordial and parochial agenda on the rest. Intertwined with this is the fact that Nigeria is in crying need of true leaders, men and women who are neither beholden to religion, ethnic agenda or private and short-term political goals; men and women who take the long, expansive, larger and visionary view of politics and country; men and women who have a passion to break down the walls that divide Nigerians and forge a common purpose for the country; men and women who despite their own losses and disadvantaged positions would fight for justice whatever the cost, in the understanding that in the long run the society is hurt when leaders pursue or disguise private interests under national, altruistic interest.
It is also dismaying that while the Kogi APC candidature controversy raged, the only voices heard were social and public commentators and legal experts, nearly all of whom have argued from the general lacunae in the electoral law and the constitution. There was not one statesman from the North or South heard. It was as if the disingenuously aloof and silent President Buhari was the country’s only surviving and senior statesman. No statesman reminded the country of the consequences of past injustice, and no one warns of present injustice. There was no moral voice, no voice of caution, no warning against the creeping ethnocentrism and sectarianism of some powerful APC leaders who have taken a position that negates the cause of justice and endangers the future of the ruling party. If care is not taken, the betrayal of Kogi may yet be the archetype of Nigerian politics, a symbol of what is to come, as the country falls deeper into the clutches of ruthless mafias.
