Obasanjo’s theory of election survival 

By Levi Obijiofor 

Friday, 27 April 2007 

In his first official reaction to general complaints about the colossal blemishes that flawed the presidential and national assembly elections last weekend, President Olusegun Obasanjo said, rather innocently: “In the next five weeks, I hope the election and appeal tribunals will work earnestly to expeditiously adjudicate on all the disputes that will be brought before them. That way, mistakes and accidents can be corrected." Every Nigerian who voted in the elections last week and in the elections of April 14, 2007, must be appalled by Obasanjo’s reference to massive election fraud as “mistakes and accidents”. This description in itself exposes the level of moral depravity of the advocate. It is an unhelpful statement designed to heal deep-seated anger and frustration. There is nothing new or strange about Obasanjo’s creepy advice.  

In 2003, Obasanjo advised his main opponent -- Muhammadu Buhari -- and other politicians who were rigged out in the presidential election to take their grievances to the election petitions’ tribunals while Obasanjo, the winner by default, relaxed. It was a political bait which Buhari took like a naïve politician. Buhari lodged his appeal in the tribunal and traversed the country, seeking documents that could assist him to overturn the election of Obasanjo as president in 2003. By the time the case went through various processes of judicial rigmarole in the tribunals, and by the time Buhari realized he could not find the essential documents that would reinforce his argument that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) rigged the election beyond belief, it was already too late. It had become painfully difficult for any court of law to rule in favour of Buhari. In the end, Buhari could not gather enough evidence to convince the Supreme Court that the presidential election of 2003 was massively rigged in favour of Obasanjo. The odds were stacked openly against Buhari, the complainant.  

While Buhari lost in the Supreme Court, he was hailed the victor in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, the court of public opinion is not a court of law. It has no enforcement powers and cannot compensate those who seek compensation of any kind. In essence, the court of public opinion is merely a court of moral suasion. There are no rules and no conventions. The court of public opinion operates like Jurgen Habermas’s public sphere. In the court of public opinion, everybody is a lawyer and everybody is free to advance their opinions and arguments.  

Buhari’s experiences in 2003 and beyond, and the nature of Obasanjo’s advice to election losers, marked for the first time the beginning of this wily theory of election winning strategies widely attributed to Obasanjo and his team of uncanny election advisers. Obasanjo’s proposition about how to win elections in Nigeria suggests, to put it crudely, that it is a race driven by the philosophy of “first come, first served”. In essence, it is alright to win elections by any means. Once you are declared the winner, the losers can trot the courts and the election petitions’ tribunals while you carry on performing the functions assigned to the post you won.  

This is why mischief and insincerity are engraved all over Obasanjo’s statement that election losers should take their case to the courts and the election petition tribunals. Obasanjo knows very well that it takes years for the election petitions’ tribunals to adjudicate election disputes. That was exactly how Chris Ngige (formerly of the PDP) was able to remain in office in the borrowed robe of governor for more than three years while Peter Obi, the rightful winner, spent his limited resources fighting a corrupt Independent National Electoral Commission and the PDP in order to reverse the electoral injustice. In the end, it took Obi more than three years to receive justice but the damage had already been done. For more than three years, Ngige, the pretender to the throne, enjoyed the benefits reserved only for genuine state governors. Although the PDP kingmakers and Ngige knew that justice had been suffocated in the 2003 governorship election in Anambra State, they all pretended that everything was okay until Chris Uba, the infamous political godfather of Anambra politics, began to sing publicly about how he single-handedly rigged Ngige into the government house in Awka. The message three years ago, still valid today in Nigeria’s election platform, is that winning is more important than the means through which victory is attained.   

In the 2007 elections, Obasanjo has revived his theory. Soon after the governorship and state houses of assembly elections on Saturday, April 14, Obasanjo declared publicly that, in his judgment, the elections were fair and free. It took relentless condemnations in newspaper editorials and by international and domestic election observers before Obasanjo grudgingly shifted his position and acknowledged that the elections may not have been fair but that the nation should at least congratulate itself for having conducted the elections. Again, following unprecedented violence that followed the flawed presidential and national assembly elections last weekend, and in particular owing to the prompt denunciation of the elections by Madeleine Albright (former United States Secretary of State and now head of the independent National Democratic Institute (NDI), as well as criticisms by Max Van den Berg, chief of the European Union Elections Observation Mission, Obasanjo has reproduced his signature excuse why Nigerians should continue to accept seriously defective elections until the country could get its acts right. The question that Obasanjo has cleverly avoided in his self-righteous but deceptive proclamation is: How many rigged elections shall Nigerians experience before the election officers and the federal authorities are held responsible for messing with the fundamental rights of everyone to choose their political leaders?  

Obasanjo’s description of election fraud as “mistakes and accidents” is an insult to every Nigerian who voted in the elections. Obasanjo must be out of sync with modern day realities in Nigeria for him to feign ignorance of the seriousness of the fraud that marred the general elections. Trying to underplay the gross injustice of the last two weeks will only aggravate rather than soothe public anger. There is anger in Nigeria, not so much because of the character flaws of the winners but because of the contemptuous manner in which voters were treated.  

Obasanjo said in his statement that “Nigeria must show example to the rest of Africa and the world that we are capable of choosing our leaders peacefully and democratically.” On the contrary, Nigerian political leaders have just shown to the rest of the world and Africa how fraudulent we can be when it comes to the conduct of elections. Of course, Nigerians would love to choose their political leaders peacefully, fairly, and in an unfettered manner if only the machinery of the ruling PDP and the duplicitous INEC officials would allow voters to do so. Obasanjo must not misinterpret public silence (after the initial bouts of violence) as evidence that the election results have been widely accepted across the country. If indeed there is silence in the country, it must be the silence that forebodes the onset of trouble. No one would encourage the use of violence to settle election disputes in Nigeria. Even in other parts of the world where election fraud resulted in widespread civil disobedience, peaceful protests proved to be more effective than violent dissent. Most recently in Ukraine and in the Philippines in 1986, civil disobedience was used as the most potent weapon to correct election scam.  

Politics in Nigeria has been driven by the philosophy of keeping the stomach contented. In previous years, ethnicity and religious affiliation were the predictors of success in elections. Now, ethnicity and religion have been displaced by a new brand of politics – the sinister role of money in our national affairs. With money, a politician can achieve anything in Nigeria. With money, you can abuse the law and live above the law. With money, you can smuggle hard currency illegally into another country and be guaranteed presidential protection in Nigeria. With money, you can engage in open destruction of public and private property and the police will provide you with maximum security. But money may not solve the latest political logjam in which we find ourselves.