“You dare God but scamper before men”— Yoruba saying
What globally renowned Africans, Kofi Annan (Ghana), former United Nations secretary-general; and Emeka Anyaoku (Nigeria), former Commonwealth secretary-general, were involved in the non-violent pact of January 14, would underscore the African anxiety over Nigeria’s 2015 general election.
That bodies like the European Union, UKaid, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the US International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, backed the pact-signing, shows the touching affection the rest of the world harbour toward Nigeria and its wellbeing.
Still, even with all the international do-gooding, it is amazing how the global order is rigged against justice and fair play; but is nevertheless primed to rally against violence, the sure and logical result of injustice.
It is the Yoruba equivalent of daring God but scampering before men!
The involvement in the pact-signing, of Mr. Annan and Chief Anyaoku, global patriots of the first rank, introduces an ironic déjà vu, particularly if the mind flips back to the 12 June 1993 presidential election result annulment debacle.
June 12? O, yes! June 12 is the fundament of the current mess.
If Gen. Ibrahim Babangida had not annulled Nigeria’s cleanest election ever, there would have been no Gen. Sani Abacha, whose iron despotism totally defrocked the military, before he expired via “divine intervention”; no NADECO war of attrition; no Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and his hurried handover; no concessionary zoning that made Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo president to placate the Yoruba, but whose presidency gave the 4th Republic its worst possible start; no President Umaru Yar’Adua dying in office, prompting an opportunistic junking of zoning that vaulted Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to power; and no President Jonathan, thoroughly and hopelessly overwhelmed, so much so that he is not only the undertaker of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) federal ruling party but may well be, from threats of his own camp fearing a crushing election defeat, the undertaker of the country.
But back to June 12, vis-a-vis the intervening pair of Mr. Annan and Chief Anyaoku. IBB had annulled the election and Abacha had gaoled Chief MKO Abiola for four years, roughly equalling his annulled presidential term.
But to break the deadlock, before MKO’s own alleged elimination by not-so-divine-intervention, what brief did the two renowned global diplomats have? To persuade MKO to surrender his freely given mandate — not to compel the erring Nigerian order to right the grave wrong, even with Abacha’s death!
This however, had nothing to do with the personal ethics of these two gentlemen; but rather the cast-in-iron ethos of the hypocritical establishment that sent them.
It didn’t matter: that MKO committed no crime, aside from winning a credible election; that while in gaol, the state also eliminated his wife Kudirat, for crusading to actualise the mandate of her locked-up husband; that a vicious state also ruined his multi-billion naira business empire!
Twenty-one years after June 12, during which period Nigeria and its institutions badly atrophied, and in the run-up to another vital poll, this soulless pro-power, anti-justice mindset has changed little.
In the non-violence pact of January 14, equal access, the most fundamental guarantor of electoral justice — and peace — was the last of the five protocols: “All the institutions of government, including INEC and security agencies, must act and be seen to act with impartiality.”
The first four protocols were sentimental platitudes, on which hardly anyone can be held to account: issue-based campaigns, no inciting statements, zero-tolerance for provocative campaigns and a national peace committee to commit all parties to the accord!
Now, what was that: a honest oversight or a lexical Freudian slip showing that even in the search for “peace”, the core fundament of justice matters less than sentimental pufferies?
Why, the president even blighted the ceremony with his near-patent illogical assertions, this one a fantastic claim that rigging does not necessarily cause violence. It was a light jibe at Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, his main presidential rival, whose “inciting” statement was blamed for the post-2011 electoral violence in the North.
President Jonathan reasoned — rather speciously — that in Kano and Bauchi he got barely 16 per cent of the vote. Yet, violence still broke out. But what if even that number was stolen?
Nasir El-Rufai, on page 466 of his book, The Accidental Public Servant, claimed a fleeing Kaduna PDP hierarch, on board the same aircraft with him, confessed that to make the 25 per cent mark in the state, Jonathan’s vote was inflated by 800, 000! On account of this heist, he alleged, Vice President Namadi Sambo and his close confidants, complete with scions and prized autos, skipped town!
Mallam El-Rufai argued that such explosive vote-pilferage, which allegedly leaked to irate youths, accounted for the post-vote rage in many northern cities. If that were true, would the Jonathan pact-signing theory of rigging-does-not-cause-violence still hold?
That patent illogicality of some-people-are-willy-nilly-violent seemed to have driven the certitude in Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi’s thinking that whichever side won the presidential election, violence would break out.
With all due respect to the erudite and rigorous professor, that theory cannot be supported by logic — or even common sense. If violence breaks out, it is because there is demonstrable violence to the voting right of the people.
That was the trigger in the Wild, Wild West of the 1st Republic, when Demo politicians, with a certain Remi Fani-Kayode leading the pack, boasting on the hustings that if the people did not vote for them, others would. Certainly, the others did; and the people reacted. The rest, as they say, is history!
Ironically, some 50 years later, a certain Femi Fani-Kayode, the proud scion of the original, is in the Jonathan camp, leading the charge with his own harvest of pre-vote illogicality!
That was the trigger in the 2nd Republic, in the tragic Akin Omoboriowo brazen gubernatorial steal in old Ondo State (now Ondo and Ekiti states), via the notorious federal might. That inferno consumed the otherwise fine mind, Olaiya Fagbamigbe, among others.
That probably would have been the trigger, had federal might attempted to skew the Osun gubernatorial election of 2014, against the people’s clear and unmistakable will. And whoever still believe both the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial elections of 2014 were “free and fair”, despite delivering contradictory results, are entitled to their costly delusion.
Trust no politician — progressive, conservative or reactionary — if they can rig, they will. Still, from its certified record of deviant abuse of state coercion for partisan gain, and the near-complete collapse of elite consensus on, and mass revulsion at, the Jonathan Presidency, it appears to have higher motive, than anyone else, to rig the election.
In fairness to the Jonathan government, such brazen electoral abuse is the usual trend. But by its spectacular bungling, Jonathan appears stripped of any elite conspiracy that could, like in the past, cover up such a heist.
So, let the noble, anti-violence ensemble pressure the government to deliver a demonstrably fair poll.
Prevention-is-better-than-cure wise, that would be better antidote to violence than a thousand pacts, even if a non-violence pact isn’t a bad idea.
