It all seems so far away, a whole lifetime away, when on a bright Tuesday morning on the 29th of May, 2007, late Umaru Musa ‘YarAdua mounted the rostrum to be sworn-in as President of the Federal Republic. His pervasive sense of purpose and the palpable sense of sincerity and the profound nature of his commitments largely dispelled the widespread disquiet over the manner he and his deputy were plucked from relative obscurity by the imperial and larger-than-life power of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and installed as PDP’s candidates in an election universally-acclaimed to be the worst in the history of democratic elections the world over. The nation was poised to go through another round of bitter recriminations around elections, and was totally unprepared for the earth-shaking admission by the new President that the elections that brought him to power were severely flawed. He also made other profound statements in his speech,
________________________________________________________________________
* Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is Executive Vice-Chairman, QURA MANDATE CONSULTING, KADUNA and Executive Chairman, D.I.T.V/Alheri Radio, Kaduna. He is also a Visiting Reader in Political Science at the Usmanu Danfodio University Sokoto. He comments on public affairs at www.baba-ahmed.blogspot.com
but his comments over the elections, and his public commitment to undertake a major overhaul of the electoral process caught the attention of Nigerians and the world. It did more than that: it took the sting out of the valid case of the opposition that the elections were an organised, brazen robbery. The nation saw a leader who combined a seeming political naivety with genuine sincerity in ‘YarAdua, and when he declared his assets in public and came up with the slogan of the servant leader, a large section of the nation’s public opinion thought that out of the rubble of a dangerously corrupt political and electoral process, a leader may yet emerge who will rekindle the hope that Nigerians may live under a genuinely-elected leadership that will govern with honesty and competence. His seven-point agenda appeared well conceived. His demeanour and initial steps as President was in sharp contrast to the familiar domineering face of the previous leadership. Even his pedigree as a creation of Obasanjo’s ambition to retain firm control over the nation’s affairs began to disappear as the nation saw some semblance of a steely character in a seemingly humble leader. It looked like Umaru Musa ‘YarAdua was going to be his own man, and Nigeria was going to have, for once, a leader who had vision and the character to actualise it. Many Nigerians saw a glimmer of hope that we could have a genuine break from the past under the leadership of a graduate politician who was neither serving nor retired military officer.
Alas, the tall dreams of those heady days in late 2007 and early 2008 began to disappear when President ‘YarAdua’s health began to falter. The race to achieve goals and targets slowed down considerably. The vision became blurred, as a small circle, which became progressively smaller, began to run the administration and the nation. The promised all-important reforms of the electoral process was abandoned half-way, hijacked and trashed by the lowest forms of short-sightedness and political opportunism. Targets on power, infrastructure, land reforms and the fight against corruption were missed or abandoned. Some element of security in the Niger Delta was achieved at a phenomenal cost, including the damaging potential that its manner of resolution could open up other areas of conflict.
In the end, the ‘YarAdua Presidency limped to its end, leaving behind a terrible legacy which will haunt the Jonathan Presidency and the 2011 elections. A good man, and one who would have made a very good President became himself hostage to a small clique which, in the manner it handled his illness, created the impression that an entire nation could be subordinated to the designs of a few people. Worse, the clique created the impression of contempt and disdain for all forms of authority, but especially for the constitutional authority and personality of the Vice President, who later became President Goodluck Jonathan. The caricature of a Hausa Fulani cabal treating a Vice President who is a minority from the South South with contempt, and keeping him and everyone else at bay became firmly imprinted among those close to the Vice President, and, quite possibly in the mind of the Vice President himself.
The circumstances under which President Jonathan became President cannot be removed from the manner he approached his bid for the Presidency. President Jonathan required incredible legal gymnastics and a rare nation-wide political consensus to assume office as President. He spent the rest of the term fighting monumental battles to carve out his own political identity, and run for office as President on his own steam. His first, tentative steps, involved the dismantling of the structures which kept him at a distance, and the invention of additional political muscle in the form of a Presidential Advisory Committee. His determination to run against his Party’s rotation principle triggered the elevation of regional, ethnic and religious politics to unprecedented levels in Nigeria. With a frame of mind which suggested that his tribe and tongue were political liabilities, President Jonathan’s campaign tapped into a reservoir of sentiment in much of the south and middle belt which saw the ‘north’s’ spirited efforts to stop him as a revalidation of the hegemony with which it supposedly controlled Nigerian politcs. The more he dug in, the more he and his opponents split a nation and a Party which had questionable credentials for uniting a nation through its sheer size, and some principles for power sharing and integration. The quasi-tribal conclave, the N.E.P.F, erected by a few northern elders in the PDP succeeded in stirring deep-seated ethno-religious sentiments around a candidate and a cause which had little bearing to the interests of even the far north. By the time its candidate lost the PDP’s ticket, the impression had been created that the north had lost out, or had been robbed of its right to field a candidate. A PDP affair, and a fight among a disintegrating political elite was popularized in the mind of simple folks as a fight between the north and south, between Islam and Christianity. President Jonathan’s candidature split the nation, split his party, split the north, and split hallowed institutions and value systems which held together our rather weak democratic experiment. The outcome of the elections showed that Nigerians have scurried back into primordial holes, with the Yoruba substantially reinventing the AG, APGA fast reincarnating the NCNC, the CPC looking a bit like the NPC, the ANPP taking up the place of the old BYC and UMBC and NEPU, and the PDP sustaining the politics of survival and strategic alliances of the minorities in the South South.
Now President Jonathan will govern with his own fresh mandate, but will deal with the old monsters which have kept the nation captive, as well as others who are appearing in new garbs. Every leader and administration has faced his own challenges, but President Jonathan’s cross is very daunting indeed. On a personal level, he has to prove that he has the strength of character and other leadership qualities to lead with purpose, vision and willingness to take political risks. Nigerians still do not know who exactly President Jonathan is, largely because he has been in the shadow of others for so long; and his stint as President was spent largely fighting series of battles to have his own mandate. He will need to balance the demands of those sections or groups who will see his victory as theirs, against the hostility and indifference of those who campaigned against him and Party. He will have to engage good and honest hands in very delicate statecraft which will limit the damage of the hawks around him that will demand all the spoils of power and their pounds of flesh in retaliation for the embarrassment and humiliations meted out to them and their Party in the north in the post-election riots and violence. He will have to rise above the partisan divide sufficiently to build bridges across and within the sections and groups in the nation, or he will simply feed the simmering opposition against his government in much of the north.
The Sheikh Ahmad Lemu Panel will not provide the basis for a comprehensive resolution of the problems which the post-election violence threw up. It may provide some insight into what happened, but a deeper analysis and appreciation of the causes and consequences of the riots needs to be undertaken, so that appropriate steps could be taken to deal with them. Widespread perception, by no means limited to the north, that corruption in government and serially rigged elections have robbed Nigerians of the capacity to develop, has taken root very deeply in the minds of Nigerians, especially the younger generations. The propensity to take up violent political options, initially popularised in the Niger Delta and now taken up by the Yusufiyya movement, by the bombers of Bauchi, Suleja, Kaduna and Maiduguri, by the alarming spread and use of small arms by ordinary citizens; by the rampaging youths who stoned leaders, tore down campaign billboards and fought-off opposition with weapons; and in the manner the entire far north went up in flames within 24 hours following the Presidential elections, represents the biggest challenge for Jonathan’s administration. Northern Governors who were largely on the receiving end of much of the vicious anger and frustrations of their people need to pay close and serious attention to dealing with issues about education, skills acquisition and corruption.
President Jonathan will make, or fail to make a mark on history in the manner he identifies his priorities and goals, and chooses those who will help him work towards them. If he is content to run an administration centred around people whose only qualifications and credentials are their contributions to his electoral victory, his campaign slogan of transformation will remain just that. On the other hand, if he digs deep and resists the pressures of the all-powerful Governors and those who see themselves as his godfathers, he will find Nigerians who will share his vision and owe loyalty to him alone, a requirement which will be very useful to him as leader. He must prioritize the fight against corruption, and live transparently above board. The brazen pillage of public funds, much of which funded the recent electoral campaigns is eroding any hope among Nigerians that the Jonathan administration will tackle corruption decisively and effectively.
President Jonathan needs to work hard to rid himself of the image of exercising his mandate with the votes of southerners. He needs to regain the trust and respect of many people from the north who still feel that he had no business running for the Presidency. He will also need to justify the genuine and popular perception in the South South that one of their own can make a good President. One way he can do this is by honouring his promise to run for only one term. He should state this during his swearing-in ceremony, and he must resist all temptations to reverse this position in future. He should as a matter of urgency, reach out to many people in his Party who may have been alienated by his campaign, as well as many others outside his party who will otherwise continue to work against him.
President Jonathan should revisit the review of the electoral process as a national priority. The Justice Lawal Uwais report is still there, a veritable source of many solutions to our electoral process. He should also encourage INEC to undertake a deep and honest assessment of the elections it just conducted, and work with the Commission to address problems which obviously arose.
The period from 2007 to 2011 was largely wasted in terms of effective governance in Nigeria. The next four years can substantially make up for this loss in the manner President Goodluck Jonathan understands his new mandate, and governs the nation. Most Nigerians will hope that he will succeed, because another four years of drift and ineffective governance will spell doom for this nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment