By all sober reckoning, Professor
Attahiru Jega has done quite well in his last two outings as Nigeria’s
chief electoral officer and, so, democracy’s chief midwife in our
turbulent turbulent country. If Ekiti broke the hearts of progressives,
of those who believe that “man does not live alone by bread” — in other
words, that the gospel of “Man shall live alone for his stomach,”
according to Saints Adedibu and Fayose, is perversion itself — Osun
offered them consolation. With the hard-fought but clear victory of
Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in the 9 August election, Jega gave hope to a
nation pining, panting even, for a sign of change in the still
uninspiring effort of governing ourselves sensibly. If against the
seemingly unstoppable electoral machine of the ruling party, oiled by
its ability to dispense power and privilege, a harried governor from a
new collation party still getting to know all of its new members could
win re-election, then 2015 might not be all the predicted gloom and
doom. Electorally speaking, only, I must be quick to add, for the forces
that tear at corporate Nigeria are legion! Continue...
Simultaneously, Jega blunted one biting criticism of President
Jonathan’s use of his awesome powers in the course of the two
south-western states’ gubernatorial elections. By either ordering or
condoning what was effectively a military siege to either state in the
run-up to the elections, Jonathan played an open and partisan hand, say
the critics. The arrest and violation of the freedom of movement of
leaders of the rival All Progressives Congress, including governors of
the party from other states, while allowing operatives of his own party
unrestricted roaming rights across the length and breadth of both
states, showed a far greater interest in his personal political fortunes
than in the fate of Nigeria, they charged.
These critics did not really need any further proof, but Jonathan’s
minister of state for defence, the garrulous Musiliu Obanikoro, was
nonetheless eager to erase any doubts. And so he issued threats and
admonitions, purportedly intended for all mischief-makers, only that
they appeared to belong exclusively to the opposition party. To curtail
them, about 73,000 troops and officials drawn from across the entire
security apparatus of the nation — army, police, SSS, civil defence
corps, etc — were deployed to Osun State. A visitor from saner climes
would be forgiven for thinking that they were needed to quell a riotous
insurrection; certainly not for the election of a governor. And then Mrs
Marilyn Ogar showed us how they do intelligence analysis at the State
Security Services. The occurrence of bomb explosions after the two
governorship elections the opposition party lost, contrasted with the
incident-free aftermath of the two they won, shows, she said, that the
opposition party is behind the bloody violence bedeviling Nigeria. She
was not done. With her inference hardly mistakable, she claimed to have
declined offers of a bribe by certain politicians to compromise the
election. Why, she even reinstated the offence of wandering in our laws!
Clearly, Mrs Ogar would not be outdone by Alhaji Obanikoro, but if the
reports are true then she can now prove her allegations in court and
dress herself in glory as a heroine of the great struggle to save
troubled democracy.
Nor would Obanikoro be upstaged. Thus, in congratulating Aregbesola,
he “saluted” the Independent National Electoral Commission but
“particularly, our Military and other security forces for . . .
ensur[ing] a peaceful, free and fair election.” He did not mince words.
“But for the efforts of our Military in Osun State,” he declared, “the
elections could have been marred by violence.”
He is not totally wrong. I recall my astonishment when I asked
Senator Femi Ojudu, over the phone, whether the bleak report he was
giving me of proceedings in Ekiti was due to the expected rigging
wrought by the PDP under military protection and he answered, “No, there
is no rigging. Our people seem not to want a visionary programme of
development and accountability.” Painful as the news was to me, I
believed him that the election reflected the prevailing will of the
people. Still, 73,000 military and other security officials for a state
election? Aren’t elections a civic affair? Why should preparations to
vote be indistinguishable from mobilisation for war with an enemy
foreign?
For as long I have lived, there has been no free and fair national
election, which until recently always included state governors’
elections at about the same time. The lone exception was the 12 June
1993 election and we know how that ended, proving that the means will
most often than not taint and jeopardise the end, however seemingly
benevolent in the short run. This is why, I think, Aregbesola, even in
victory, felt constrained to both praise INEC for conducting “a largely
free and fair election” and to pillory the military for conduct
detrimental to democracy and the rule of law. Many of the troops
stationed in the state, he asserted, violated the constitution by
turning themselves into a terror gang after specific targets, and so
into partisan agents of the ruling party.
The matter might boil down to the overzealousness of a few who cannot
“differentiate” between legitimate and illegitimate orders or who, in
their craven eagerness to please power, please the president, send
themselves on unconstitutional errands. And it may be that the temporary
answer to clamping down on opposition figures, on molesting, harassing
and intimidating supporters of the opposition party is for soldiers and
policemen to have the courage, henceforth, of “resisting wrong orders”
that are “antithetical” to the constitution, as Aregbesola urges. What
is unmistakable, however, is that for as long as we can only vote under
the iron cordon of military troops massed round the ballot box, our
elections look more like military operations than civic actions. And to
that extent, we prolong the poisonous ethic and tragic memory of
military dictatorship in our land.
omoliho@gmail.com
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