The presidential election of Saturday, 9th April 2011 has come and gone, and won and lost. Jega, the electoral umpire, has been hailed for discharging his duty diligently, honestly and fairly.
The presidential election of Saturday, 9th April 2011 has come and gone, and won and lost. Jega, the electoral umpire, has been hailed for discharging his duty diligently, honestly and fairly.
Results have not just given it to Jonathan but given it very handsomely. It had been thought it might end with very narrow winning margin, or even with a runoff. But somehow, somehow, as predicted by the oracle at Thisday, Nduka Obaigbena, through his Ipsos opinion poll which had said PDP would win by 62%, PDP pulled it off with 58.9% ( approximately 60%) of the total votes cast across the nation.
Forget the local, regional, national, international, global and even “celestial” election monitors’ and observers’ verdict, the elections still appeared to have some elements of rigging. For the “ babaric cabal”, PDP must win and win by all and any means necessary. Those conservative forces that keep Nigeria in the backwaters of political and economic development, the 100-percenters, the murderers and assassins, the generator moguls, the political jobbers, etc, etc, have bought their way to continued business as usual with Jonathan's election. The fear of Buhari is the beginning of their "goodluck", and our badluck!
The result needs thorough statistical analyses and these may help reveal what we suspect to be "collational rigging", a sophisticated rigging that was un-observed or even un-observable by the observers. CPC has alleged that the Excel programme was already rigged to rig results downwards for Buhari and upwards for Jonathan. While I would like to think that this is not really correct, however, the figures from the South South and the South East appear suspicious from a national trend analysis.
As for the South South and the South East that now finds Jonathan their "Messiah", where were these people and their so called leaders and fighters when Yar Adua went "missing in action" and Jonathan was being prevented, ostensibly by the “Turei Mafia”, from taking over his right acting presidential position? Who were those who fought for Jonathan's constitutional right in Utuoke, PortHarcout, Owerri, Warri, etc, etc...? My records show, (and I happen to have very plenty of it via BISIKAY (2010) “UMORU, UMORU, ARE YOU DEAD?: THE YAR ADUA PRESIDENTIAL DEATH SAGA – VOLUMES 1 – 7, www.lulu.com), that those who gallantly fought for Jonathan’s presidential rights were the so called “rascals” of the South West, led by a 76 years old Nobel Laureate. At that time records show that the Jonathan “99.9% voters” were among the cowards and vagabonds who tried to prevent Jonathan from assuming his rightful presidential seat then. What a bunch of hypocrites! Shame! Shame!! Shame!!!
Still on the South East’s results, I wonder how the Ndigbo will ever attain the coveted Presidency of Nigeria if they had freely massively voted for Jonathan. Their IGBO 2015 PRESIDENCY Project has already failed as it is most likely the next President will come not from the East nor the South of the Niger, but from the North or even from the West. Mark my words. It seems the Ndigbo can not read the political map well enough or that they are self-deceiving regarding the Presidential post. Jonathan is already serving as the proxy-Ndigbo president, directly or indirectly though his having a half- Ndigbo, half-Okrika Patience. Tactical voting might have given them a chance for a Northern President, while they prepare to grab the 2015 Southern slot for the Presidency. With great sons like Senator Ken Nnamani, and Professor Okedinachi Utomi, etc, and great daughters like Professor Dora Akunyili and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Uweala, etc, the Ndigbo can still justifiable clinch the post. Now, I wonder how they will ever make it happen the way things stand. Maybe, I am wrong. Time will tell.
How the South West came to “vote” massively for PDP remains an enigma to me. If the people voluntarily voted for the man who had abused their leaders as “RASCALS” then there is some madness in the land. Any one saying they voted for Jonathan, being a “nice” man, and NOT for PDP, being a “nasty” party, is very FOOLISH. Was Jonathan on the ballot paper or was it PDP? Would Jonathan rule as Jonathan Party man or as PDP man? Will the government be a “nice” government or a “nasty” government? Would Ministerial appointments not be made of PDP men and women who the so called “progressive” electorate of the South West had earlier voted out? I would be very disappointed if we do not have one Iyabo Obasanjo as Minister for Health, one Iyiola Omisore as Minister for Finance, one Kamoru Adedibu as Minister for Internal Affairs, etc, etc.
With the result, I am ashamed to be counted among the people of Yorubaland. We must still give great credit to Rauf Aregbesola for standing for what he believes is right, mobilising for ACN presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu. Whatever Tinubu might have or might not have agreed with Jonathan it remains that people had a chance to make their own choice at the polling booth. All we need to do is leave Tinubu, Fayemi, Mimiko, Fashola and other so-called Yoruba leaders to their consciences while we do what we perceive as being “OMOLUABI”-like, and vote for CHANGE, via ACN, CPC, ANPP, or any other party bar PDP. How can a region that has a choice party, Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, with a good Presidential candidate that was marketed to the world, then come election time, giving their own Nuhu Ribadu/Fola Adeola ticket only 1,369,943 votes (30%) and their nemesis, Jonathan Goodluck/Naman Sambo of PDP 2,786,417 votes (61%). Is it just me who can not reconcile these perplexing figures, or maybe you too are with me?
While the whole world is fighting for CHANGE, Nigerians have voted for CHANCE, otherwise known by local parlance as GOODLUCK. By chance, Jonathan’s goodluck might rub on Nigeria and Nigerians. By chance, he would defy his party and change Nigeria for good. By chance, he would restructure Nigeria’s skewed federalism. By chance, he would provide sustainable development across the nation. By chance, there would be adequate electricity for all. By chance, he would give us the right level of infrastructures. By chance, sanctity of lives would be promoted, and the “butchers of Ibadan” and the “assasins of Ife” and the “killers of Ado” would be caught and punished. By chance, the “iboris” in government houses would be jailed. By chance, godfathers would be told to go and hang and go to hell! And, by chance, Jonathan would purge himself too of the “pdp syndrome”. By chance, me and 16 million other un-hypnotised CPC, ACN, ANPP, ADC, HPC, etc, etc, voters, would be made to eat our words.
Regarding the post election riots in the North, I can say that because those guys there can not adequately intellectualise the reasons for Jonathan's victory and Buhari's defeat like you and I, they take to the streets, and unfortunately causing so much unnecessary mayhem. They could simply do non-violent mass protest as in the Maghreb region of Africa. Anyway, because "JUSTICE is the first condition of HUMANITY" according to Prof. Wole SOYINKA, where there is no justice PEACE may also be absent. It was such principle that made Malam Nasir El Rufai in a Chatham House lecture in London recently to predict that the people may not wait for the courts this time before taking the law in their own hands. In the first instance, why must those who rig would continue to rig and be left to enjoy the sweet “fruits” of their rigging, while the aggrieved would still have to continue to chase elusive justice, over the years.
We had been warned this election could not be rigged. We had accepted that Professor Attahiru Jega would not, could not and should not do an “Iwu-ru-wuru” election. We should go and vote and make sure our votes get counted. That all will be free and fair.
One other thing, it appears to me that Nigerians at home can not see the Jonathan-PDP presidential danger as we in the Diaspora see it and we have been raising the alarm and warning of people voting wrongly. Saharareporters has consistently been reeling out articles and reports and exposees about misgovernance and maladministration by PDP over the last 12 years. Nigerians are now claiming that they know Nigeria better that you and me who are resident abroad. They say that they knowingly voted Jonathan. That it was just crazy for anyone to vote against the “saintly” Jonathan. I am wondering if these people really understand what quality governance means. Where I live, there is 24 hour electricity and a power outage will be a crisis. But a Nigerian youth told me pointedly that he was proud of Jonathan for giving them 4 hour electricity daily these days, before the elections. (Would the same level of power continue or even improve after April?). People at home think we are “misguided”, “ignorant” or “misinformed”. Their values appear to be as simple, basic, and unambitious as their governments are.
Maybe we are seeking a far far better country than they can imagine. Hence their being easily “mesmerised” by the Jonathan hype. So, the people probably deserve our pity.
As they say, every nation gets the rulers they deserve. So for the next four years, the leadership and the followership in Nigeria could both be held responsible for whatever the lapses Jonathan’s PDP government makes. Everyone keeps telling me Jonathan will disappoint me and other sceptics and cynics. They believe Jonathan is “God sent”, and would perform the wonders of transforming Nigeria. Ah!
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Now, let me confess my “sin”. I voted. I voted for Mallam/General Mohammadu Buhari, the Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC. I have swore that I can never and will never vote for enemies of progress in the “club” called PDP. I am a diaspora Nigerian, a “Yorupean”, so to say. I want Nigeria to be better so that after my retirement, I may count Nigeria among those places I may retire to live in. But even after 24 years being out in Britain, Nigeria refuses to move forward like other nations on earth. Indeed, the last 12 years of PDP rule between the “barbaric” obasanjo (8 years), the tragic Yar Adua (3 years) and the lethargic Jonathan (1 year),Nigeria has retrogressed.
Indeed, I left Nigeria because of issues like the notoriously harsh Buhari government of 1984/85.They came up with several draconian decrees in their enthusiasm to sanitise the Nigerian stinking socio-political hell hole. They had three men, Batholomew, Lawal and Lawrence, convicted drug peddlers executed by retrospective effect of their decree. That was too much for many of us and Nigerians began “check out”. I even had a poem for the era titled, “Why WAI?” with lines like: “Soldiers eat rice, And the workers? They eat lies. We asked why, why? They repied, that’s WAI!”
But years after Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon, of blessed memory, Nigerians like me began to feel nostalgia for the disciplinarian government to change things. I do remember us all saying “we need a Rawlings” to help us cleanse and transform Nigeria like Jerry Junior Rawlings had dome for Ghana in the 80s. I do not think we can have military Rawlings again so why not seek a politician Rawlings? I came to the conclusion that that person could only be Buhari this time around in Nigeria’s socio-economic-political predicament. I ardently believe that only a Buhari presidency could help us to achieve the elusive development we all seek.
Why Buhari? Why not Jonathan? Buhari is without any baggage to operate as a reformist president Where as Jonathan has lots and lots of baggages: the usual political jobbers, the political businessmen and women, the desperate governors, the godfathers and godmothers, the “thugfathers” and the political criminals and refugees, all who contributed more than N100,000,000,000 of the alleged N250,000,000,000 that PDP spent to create a national “mass hysteria”, or a “Jonathanmania”, such that the electors could not remember that Jonathan and PDP are one and the same symbol of Nigeria’s backwardness and darkness! My good cousin’s weird experience appears to have best illustrated this.
It seems, unlike you and me might expect in this “revolutionary times”, that the priorities of Nigerian voters are not better governance, transparent leadership nor productive management but parochial sentiments of “a minority”, Christian southerner winning the presidency. Alas!
In my search for illumination as to why and how “progressives” who hated PDP, and demonstrated same by sweeping away the PDP national “legislooters”, the “stealators” and the “represetathieves” from the South West only a week earlier, would now massively, gleefully and freely vote for a PDP president, a political “cognitive dissonance”, I kept asking everyone whether it was me or it was them that’s mad! My cousin told me how his conscience was haunting him when casting his vote for Jonathan, asking himself if he was not in a spell. Yes, everyone says they voted NOT for PDP but FOR Jonathan. Dont they?. Lies! Check the voting card used, there was no name like Jonathan or Buhari, or even Bisikay, on the long slip of paper. All there was were 20 party names and logo. So, if you had planned to vote Jonathan and not PDP, and you could not find his name but that of his hated party, PDP, what should a very sober person do?. That is why the party is gloating even in Lagos, that they won it, and would also win the next gubernatorial election all over the nation, including removing Fashola and retaining Akala.
That Buhari lost the elections yet again is not a personal disaster for him but a national tragedy for the masses of innocent poor people of Nigeria, a country whose destiny it has been since independence to have the wrong persons elected for their president: first republic, it was Balewa instead of Azikiwe/Awolowo, second republic, it was Shagari instead of Awolowo/Azikiwe, third republic, it was obasanjo instead of Falae, then again obasanjo instead of Buhari, later again it was Yar Adua instead of Buhari, and now....How the mind of the electorate works in Nigeria still baffles me. What an accursed nation and doomed people Nigeria and Nigerians are!
Bisikay Ayedun, PhD, a global analyst and business philosopher, is director of BCK International, a personal and organisational development consultancy and training firm, base in London, UK. He is the author of: Why Managers Cant Lead and Leaders Cant Manage; The Cosmic, God, You & I; The 12 Strategies of SuperLife Achievement; Life Is...; SuperLifePower!; Voodoo?!:Oogun Or Juju-Truth Or Myth? (www.amazon.com). He is also the editor of: Triumph of Rule of Law-The Ladoja “Impechment”Saga; Umoru, Umoru, Are You Dead?-The Yar Adua Saga; Obama In Africa; Obama:The First 100 Days; Nigeria@50:Chronicle of A Tribulation for Celebration; Baba Sege-You Still Dey Kampe; GANI-Exit of Our Akonic Fighter; etc, etc.
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