| The ANC Landslide and Why Nigerians should Take Note |
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| Wednesday, 28 April 2004 | |
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The victory of the African National Congress (ANC) in the April 14, 2004 general election does hold special significance on a continent where the rigging of elections by petty tryants and their ruling parties has become as predictable as the rising of the tropical sun. President Thabo Mbeki’s ANC won a landslide victory in polls that have been universally hailed as “free and fair”. If they have a modicum of humanity left in them, members of Nigeria’s PDP-led regime of General Obasanjo should stoop in shame and join fellow Nigerians in trying to learn some useful lessons from the South African example of participatory democracy at work. When the South African president says that “the ANC has the overwhelmimg support and confidence of the people of South Africa”, he can be sure that very few objective individuals will disagree with that assessment. The ANC win is truly a people’s mandate for several reasons. The main reason, of course, has to do with the transparent electoral processs which accounted for the high voter turn-out, estimated at about 77 % of the 21 million registered voters. The ANC won 70 % of the vote. By contrast, during the March 27, 2004 local government elections in Nigeria, only about 25 % of eligible voters bothered to vote. A key explanation for this level of apathy is the “419” ‘selection’ exercise which witnessed the allocation of votes to undeserving persons with the active connivance of the police and other security agences. It is important to mention that the transparent electoral process in South Africa has as its backbone that country’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). This is an outfit whose members, unlike what obtains in Nigeria today, are not beholden to the whims and caprices of a crooked governing party and its scheming leader. Also, in South Africa, the police force and other security forces were not used as instruments of coercion in the service of rogue politicians out to thwart the democratic process. Another critical point to note is the fact that in conformity with the policy of providing a level playing field for all contestants, access to public media was not skewed in favor of the party in power at the centre. The stage was thus set for an electoral contest generally devoid of the type of criminal shenanigans and recriminations one has come to expect from Nigerian pols and especially those belonging to that visionless behemoth paradoxically named the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In Nigeria, a ‘landslide’, ‘seaslide’ or even ‘moonslide’ has come to mean the brazen subversion of the people’s will by a rotten regime and its henchmen. The ANC victory, significant as it is, is only but an aspect of a much larger victory – that of the South Africans and their determination to install a democratic process which caters primarily to the aspirations of the people. In present-day South Africa, elections are the true expression of the sovereign will of the majority. The successful conduct of South African elections since the formal end of the obnoxious apartheid system is instructive on several counts. It has also made the drawing of parallels with the contemporary Nigerian situation both inevitable and apropos. The shabby conduct of the March 27, 2004 local council elections in Nigeria has no doubt amplified the contrast between South African democracy and Nigeria’s tyrannical order under the current Obasanjo regime. But if the 2003 and 2004 editions of the electoral charade in Nigeria have been unprecedented in the brazen nature of the corruption which attended their organization, the impunity with which Nigeria’s political class has conducted the affairs of the nation since 1999 has been profoundly traumatizing in its overall impact on society. Together, these excesses of Nigeria’s political leadership are bound to have very negative implications for our country both nationally and internationally. Today, Nigeria and South Africa are said to be the two African economies south of the Sahara with the potential to serve as power houses for greater regional and continental integration and growth. It is hardly surprising that the respective national leadership in Nigeria and South Africa should see themselves as imbued with a sense of mission regarding the affairs of the continent. But can a country whose political leadership is deemed by the people as lacking in legitimacy realistically lay claim to leadership roles outside of its national theatre of operation without running the risk of being seen as, at best, a tragi-comic nuisance only tolerated by those finding themselves in desperate circumstances and, at worst, as a neo-colonialist agent of usurious imposition? Obasanjo can play host to all the world’s leaders, organize international sporting jamborees every single month of the year, play to the gallery by engaging in diversionary adventurism in every African backwater and even offer asylum to any homicidal ex-dictator under the sun, but Nigeria will not be accorded the recognition that we so desperately crave as long as our politicians and their collaborators are perceived as essentially selfish and morally bankrupt tormentors of their people with little or no regard for democracy and human rights. It is quite understandable that hard-working and honest Nigerians who are in the majority would like the rest of the world to view their country in a better light. We should not be judged on the basis of the sins of a corrupt minority in power, one would argue. Yet, the average Nigerian cannot insulate himself from blame for the reckless impunity of the decadent political class. To the extent that he is aware of the excesses of the ruling mafia and yet prefers to fold his arms and take refuge in the defeatist culture of sycophancy or resignation, the average Nigerian cannot expect that freedom-loving people around the world would find his posture morally uplifting. As a matter of fact, it is a national embarrassment to see a callous and tyrannical Obasanjo either playing the humanitarian tsar in Liberia or the starry-eyed democrat in Sao Tome, with long-suffering Nigerians generally reduced to sniffling or wallowing in self-pity. We are reminded that South Africa’s leadership position in world affairs does acquire greater attraction with the democracy-enhancing stance of the ANC-led administration and other major national players in the politics of the country. Under Mandela and now under President Mbeki, South African leaders have not felt the need to seek to divert the attention of their fellow citizens from their administrative failures by embarking on foreign adventures. This would explain, in part, why South African involvement in places like Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has met with less controversy internally than Obasanjo’s intervention in the Liberian conflict. It is noteworthy that the electoral mandate accorded the ANC on April 14, 2004, came about despite the fact that the economic circumstances of the average South African can hardly be said to have substantially improved under the Mbeki government. What the South Africans have clearly stated with their vote is that they have confidence in the honest efforts being made by their elected representatives to better the lot of the people. What this means is that when President Mbeki takes a decision to intervene in a foreign conflict, he is doing so with the weight of national popular opinion behind him. The president can thus say that he is pursuing the national interest without fear of contradiction. In the prevailing political situation in Nigeria today, Obasanjo’s claims of acting in the national interest in Sao Tome, for instance, do sound both hollow and self-serving. This invariably leads us to the issue of how Olusegun Obasanjo wants to be remembered in the history of our nation. President Obasanjo’s supporters like to remind Nigerians that he is a man who is deeply concerned about his place in history. Obasanjo is entitled to his idées fixes, but he must realize that, like any man in his position, he will ultimately be judged by his actions and not by the mendacious official discourse emanating from his hired hands. It is no secret today that Nigerians are generally scornful of the often coarse pro-regime justifications by the likes of Jerry Gana, Bode George and the truculently xenophobic Femi-Kayode. Mrs. Oluremi Oyo, the president’s media operative, considers her master’s regime as “very well regarded”. “...We have succeeded in ensuring that there is peace in our nation. And so, the time is very ripe and there is a conducive environment for investment...There is no point in heating up the system whatsoever”! This is the best argument the regime can come up with against the so-called Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) and their intention to hold a mass protest to mark the first anniversary of the 2003 electoral fiasco while at the same time denouncing the systematic and on-going destruction of Nigerian democracy by Obasanjo and his PDP in particular. Any public protest by the CNPP will be viewed by the dictator and his men as “enemy action” and participants in such an event will be treated as “enemies of the state”! (ThisDay Online) It is apparent that these dim-wits in government have inflicted so much pain and suffering on the average Nigerian that they are now more paranoid than ever before. Their every gesture and pronouncement betrays a regime whose representatives are scared of the Nigerian people precisely because they have wrecked the lives of fellow citizens through their recklessness and criminal ways. The likes of Oyo cannot put a lie on history. President Obasanjo’s track record since 1999 is that of an administrative disaster that is in many critical respects worse than the recent Abacha and Babangida military dictatorships. When the regime says that it has “succeeded in ensuring...peace in our nation”, that “there is a conducive environment for investment”, or accuses the opposition of trying to heat up the system by calling for a mass demonstration against the excesses of the PDP-led tyranny, any thinking Nigerian knows that it is lying. Obasanjo’s failures as president are now legendary: unprecedented insecurity, much of it as a result of the regime’s gangsterism; a concerted assault on vital democratic structures like the judiciary and the National Assembly; insensitive economic policies; a neglect of the health and educational sectors; wanton corruption; etc. Of course, it is to be expected that a corrupt process will more likely than not throw up mediocres. With Obasanjo and his cohorts in the PDP, the country is fast regressing into the Stone Age of barbarism and moral collapse. It should be emphasized that one of the more worrisome failures of the PDP-led regime is its wilful desecretion of the electoral process. There is nothing honourable about a man who has spent the last five years scheming to corruptly impose himself and his allies on the Nigerian people. Obasanjo has debased the Nigerian presidency and with it, Nigerian democracy. Above all, he has systematically contributed to the continued dehumanization of the average Nigerian. His apparent determination to rig the 2007 presidential election in favour of a preferred successor must be seen by Nigerians and the international community as unacceptable. It is hard to imagine what topics Obasanjo would want to discuss when he is in the company of either Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki. The Nigerian dictator seems to have very little in common with these two African democrats. And that is one good reason why the current South African president should use his moral standing to impress upon the Obasanjo regime to resolve to henceforth respect the wishes of the Nigerian people by organizing truly democratic elections. It is fair to say that today, Nigerians have very low expectations of the dictatorship in Abuja. That notwithstanding, they should not relent in their collective determination to have, for once, free and fair elections in 2007. This would be a rare and sweet victory for the people. It would signal the beginning of the process of consigning “419”, March 27, 2004 and the principal actors of these tragedies to the garbage can of history. Aonduna Tondu New York
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Posted by Robot| 12.11.2005 14:09