Tag: Senator Iyiola Omisore

Is there a possibility (that) the president sees the militarisation of elections as a worthy contribution to democracy?

My the time you read this article, incumbent governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, must have seen off the challenge of Senator Iyiola Omisore, the PDP candidate in the just concluded governorship election, on whose behalf the state was unnecessarily put under a stifling security lock- down for the better part of the election week capped by a 24-hour curfew as the icing on the cake. That, of course, would be if the Election Fixing Contractors (EFC) and their rogue INEC collaborators did not have their evil way as they did in Ekiti in what is sure to turn a pyrrhic victory sooner than later. Now that the two governorship elections in the Southwest have come and gone, some questions have become of critical importance if Nigeria must remain a member of the civilised comity of nations.

The most important of these is why, after he had been in office as president for six years, President Jonathan, and those around him, still think they must fight to the death to get him re-elected. That precisely is what Nigerians have seen in the two elections both of which turned out, uncannily, as predicted by Vice-President Namadi Sambo who said long ago that the two elections would be war.  Some of us had thought then that he was mistaking the Southwest for the Northeast where Nigeria is confronted with its stiffest war situation in over four decades.  What we have seen in Yoruba land these past two months had been nothing short of war. Not only were soldiers and police men deployed in their thousands, it has been observed, because Nigerian soldiers do not go around in hoods, that fake soldiers have equally been sent after Yorubas in whose geo-political zone the two elections took place, wearing some macabre hoods. We equally thought that the PDP lodestar, Buruji Kashamu, was merely grandstanding when , a little before the vice-president’s gaffe, but ominously in a thoroughly coordinated plot, he declared that PDP was out looking for ‘soldiers’ as its governorship candidates in the two states.

They both must have been acting on orders from above.

That then leads us to the next question. When on the orders of the president, elections in a democracy are turned to mini wars, shouldn’t  Nigerians safely  assume that he and his party, the PDP, actually intend to rule over a captured  people? Of course, the word capture, which used to be the monopoly of Chief Bode George, a one-time PDP poster boy in the Southwest, has since become democratised and popularised within the top echelons of the party, the latest aficionado being Chief Ishola Filani, the Acting Southwest Deputy Chairman of the party whose own ambition, as he has said severally, is to capture the Southwest for President Jonathan ahead of the 2015 presidential election.

Is there a possibility (that) the president sees the militarisation of elections as a worthy contribution to democracy? I ask this question because without as much as initiating a single electoral reform in his six years in office, the president was recently quoted as follows while breaking fast with the diplomatic corps and some senators during the last Ramadan: “I know that one thing that is dear to your hearts is what the elections in this country will look like next year. But let me use this unique opportunity to reassure you and I’m conveying this to my brothers, your heads of government, that our elections next year will be free and fair. It will be very peaceful in nature that will even surprise the whole world.”

Now, the above is a very weighty undertaking  and the fact that he wanted this conveyed to his brother Heads of State makes it doubly so. Given that Nigerians cannot remember anything that the president is doing fundamentally to improve our shambolic elections, unless militarisation could be so regarded, could it be there are things the president knows which Nigerians, even the legislature, haven’t the slightest idea of? It is necessary to read the president between the lines, especially where he says the election “will be very peaceful IN NATURE (caps mine), and will even SURPRISE the whole world.”  In nature, and surprise the world? Dr Reuben Abati must help us out here, and why do I say this? I am one of those who can attest to the fact that the 21 June, 2014 Ekiti governorship election was peaceful IN NATURE; the lines were peaceful, there was no ballot box snatching etc, but many will wager that it was all because the election was scientifically rigged which rendered all the usual PDP rigging tricks unnecessary. Since this columnist, and not a few Nigerians, believe that something far removed from PDP’s  romanticised ‘stomach infrastructure’ accounted for the so-called  defeat of an absolutely performing  Ekiti State  governor, it will be appreciated if the president will get one of his media aides to tell Nigerians on what basis he made that promise to the world. Not to do so is to allow present rumours take a life of their own.

Finally, it is appropriate to ask whether the president does not think that an election as important as the presidential should be fought strictly on the basis of performance, especially by an incumbent who has, fortuitously, already spent more years than a single term in the post? Nigerians have followed the Babel  of advertisements  by several pro-Jonathan groups which decided to jump the gun even ahead of Mr President  and have observed that not a few of the claims they make for Mr President actually stand the Nigerian reality on the head. There is, for instance, the thoroughly asinine one that says the president has fought terrorism to a standstill. The Boko Haram felons must be laughing! And this is where whoever knows the president will realise that these attention seeking groups are misrepresenting President Jonathan and doing him a great disservice.

Before the ensemble of Southwest PDP chieftains came to suffocate the president and led him on to several unfortunate routes, Nigerians knew him as neither a General nor a Pharaoh. I wouldn’t know what they think today, but President Jonathan can still prise himself free of these  do-gooders and allow genuine supporters, as distinct from these self-serving Yoruba PDP fellows who were recently appropriately described by former governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, to run an intellectually grounded campaign on his behalf.

Without a doubt, most of the problems the president has to deal with today were inherited and many, like terrorism, do not go away easily. But there were things he could have done proactively which he, unfortunately, allowed to fester.  Ensuring, for instance, that those who killed Yusuf, the Boko Haram leader, and some of his supporters were quickly brought to book would have probably stopped this menacing terrorist sect in its tracks. The president also miscalculated in shielding members of his cabinet accused of corruption instead of promptly excusing them from their duty posts to signpost his determination to effectively fight that canker worm. Only this past week, the United States finally put a closure to the Abacha kleptomania ensuring the family lost millions of dollars whereas back home in Nigeria, the president not only ordered that the case against Abacha’s son be discontinued, the fellow is being aggressively romanced by the presidency with an eye to the 2015 elections and may, indeed, emerge the party’s governorship candidate in Kano State.  Rather than allow these  power mongers to hold him captive, especially now that February  2015 is fast approaching, the president would be better served if he, from now on, pursues genuine  electoral  reforms  in which only the police would have any role whatever, squarely, aggressively and, conscientiously confronts corruption and like Obasanjo,  makes public example of  those who currently think they are untouchable and if he goes ahead to negotiate the release of our Chibok girls since a direct military confrontation  is unthinkable  as it would put their lives in jeopardy.

That way, President Jonathan would be honestly getting ready for an election whose transparency and peaceful nature will truly surprise the world.