What sense can one make of the ‘result’ of the Presidential election in Nigeria? Local and most foreign observers are united that the elections
were ‘fundamentally flawed’. The coalition of domestic NGOs, CSOs and think-tanks, under The Transition Monitoring Group, TMG, that deployed 50, 000 monitors across the country, has not only condemned the widespread irregularities variously reported about the election, it has gone further than any other group of monitors by categorically calling for a cancellation
of the results and a rerun of the vote. The two leading opposition candidates, retired General Muhammadu Buhari (ANPP) and embattled Vice President Abubakar Atiku (AC) and other presidential candidates (there were 24 of them!) immediately rejected the results and have declared that a new president cannot be sworn in on May 29 based on the result announced on Monday because they believed the elections were massively rigged in favour of the ruling party’s and President Obasanjo’s anointed successor, Alhaji Umar Musa Yar ‘Adua. The losing candidates have left open their options for taking on the PDP and addressing their grievances including using the courts, public pressure, protests and international opinion.

For their part the PDP, President Obasanjo and the Electoral Commission have reacted not triumphantly but by conceding that there were ‘problems’ (an understatement indeed!) with the conduct of the vote, but they insist that the shortcomings were not sufficient to nullify the officially declared outcome.

So far there has not been much surprise in the reaction of the various interested parties including the sporadic violent reactions in opposition strongholds where voters felt that the declared result was not in accordance with their wishes. They burnt down houses, offices and other property belonging to members of the ruling party or suspected electoral officers or members of the public just caught up on the wrong side. Soon after the security forces move in and some calmness is restored. It is almost like the authorities were planning for a short period during which the frustrated voters can vent their spleens.

So what next? How long will these controversies last? And what long-term impacts will they have on the body politic of the country?

In a game that will mostly be based on ‘wait and see’, the government has more time on its hand and can afford to wait. If the opposition chooses to go to the courts the matter will definitely be bogged down in procedural issues that may not be decided by the 29th of May when the new President will be sworn in. As it happened after the last, also very controversial election in 2003, a final verdict on the election may drag on to the Supreme Court and probably take the next three years or more, and it will not have any political impact or even make a legal difference. Should they choose to take to the streets it may not yield any immediate political benefits either, but it would definitely create more chaos, destruction and even more deaths for their supporters and innocent members of the public.

They also have to consider the reality of the power relations. The opposition will only be able to get away with public disorder and impunity in areas where they are most popular. Why make ungovernable places that are already sympathetic to you like Lagos and Kano. Would you not be inviting the government to declare a state of emergency and direct PDP rule in those pockets of places where the opposition is actually in power? How will that play out with elected opposition candidates from those areas? The critical Niger Delta has been disenfranchised for such a long time that strealing their mandate again is just routine. And now they can even claim one of them is finally in Aso Rock since the new Vice President is from the Niger Delta.

The last time Nigeria had a free and fair election was June 12 1993, and the military dictator, the gap-toothed fiend General I.B. Babangida, and his regime annulled the result. National protests and international isolation followed, forcing IBB out of power but the winner, Chief MKO Abiola, never regained his victory. Instead another military regime even more brutal than IBB´s followed and Abiola died in prison. When Abacha was aided to his death in leisure the same Generals organized Abiola’s`death in prison by choking on tea served to him in the presence of a ‘visiting’ (or was it supervising?) delegation of senior US officials including Susan Rice`, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for Africa!

The June 12 struggle that was a national campaign became isolated as a Yoruba affair in spite of the fact that Abiola would have won even without votes from Yoruba Land. Obasanjo was one of the scheming Generals who denied Abiola his mandate. Other Generals rewarded his betrayal of democracy by making him President after Abacha. And they are all now complaining about him.

The situation is different now. Neither Buhari nor Atiku can claim the same national mandate and popularity as was claimed for Abiola. They are neither able to transform the frustration of the voters into a sustainable popular struggle. A military coup is more or less out of the picture. They cannot accuse Obasanjo of favoring his ethnic group or his religious faith. So all the fault lines of Nigeria’s politics are safe. Just as the Generals gave Nigeria a President who was Yoruba in 1999, but not necessarily the preferred candidate of the Yoruba people, Obasanjo has given us a President who is Hausa-Fulani Muslim but cannot be Hausa-Fulani President.

The sadness of it all is that I believe that Yar’ Adua could still have won, although maybe not by such ridiculous margins. But the PDP has made it look like there was no reason why many Nigerians would have voted for him given the limited choice they had of choosing, effectively, between three candidates. One a former General and the other a former custom officer and Yar ‘Adua, the only civil civilian who also had a reputation for running a decent administration in his state and also one of only a handful of the 36 state governors not known or believed to be corrupt.

Obasanjo has `helped` Yar Adua to the gate of Aso Rock; but he cannot co-habit with him. It will now depend on him how he shoulders on. It will take more than his initial reconciliatory statements to his `worthy opponents` for the controversies and the credibility deficit with which he was annointed to settle. Obasanjo turned against those who facilitated his entrance into that bastion of power, therefore he cannot expect that he would be driving Yar Adua from behind. Proxy politics like opposition gangings-up have never really worked in Nigeria. One of the first things Yar Adua has to do with immediate effect is to unlearn some of his benefactor’s worst ways of doing things. Politics is about persuasion not conquering your opponents.

The International Election tourists otherwise known as observers or monitors will already be on their way to the next election in some other country by now, cutting and pasting, on their high powered laptops, as they go. Democracy in any country can only be guaranteed by the peoples of that country, not by any group of outsiders no matter how well-meaning. The EU, NDI, Madeline Albright, Commonwealth and whoever can all say that their governments are not about to impose sanctions on Nigeria (not while the oil is still flowing) and their businesses are not going to withdraw under Yar Adua (they did not under Abacha) so it is really up to Nigerians to fight to make their interests relevant to their political dispensation as they confront an undemocratic civilian government and equally non-democratic opposition political parties whose only ideology is ‘its our turn to chop’.

“Forward ever , backward never”…..Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972)

………..DON’T AGONISE!………..ORGANISE!!………..

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 9:48 am and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.