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
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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!