ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA: A CASE FOR OPTION A4
The Shehu Musa Yaradua’s government has, like its predecessors, started
moving in cycles. As far as I can discern, we are going on a dubious
merry-go-round. I cannot fathom why a self-proclaimed “servant-leader” and
a graduate of whatever ideological persuasion, cannot skim through our
history and start acting decisively. I read he was of the radical school
of thoughts, but his actions so far tend to prove the contrary. He should
hearken to Edmund Burke’s voice that “all that it takes for evil men to
take over society and poison it, is for righteous men to stand aloof and
do nothing”. If Yaradua is a righteous man, let him start acting now and
let the heavens fall if they want to. He should dismantle those interest
groups that have held Nigeria hostage. He has been in the system long
enough to pretend not to know them.
I am not shocked by the scandals and figures coming out of the Elumelu
panel on PHCN neither are Nigerians. For God’s sake, these figures are
capable of killing the healthy brain cells of any sincere, passionate and
patriotic Nigerian. They are stroke-inducing figures. [Un] fortunately,
Nigerians are used to these razzmatazz. They have, over the years,
developed shock absorbers as a form of defence mechanism. They absorb
every evil inflicted on them by their leaders, with “philosophical
calmness,” thus it has always been business as usual.
The late brilliant journalist, Dele Giwa, as far back as I can recall,
ones wrote in one of his columns in the now defunct CONCORD newspapers
that “Nigeria is God’s experiment in the impossible.” What an established
sarcasm! More than 20 years after his brutal death, the assertion still
stands the test of our inglorious time. One ex-president even boasted to
his own derision, that he had, during his appalling tenure in office,
applied all economic theories to the Nigerian economy, and was surprised
that the economy did not collapse. In other wards, he applied those
theories, not to improve the economy but to deliberately and consciously
destroy it. But he never knew that Nigeria is being guided to a particular
destination, by a strong spiritual hand. A spiritual principle most
Nigerian leaders with ossified and congealed brains, have failed to
discern and comprehend.
When the late chief Bola Ige, was appointed the Minister of Mines and
Power in 1999 by Obasanjo, he personally looked into why NEPA was not
performing to full capacity. He submitted the report to President
Obasanjo. In a snippet of that report which Ige released to the press, he
strongly blamed NEPA contractors and generator sellers for the problems of
NEPA. What action was taken and where is the report? Since Obasanjo was
afraid to act on the report because he did not want to offend certain
interest groups who, perhaps, contributed in some way to his election, can
Yaradua, David Mark,and Bankole be bold enough to act on it? Why set up
the Godwin Elumelu led panel on the PHCN, when the previous panel report
was not acted on? When is Nigeria going to be governed by serious-minded
politicians? Is the country jinxed ? Perhaps if that report was acted on,
the present scandal daily bombarding our ears would have been nipped in
the bud. Today, Bola Ige has been vindicated. NEPA or PHCN is not working
because contractors don’t want it to work. QED! So, what concerned
Nigerians should be addressing is: what drastic measures should be taken
to save the PHCN?
The Elumelu panel should please be disbanded to save public cost.
Nigerians are tired of these kangaroo panels. With the calibre of people
involved in this scandal, the report will not go anywhere. What Yaradua,
David Mark, and Bankole need is the courage and political will to do what
is good for Nigerians without caring whose ox is going to be gored. They
should merge Bola Ige’s report with the emerged scandals, and start
acting. They should stop playing chess with the patience of the people.
History will not forgive them if they refuse, during their tenure, to do
what is right and just in the eyes of the people. And if their hands are
tied {which is a common excuse by our leaders} they should resign en-mass.
To resign from a position of power and authority is not a thing of shame.
African leaders and politicians see resignations as an act of shame or
failure that should not be countenanced. It is not true, rather it is a
mark of honour.
This then brings me to the main topic, which is the electoral reform
panel. Like the Elumelu panel, the panel is a smokescreen. Nothing will
come out of it and, I plead to submit that I was surprised by the roles of
all the opposition political parties in the run up to the April 2007
elections. They knew what happened in the elections of 1964, 1979, 1983,
1999 and 2003 and yet did not take concrete steps to avoid the blatant
repeat of those failures inherent in the electoral system. There were no
guaranteed safe guards put in place by INEC except sugar-coated
professorial speeches and lectures laced with propaganda. So, because of
their desperation to take over from Obasanjo and thwart the third term
agenda, the parties went into that election with the erroneous assumption
that all would be well. The shambled elections are being overturned by
judges in most states and Nigeria just keeps dithering.
The presidential election’s judgement has made a bad situation, worse. To
me, what was at stake before the judges were social justice for the people
and, the nation’s honour and integrity in the international community. If
the judgement was passed in public interest [ for that is what it seemed],
the danger implicit in it, is that the beneficiaries would rig again at
that level, believing that the judiciary would pass another judgement “in
the interest of the public.” The Guardian newspaper editorial commentary
on the judgement dated March 5th, 2008 captured a few mud swings of the
nation. Says the Guardian “…the tribunal sought to confer legitimacy on an
election that was universally considered fraudulent.” To me, the tribunal
did not “sought“, rather it conferred legitimacy on the most fraudulent
elections conducted in that country.
Besides, this is a dangerous precedent and a clarion call for anarchy
during subsequent elections. I can assure the readers that one day, just
one day, the patience of the oppressed and the electorate will snap and my
pity goes to whoever is in power. What happened in Kenya would be a
child’s play. Perhaps it is worth recalling at this point the Kenyan
experience. The opposition leader Raila Odinga, said in one of his
interviews that the people took the law into their hands because, as at
the time the new election was being conducted, the election dispute of
2002 was still in court . The Kenyan court was procrastinating until the
present election came and we’ve seen its attendant mayhem. So this time
around Rome decided to burn. The people decided to be the judge and the
executioner.
The Nigerian Guardian editorial then went on to submitt that “ what is
clear from the outcome of the presidential election petition so far, is
that law alone cannot enthrone a fraud-free and transparent electoral
process in Nigeria.” The paper then called for a review of the electoral
laws. A review, is not the problem. We have to look into electoral
conducts of field officers, abuse of sacred ballot papers, abuse of sacred
ballot boxes and abuse of security apparatuses by the ruling political
party. We have enough laws. What we need is the will power to enforce
them. Lawyers are just eating the country dry. They are creating more
problems with their dubious interpretations of the laws they have helped
in the first instance to draft. It is time for the people to stand up and
help to re-create their own laws and interpret it themselves. This is not
a call for anarchy for we are already in a state of anomie.
In all, the editorial never made a recommendation of any electoral option
as if we have had none. Do we really as a nation, learn from history? The
answer is an emphatic NO! Since the sixties, I can say that with the
exception of the 12th June 1993 election, none has been held in Nigeria
that had not left on its trails; mass deaths, “petals of blood“, arson and
thuggery, blatant rigging, manipulations and the doctoring of result
sheets. None! The surreal tendency is that we end up heaping “together the
mistakes of our lives and then create a monster called destiny” {ala Tai
Solarin}. Oh yes, Yaradua is destined to rule! It is his destiny! Destiny
created through a perfectly executed electoral fraud! Most advanced
countries are advanced because they learn from their history and improve
their countries based on past and learned experiences, but in Africa, our
leaders don’t. As a result, history continues to repeat itself in the most
absurd and deleterious manner and, with painful and devastating
consequences.
Perhaps as a participant observer on the 12th June 1993 election, I will
like to chronicle the option A4 electoral process for the benefit of
Nigerians who did not know about it. On that day, an election was held in
Nigeria between the Social Democratic Party {SDP} and the National
Republican Convention {NRC}. The late chief MKO Abiola, purportedly
murdered by the state machinery, was the presidential candidate of the SDP
while Alhaji Bashir Tofa was the NRC candidate. The election went well.
There were no ballot papers neither were there ballot boxes. All that the
electorates were asked to do was to go to their voting centres, check
their names on the electoral register and wait until it was time for
voting. We had one of our thumps inked for easy identification during
voting.
When it was time, every electorate was asked to queue up behind his or her
candidate‘s poster. The counting of the voters was done by the electoral
officer accompanied by the representatives of SDP and NRC. It was then
entered in a result sheet, which, if I may still recall, was in
triplicate. It was signed by both the electoral officer and the
representatives of the two political parties. The returning officer took
his copy and the representatives of the parties took theirs. They returned
to the electoral headquarters with their respective results were all
results were being collated. At the headquarters, the SDP and NRC
representatives gave their results to their party representatives
respectively, while the electoral officer gave his to his boss. The
signatures were verified and figures cross checked and entered. Simple!
That was the operational modus of option A4 in 1993.
Now, it is pertinent to remind readers at this juncture, that this option
was the brainchild of Professor Humphrey Nwosu [who was then the national
electoral council chairman], in consultations with Prof. Omo- Omoruyi [who was the Director-General of the centre for democratic studies], and
Prof. Akinyemi{ then Minister of External Affairs]. However, most of the
nitty-gritty, was done by professor Nwosu. The system was developed and
opted for, to avoid the repeat of our past notoriety in vote rigging,
illegal thump printing of ballot papers, illegal stuffing of ballot boxes,
bloodletting, and manipulation. There were no ballot papers for people to
dubiously thump print on, in the bushes nor were there ballot boxes to be
conveyed around in questionable circumstances. The physical presence of
the electorate was used and was used to great effect.
The results were declared at state capitals after a collation from the
wards to the council headquarters and on, to the state capitals. At the
state capitals, all the party agents have the results in their hands,
which were also transmitted to the SDP and NRC party headquarters. The
only state result, out of the 36 states, which was withheld was Taraba
state while the rest 35 states’ result were known. What remained to be
done was for Prof. Nwosu to announce the results in Abuja and declare the
winner. Just while he was about to do that, a macabre dance started
unfolding before our eyes. One of the maximum leaders of “the forest of a
thousand demons” decided to unleash his demons on the country.
The then Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, out of relative slumber
coupled with a mixture of supreme arrogance, decided to play out his evil
by annulling the best election ever conducted in the annals of our
history. The international observer groups had described that election as
the best and praised the ingenuity of the professors who invented option
A4. All entreaties to that Gestapo regime of Babangida to de-annul the
election fell on deaf ears. His complete incompetence was on display. He
ended up telling Nigerians, having disgracefully left office, that he was“born to dominate his environment”. That annulment was a coup against the
electorate, an act of violence against the masses and an unpardonable
insult to all of us. The rest of what happened is now history deposited on
the banks of rivers Niger and Benue.
When General Abdusallami Abubakar took over after the death of Abacha,
Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief. We had thought the election would be
de-annulled and announced but it was never to be. Chief Abiola, who had
won that unique election, died during Abubakar’s tenure in office and in
the confusion that followed, Abubakar called for another election. He
abandoned option A4 and reverted to our old kill-and-go method. What
happened in the election of 1999 between Olu Falae and Obasanjo is also
better left for history. Today, Nigeria is neither moving forward nor
backwards. A country, Chinweizu, in the Guardian of 24th June 2005,
rightly called a “noyau: A country in which its citizens like to hate
themselves… a society of inward antagonism, one in which members would not
survive if it had no fellow member to hate”. What a description!
My question to Nigerians is simple: what happened to option A4? I can bet
here that if that option was used between Obasanjo and Olu Falae in 1999,
the later would have defeated the former without doubts. And subsequent
elections, conducted on that basis, would have produced popular leaders
and not political wolves in sheep clothing. But Falae {himself} never
pressed for the use of the option neither did the political parties that
took part in the sham elections of 2007. They knew how transparent the
option was and yet they failed to shout for it. The Nigerian press did not
even help matters. They also failed to mobilise support and yell for that
option. Today, the chickens have come home to roost. Says Jean-Paul Sartre“uneasy consciences” are now “caught up in their own contradictions.”
Again, I posit this question; what happened to our home grown option A4
electoral system? Why should a country as big as Nigeria continue to
behave like a compound fool? Why must we be moving in vicious cycles?
Perhaps, the answers could be gleaned in Areoye Oyebola’s book ;THE
BLACKMAN’S DILEMMA, Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo’s book; WHAT IS WRONG WITH
BEING BLACK, or Reuben Abati’s article in the GUARDIAN of 13th March 2005
entitled; CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER [the Black Eagle Cartel cult]: A
cult that conveys a lot about the ritualistic hubris of our dare devil
politicians.
I had watched on television, with undisguised glee, where professor
Maurice Iwu opened his mouth and said his electronic system was better
than option A4. That is a knowing lie! I guess he was in America when the
option was used in 1993. What one had expected the professor to do whilst
in office was to try and improve on option A4. But his intellectual pride
and jealousy to a system he did not invent or participate in inventing,
played out itself. He failed to bury his pride by not canvassing to use
that option and the nation paid dearly for it. Today, he is busy, going
about, intellectualising his failure. Even my mum, with her native
intelligence, knows that Maurice was a colossal failure. He should be
removed before he transforms into a more dynamic dangerous phlegm.
So, in as much as we continue to use ballot papers and ballot boxes,
elections would continue to be rigged in Nigeria. I rest my case! Any
Nigerian who is tired of the mess in that country should go to www.championsfornigeria.com [anchored by Akinadejumo Adetokunbo, the fiery
anti-corruption writer] and register to join and contribute ideas and
solutions {not gossips} to our myriad of problems. We should stop whining
and start acting! “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of
tyranny,” says Prof. Wole Soyinka.
By EPHRAIM EMENANJO ADINLOFU
ephraimadinlofu@hotmail.co.uk
Ephraim Emenanjo Adinlofu is a member of Champions
For Nigeria organisation, an organisation that is
out to promote excellence and good governance in
Nigeria. He has his B.Sc {1987}and M.Sc {1993} in
Sociology from the university of Jos, Nigeria,
and he lives and works in London.