|
"...Mr. President, it is a matter of great concern bordering on shame to Nigeria that Angola with more inadequate infrastructure than Nigeria, being engaged in civil war for over 16 years and with over 80 per cent illiterate population could organise a decent, world-acclaimed, free and fair election within a space of one year with open-secret ballot..."
Many would hardly believe that the above statement was made by president Obasanjo considering what Nigerians witnessed in the 2003 and 2007 elections superintended by him. But those were his exact words in a letter written to president Babangida in November 1992 in one of the former's various vituperations against the latter's nebulous transition programme. Surprising? Not in the least in view of what Adamu Adamu once wrote viz:"Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted. And many are those who are honest and straight only because they have audience". Thus, when the president reportedly said the 2007 election was a matter of life and death for him I was not amazed, though some Nigerians, some senators in particular, rightly expressed their reservations over such gibberish. I was however perplexed when senator David Mark was defending him. It had never occurred to me that senator Mark's characteristic perpendicularity has given way to unscrupulous sycophancy.
Many weeks before the polls, PDP thugs, particularly in the north-west, went berserk, basking in the euphoria of belonging to the ruling party, unleashing terror on opposition politicians as well as innocent and law-abiding citizens. The security agents only watched with consternation because they dared not touch the PDP-anointed. This continued up to the day of the governorship polls. In some states, matchet-wielding PDP thugs dispersed prospective voters from the polling centres and thumb-printed the ballot papers. In some other places, security agents themselves were used to intimidate the voters. On the eve of the polls, security operatives also picked up many opposition parties' stalwarts on the pretext that they constituted a security risk. It therefore became apparent that the horde of soldiers and policemen deployed during the elections was partly to provide security but mainly to facilitate rigging by the PDP.
Though the election has come and gone, it has left its deep scar on the precarious security situation in the country by adding a new dimension to political thuggery and this will persist for as long as this democracy survives. This is the willful killing of political opponents by armed youths for as little a price as two hundred Naira which has now become part of the political process. Democracy in Nigeria has over the years become an affliction with a higher mortality rate than the dreaded HIV/ AIDS. The question is, could the need to add to the pool of political thugs be responsible for the seeming insouciance of the government towards the creation of employment? this is very unfortunate, coming at a time when many Nigerians and the international community look forward to a lasting solution to the problems of youth militancy in the Niger Delta.
Thus, what the senate president said and which made him a subject of vilification by such a political neophyte as the robot-like information minister did not only happen in the south-east but also in some parts of the north. That the senate president said it himself at a time when many leaders and elders, INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners, Police Commissioners in the states and even some religious leaders have chosen to become shameless pathological liars shows that senator Nnamani has the well-being of the country at heart. He is one man every patriotic Nigerian should hold in deference for without him as the senate president, many things would have gone wrong. Specifically, the third-term merchants would have had their subversive plans through and the just concluded election would not have been contemplated in the first place.
Even when the third term plot had fizzled out, the government did not seem to have had a good intention of conducting the elections. It would be plausible therefore to say that the exercise was meant to fail from the start. What with the unwarranted declaration of Thursday the 12th and Friday the 13th of April as public holidays just on the eve of the Supreme Court's judgment in the suit filed by the VP. This provided INEC with the alibi to claim it had an emergency situation. It had forgotten that when it disqualified the Adamawa state gubernatorial candidate of the AC on the day of the polls, his name was already on the ballot paper but voting still went on. INEC did not deem it necessary to put off the polls and print fresh ballot papers. The same way INEC could have printed its presidential election ballot papers much earlier without minding the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision. This is because even if the VP should have lost the appeal, election could hold in spite of the appearance of his name on the ballot paper, only that his votes would have been invalidated as done in the case of the AC guber candidate referred to earlier.
INEC has also demonstrated, at least from what we have seen, that its interest is only in the figures passed on to it, caring less how the figures were arrived at. Evidence for this lies in the fantastic number of votes announced for many states where voter apathy resulting from disenchantment with the governorship polls was recorded; reminding one of Fela's people no go vote / dem come get big big numbers. This being the case, we do not need an independent(?) body like INEC to conduct elections. The National Population Commission and the Federal Office of Statistics are all good at manipulating figures and can do the kind of thing INEC did at a lesser cost. Where they encounter problems with allocating the figures to candidates, the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission can come to their aid.
Meanwhile, though the 2003 election was unpardonably clumsy, it was nonetheless more reasonable than Prof. Iwu's perfunctorily organised charade. Never mind the apocryphal accounts of the exercise being given by people who make a fortune out of falsehood and opportunism. They are being deceived by the uneasy calm with which Nigerians have accepted the sham. But not every silence signifies consent. We are only quiet because we are being genuinely ehinderophobic in view of the freshness in our minds, of Tafa's brutality of 2003 and the rampant cases of political armed robbers terminating the lives of notable politicians around election time.
However, as a people with unshaken faith, we take solace in God, believing as it were, that at the appropriate time, He would deliver us from this malaise. And arising from this melancholic state, as a Nigerian, with as much a stake in the country as every other Nigerian, I fervently pray for the termination of this modified monarchy in which only the heirs apparent get to power and the entrenchment of true democracy in the country. It is however important to note that as long as violence remains the only means by which political power is obtained and retained, so long will Nigeria remain politically unstable because we may wake up one day and find ourselves where we never expected since violence is certainly not the prerogative of any particular individual or group.
On the final note, my voice is barely audible as to reach the ears of Generals Babangida, Abdulsalam and Gusau, but could someone help me amplify it so that this song could reach their ears: Wayyo mu Allah! Ku kuka iza mu kun gaza fidda mu.
Abubakar Atiku Zagga, Minannata, Sokoto.
|