By Obi Nwakanma
The governing All Progressives Congress (APC) had no sterling records on which to run and return to power in the federation of Nigeria in this election. The facts were stark. Compared to February 2015 when the party, an alliance of the discontented, fielded the ex-military dictator, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, a former Major-General and at that time serial contestant for the office of the president of Nigeria, the mood had swung so heavily against the APC nation-wide in 2023.
Nigerians were measuring the time of the PDP, from 1999 to the time of the APC, from 2015 to the current year. As a Nigerian engineer told me, “you could say anything about the PDP, but what you could never say was that they put Nigerians through hunger. Under the PDP Nigerians took for granted that you could put food on the table without much hassle. But since the APC, all those things you took for granted – just food – including ordinary cereal and milk for kids have become unbearably exorbitant and impossible to buy.”
Nigerians he said had been so
impoverished that the middle class that had returned and surged under president
Obasanjo had disappeared. This is not the place yet to do the post-mortem of
the Buhari years, but the more pertinent questions remain, on what basis can
the APC government claim the mandate of Nigerians after eight years of the
worst government to ever govern Nigeria? The APC government of Buhari failed on
every given measure of good governance and in fact, destroyed the fundamental
fabric of once sacred institution in Nigeria. What Buhari will leave of Nigeria
would be a wreckage.
If Nigeria was limping when
Buhari was elected in 2015, it is now in coma in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU),
after what Buhari and his APC administration had done to it these past eight years. So,
on what basis would Nigerians elect another APC government? This is the
conundrum which the Independent National Electoral Commission has created with
the announcement of Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday morning, as the winner of
the 2023 presidential election.
The declaration left Nigerians
very shocked and unamused. There was no jubilation on the streets. For the
first time in Nigeria, after any election, a calm, predatory silence descended
on Nigeria. There was no flurry of congratulatory messages.
In fact, the slow, tepid, almost apologetic way that Mahmoud Yakubu, a Professor and Chairman of the INEC announced the result, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when Nigerians were mostly sleeping, and those awake were either up to no good or too restless to sleep, is instructive.
Announcement of the presidential election results in
that time of the morning, said to be when crooks often go to town, reflects in
large degree, the antinomies of this election. It speaks to the secretiveness
of the long plot to deny Nigerians their true mandate. It signals the intention
to commit atrocities when only few are watching, and yes, the trail of events
leads me to believe what a majority of Nigerians currently believe: that Bola
Tinubu did not win the election whose victory he now claims.
He is the product of a very dark
form of elite bargain – the thing that Nigerians now call “Emi lo kan” – it was
his turn to rule. The baggage Mr. Tinubu brought to this contest should have
disqualified him in the first place.
First, there were claims that he
had lied in his sworn declarations about his age, education, his career, and
his affiliations. The investigative journalist, David Hundeyin did extensive
reports on Mr. Tinubu’s alleged drug past and claims of his forfeiture to the
US District Attorney in the state of Illinois thousands of dollars said to be
proceeds from the drug trade.
His handlers fobbed it all off,
claiming that little evidence exists, even in spite of the trails of public
documents provided by his traducers. The intriguing thing is that these
accusations neither triggered investigations by the Nigerian Secret Services,
whose sacred duty includes doing a background check on anybody aspiring to
public office, much more to the Presidency of Nigeria; nor was there action by
the Police.
In September 2022, the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission, suddenly dropped its probes of Tinubu and his
reported involvement in the Alpha-Beta alleged tax evasion. Mr. Oladapo Apara,
former Managing Director of Alpha-Beta Consulting had sued Ahmed Bola Tinubu
for allegedly instigating his sack and seizing N18 billion of his total share
profit covering the period he ran Alpha Beta.
In his petition to the court, Apara revealed that Tinubu owned Alpha-Beta which he allegedly ran by proxy for twenty years, including using the company to take a percentage of the revenue collected from Lagos State government, as well as evading tax to the tune of N100 billion.
But suddenly, the issue fizzled out. EFCC dropped their investigations,
and Oladapo Apara and Tinubu settled out of court. This was also not Tinubu’s
first Rodeo with the EFCC. There is very little doubt that Bola Tinubu was
given official protection by the Buhari administration in all these questions,
prompting questions by many Nigerians, if Tinubu had anything on Buhari,
besides all the shared hustling in the APC.
The question remains pertinent,
particularly given that during the APC primaries, when the subterranean moves
were made against his emergence, Tinubu went off on his now famous “Emilokan”
rant, threatening to spill it all out, if he was denied what was his by right,
as he perceived it. Tinubu’s threat to “talk” had an electrifying effect in the
party, which quickly rallied to offer him the presidential ticket. He was even
helped to raise the flag from his shaky hands on that occasion, prompting the
satirical song by the Pyrates Confraternity during their sally, mocking
Tinubu’s infirmity.
Through the campaign trail,
Tinubu was said to have made embarrassing gaffes, that also soon became the
stock of national amusement and mockery; the reported “Bala Blu..” gaffe in
Owerri was turned into one of the funniest musical skits that I have personally
ever seen, with the invocation, “Buhari! Buhari!” He refused to join in
public debates .
And so, Nigerians went to the
polls. The pollsters never gave him a chance. Indeed, in the weeks leading to
the elections, a great rift emerged in his party over the fuel scarcity and the
Central Bank money policies.
The APC had tanked. The Tinubu
campaign had tanked. Then came last weekend’s election, and it became clear
very quickly what that musical genius and social rebel, Fela Kuti meant by what
he once called “Government Magic.”
Nigerians went to the polls, and across Nigeria, INEC officials, police and security agents; state governors, all colluded to suppress the votes, and piled votes for the APC where it did not win votes. I am personally startled by the outcome of this election with the results declared by Mahmood Yakubu.
It was a fraud. I base my
assertion here on the statements issued by the various observer teams that came
to observe the elections in Nigeria. Without fail, each group, from the EU
observers to the African Union observers, to Nigerian CSO observers, all were
united in declaring what happened that Saturday as a brazen electoral
heist.
As the pattern and map of this
systematic fraud unfolds, one is startled by the extent of subversion aided and
abetted by the sitting government of Nigeria. In Imo State, although Peter Obi
won, many polling stations were transposed for Tinubu.
In many places in the state,
voting did not take place, yet votes were recorded in favor of the APC.
In Rivers State, the now infamous Obiakpor vote stealing, and transposition was
just one example of how a sitting governor allegedly abetted treasonous crime,
for indeed, any action aimed at violating the sanctity of the votes of people
in an election is a high crime against the state.
I will not say much more than
this because this issue is now subjudice. But it is vital to show that INEC’s
conduct last weekend was a shit show, and it was abetted very clearly by the
Buhari administration.
The INEC, which had promised to
follow the guidelines established under the electoral act abandoned its own
process, and the provision to transmit the election results electronically and
in real time failed. INEC claims there was a “glitch.”
But why the “glitch” only during
the presidential election? I think I know why Buhari’s government conducted
this kind of sorry-ass election. Muhammadu Buhari said it: Tinubu’s purported
election victory was evidence that Nigerians judge him, Buhari, and his party
the APC, to have done well, it merited re-election. But to all intents and
purpose, Bola Ahmed Tinubu does not have the mandate of Nigerians to
govern.
Even with all the riggings in
his favor, an overwhelming number of Nigerians voted against him than voted for
him. Should this fraud stand, and he becomes president, Tinubu would be
burdened by the most debilitating legitimacy crisis at home and abroad. INEC
has given Nigerians a donkey in a race of stallions. Terrible.
*Nwakanma,
a poet, literary critic, journalist and professor
at the University of Central Florida, is a commentator on public issues
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