More critically, this is the most consequential election for Nigerians since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, so moving forward as a nation after the horror we have just witnessed is near-impossible. Something must give, the nation has reached the end of its tethers.
I am writing this on Friday, the 17th of March, 2023, a day before the rescheduled gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly election in Nigeria. But I can attest to the fact that due to the outcome of the presidential election of the 25th of February, 2023, Nigeria and most Nigerians are presently in a state of paralysis or suspended animation. This paralysis or state of suspended animation is not induced by fear; it is the result of the collective shock of a people realizing that after all we have done to avoid this fate, this fate still found us.
More critically, this is the most consequential election for Nigerians since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, so moving forward as a nation after the horror we have just witnessed is near-impossible. Something must give, the nation has reached the end of its tethers. The people are thinking because they know that something must happen to stop the rot. Their thoughts have not yet crystalized around what to do, but they know they have to do something.
Thus, whether this state of paralysis is permanent or not depends on our collective capacity and willingness to fight open injustice, to fight to save our country. We actually have to do it for our sake, for the sake of our children and for the sake of the future. But, as I said, it depends on our capacity and willingness to do so. Also, those in the state of suspended animation can only be managed away from implosion or explosion by that same collective willingness to fight for justice. Nigeria is perched on a keg of gunpowder. The election of tomorrow is just a veneer – something that has to be gotten out of the way before the nation faces the real crisis of existence that it’s mired in.
This is not to discourage people from voting tomorrow, I only want us to acknowledge an impending truth. When a society gives political deviants a yard, they naturally take a mile. When a brazen thief gets away with his action in broad daylight, he will think he’d get away anytime. As long as we are all still sitting and scratching our heads and wringing our hands over the open stealing of our nation on Saturday, the 25th of February, 2023, the butchering of its constituent parts in the form of tomorrow’s election is a foregone conclusion.
I mean, as a discerning Nigerian, what do you think is going to happen on Saturday, the 18th of March? Are you actually expecting electoral justice for Nigerians after the show of shame of February the 25th and our tepid and confusing national response to it? You haven’t seen the handwriting on the wall with INEC’s conduct since it declared Bola Tinubu winner? You think its continuing impunity, antics at the courts and its reconfiguration of the BVAS are actually meant to deliver a free and fair election tomorrow? You don’t know what it means when Muhammadu Buhari, INEC and the APC tell you to go to court? Well, let me tell you what will happen on Saturday, the 18th of March, 2023. For you sitting there and precipitately celebrating how you have made Labour a third force in Nigerian politics based on figures the thieves allotted to you from the presidential election, figures you are disputing, you sure will be allocated something to keep you celebrating. For you, the PDP people still sulking from the national rape of the 25th of February, 2023, sure, they will award you something to celebrate.
Sure, they will leave Labour with one governorship seat in the South-East to celebrate. They have psychologically caged Labour already by using them (and Peter Obi) to rig the election of the 25th of February, while leaving their members and activists to giddily celebrate ‘winning’ Lagos from Tinubu, ‘winning’ Nasarawa, ‘winning’ Delta and so on. Yeah, they have left them to celebrate meaningless wins they allocated to them because what matters are the big prizes they have already stolen. Buhari, the APC and INEC have already done stage one of the business, which is to steal the presidency for Bola Tinubu and get a super majority for him in the National Assembly. Their task on March 18, 2023 is simply to win a super majority of the states (including Lagos that some supporters of Labour are already celebrating they’ve won). Yes, on Saturday, the BVAS will still not work and all the contrived problems of the 25th of February will show up in different degrees and there will be excuses galore, as usual. They will steal two-thirds of the governorship positions, give the PDP more than half of the rest and leave Labour with one governorship seat in the South-East. Expectedly, some amongst the opposition will begin to jubilate, celebrating winning one House of Assembly seat here and one governorship there and some in Labour will celebrate how they are growing as a political movement based on these same allotted election results. They will joyously mock those who say they are four people tweeting in a room and tell tales of ordinary people winning on their platforms here and there and so on. But for APC, what matters is that they would have once again stolen the majority of the governorship and Houses of Assembly seats to ensure they have an unchallenged control of the nation at every political level.
For me, the saddest thing I’ve observed after the brazen theft of our nation on the 25th of February, 2023, is the sight of members of the opposition being on each other’s throats. This is exactly what the APC riggers want and they’re getting it! Initially, shortly before the announcement of Bola Tinubu as the winner by the Chairman of INEC, Professor Yakubu Mahmood, I was encouraged by the sight of the vice-presidential candidates, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa of the PDP and Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed of the Labour Party, holding a joint press conference calling for the cancellation of the election and clearly pointing out why in some detail. At that point, I was convinced the opposition knew what needed to be done. I was convinced they had quickly realized that we have crossed the partisan stage to the pro-democracy struggle stage, the stage where they have to jointly mobilize Nigerians for the battle ahead. But I was wrong.
Since after then, both parties and their supporters would seem to have withdrawn to their own corner to fight separately against the APC. They seem not to realize that this is a battle that calls for the solidarity of civil society and all Nigerians of goodwill, no matter their parties or who they voted for in the presidential election. They seem not to realize that this struggle needs a clearheaded central leadership that must show direction to Nigerians. They are preparing to separately go to court to prove that Peter Obi or Abubakar Atiku won the election without realizing that they are not only fighting the APC as a party, but Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led federal government and the Professor Yakubu Mahmood-led INEC who are collectively the real contrivers of this mess. They seem not to realize that this is a conspiracy against Nigeria that has likely coopted many top members of the Nigerian bar and the judiciary, which is why the thieves are confidently directing the aggrieved to go to court. Justice will not return if the PDP activists and the Labour Party activists and members of the other political parties that participated in the election (apart from the APC and those mindless partisans amongst them who are still supporting this unpatriotic and shameful stealing of a national election) continue to behave as though they are still in the partisan season.
Another big mistake, and possibly the biggest mistake the opposition has made, is to fall for the soporific line that they should go to court without first exploring the extent they could push politically. Atiku Abubakar and the PDP led a protest to INEC’s headquarters and the Labour Party is threatening to picket their offices nationwide, but after these, what next? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why? The reason is simple - the opposition has allowed itself to lose momentum.
The truth is if the opposition felt strongly about the evil that the Buhari government, INEC and the APC have done to Nigerians in the presidential election, the natural response would have been to immediately withdraw from further elections. If Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi had come out to say the PDP and the Labour Party shall not participate in the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections scheduled for tomorrow until INEC does what is right, which is cancel the presidential election and conduct another that would be seen as free and fair, that would not have BVAS not working, whose result would be seen by everyone in real time and the rightful winner declared, that would have changed things. That would prove to the concerned world that Nigerians are not people who take injustice lying low. The Buhari government and INEC would have had no choice but to accede to that demand because they certainly cannot organize any credible election without the PDP and the Labour Party participating. But instead, what we have is the PDP and the Labour Party preparing to participate in another election tomorrow, which would see the APC do exactly what they did in the first one. Yes, the PDP and the Labour Party by participating are giving legitimacy to those who have rigged and who are still going to rig the election against them. It’s like offering your head to be cut off by people you know are invested in killing you.
I said earlier that the APC are using the Labour Party and Peter Obi to rig the election of 2023. Let me explain that comment now. It is not a criticism of Peter Obi or an accusation against him. I am not blaming him for anything, I’m just making an analysis based on the facts as they are or as I see them. I’m not passing any judgment because at the end of the day, we are a democracy and every person is free to pursue their political aspiration in any way and manner and under any legitimate platform they deem fit, irrespective of what others think. So, please, I’d want people to understand the following explanation of my comment bearing the above caveat in mind.
Before the emergence of Obi as a viable candidate of a third party, the national mood was one that had already condemned the APC to sure defeat in the expected election. It was even more obvious with the choice of the ailing Bola Tinubu as the presidential flag-bearer of the party. However, Bola Tinubu and his promoters did not relent. They actually sponsored the G-5 within the PDP from the moment Nyesom Wike lost the PDP presidential ticket at the party primary. Forget the lies about North-South balancing or transfer of power to the South and all that tosh being bandied around by Wike, the singular purpose of the G5 was to work from within the PDP to damage the chances of Atiku Abubakar winning the presidential election. That is their job for Tinubu.
Obi, having left the PDP and joined the Labour Party began to win over the support of disaffected young people who ordinarily were going to vote against the failed APC. In what was effectively a two-party system, most of these people were invariably going to vote for the PDP against the APC because even though a lot are not enamoured with the PDP, they know it is a better alternative to the APC. But the emergence of Obi in the Labour Party not only gave them what they consider to be a credible choice, it made them believe that they have the electoral power to defeat the two main parties. This was music to the ears of the APC and the G-5 because the emergence of Obi on the platform of the Labour Party gave the APC and the G5 the perfect excuse for rigging out the PDP. It was a simple justification – Obi would be blamed for taking away traditional PDP votes from the PDP nationwide thus rendering it unable to defeat the admittedly much-hated APC. Having perfected the plans to rig the election, this was going to be their explanation for their improbable win.
Now, we all must accept that whatever result INEC has declared is not a true reflection of the electoral capacity or viability of Labour and Peter Obi. The fact is we actually do not know how good or how bad the Labour Party and Obi are electorally because the figures have been distorted by the riggers. But one thing the riggers have done is use the presence of Obi and the Labour Party as the perfect excuse to knock out Atiku and the PDP. That is why you see that their singular justification for their ‘victory’ is that Peter Obi and the Labour Party took the traditional PDP vote in several places to allow them win. Of course, this is what some of us have been saying long before the election. We have warned of the possibility of Labour and Peter Obi allowing the APC to retain power through the backdoor. The APC listened to all these analyses and framed their rigging figures along those lines.
However, a lot of us who support the PDP know that even though it was our fear, Obi’s presence on the ballot actually did not do enough to prevent the PDP from winning. We have our figures from everywhere and we know Atiku won, but we cannot be making that declaration now because the official figures have been distorted by the riggers and someone else has been declared winner, while another, Peter Obi, is also declaring he won and that he will go to court to prove it. We will therefore have to leave it to the courts to decide.
One thing also giving some of us who support the PDP the conviction that the PDP won is the fact that the APC worked to rig them into second place. One thing is certain, which is that the APC lost, which is why they had to rig it. Who then won? If it was the Labour Party that won, they would have been rigged into second place. But the APC saw that this was impossible because there was no pathway for an Obi victory based on the constitutional requirements for percentages and spread. Yet, he was useful enough to be used to knock out Abubakar Atiku from the top, which is why we are where we are right now.
All the APC wants to do with this election is whittle down the electoral capacity of the PDP, which truly is the only party they fear. In this election cycle, they have now found Labour handy for that job. Through rigging, they are giving some areas where the PDP has great influence to Labour. That way, they are whittling down the power of the PDP at every level by giving some of its strongholds to Labour, which then goes on to celebrate becoming the ‘third force’ in Nigerian politics. In all, the APC loses nothing, but actually even gains more than it had before the election. To them, it’s a perfect plan – deflate the PDP and get the Labour Party rejoicing, set the cat among the pigeons of the opposition while still in control everywhere. Also, it’s another way of guaranteeing their electoral future. If they can be this awful in governance and still retain power, it means they aren’t likely to lose power if they remain united. The only chance of the opposition ever defeating them is if they unite. The APC knows that if the opposition unites and the national mood before an election indicates strongly the APC are going to lose, it would be difficult to rig the opposition out. So, the APC surely will continue to invest in the continuing disunity of the opposition by constantly sponsoring fifth columnists amongst them as they’ve done this time with the G5. As long as the opposition is not united, no matter the national mood, they can always rig and blame the opposition’s ‘loss’ on their disunity.
Honestly, I do not expect Labour Party supporters and activists to accept my analysis, but that’s fair. In fact, I’m not proposing anyone accepts this because to me, the only remedy for what has happened is a simple cancellation of the official result of the presidential election, which is the rigged result. The only thing is to reconduct the presidential election and ensure the BVAS works as it should and let the winner emerge in real time as lawfully stipulated. It’s the only fair thing, no matter what the PDP, Labour or the APC claims.
Anyway, after tomorrow, we, all of us in the opposition, will clean our eyes and stare clearly at what our problem really is and finally begin to act in solidarity to save the country. For now, we are all still lost in a dense partisan fog, celebrating rubbish and hoping for the impossible in the circumstances we have caged ourselves. We still have to tear the skin off each other within the opposition to show that Obi is better than Atiku, the Labour Party is from God and the PDP is from the devil and vice versa. It looks like a life and death battle for some people, so I will leave you lot to it.
I will see you all after tomorrow, after the second lightning strike. That is when every right-thinking Nigerian will really be ready to begin to talk Nigeria. Right now, it’s impossible because we are all hoping to win the governorship here and the House of Assembly there. They’ve set us on a wild goose chase and we are happily hopping around. Yeah, truth is a hard thing to swallow, so I do not expect many people reading me now to understand me. But, you cannot run away from it. You will meet me sitting here, waiting for your acknowledgement after the fact. It’s a long night.
Bon voyage!
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