It is patently clear that the president’s glib talk about free and fair elections is a hoax. It is a cheap ploy intended for the unsuspecting. Nigerians are not fooled. At every campaign stop these days, Jonathan has punctuated his speech with empty slogans about eschewing violence and the imperative for credible and transparent polls that are an expression of the will of the citizenry.
It is patently clear that the president’s glib talk about free and fair elections is a hoax. It is a cheap ploy intended for the unsuspecting. Nigerians are not fooled. At every campaign stop these days, Jonathan has punctuated his speech with empty slogans about eschewing violence and the imperative for credible and transparent polls that are an expression of the will of the citizenry.
Distressingly though, the deeds of the president’s associates in both the PDP and the country’s security forces in particular are a direct contradiction of the man’s posturing on democracy. This worrisome situation is no doubt heating the polity more than ever before. Of course, it goes without saying that the Nigerian people will not sit idle this time around and allow those who have in the past eleven-odd years systematically wreaked havoc on the nation have their way, that is to say, to criminally inflict yet another round of impositions by way of fraudulent elections. Enough is enough!
A few days ago on the hustings in Ondo State, President Jonathan was at his cynical best when he reportedly stated as follows: “As sitting President and Vice President, we have enormous powers but we will never discriminate against anybody because we believe powers are used for the benefit of the masses. Even though we are contesting this election, we will not use power to intimidate anybody, the election will be free and fair; one man one vote; one woman, one vote, one youth, one vote”. Really? Even as Mr. President is waxing philosophical about respecting the rights of fellow citizens, the hypocrisy of his regime is being exposed when in a show of ignominy and brazen impunity, his allies in places like Benue, Jigawa, Niger State, Ebonyi and Abuja, amongst others, are dangerously and illegally deploying the police and other state institutions to harass the opposition and basically deny them and the citizenry in general their constitutionally guaranteed rights of public assembly and free expression. To make matters worse, Jonathan is ominously keeping quiet in the face of these excesses, for the simple reason that he stands to gain politically from them. What a shame!
In Benue, a desperate Governor Gabriel Suswam who doubles as Jonathan’s soi-disant zonal campaign coordinator is said to be using PDP thugs in a futile bid to stem the tide of change as symbolized by a formidable opposition platform called the ACN. The government has employed every dirty trick, from vicious armed attacks on members of the opposition, the muzzling of local media outfits, the denial of access by opposition voices to the publicly funded Radio Benue and The Voice newspaper, to the refusal to let the ACN hold the state launching of the ACN’s presidential campaign that was scheduled for Thursday, March 03, at the Ibrahim Babangida Square in Makurdi. Undaunted , the masses seem determined to defend their political choices. And that is how it should be. With the ACN’s presidential launching moved to Gboko, the latter city was said to have come to a standstill. Expectant and jubilating crowds that were estimated in the hundreds of thousands had converged on Benue’s second city. It is as if everybody wants to ‘feel ‘ the message of salvation and change. What this means is that if Nigerians truly want to see development in their respective communities, they should be prepared to defend their legitimate aspirations against those who are comfortable with the untenable status quo as represented by the likes of Jonathan and his ‘friends’.
Almost as if echoing his Benue State counterpart, the PDP governor in Jigawa, Sule Lamido, has also reportedly intervened, through the local police command, to prevent the staging of campaign rallies by key opposition parties, namely, the ACN and the CPC. In Jigawa too, the opposition and the masses in general seem determined not to give in to unwarranted hounding from an incompetent government.
In Niger State, the invidiously loquacious state executive called Babangida Aliyu who, like the Benue and Jigawa governors, is trying to ward off a determined opposition force that is counting on his unpopularity as well as his dismal track record to win the April elections, the state police commissioner, one Michael Zuokumor, has curiously joined the political fray by asking the CPC to “postpone” the official inauguration of its presidential campaign in the state. A bizarre and very funny reason has been advanced by the police in Niger state to explain their partisan involvement in favour of the PDP: That the Minna inauguration that was supposed to feature the CPC’s presidential flag bearer, General Buhari (Rtd), was to coincide with the launching of a senatorial campaign by a PDP candidate in Suleija, another Niger State town! And, as it turned out, the CPC did the correct thing by objecting to this brazen attempt on the part of the PDP and the nation’s security outfits to constrict Nigerian democracy. The CPC’s Minna outing did indeed take place on Thursday, March 03, 2011, as mammoth throngs turned up to hear the political message they had long anticipated. It was almost a repeat of the Kaduna CPC rally of the previous day which witnessed unprecedented crowds of supporters enthusiastically congregated to listen to the CPC’s presidential candidate.
In Ebonyi State, its underachieving Governor Elechi believes that the best way to prevent his imminent defeat at the polls is to impose a ban on a scheduled presidential campaign rally by the ANPP. There also, the reasons advanced for the repression are as vacuous as they are laughable. Moreover, it has been observed that Elechi’s PDP government did not object to a recent PDP presidential rally that took place in the state recently.
Another sinister dimension of the insidious repression currently taking place under President Jonathan by his associates, just like in the days of the late Umaru Yar’Adua and the civilian tyranny of the former dictator called Olusegun Obasanjo, is the resort to the SSS and the police to squelch key opposition voices. Last Tuesday, March 01, 2011, as indicated by the local Nigerian press , the former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, an ACN chieftain, was “quizzed” in Abuja by the SSS for having allegedly made disparaging statements about the president during a campaign outing in Jigawa. Tinubu was reportedly reacting to an earlier statement in which Jonathan had insinuated that opposition politicians in the South-West are rascals. What apparently irked the SSS hounds was a Tinubu address metaphorically alluding to Jonathan as “a fisherman whose boat is about to capsize”. It is at once scary and unfortunate that the SSS has discarded any semblance of professionalism and is doing the biding of its political masters in the PDP by turning an innocuous campaign rhetoric into something belonging in the nebulous category of “security matters’’. We have been on this slippery path of tyranny and inane zealotry before. When an imperial Jonathan begins to equate his personal likes or dislikes with the nation’s security interests, there is cause for alarm. The president and his subalterns must be called to order. The president’s delusions of power cannot and must never under any circumstances be seen as being synonymous with Nigeria’s national or security concerns. This also applies to his pals in the various states. For the record, Jonathan and his confederates like the ex-tyrant, Obasanjo, Anenih, Edwin Clark and a host of others have historically been engaged in conduct, verbal or otherwise, that should be rightly deemed as destructive and unpatriotic, yet they have never been ‘disturbed’ by the SSS or any other security outfit for that matter. Enough is enough.
What the nation has witnessed and continues to witness in Benue, Kaduna, Plateau, Jigawa, Lagos, Kano, Maiduguri, Benin, Ibadan, Enugu and other places is an indication of the desire by the average citizen to be heard, unhindered. The Nigerian masses are making an unmistakable statement that they want to elect their leaders on their own terms, that is to say through the ballot box. At the same time, they want those seeking their support to be able to articulate their respective political programmes or agendas freely and not encumbered by repressive antics on the part of those nominally entrusted with the task of defending the common good. The various political parties, their candidates as well as supporters should reject any unjust and illegal attempts aimed at stopping them from taking their message to all the four corners of the country.
It requires reiterating here that for over a decade now, the PDP and its oligarchs have imposed themselves on the Nigerian polity by behaving in an insouciant and irresponsible manner. The PDP’s decadent and corrupt hegemony of rigged polls and misgovernance has inflicted untold misery on the country and its people. The nation has been reduced to a pathetic state of anomie, not to mention a near-total collapse of strategic sectors of the economy. The peaceful way out of this self-inflicted rot is through a truly credible electoral process. The huge crowds making their way to the nation’s city squares and villages to participate in an open and democratic exchange with potential representatives are invariably saying to Jonathan and his PDP that enough is enough. Crucially, Nigeria’s security outfits and the armed forces in general cannot afford to be seen as constituting themselves into obstacles to the people’s emancipation and progress. Again, this cautionary note: Those who make peaceful change impossible do make violent change inevitable.
Aonduna Tondu ([email protected]).
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