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Last week, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, governor of Kano State, promised the world that Kano, the state he presides over, will render riggers jobless in 2007. It was a very significant statement because of the man from whom it came. Kano is famous for stopping riggers in 2003 in spite of the desperation of the PDP government at that time. Shekarau was the ultimate beneficiary of that resoluteness.
In the 2003 general elections, when the rigging genie had a field day in Nigeria, wreaking havoc across the country, Kano and indeed Lagos proved to the world that riggers were not as invincible as they claimed to be after all. Just before the elections, the governor of Kano at that time, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, bragged to a group of friends that Shekarau was a man of straw; that he posed no threat at all and he would not lose any sleep over him. “We were not defeated when we were not in Government House; how can anyone dream of defeating us now that we have INEC, the police and the military,” he said, or words to that effect. To Kwankwaso, the people didn’t matter in a democracy as long as they had INEC and the instruments of power. And it would appear that even God didn’t matter. The governor was so power-drunk, some people said, and so trusting in the temporal powers at his disposal that he once declared that Shekarau had no chance of winning because he had “nobody except God”. God heard him and the rest is now history.
But it was not for lack of trying that the riggers failed in Kano in 2003. The incumbent power holders brought fake ballot boxes and ballot papers and attempted to use the police and military to subdue the people. But the electorate simply refused to be cowed. The sheer number of the voter turnout and their determination to reap the full benefits of democracy was just not conducive for any rigging operation. And when they could not rig, somebody suggested to the criminals that they should simply get INEC to announce they had won, just as they successfully did in other states.
When the rumour spread like wild fire across the state that INEC was about announcing Kwankwaso the winner in spite of the very clear message they had passed, the people left the comfort of their homes late into the night for the streets, fully kitted to show the stuff of which they were made. The security agencies warned the president frantically against changing the results, and, unfortunately, he heeded their counsel. Many of us were disappointed that INEC did not go ahead to announce fake results in Kano as it did in other states. I for one wished that they had rigged the results in Kano and Lagos. That would have provided the trigger that Nigeria needs to solve this cancerous rigging problem once and for all. The fire that would have been ignited in the two states would have spread to other states and would have licked up the miscreants and their sponsors, and Nigeria would have been enjoying the edible fruits of democracy today and not the lies that we are currently entertaining the world with. And as long as we do not correct the current anomaly that does not give room for elections, it will continue to remain a matter of time before the entire system comes crashing on everyone. It is because Obasanjo and the riggers were not punished for their crimes against democracy and the nation in 2003 that he could even think of perpetuating himself in power beyond 2007. The president’s attempt to stay beyond 2007 was not worse than the 2003 electoral fraud and he was right to be surprised that Nigerians could be so vehemently against him for something as elementary as that. Why should they be so opposed to him simply because he wanted to extend the frontiers of crime by a few more years? he must have thought. And especially after working so hard bribing senators with a whopping N50 million each with the promise of a further N50 million after delivering the goods. Mantu was the president’s idea of a good Nigerian, and so he could not see reasons why Nigerians were not behaving like him. Kano people have resolved once again to stop the riggers in 2007 and it is easy to believe them because they have a rich history of doing so. Aminu Kano finished that job in Kano a long time ago. And with Governor Bola Tinubu still fully in charge of Lagos in spite of Obasanjo’s best wishes, it is also certain that the riggers will not have their way in Lagos in 2007 as they did not in 2003. The Lagos case in 2003 should also interest Nigerians as we approach 2007. Those who were given the contract to rig the 2003 elections in the South-West were so confident in their expertise that they even pasted the rigged results on INEC’s website even before the assignment had been carried out. They succeeded in Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti and Osun states because the AD administrations of these states were busy making tribal deals while Tinubu, who knew that Obasanjo was more pro-Obasanjo than he was pro-Yoruba, never allowed himself to be hoodwinked.
Nigerians should diligently study the Kano and Lagos models. It is the only route towards a genuinely democratic Nigeria.
It will be safe to assume that Obasanjo intends to rig the 2007 elections far worse than he did in 2003. It is always easier to deal with the crook you know. If, in 2003, people were taken by surprise because no one could have imagined that the president would stoop so low, today they are wiser. And it will also be important for all opposition politicians to know that they cannot defeat Obasanjo’s well-oiled rigging machine if they engage him separately and disparately. They must all come together and fight as one organic whole. All the serious presidential aspirants must band together and present a common candidate. The alternative will be worse for them than Soddom and Gomorrah. If they don’t, Obasanjo will rig them all out and find the slightest opportunity to send them all to jail. The Nigerian president follows no rules. Remember what he did in Oyo State with Governor Rasheed Ladoja. The president has not only become desperate, he is armed and dangerous!
But some good news emerged last week. General Muhammadu Buhari, a presidential aspirant, announced that some of them are ready to protect their votes with their lives just to ensure that the parody of 2003 does not recur in 2007. Buhari is not known to be flippant. That is why the admonition has to be taken seriously. Nigerians will definitely be waiting for the riggers in 2007.
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