The Plateau Referendum: A Rebuff For Despotism

Mohammed Al-Amin

The outcome of the recent referendum in Plateau State, designed to humiliate the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Mr. Simon Lalong out of office, was a stinging message for the enemies of democracy that have hijacked the national leadership of the PDP. The new PDP national leaders had wanted to punish Mr. Lalong for his stubborn refusal to lend his hand to the effort by Pro-Obasanjo anti-democratic elements in their desperate desire to remove Governor Joshua Dariye at all cost.

However, the referendum had turned out to be an earthshaking humiliation of the Aso Rock-sponsored anti-democratic forces determined to oust Speaker Simon Lalong. Despite the huge presence of security forces to psychologically browbeat the voters into Aso Rock line, the electorate of Plateau State had courageously defended their sovereignty by re-affirming their freely given mandate to the Speaker. In fact, even the Policemen and Soldiers deplored to maintain law and order reportedly refused to be used to subvert the genuine will of the people.

Consequently, the result was what the people had voted for and the security forces deployed to monitor the election simply refused to interfere. With nowhere to hang their faces in shame, the returning officer from INEC needlessly told the people that the result of the referendum is subject to ratification from Abuja. Perhaps scared of the fact that the people’s patience has been pushed to the limit, Aso Rock and its hatchet men in the PDP national leadership grudgingly swallowed the bitter pill of the popular will of the electorate in Plateau State.

Despite INEC’s shameless and audacious defiance of a court injunction, restraining it from conducting the referendum, the result was still against what President Obasanjo and his anti-democratic elements had wanted. Their optimistic prediction of subverting the will of the people was resoundingly defeated by the supporters of Mr. Simon Lalong. As the pursuit of personal vendetta becomes official policy under President Obasanjo’s distorted version of democracy, the newly-imposed enemies of democracy in the PDP were determined to punish Governor Dariye and anyone stubbornly sympathetic to him.

Speaker Simon Lalong, unlike the treacherous character of Obasanjo, does not believe in betraying his friends, and therefore, stood steadfastly behind Governor Joshua Dariye in his grim battle against General Obasanjo’s bloodhounds of vengeance.

Instead of humiliating the Speaker, the sponsors of the vindictive referendum were taught the bitterest lessons of their lives. As the winds of democracy are blowing unstoppably across the world, burying dictatorship in their wake, the Plateau referendum has taught us that there is a limit to how far you can intimidate people and achieve the result you want by brute coercion. Dictators may delude themselves by having their despotic garment embroidered in the gold of democracy, but it is dictatorship still. And the Plateau people had removed that cover of outward democratic pretence!

The reported sympathetic attitude of the security forces to the voters in Plateau State was a humiliating message of those who think they have absolute liberty to crush the will of the people, even under a democratic order, forgetting that command mentality is out of fashion or tune with genuine democratic practice.

The emperor mentality, which infects the psyche of President Obasanjo and his obsequious band of anti-democratic forces, inherently sows the seeds of its own eventual humiliation. Pixilated by power, our new self-imposed despots in the PDP failed to make a distinction between citizens and subjects. Worst of all, they tend to mistake people’s silence to their acquisition of power by force for submission, legitimacy or acceptance.

And if they had lived under such ridiculous illusion, the Plateau referendum was a stark reminder or wake-up call to those seized by the stupor of fantasy, mistaking people’s silent helplessness for acquiescence to despotism. History abounds with scintillating examples of how security forces reached a point where they could no longer lend their hands to the diabolical designs of dictators to brutally crush the will of the people.

It is also interesting to note that enemies of democracy in the PDP are ultimately destroying themselves by their own excesses. Indeed, we shall reach a point at which our patience with their excesses will snap and fight back fiercely to defend our mandate. The extraordinary courage demonstrated by the people of Plateau State who, despite the intimidating presence of security forces had voted overwhelmingly to re-affirm their loyalty and love for Speaker Simon Lalong, is a source of inspiration to all those with authentic commitment to democracy.

Genuine Nigerian democrats who may have shown sign of losing hope should now feel buoyed up by the historic challenge demonstrated by the people of Plateau State against the systematic efforts of President Obasanjo and his self-imposed henchmen on the PDP national leadership to crush the sovereignty of the people. And if the people of Plateau State could react with this courage, the development is a positive tip of the iceberg, because of its domino effect across the country in the immediate future.

With a sinister design to dissolve duly elected PDP executive committees in the States of the federation, and replacing them with unpopular and un-elected leaders, the Plateau referendum should galvanize genuine democrats across the country to stand up to defend their right to freely choose their own leaders.

As HIV/AIDS targets our immune system, so are despots hiding, behind the cloak of practicing democracy, determined to destroy our fundamental freedom to choose our leaders. Freedom of choice is the heart and soul of democracy, and once you deprive democracy of these components, it dies automatically. In fact, in case Col. Ahmadu Ali, Tony Anenih and co. have forgotten, the will of the people is superior to a standing army, because even coup plotters try to gain popular good will to claim some semblance of legitimacy.

Clearly, President Obasanjo and his despotically installed PDP leaders are detached from the reality of our people’s capacity to assert themselves when pushed too far. Their current methods of imposing leaders is rigging in disguise because it may have implications for the 2007 presidential election. When people can no longer choose their own leaders, then there is the danger of chaos attending the elections to be held in 2007. It is impossible to speak of smooth succession in 2007 when President Obasanjo is determined to either succeed himself or impose leaders on us.

However, let him and his like-minded enemies of genuine democracy be reminded that the outcome of the Plateau referendum is a major first sign of a vote of no confidence on the despotic means by which President Obasanjo is trying to shape the future of our democracy. Already, the political future of the PDP itself is now on the tenterhooks because genuine founders of the party are now being humiliated while charlatans have replaced those with legitimate mandate. How far can the party sustain this anomaly, silently supporting the President’s unconstitutional and glaring unpopular third-term agenda, without the inevitable risk of implosion?

Signed.

MOHAMMED AL-AMIN