Governors of the Northern states met recently in Kaduna and
decided that come 2015 only a Presidential candidate of Northern extraction
would get the votes of the northern electorate. This bunch of unpatriotic
elements forgot conveniently that Nigerians of other geographical entities
still live in the North in spite of the torrents of terror-related attacks by
armed Islamic fundamentalist group in the North.
Currently, one major tension that has built up all around the
country is the groundswell of divergent opinions and interpretation given to
the statement credited to Nigeria’s one time military dictator- General
Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari has contested the position of the President of the Federal
Republic under different opposition political platforms since 2003 and he has
consistently emerged the runner up to the eventual winner. He has also had the
honour of becoming the only Nigerian alive to have dragged eventual winners of
three consecutive presidential elections from the lower election petition
tribunals to the highest court in the Land-the Supreme court of Nigeria. Buhari
lost in each of those hotly contested legal cases and in each of those times he
experienced judicial misfortune, he is known not to have accepted any of the
verdicts with equanimity.
For the powers-that-be in the Peoples Democratic Party, the fear
of General Muhammadu Buhari is the beginning of political wisdom. After Buhari
lost at the polls in the 2007 presidential election, he decided as usual to
challenge what he assumed was huge electoral fraud at the election Tribunals
but midway into the hearing of his matter which he instituted alongside his
then running mate at the election- the now late Chief Edwin Umeezuoke, Buhari
suffered a monumental set back when his once trusted running mate at the
election and a co-plaintiff in the election petition decided to pull the rug
off his feet when he shockingly withdrew from the matter at the presidential
election Tribunal thereby exposing General Buhari to ridicule before his
political adversaries.
Buhari never recovered from this disappointment which eventually
made him to leave his then political family-The All Nigerian Peoples Party
(ANPP) to form his own party- Congress of Progressive Change (CPC).
From the above analysis, it is safe to adduce that General Buhari
has had a dose of political misfortunes.
The Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change
(CPC) in the 2011 presidential elections, major –General Muhammadu Buhari while
receiving some of his party loyalists from Niger state in his Kaduna home
tasked the Federal government to either organize free and fair election in 2015
or face the consequences of bloody revolt from the electorate.
According to Buhari, “…We have resolved with your leaders that by
2015, either they uphold the principles of justice in the election or it will
be bloody. God’s willing by 2015 something will happen. Either they conduct
free and fair election or they will be disgraced.” Buhari was even quoted to
have stated that if election is rigged in 2015, monkeys and baboons will soak
in their blood which is an expression that bloody violence will greet any
suspected manipulations of the outcomes of 2015 General elections.
The above apprehensions raised by no other a person than Muhammadu
Buhari regarding a possible doomsday scenario in the country comes the year
2015, goes to show that many important factors are at play here.
First, Buhari’s doomsday tale is substantially in tandem with a
recent study by some controversial researchers under the umbrella of the
National intelligence council in the United States of America who had about two
years ago predicted that Nigeria may disintegrate by 2015 because of a
combination of factors which may include religious; terror-related; political
and regional conflicts.
Besides, the United States report which predicted the doomsday
scenario by 2015 in Nigeria had raised a very critical point that; “other
African Countries-including some failed states-plagued by poor leadership,
divisive ethnic politics, decayed government institutions, geographic
constraints, and a brain-drain may be unable to engage the international economy
sufficiently to reverse their downward trajectory”.
The kind of regional politics most politicians play in present day
Nigeria is a justification of this study by the Americans on Nigeria’s future
comes the year 2015.
Secondly, a good look at the prediction of blood- bath by 2015 as
made by the politician- Buhari would show that he has quality amount of
historical body of evidence backing up his claim especially if we take closer
look at the violence that preceded the Western regional elections in Nigeria in
the 1960’s which snowballed into the first ever military over throw of
government which brought in the then General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi whose
administration was toppled and he alongside his close military aides were
gruesomely murdered.
Nigeria also fought bloody 30-months civil war when riotous
Northern crowds executed what is still considered in some quarters as
systematic genocide of the Igbos who lived in the Northern part of the country
and the then Eastern regional military administrator-Colonel Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu [late] rallied his supporters to declare a separate political
entity to protect the human rights of the Igbo speaking people who were at the
receiving end of mass killings.
It is fair to say that Buhari’s doomsday scenario deserved
comprehensive psychoanalysis to anchor it properly within faultless historical
perspective.
Buhari’s submission ought to have generated deep introspection,
retrospection, critical appraisal and should not be dismissed with mere wave of
hands or with the usual angry tone with which the ruling People’s Democratic
Party always treated criticism from respected quarters. It is a fact that wise
persons when confronted by an upsurge of verbal firepower as has happened with
the statement of General Buhari, the best way is for the people in government
to be in their best of forms, restrain themselves into jumping into the
bandwagon of verbal combat but should reflect on all the possible imports of
such weighty comment.
Bill Newman in his scholarly book titled; “10 laws of Leadership”,
rightly stated that; “wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge and experience
to any given situation”. The same author further stated that ‘one of the tests
of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an
emergency’.
The truth is that the current political leadership in Nigeria has
not accepted the truth that our electoral system is rotten and therefore is in
urgent need of comprehensive overhaul. I am not one of those that would be
carried away by the false belief that because the chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission Professor Attahiru Jega came from a labour union
background therefore the weighty operational challenges confronting that electoral
institution are healed overnight.
The fact is that Nigeria’s electoral system is bad and therefore a
careful psychoanalytic reflection on the doomsday scenario in 2015 created by
Buhari would reveal that this is possible if we do not unbundle the crises of
credibility afflicting the Independent National Electoral Commission, a body
that is anything but independent.
Samuel Anayochukwu Eziokwu in his book “Good governance; Theory
and practice”, stated that “current method in Nigeria where the President wakes
up and appoints a particular person to head the electoral body is becoming
archaic and obsolete… a credible selection of the head of electoral body is a
rudiment of any free and fair election.”
Charles Onunaiju, a public policy analyst had in 2006 stated
rightly thus; “Any good constitution must think of the South African experience
where members of the electoral commission are chosen through popular consensus
and all political parties are represented and not one handpicked by the
President and ratified only by the National Assembly”.
It is therefore imperative that the National Assembly should amend
relevant sections of the constitution on the composition of members of the
electoral agency and borrow the South African model if we want to avoid the
doomsday scenario of 2015 predicted by Buhari. In the 2011 elections in most
parts of the country, INEC officials followed the tune dictated by the pay
masters in Government.
Written By Emmanuel Onwubiko
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