Last Wednesday, this column ended with a promise that today, God willing, we’ll examine the question about whether the opposition leadership can deliver on its commitment of bringing an end to the nasty and brutish present the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has landed us in and would like us to continue with. Of course, PDP did not put it exactly this way when President Goodluck Jonathan read his acceptance speech as its candidate in next month’s presidential election during his recent coronation at Eagle Square in Abuja.
“The choice before Nigerians in the coming election,” he said in the speech, “is simple: A choice between going forward or (sic) going backwards; between the new ways and the old ways; between freedom and repression; between a record of visible achievements and beneficial reforms and desperate power-seekers with empty promises.”
Obviously for the president, a vote for the first options in his four dichotomies – forward/backward; new ways/old ways; freedom/repression; visible achievements and beneficial reforms/ desperate power seekers with empty promises – represents a vote for himself and PDP, while a vote for the second represents one for General Muhammadu Buhari and All Progressives Congress (APC).
These dichotomies, to begin with, are based on certain false assumptions and some are indeed themselves false. It is, for example, not necessarily true that the future is always better than the past or that new ways are necessarily better than old ways. Certainly in the specific case of the president, his new ways have proved more disastrous than the old because, by almost every development index you can think of, it has, as I said last week, landed us in a present worse, far worse, than the past. Again, it is also not true that only those desperate to get power make empty promises; those desperate to retain power too can and do make empty promises.
Today our economy has come to be defined not so much by its recently rebased size, which has earned it the dubious honour of being the largest in Africa. Rather our economy has come to be defined, even by the president himself, by the numbers of the new rich, who own private jets and guzzle huge quantities of expensive wines that it has created. In other words, Nigeria has come to exemplify a society with an unhealthy huge gap between the few obscenely rich and a huge number of the rest living in abject poverty.
There can hardly be a better illustration of this new Nigeria than a seven-page article in TATLER (December 2013), the glossy British fashion magazine, headlined “THE NIGERIANS HAVE ARRIVED.” The article, which spoke about how Nigeria’s new rich fly from Lagos to London by private jets, love to live and shop in Belgravia, a wealthy neighbourhood of London, wear “bespoke suits” and play polo with princes, described the country as the second fastest growing champagne market after France. “Total consumption (of the drink),” it said, “reached 752,879 bottles in 2011 and the country is spending around N41.41bn (£159m) on the drink annually.”
Surely, this is not the kind of Nigeria we can all be proud to be citizens of, especially not when the inequality and inequity in the land is based, not on hard work and entrepreneurship, but mainly on cronyism. As that justly famous Justice of American Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis, once said of his country, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Second, the president’s dichotomies are based on the assumption that he is sincerely committed to his oft-repeated promise of allowing free, fair and credible elections. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the man did not deliver on this promise four years ago and the stakes have become much higher since then as can be seen from the number and the character of the country’s new rich alone.
Four years ago the man won on the power of incumbency coupled with the power of religious and ethnic propaganda. Then public policy, the treasury, chief executives of state and local governments, and even traditional rulers, were all held hostage to ensuring victory for the PDP at all levels of government. Similarly the party succeeded in dressing Buhari, as the leading rival candidate – of course with the active complicity of the mass media – in the robes of an ethnic jingoist and religious extremist.
Even then the PDP did not take chances with the actual voting itself. Here, it was instructive that there were high voter turnouts in virtually all the states that were the party’s strongholds and corresponding low voter turnouts in opposition strongholds. Whereas, for example, the highest voter turnout in opposition strongholds was in Kano with 52.3 %, the lowest in PDP strongholds in South-South and South-East, except for Anambra (57.3), Ebonyi (47.3) and Edo (37.2), was 60%. Indeed, Bayelsa, the president’s home state, had an improbable 85.5% turnout in a country which, like most democracies in the world, has had an average of lower than 40% voter turnout since elections started in the country.
It therefore came as no surprise that a programme on the Federal Government-owned Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), which started an analysis of the votes on April 17, was yanked off the air “on orders from above” barely five minutes into its continuation the following day when one of the discussants, Dr Jibrin Ibrahim, who was an election expert, started raising awkward questions about the credibility of the figures.
Four years on, it now seems the power of ethnic and religious propaganda against Buhari as the leading opposition candidate, is no longer as portent as it was on the three occasions he lost, thanks essentially to his choice of a running mate, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who is not only a senior pastor of arguably the most influential Pentecostal church in Africa, but comes highly recommended for his intellect and simplicity and as a man of high personal integrity.
This obviously means the president would now have to rely more on his power of incumbency than he did four years ago if he is to be sure of winning the election. So far he has demonstrated a willingness to use it at the expense of the opposition, witness, for example, how he sided with the minority faction of a divided Nigerian Governors Forum, how the Police recently tried to shut out the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Aminu Tambuwal, from the House because he had defected to the opposition, how the Directorate of State Services invaded the Data Centre of the APC in Lagos, under the guise that the centre was forging a voters register, and from the way his administration has selectively fought its war against corruption.
The omens are therefore not good that the elections this year will be free, fair and credible. Assuming, however, they are, and assuming the opposition wins the presidential elections, can it deliver on its promise to end the current rot?
The answer, says conventional wisdom, lies in the parties focusing on debating issues rather than personalities of the contestants. I disagree somewhat. Issues are of course important but again as Justice Brandeis once said, “We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.” In other words what in the end makes us believe in someone is not his knowledge or competence as such. It is essentially his character.
By all means let us discuss issues if only because therein can we tell whether someone has a grasp of the things at stake. But we must remember always that, in the end, talk is cheap and character more than even knowledge and competence, is what makes the difference.
Clearly the leadership of the ruling party has demonstrated that it lacks the character to deliver this country from the problems of insecurity, industrial scale venality and poverty that has bedevilled it. The big question is, does the leadership of the opposition have the character to enable it turn the tide for a better future?
As political parties I believe there isn’t much to choose between PDP and APC. But then even though a tree does not make a forest, small groups and even individuals can, as History has taught us, make a difference. I believe the combination of Buhari and Osinbajo can make a significant difference in the nation’s war against insecurity, corruption and the poverty in the land. This is because both of them possess what, to me, are the greatest virtues in fighting a successful war against any evil – personal integrity and a simple lifestyle, even if it is merely comparative.
As a human being, Buhari, of course has his vices but many that are often attributed to him, like religious extremism and ethnic jingoism, as I’ve had occasions to point out on these pages, are simply not true. Some that are true, like his self-righteousness, rigidity and a tendency to over-delegate, he seems to have learnt to change or moderate since he entered politics more than a decade ago, as anyone familiar with the internal politics of the opposition parties he has been a member of will testify.
Twelve years ago, on January 28, 2003 to be precise, I described the choice between President Olusegun Obasanjo as the candidate of PDP and Buhari as the candidate of the opposition ANPP in that year’s presidential election as a difficult one “between the rock and a hard place.”
Twelve years on, the choice between President Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari couldn’t be easier, given the preponderance of the character of each of them, never mind the poor record of the incumbent in the last six years, a record which would be hard to surpass in its bankruptcy.
A correction…
Last week I referred to Major-General Ishola Williams in error as Alabi William. The error was inadvertent and is regretted.
…and a notice
Twenty years ago this month I was a guest speaker at an occasion during which General Muhammadu Buhari was honoured over his conferment with an honorary degree. It was a long speech but re-reading it I thought it has some relevance to the current cross-road we are in, especially given the roles some of the key players then are still playing in our politics today.
The editors of Daily Trust, The Nation, Newsdiaryonline and Gamji have obliged my request to publish it between this Saturday and Sunday. You may wish to read it for all that it is worth.
