Analysts can’t resist the temptation to award victory or defeat in the 2015 presidential poll to political parties and their candidates based mostly on geopolitical dynamics. It is not hard to see why. President Goodluck Jonathan hails from the South-South, so, he’ll probably take that zone, including perhaps Rivers State, they suggest. The Southeast has completely eschewed any reasoned discussions of the poll; therefore, according to the zone, if not Dr Jonathan, then nobody else will get the great prize. On mainly religious grounds, too, a sizable part of the Middle Belt and a fair portion of the Southwest are believed to have concluded plans to vote unthinkingly for Dr Jonathan since every other contestant, they conclude, is an agent of the devil. As for the other parts of the country, argue some of the analysts, Dr Jonathan will find it tough going.
But basing the outcome of the 2015 presidential race on essentially technical and zonal permutations rather than on candidates’ ideas and competence, and on religion rather than on issues and candidates’ track records, is to unwittingly lay the foundation for Nigeria’s disintegration. The country is today largely divided between North and South, and between Christians and Muslims. These divisions have been exacerbated by the Jonathan presidency, by his supporters and aides whose fanatical zeal to win the presidential election has become truly numbing, and by his paranoid kinsmen who have blurred the lines between decency and indecency, between democracy and tyranny, and between sense and nonsense. Indeed, we all seem to ignore the unsettling questions about the potential of these divisions, these scorched earth policies and politics, to promote crises in the near future.
Since the contest has appeared to us to boil down to a struggle between Christians and Muslims, and having irrationally described the opposition party as Islamic and the ruling party as Christian, we fail to ponder what the repercussions would be if the other religion we paranoiacally abhor were to win. To be sure, the exploitation of ethnic and religious sentiments predates the Jonathan presidency. Under past military regimes, religion and ethnicity played an unwelcoming and pernicious role in the formulation of national policies and the conduct of politics. Many years back, it was in fact unavoidable to conclude that rulers of northern extraction deliberately and unwisely skewed postings and promotions in key ministries and the security services in favour of northern officers, even as they thoughtlessly appeared to promote Islamic trappings in governance, such as the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). So the excesses we are seeing today have their antecedents, with some Jonathan supporters even asserting that today’s politics and policies must be dedicated to breaking the North’s ethnic and religious stranglehold on the polity.
There can be no doubt that past rulers, many of them so schizoid that it is difficult to gauge how messed up their moral compasses were, made too many mistakes. They had the opportunity to create a stable, fair and just society, but either because of incompetence and ignorance, or because of their fundamental disposition to fanaticism, they simply enthroned ad hocism in governance and ruled with the immature instinct of neophytes. Sadly, the consequences of years of favouritism are today manifesting in Dr Jonathan’s presidency’s reverse discrimination and favouritism. The pressing danger is that if we go into the 2015 presidential poll with these implacable divisions anchored on ethnic and religious discrimination, Nigeria’s future could become blighted. Confronting our demons is therefore the urgent need of the moment.
Under the military, those who climbed to leadership positions were neither gifted nor really disciplined, nor yet deep or ideological. In those days, politicised officers wormed their way into national leadership. But under civilian rule, it is even more scandalous that since the time of Olusegun Obasanjo, through the reign of Umaru Yar’Adu, and now the subversive rule of Dr Jonathan, leadership recruitment has been so flawed and polluted that only the worst have been able to claim Aso Villa. Chief Obasanjo was a megalomaniac without the redeeming feature of ideological or moral conviction. Former President Yar’Adua was somewhat more honest and altruistic than his predecessor, but he was entirely lethargic, superficial and permissive. Dr Jonathan has blended in himself the worst qualities of his two predecessors. In him pedantry, egotism, superficiality and despotism reach their sublime worst.
In 2015, Nigeria must therefore make a clean break from the past, both in terms of the quality and disposition of the president and the issues and values that shape that choice. The present trend and methods are simply untenable if the country is not to fragment. The first place to begin is to consciously and firmly redirect politics away from the ethnic and religious cocoons in which Nigerians are ensconced or are retreating. The talk of where Dr Jonathan hails from, or how the country has survived on oil from the Niger Delta to justify inflicting an unprepared and emotionally distraught president on the country, must be resisted. In fact, having recognised his limitations, and knowing full well he is unlikely to achieve any amelioration of his weaknesses any time soon, Dr Jonathan has mastered a lethal and enervating cocktail of disinformation, propaganda and tyrannical use of power to sustain his hold on power. He is succeeding because his methods and proclivities are anchored on the exploitation of elite greed.
One of the issues that should influence the choice of who becomes president next year is the Jonathan presidency’s relentless and remorseless thirst for scandals. While his Petroleum ministry was yet to account for about $12bn the former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, accused it of squandering, and while billions of naira are filched from various pension funds, other more aggravating scandals have erupted. His government illegally hauled $9.3m cash to South Africa to, as they put it incredulously, buy arms. And among other malfeasances, enough to cause any other president to be impeached in a decent society, Dr Jonathan has actively promoted or connived at the wholesale subversion of democratic principles and practice in Nigeria. Ekiti is in turmoil, Rivers was and is still in turmoil because the president shirks his responsibility as the most potent defender of the constitution, Adamawa has been laid prostrate, Nasarawa tethers on the brink, and Osun and Edo, not to talk of Ogun and Lagos, are under his party’s radar for destabilisation and, if necessary, destruction by an army of well-funded vagrants.
Nigerians may not be enlightened enough to appreciate that a dictator is emerging; but after acquiring confidence in his war of attrition with Chief Obasanjo, having lured the Judicial Council into surrendering its powers in the Justice Ayo Salami case, and having compromised, subjugated and tyrannised the elite everywhere, Dr Jonathan has concocted a series of stratagems to transform his party into the most potent weapon of oppression ever seen in these parts, and the country into a one-party dictatorship. The electorate must be made to understand that full-blown dictatorship will flourish once Dr Jonathan is re-elected.
Indeed, it is an indication of the country’s moral health that all the scandals swirling around Dr Jonathan have neither bothered him nor lowered his stock among the stragglers that hoof the Niger Delta, Southeast and now surprisingly the Southwest. He fully expects to win the poll next year, partly because of the many endorsements he has received. But the politics of local elections at the local government and state levels are quite different from the politics of presidential election. And though the 2015 presidential poll has been scheduled first, with the sinister anticipation of triggering a bandwagon effect, it is expected that in a tight race, it is still possible to defeat Dr Jonathan, notwithstanding his resort to acrimonious politics, his embrace of ethnic and parochial schemes, and his promotion and exploitation of religious differences.
The second issue that should lead the electorate to reject Dr Jonathan is the case of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants on April 14. For the past 167 days or so that the abductions have lasted, the president has handled the matter with utter incompetence and lethargy, so bad that the whole world is appalled by his seeming indifference. The world, it will be recalled, rose up in solidarity with us when the abductions created global tremors. But arriving in Nigeria, and seeing how the Jonathan presidency handled the matter, and recognising that even our troops were unwilling to fight, the foreign helpers quietly left in frustration and disgust. They are even more stupefied that the Nigerian government has tried to blackmail them with silly allegations that the West is conspiring to bar Nigeria from procuring arms. For the nearly six months that the abductions have lasted, Dr Jonathan has been unable to articulate a coherent strategy for rescuing the girls, in addition to initially doubting Boko Haram’s criminal act. Moreover, his wife, Dame Patience, outrightly scorned and derided reports of the abductions. There was therefore no strategy to negotiate the girls’ release, and there was no will to fight.
The third issue that should influence the repudiation of Dr Jonathan is the worldwide scorn reserved for him. Many African leaders are aghast that Nigeria could tolerate him for almost six years. They would be dumbfounded if we gave him a hearing during this coming election, and would be indignant should we elect him for another four years. They would ask how four more years of Dr Jonathan would profit us. If African countries such as Zimbabwe and Uganda could snort at Dr Jonathan heartily, what of the developed democracies? While diplomatic refinements may not allow Western leaders to say what they think of Nigeria and its leaders, they have acted it and taken it out on Nigerian travellers. Once the Nigerian steps out of his country, he is held in absolute contempt. It is transferred aggression, an aggression activated by the disdain they have for our leaders. No other country’s citizens are held in so much contempt anywhere as Nigerians; not even Haitians, Colombians or Albanians; and minus ebola disease, not even Liberians or Sierra Leoneans.
Conventional opinion indicates that the opposition would have a tough chance beating Dr Jonathan. The truth, however, is that he is vulnerable at all levels and on all fronts. Dr Jonathan and his aides recognise these vulnerabilities, and will try desperately to focus their campaign on religion, ethnicity and the North-South divide. They will do everything to bribe everyone, creating more states if necessary. If the opposition gets the right candidate and sensibly focuses their campaign on those areas where Dr Jonathan simply has no answer, he can be beaten fair and square. It would be a tragedy should he return to office for another four years, for we would be unlikely to survive the gargantuan social, political and economic damage that his re-election would entail.
