23 Dec 2004 |
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| These are pregnant times in Nigeria. First, it was the letter by the PDP National Chairman, Audu Ogbeh. Then came the reply by President Obasanjo in which, characteristically, he sought to pass the buck on Anambra and the rot in the country under his leadership. And even as Nigerians were still grappling with the implications for the polity of all that, came the judicial confirmation from Abuja last Monday that the president and his party did indeed lose Ogun in the 2003 presidential election. In many respects, Ogun is like the proverbial voice from the grave. It is Nemesis returning to demand a rendering of accounts from those with claims to the leadership of this great nation of ours. It is the collective voice of conscience of the Nigerian people – a voice which was brutally silenced with so many Nigerians paying the ultimate sacrifice, victims of a clique that is hell bent on imposing its crooked ways on the country and its citizens. It is true that in their ‘majority’ judgement, the judges of the Appeal Court did not nullify the electoral heist in Anambra and elsewhere. We are invited to read between the lines. That dissenting ‘minority’ judgement of Justice Nsofor is arguably a more befitting verdict on the reality of the electoral charade of 2003. Yet, the cancellation of the Ogun poll has vindicated those who have all along insisted that Obasanjo and his PDP did not win elections in that and other states across Nigeria. Ogun holds lessons for us all. For Obasanjo, it is yet another reminder of just how unpopular he was in the run-up to what is known in local parlance as ‘419’. Events in the last two weeks or so seem to indicate that Nemesis may finally be catching up with those who organized a most brazen rape of Nigerian democracy last year. As if to add salt to injury, these buccaneers have further aggravated our national condition with their blind allegiance to so-called reform policies that have studiously avoided any talk of transparent governance. When rational voices warned then of the consequences to the nation of refusing to act decisively against a regime that keeps insisting that performance and track record cannot be used as objective parameters for deciding who should lead us in a democracy, they were confronted with the barely disguised hostility of some of the very people who routinely pontificate about democracy and human rights. The convenient alibi has always been that ours is a young democracy. So, those wanting to instil some semblance of accountability into our polity were literally told to get lost! And like sacrificial lambs, the people appear to have been cowed and have since taken refuge in a state of despondency and deafening silence. But theirs is the silence of the graveyard. It is the type of silence that is witness to the macabre retinue of broken promises by a decadent regime. Its solemn testimony speaks to the depravity and state-sponsored mayhem in communities across the land. Its moans tell the story of our collective gloom in the face of plenty. And it says that somewhere in the inner recesses of their individual and collective conscience, Nigerians are quietly demanding that this time around, lessons be learnt in a meaningful way from our unsavoury experiences with bad leadership. They are clamoring for redress and retribution. The Ogbeh-Obasanjo exchange on the Anambra crisis and now the judgement by the Appeal Court regarding the last presidential ‘selection’ have provided the context for a renewed initiative in that regard. As an initial reaction to the majority verdict regarding General Buhari’s prayer that the result of the 2003 presidential election be declared null and void, it is in order to congratulate him for his dogged determination to act within the law and carry Nigerians with him in the struggle for a saner and more accountable system. His decision to go to the Supreme Court is a wise one. The first thing that Buhari needs to do at this juncture is enhance the manpower situation of his legal representation. His group should bring in other able and equally intrepid hands to join his team of lawyers. The civil society groups should support this effort by organizing other forms of peaceful protest which should primarily be aimed at ensuring that the courts or electoral tribunals are shielded from unwarranted political interference. This is a much better way of helping, through concrete gestures, the sustenance of the democratic process in the country. This, to me, is the ultimate lesson Nigerians can derive from the Ogun metaphor. For Obasanjo, as has already been mentioned, the annulment of the result of the presidential election in his home state of Ogun has presented him (and Nigerians in general) with what he himself has variously called a ‘moral burden’. Ogun will be a constant reminder that his legitimacy is at best a tenuous one. Beyond the spectre of personal humiliation, one cannot ignore the irony of the president who prior to ‘419’, was triumphantly and gleefully telling AD governors to start preparing their bags to get out of the respective government houses in the South-West. Yet, our temptation to gloat must be tempered by the realization that we are not in any tangible sense out of the woods. Nigerians must remember that vigilance is de rigueur. They should know that they are dealing with an individual with no remarkable history of remorse or self-reformation. If the recent Audu Ogbeh admonition has taught us anything at all, it is the fact that with Obasanjo and his éminence grise, what matters most is the lust for power and its trappings. It is as if for these confederates, Nigeria and her superior interests are only but an after-thought. It is therefore hardly surprising that pro-Babangida supporters within the PDP are reportedly scheming to get rid of Ogbeh ahead of the 2005 national convention that is expected to take far-reaching decisions regarding 2007. With or without Audu Ogbeh as PDP chairman, it would be a national disaster to allow Babangida or his surrogate to take control of the PDP or any other party for that matter. And when Omo Omoruyi, Babangida’s rabble-rouser and ally calls on the PDP to sack Ogbeh on account of the latter’s principled stand on the untold suffering of the Nigerian people, he should be dismissed as a joker. But Ogun is also a footnote of the 2003 electoral fiasco and as such it recalls Anambra and other places where Nigerian democracy was almost fatally wounded. And here lies another potent irony. In his rationalizations about the electoral banditry in Anambra, President Obasanjo gives the impression that he expects Nigerians to accept his curious insinuation that he is not politically responsible for ‘419’ and its consequences in Anambra and other parts of the federation. With Ogun, that line of reasoning will be much harder to defend. The only difference between Anambra and Ogun may lie in the fact that in the president’s home state, there are no known thugs openly and violently letting it be known just to what extent they helped in the PDP ‘capture’ of the state and subsequent subjugation of its citizens. For the AD and their ideological godfathers in Afenifere, Ogun will no doubt provide the vindication that they have all along wanted. But that is the happy part. There should be soul-searching within their ranks. The objective should be the rebuilding of the AD as a credible national democratic organization. AD cannot afford to remain imprisoned in its provincial cocoon. They should realize that their current predicament as a fringe party has a lot to do with the fact that the temptation of ethnocentric insularity as practised by the more hard-line segment of its largely gerontocratic leadership has kept many Nigerians at bay. The ethnic factor was said to be a key consideration in the decision by the AD not to field a presidential candidate in the last election. AD told those who bothered to listen that not presenting a presidential candidate was their way of making sacrifices for Nigerian democracy! This type of self-serving attitude by party kingpins did contribute in no small way to the scope and magnitude of the electoral brigandage witnessed in the South-West. It also contributed to the tolerance of the extreme evil of election malpractice associated with that exercise. Even after the massive electoral fraud, some notable AD figures explained that their party had decided not to ‘make a fuss’ about their ‘defeat’ because, as they put it, it was part of the sacrifice they had to make for the ‘Yoruba nation’ and democracy! But Obasanjo and Bode George had other plans for them beyond the unholy entente between AD and PDP. The rest, they say, is history. There is an abiding lesson here for Nigerian democracy. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! Aonduna Tondu New York. E-mail: tondua@yahoo.com > |
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