By Sola Ebiseni
Nigerians are so shell-shocked at the degree of lawlessness that characterised the 2023 elections, wondering if this country is still under any government which is symbolised in the President. As the head of state, President Muhammad Buhari has nowhere to pass the buck, especially of the orgy of violence during the elections in all parts of the nation. He is inexorably accountable. The Presidential and National Assembly elections of February 25 set the tone for the horrendous occurrences during the gubernatorial election which was initially slated for March 11, but postponed by one week.
Some of us had thought it was mischievous, as some suggests that the real reason for the shift was to buy time for those caught unawares during the first elections to redeem their losses by all means. We were proved wrong. Even at that, Nigerians were still hopeful that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and particularly its Chairman, would strive to prove pessimists wrong that its sole agenda was to deliver the country to the ruling part unashamedly.
Events during the Governorship
and Houses of Assembly elections have not only diminished the electoral body
irredeemably, it has sunk Nigeria to the lowest ebb of decency in the comity of
nations. In the final analysis, this year’s elections terminating in the
Ides of March will go down in history as the most organised conspiracy
against Nigerians. Yet those who beat their chests that the Ides of March have
come and gone may not be abreast of the historical contexts of this
coincidence of the times and what the Yoruba would readily call the atubotan
(aftermath) of treachery.
Elections have been held and even blatantly rigged in Nigeria. I have
witnessed all, as an adult, what took place since 1979. Even from the records
in the previous ones during the colonial and First Republic era, not at any
time was the level of savagery displayed on the election day as happened in the
present process ever occurred. In the past, there had been thuggery at polling
units, illegal thumb-printing of ballot papers, snatching and stuffing of
ballot boxes, including all manners of manipulations at the collation centres.
All those pale into abysmal
insignificance compared with the present scenario when the citizens have been
assured that those incidences have been rendered impossible by technology. It
was to ensure electronic accreditation of voters whose votes would also be
transferred online avoiding tampering with same at the collation centres or at
any stage of the voting process. For conclusive effects, this national resolve
was backed up by the Electoral Act 2022 pursuant to which the INEC made its
regulations incorporating these electronic processes which thereby have no less
statutory force. In that wise, whoever decided on ballot snatching would not
only have wasted his energy on such a primitive exercise, but also have the law
to contend with.
But INEC paved way for violence
when it gave up technology and transgressed against the law by returning to
primitive manipulations through the illegal manual processes. We have seen in
the past, protests and riots against the electoral process because people felt
the process was manipulated to allow wrong candidates to emerge victorious. But
that, was always after the elections as happened in 1964 and 1983 in
Yorubaland.
It has never happened that on
the day of election, not only were incidences of ballot papers snatching rampant
throughout the country, armed terror gangs took over the streets and the
polling units, while a dangerous dimension of inter-ethic violence was
introduced. On such international platforms as televisions and the ubiquitous
social media, our Nigeria was displayed with criminal gangs rampaging our
cities, with Lagos the worst hit. The gangsters brandished lethal weapons with
which voters were threatened and intimidated from coming out to vote.
Thus, they were not able to
exercise their franchise as the ruling party openly desired. They had the
effrontery in a country with government (as the Yoruba saying goes) to have
announced their nefarious plans at meetings posted on social media and
televised to the world. Nigerians had expected that the President and Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces who recently swore to a legacy of free, fair and credible
elections, even if that is the only achievement of his lacklustre
administration, would have clipped the wings of these over-pampered miscreants.
But not President Muhammad Buhari.
The same way he watched, without
clue, activities of criminal herdsmen fester into organised militia taking over
vast swathes of land, cleansing the indigenous inhabitants, occupying same and
eventually graduating into armed gangs carving provinces of influence beyond
the peaceable access of the nation’s security forces, taking military
fortresses and prisons by storm; the President’s command capacity is dwarfed by
these cretinous anti-democracy militias.
Eight years on, the Buhari government
is like the proverbial cobra that crawled through the rock with no signs. Early
enough, the wife of the President observed loud and publicly that her husband
was not in charge; the President dismissed her worries as rantings from ‘the
other room’. Even politically, he lacked the capacity to keep the party
together. Rather, he preferred to keep the minority CPC extraction which had
failed him in his three previous shots at the presidency.
Even at that, he soon lost his
closest allies for ages, the likes of Buba Galadima; surrounding himself with
some young turks, handing over the party to Mai Mala Buni, Governor of Yobe
State, and eventually to Abubakar Malami, SAN, his Attorney General. Always
indecisive on major issues, his dilatory disposition cost him the choice of his
successor. The best reading of his body language showed a narrow-minded
preference for a successor of Northern extraction. This is in spite of several
quality people in his government from the South.
He was eventually swept aside
and rendered irrelevant during the presidential primaries; not before he was
roundly reminded of his previous misadventures in politics, including a descent
to crying publicly and on television never again to venture into politics until
he was rehabilitated by the godfather who snatched the ticket in spite of him.
Since then, Buhari has become a President without the status of the
commander-in-chief, a lame duck. The policies of his government were not only
pooh-poohed by members of his party, he was audaciously challenged to a legal
duel by APC governors who are already courting their own new
commander-in-chief.
He has lost all, including the
command of the police which members, courting new loyalty, look on while
official thugs launched mayhem on the people during elections. About 30 years
after the heat of inter-ethic war gushed out like molten magma in Rwanda the
world was treated to the spectacle of tribal war chanting on the streets of
Lagos by misguided power mongers who felt called upon to rule the people
without their consent in the new concept of democracy being sold to the world
in Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the President to
whom the people look up to for safety is frantically seeking to confer
legitimacy on a process still being questioned in court. When the state
of Rome was conspired against and Ceaser put away in the Ides of March, they
fancied themselves as the nobles in whose hands the soul of the nation was
kept. History taught otherwise. The Ides of March is here, but certainly not
gone. Nigeria, we hail thee.
*Ebiseni
is the Secretary General, Afenifere and South West
Coordinator, OBIDATTI Campaigns Organisation.
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