Developments in the country since electioneering suggest we are not ready for a peaceful, free and fair vote. It does not matter that different steps have been taken to ensure we play by the rule as we transit once more from one civilian administration to another since 1999.
President Goodluck Jonathan, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, and his counterparts Muhammadu Buhari (All Progressives Congress, APC), Godson Okoye (United Democratic Party, UDP), Remo Sonaiya (KOWA party), Chekwas Okorie (United Peoples Party, UPP), among others, have several times committed themselves to a peaceful transition.
The first commitment was organised and supervised by former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, and former Commonwealth Secretary General, Emeka Anyaoku, who got the presidential candidates to sign pact for a peaceful poll.
Many Nigerians have on their own made similar cases for a peaceful ballot. But it seems the more people suggest and preach peaceful election the hungrier the politicians and their supporters are for a bloody exercise.
With what happened in Okrika, Rivers State last week and the blame game that is ongoing, you wonder who exactly is ready for peaceful polls. How about incessant clashes between the PDP and APC like the one the police averted last week in Ekpoma, Edo State?
I doubt if there is any state in Nigeria where the commissioner of police or even the assistant inspector general of police in charge of the zone has not assembled the governorship candidates to a peaceful pact.
The scenario we are treated with remains that of politicians embracing themselves before the cameras for the purpose of the peace pact meeting while their hired foot soldiers with a brief to do electoral damage for politicians are continuing with the act.
I have argued in this column the dangers that await us if we do not call our wards to order as well as the need for politicians and opinion moulders to bridle their tongues if we are ready to have a peaceful contest.
In the past few weeks we have heard of veiled calls for the military to form an interim government. Luckily though, the military high command distanced itself from that call.
Even the Presidency last week accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of plotting to be installed the head of that contraption. Both the government and the governed have lost control of how to talk, and like lose canon fodders, politicians have reduced their campaigns to blatant lies, rumours and figments of the imagination of the actors. As a result, we get tension, fear and apprehension tailored along religious, ethnic and political lines.
Nigeria and Nigerians are daily being separated and endangered just because we are going into election. Nobody remembers the things that bind us together, but only those that can give us or our party, religion, tribe an edge in the election. Nobody cares about damage this mindset will cause after the election.
I must commend last week’s meeting of the Peace Committee and the comments by its Chairman of the body, former military Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, particularly on interim government.
Abubakar said: “We have been meeting to review where we stopped at the last meeting. We are aware that the election dates have been shifted. There have been a lot of rumour going on around the country, whether there are plans to form an interim government.
“We have heard from the president that election will hold by March. He has also said there are no plans to have an interim government. We appeal to Nigerians to focus their minds on exercising their right on election day.
“During the meeting here we were fortunate to have the chairman of APC and a representative of the PDP chairman.
“We are appealing to our youths to ensure they are not used as thugs during the elections. It is always the children of the poor that are used during the elections. We appeal to party leaders to tell their supporters and candidates to be law abiding. We must ensure that the peace we have heard so far is sustained.”
The world is focusing on Nigeria and watching keenly how everything will play out from March 28 when the first ballot will take place.
Hawks as Jonathan campaigners
Have you been to the seat of power, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja lately?
If you went as a concerned Nigerian in this silly season of politics with its electioneering, and you touched base with some key areas in the FCT, including the top notch hospitality facilities and other prominent government and private offices, what did you observe?
Did you notice the horde of men and women in their middle ages milling around town and clutching files, bags and suitcases and looking more like the carpetbaggers?
I spend spent four days (Monday through Thursday) in Abuja last week after more than a year I last visited. I saw a town enmeshed in the murky waters of politics, peopled by all manner of persons masquerading as politicians, nay campaign coordinators of Jonathan.
When you seat with them, they engage you ad infinitum with tales that are neither here nor there, intermittently exuding demeanour that suggests at best how marginally prosperous they are, perhaps based on the small money that has exchanged their hands as campaign handlers, nay hawks of the president.
They make bogus claims which discerning minds know can only come from people with limited intelligence. When they discuss with you further in pallid campaign speeches, they wear the toga of masters dishing out instructions to their slaves and in manners that we may not have experienced in the medieval days.
Take a deep breath and evaluate all you hear from them, it is nothing but empty nattering that leaves your imagination staggered.
God help you if you are a reporter like this writer; they want to diminish your importance because their warped minds tell them you may have come to ask for favour from them being campaign managers or coordinators of the president, their client.
If you are not careful, they will lecture you on your profession. Their feeling of self-worth which bothers on huge ignorance of even the job you do wakes up and pushes them into telling you how you should be doing or should have done the job.
There are so many people claiming to be working for the re-election of Jonathan in Abuja, but I doubt if their so-called hard work is translating into anything commendable because their behaviour gives them away more as political jobbers than coordinators and managers of the president’s campaign.
A few instances would suffice.
The characters talk of money, money, and more money. They behave like those who have set a target for themselves with regard to how much money they must make for themselves during the election and anyone who stands between them and their target is dealt with.
Talk of my interaction with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, including those serving in re-election committees for Jonathan, you now know why everyone is complaining about money.
In fact, a PDP chieftain and former governor who has just joined the party from the opposition could not hide his disdain at the rate PDP members talk about money as if it is the only thing that matters in politics.
“Every PDP member, both big and small, is thinking of what to grab, how to grab it and where to grab it. I have never seen a thing like this in my more than four decades of politicking.
“They are not bothered whether the job is done. All they care for is money and how to get it. Honestly, this has been my greatest challenge in the PDP since I joined them,” the man told me.
Granted that there are a few genuine ones who have seen what is at stake in the politicking and want to ensure that Jonathan gets re-elected on March 28, but without sounding immodest, such numbers are really few and far between.
I am worried that most of those who claim to be working for Jonathan are people with little patience. I doubt if they believe in the natural law that you must sow seeds first and allow them to die, germinate, grow, bear fruits before you reap from them. In their own calculation, this transition period presents what looks like a farmland already cultivated by some people and, with the garb of campaign coordinators and managers, they are simply harvesters.