The Nigerian government has admitted that it has denied Mr. John Campbell, a former United States Ambassador to Nigeria and an active commentator on Nigerian affairs, a visa to enter the country. The government says Mr. Campbell has not satisfied the requirements to be issued a visa, but the opposition has dismissed this as a laughable excuse, and demanded that government apologize to the former Ambassador, and admit to its intolerance of criticism. Once again, Mr. Campbell has become the issue in our politics, and in the quarrels which the denial of his visa are generating, we are likely to miss the substance of his comments and predictions. Without a doubt, this quarrel over one American reveals an embarrassingly low point in the manner Nigerians see their own affairs, as well as the full import of the controversies surrounding the quality of the elections which have just produced the people that will lead Nigeria in the next four years.
Mr. John Campbell had written an article a few days after the Presidential elections in April in which he alleged that the Presidential elections which returned President Jonathan were rigged at the collation stages. He also alluded to the possibility that the post-election violence which followed the Presidential elections will alienate the North from the rest of Nigeria, and therefore hasten a process of weakening the North politically, which is already underway. The comments of Mr. Campbell naturally stirred a lot of interest, as much for his views on the results of the elections, but more significantly, because he also alluded to the possibility that the elections have set in motion a process that will weaken the Nigerian State, and have raised some basic questions regarding the future of the far North, or as he saw it, the Muslim north, in Nigeria of the future.
Ambassador Campbell had made earlier comments and, postulations regarding Nigeria in the past many of them questionable. He had questioned the capacity of Nigeria to survive as a nation in future, given its geo-political, religious and ethnic composition, and the manner our politicians are turning them into sources of disunity and fragmentation. He had predicted that President Jonathan’s candidature as President in the PDP, the controversies over the zoning formula, the rising popularity of General Buhari in the far North, the weakness of the ruling class and the absence of a wide political consensus around fundamentals of the political process will all pose major problems for the political and electoral process. He was consistent in warning that the 2011 elections will be a major watershed in determining the future of Nigeria as a developing democracy, whose fragile political structures and an underdeveloped political framework may not withstand major crises.
There were two immediate reactions to his comments on the uncertain future of the North in Nigeria. One reaction took the form of alarm bells in many academic and political circles in the north. The other reaction triggered a deluge of disparaging and insulting articles and other electronic messages, all heralding or urging the imminent departure of the “almajiri” north from Nigeria. Both reactions were tragically-misplaced. The northern academic and political elite showed its poverty in the manner it seized upon a one-page brief written by an American to galvanize it into action towards understanding the causes and consequences of the political and economic backwardness of the north in the Nigerian context. The Nigerians who saw in Campbell’s brief a welcome prognosis that there could be a Nigeria in future without the North are also celebrating without reason. They showed a pathetic lack of appreciation of the nature of the Nigerian federal system, which needs the north to survive as much as the north needs Nigeria.
There really was nothing new in the Campbell thesis to get the nation all worked up. Even Mr. President’s best friends will concede the fact that some enquiry into the incredulous results in the South South and South East presidential elections will need to be undertaken, if only to prove that he is not governing with a brazenly-rigged mandate. It is also very clear that INEC and Professor Jega paid scant attention to the full election process, and the gaps in their preparations and attention were fully exploited by those who wanted to rig the elections. To rely on the reports of foreign and external observers, such as Ambassador Campbell, to validate or denounce our elections is a very risky strategy for assessing our efforts towards the development of our democratic processes. Foreign observers are extremely limited in their capacities to assess our entire electoral process, and it amounts to an insult for INEC and those who want to hold up our elections as free and fair to continuously cite their comments as validation. Similarly, people like John Campbell are not without their motives and limitations, many of them against national interests, and it is equally insulting that much of the criticisms of the elections should be predicated on his extremely limited perspective. Now that the presidential election results are before the courts, all Nigerians will hope that the judicial process will do justice to the genuine need to establish what really happened during the 2011 elections. Until then, comments and opinions of Nigerians will matter, but the courts’ verdict will be the most important.
The apparent refusal by the Federal Government to grant a visa to former US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. John Campbell is a reaction which is completely inconsistent with its cause. The Nigerian government has accorded Mr. Campbell a status which he does not deserve. He is an American who sees himself as some sort of expert on Nigeria; and he is entitled to his views, whether government likes them or not. And he will not stop commenting on Nigeria. On the contrary, now his comments are likely to be accorded greater interest by sections of the international community and those Nigerians who prefer to believe what foreigners say about our country, more than what we see, say and experience as Nigerians. To keep out Campbell because he says things about our country or our elections which our government does not like is not standard practice expected of civilized governments. Many Nigerians have said the same things about our nation. Whether Campbell says them or not, many of our political and electoral problems require serious analyses and solutions. Banning Campbell from coming to Nigeria will not solve them.
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