PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

A “round table” for Jega ... and a word for Jonathan

ndajika@yahoo.com

Penultimate Saturday, Mambayya House, Bayero University’s Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Research and Training, organized a “round table” discussion in its large lecture theatre on “The Path to Credible Elections in Nigeria” in honour of its pioneer director and erstwhile vice-chancellor of the university, Professor Attahiru Jega. The man, as we all know, was recently appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to universal acclaim.

The chairman of the roundtable was Justice Alfa Belgore, a former Chief Justice of the Federation who, incidentally, was the first to be offered the job but had declined. The lead discussants were Barrister Festus Okoye, a compendium of election monitoring, Dr. Junaidu Mohammed, the well-known radical politician and critic, and Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, a senior lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University’s Political Science Department and a spitting image of the late radical historian, Dr. Bala Usman.

The others were Professor Awwalu Yadudu, the well respected constitutional lawyer and teacher in Bayero University’s Faculty of Law, and this reporter. The sixth discussant, Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim, columnist with Next and head of the Centre for Democracy and Development, couldn’t make it in time from monitoring the Republic of Guinea’s recent and first multi-party general election since independence in 1958, an election generally acknowledged as free, fair and credible.

As was to be expected of such a “round table” discussion, there was no shortage of ideas on how to break the jinx that has plagued our elections since independence in 1960, the last two of which have been universally denounced as the most shambolic. (In spite of the surfeit of ideas for Jega, I think he – and his colleagues – should find a hilarious little book by Michael Moore, author of the best seller, Stupid White Men, and the docudrama, The Fahreinheit 9/11 Reader, useful as a guide. This is his Mike’s Election Guide 2008.) 

Listening to the discussants and to the interventions from the capacity audience you’ll be forgiven the conclusion that Jega’s acclaimed competence and integrity were enough to bring about the credible election that has eluded this country for much of its history. One of the few cautionary notes against this high expectation came from Junaidu Mohammed who said in effect that the problem of our elections was far less that of the integrity of INEC than that of the combination of (1), a society which rewards corruption and mediocrity and punishes honesty and (2), a political system in which power is regarded, especially by the elite, as an end in itself instead of a means for public service.

Siddiq Mohammed also entered a caveat. He was, however, more concerned with the role of the judiciary than that of INEC. A judiciary which, he said, actively connives with the highest bidder to fix elections, in some cases by even doctoring court documents, is even more dangerous than a crooked INEC. This, he said, was generally the case in the last two elections.

Not surprisingly, the chairman and Professor Yadudu, hardly a fire spitting radical lawyer, went to the rescue of the judiciary. Widespread accusations that the judiciary has been suborned are, they said, unfair because they ignore the fact that judges can only decide on the basis what the law says and not on what it ought to be. Such accusations, they also said, ignored the fact that judges against whom incontrovertible evidence of corruption had been established have been punished. 

Almost all the institutions involved in elections – INEC, the judiciary, the police and other security services, the political parties – came under one form of criticism or the other. By common consent, however, INEC was seen as the main culprit and the one deserving more attention than the rest.

For me the one good omen that INEC under Jega can break the jinx in our elections was the fact that he himself had no illusions that his acclaimed competence and integrity are sufficient to get the job done. In his own remarks towards the end of the discussion he made it clear that with all the best of intentions and determination in the world, INEC alone cannot succeed if the public does not do everything possible under the law to protect their votes.

And this, I am afraid, is where the joker lies. I did enter a caveat similar to Jega’s in my intervention. In doing so I pointed out, for example, how President Obasanjo went around INEC’s stand against the purported election of Chief Adolphus Wabara as an Abia State senator in2003 in his determination to impose the man as Senate president even though it was a notorious fact that the man lost his primary elections within the PDP and went on to lose the senatorial election itself.

The late Makama Nupe, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa - a person of the highest personal integrity if ever there was one – who led INEC’s resistance as the national commissioner who supervised the elections in Abia State, even resigned his job on account of the controversy but was eventually persuaded by some of his colleagues and the president himself to withdraw his resignation.   

What I did not say and no one else said during the roundtable was that not even vigilance on the part of the public as a greater antidote to election rigging than INEC’s integrity is enough to stop a president hell bent on rigging an election from doing so.

This is why I have argued severally on these pages that if President Goodluck Jonathan truly means what he says about conducting a free, fair and credible election next year, he should disavow his interest in contesting the presidential election.

And this is not because as a gentleman he should respect the gentlemen’s agreement about power rotation and zoning his party provided in its constitution and of which he has been, and remains, a prime beneficiary. It is simply because in a society like ours whose institutions are weak and in a political system where the winner takes all, the president cannot resist the pressure and the temptation to rig the election for himself, if not for his party.

The signs are already ominous. These include his sacking of Vincent Ogbulafor as party chairman, for no better reason than that he stood for its provision on zoning, and replacing him with Okwesiliezi Nwodo whose  performance in his previous job as the party secretary-general  was forgettable, to say the least. More ominously there is also his dumping of the so-called PDP Reform Group so soon after they served his objective of getting rid of Ogbulafor. It is all as if we are back in the bad old days of Obasanjo’s use of carrots for supporters and huge sticks against perceived enemies.

When the president inaugurated the Presidential Advisory Council in March, the best piece of advice he got from General T. Y. Danjuma as its chairman was that he should focus his mind on conducting a credible election next year. “If all you do as Acting President,” said the general, “is to ensure that our elections are transparent, it shall be sufficient to endear you to the nation and you shall go down in history as one of our greatest leaders.”

Of course the general appears to have since changed his mind for apparently political reasons and has been saying the president can contest PROVIDED he can conduct a credible election.

It would take a person of extra-ordinary self-will to resist the temptation to cling on to power by all means. Jonathan’s record as president so far and his scanty political experience suggests he is no such person.

The choice before him is clear. As he makes up his mind he should remember the disgraceful end of all our past leaders, including his principal, President Obasanjo, who clung on to power more for self-aggrandisement than for public service.