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The Casualties Are Many By Sa’ad A. Jijji
When in 1970, John Pepper Clark - Bekederemo, the Ijaw born poet, wrote the above line in his famous poem ‘Casualties’, it was in reference to the many casualties of the Nigerian Civil War. How apt a phrase to describe the aftermath of the recently concluded April 2007 elections. Indeed the casualties of these elections are many and ‘a good number of them...’ as J.P. Clark rightly observed in reference to the Biafran War casualties, ‘are well outside the scenes of ravage and wreck..’
To the families of the scores of policemen and civilians killed in the run-off to, during and after the elections, I offer condolences. Your casualty is of the supreme type. We only pray to the Almighty to give you the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss. The Nigerian nation and its quest for democratic rule were also casualties. Like most Nigerians, I thought we were making progress in our democratic development. The April elections were a rude awakening to our collective delusion. Elections, which forms the bedrock of democracy, we now understand in Nigeria is more about votes than voters. We were so naïve to assume that there was a necessary correlation between the two. The Art of Rigging is perhaps one area we are now setting global standards. Why worry about voter intimidation / inducement or ballot stuffing when you can simply fill out INEC’s result sheets and get the result announced. Had Chris Uba patented this invention, he would have been a billionaire by now. President Obasanjo is another casualty in this election. He certainly does not deserve this kind of ending. Whatever anyone may say about President Obasanjo’s performance in the last 8 years or his democratic credentials, nobody can take away his deep rooted love for Nigeria. You only need an open mind to observe his actions and utterances to see what I mean. Even his choice of the taciturn Umar Yar’adua as his successor above other more ‘Loyal Governors’ is borne out of this sense of patriotism. President Obasanjo has fought for and served this nation in the best way he perceives. Unfortunately, historians will not be so kind to him. His protracted battle with Vice President Atiku Abubakar has been so long and messy that, irrespective of the outcome, the President was bound to end up a loser. Sun-Tzu had cautioned his students in his ‘Art of War’ classic that ‘ ….No nation has ever won a protracted crisis…’. The President could never have won this prolonged battle. The personal and institutional damage done by this prolonged conflict will haunt the President and Nigeria for a long time to come. Sadly, President Obasanjo’s legacy is likely to be overshadowed by this election. The Economist magazine concluded in its last week’s edition ‘Much of the blame for the present electoral chaos rests with Mr. Obasanjo himself’. The Time’s magazine says ‘Sadly he (President Obasanjo) has done his best to compromise democracy’. Reuters reports ‘The chaotic elections dented the image of outgoing Nigerian President…’ Some conclusions indeed. After all, the annulled June 12 election has stubbornly continued to define President Babangida’s legacy as if that was all he did during his 8 year tenure. Really ‘The end is everything’
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its Chairman Professor Maurice Iwu are also casualties in this election. This distinguished Professor of Chemistry, will now join the league of otherwise distinguished Nigerians whose reputations have been soiled by Nigeria’s Electoral process. Justice Ovie Whisky, Professor Eme Awa, Professor Humphrey Nwosu, Dr Abel Ghoubadia just to mention a few. I really can’t remember a lot of complaints about the integrity of these gentlemen at the onset of their tenures. Professor Iwu promised that ‘…..there will be a free and fair election even if that is the last thing I do in my life…’ What a weighty statement. In fairness to him, he tried – at least so it seemed to many Nigerians before April 14. Well, he is still alive and serving as Chairman of INEC. May be this will be a case of a ‘Dream Deferred’. I can relate to the disruptive impact of the late Supreme Court judgment on the presidential elections, but I am unable to comprehend the Professor’s definition of “Contingency Plan’. Does the late Supreme Court judgment also account for the missing party logos in the parliamentary ballots or the rampant cases ballot shortages? Were Professor Iwu to leave his job soon, his 80% self - assessment of the April elections would only exist in his personal records. For INEC, the judicial system has severely whittled down its powers. The election tribunals will definitely follow up and strip INEC of its competence and impartiality. Courtesy of the Supreme Court judgment, some of the governorship election results were already ‘Dead on Arrival’. Much has been said on the logic of the Supreme Court judgment that INEC has no power to disqualify candidates for elections. Can you imagine a soccer referee not being allowed to send off a man masquerading as a girl to play in an all females match? However, since the Supreme Court was not engaged in academic exercise when handling the issue, could the esteemed judges have taken ‘Judicial notice’ of the conduct of Iwu’s INEC and shudder at the thought investing such a body with such enormous powers? After all such practical national considerations in judicial decisions are not uncommon worldwide. The United State’s Supreme Court judgment on the Bush vs Gore Florida recount case is a reference point. Whatever the reason for the decision, INEC is now effectively a “Match Commissioner’ to use soccer terms. Sit, watch and write reports at the end of the match. By the way, I often wondered, how the framers of the constitution envisaged INEC disqualifying a candidate presented by a party if the commission believes such a candidate is a member of a secret society without going to court. Being a layman, I defer to the learned ones who seem to be the only winners at these times smiling to the bank with their unending briefs.
As J.P. Clark said in his poem even those ‘So smug in smoke-room….’ are casualties in the Biafran war. In the April elections, PDP and its flag bearers are also casualties. President-elect Umar Yar’adua will definitely wish for a more credible mandate. He needs it to govern. President Obasanjo managed by with his equally controversial mandates mainly because of his personal goodwill and political capital at home and abroad. Yar’adua is not in the same breath. The National Interest online paper says “Yar’adua will inherit a poisoned chalice…..’. The financial Times says to survive “Yar’adua would have reach out to his aggrieved opponents and make messy compromises…’Undoubtedly, Yar’adua will probably spend the better part of his first term correcting this moral deficit at home and abroad. To lead Nigeria from a clean slate is not an easy challenge; to start from such a moral deficit is unprecedented. And he needs to do all these while trying to untangle himself from the “Obasanjo Boy’ tag he now has. How he does that with President Obasanjo serving as the party’s Board of Trustee Chairman will be quite interesting. The PDP is another casualty in this election. Its string of victorious not withstanding, the party leadership should be worried. There are ominous signs as the clouds gather. The significance of Governor Muazu’s fate in Bauchi state should not be overlooked by the party. It portends something. The groundswell of opposition and hostility to the party is ever growing. Even football spectators now refer to any form of player cheating as ‘PDP’. The party should not mistake this feeling as the envy that every distinction breeds. The general resentment is real, and should be carefully addressed. And then there is the other issue of the Nigeria Judiciary that seems to have taken note of the party’s attempts to scuttle either the letters or spirit of some of its decisions.
The opposition is probably the obvious casualty in this election. The PDP machinery has been ruthless. And like a wounded lion, the opposition is seething with anger. For General Buhari, the ANPP presidential candidate, this is yet another frustrating time. The General has invested a lot of his time, energy and meager resources to offer his services to the Nigerian people with little results. With his advancing age, how much longer can he go? To his credit, he is perhaps one of the very few politicians I know who practices this second oldest profession without showing traits of the older one. Integrity may be a virtue in politics, but honesty seems to be a liability in Nigerian elections. Vice President Atiku Abubakar is another casualty. Being the oldest democrat in the presidential race did little to aid him. How this all-powerful Vice President who, in 2003, had the enviable tag of being the only running mate to have picked his candidate slowly lost his political relevance will make a good subject for political review. Atiku has come out of his conflict with President Obasanjo as the legal winner. What a pyrrhic victory. As the Greek King Phyrrhus wondered after his victory at Asculum, “If we defeat the Romans in one more such battle, we will be totally ruined.’ Atiku will now need to survey his various battle fronts and count his financial and political costs. Interestingly, Atiku’s travails have so enriched our democratic and constitutional development that the history of Nigeria’s fourth republic will be incomplete without mention of this dogged fighter and survivalist. For the other candidates and their parties, the April elections have been one expensive charade. How many post graduate seminars did Professor Pat Utomi miss to attend this expensive Politics 101 class? For Jimi Agbaje, the amiable DPA candidate in Lagos governorship elections, obviously ‘NOT everybody loves Jimi Agbaje”
Other casualties exist. To Nuhu Ribadu and his EFCC, whose hard won credibility, The Economist Magazine rightly observes, has been ‘….mortgaged to political expediency’, it is now time to reflect and seeks ways of rebuilding popular confidence in the commission. To some ministers and governors whose shifting loyalties have thrown more light on their characters, I can only use the Igbo proverb ‘If not for the blowing wind, we would have assumed the Hen has no anus’ To the election observers who have expended time and money to observe this dance of shame, take this as a learning process. And please don’t expect any more invitations soon. I can’t understand why election observers should behave like monitors. To Nigerians in Diaspora who will now have to live with an increased stigma associated with the green passport as a result of this widely publicized absurdity, I urge patience. Don’t succumb to attempts to use these elections to validate the ‘Bell Curve’ theory. To those who lost their loved ones because of the militia attack in Kano that could only have happened because our entire security and intelligence services were too engaged in elections to notice a battalion size legion of arms bearing foreigners slip through our borders and occupy part of that ancient city, I offer my condolences. To my fellow Nigerians, we need not despair. For as Chief Sunday Awoniyi once said, ‘To despair is to show ingratitude to God’. God willing, we will try again,
Indeed the casualties are many…….including the English Literature teacher that introduced me to this J.P. Clark poem exactly two decades ago - Hon Victor Lar, the ANPP Governorship candidate for Plateau State. I sympathize with you even as I remember your other favorite poem ‘The Pomegranate’. You were a great teacher.
Sa’ad lives in Abuja |