The article below was first published in 2011. Four years down the road, I am reproducing it to prove the point, in my view, that nothing changes for the better in Nigeria. Despite all protestations to the contrary, we have no democracy, not to talk of a thriving one.
Democracy is always hoisted on the totem pole of the rule of law and strong institutions. Democracy is about the people and their sovereign right to choose who governs them.
Democracy cannot be about the rule of strong men where might is right. Unfortunately, that was the legacy Olusegun Obasanjo bequeathed to the nation, and his successors are doing everything to surpass his dictatorial record.
As the 2015 elections are approaching, governors have become emperors, determining who succeeds them and who becomes what. It does not matter what the people want. But we will eternally be damned if we allow the same 2011 shenanigans in 2015.
“Chinua Achebe, Africa’s most famous novelist, and Nigerian patriot par excellence, rejected the offer of the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR), the country’s third highest national award, last week as he did seven years ago.
When he first did in 2004, the globally acclaimed literary icon lamented the parlous state of the polity, caused by the mendacity of the political leadership. That was when President Olusegun Obasanjo’s shenanigans almost reduced Nigeria to a banana republic. Achebe was particularly irked that Obasanjo was overtly indulging malcontents in his home state, Anambra.
“For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay,” Achebe told Obasanjo in his rejection letter. “I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.
“I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”
More than four years after Obasanjo, the brash and impetuous General, left office, Achebe is still saddened that nothing has changed even when President Goodluck Jonathan, the self-acclaimed good man, is in the saddle.
“The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed, let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must, therefore, regretfully decline the offer again,” Achebe said in a statement.
But Jonathan thinks Achebe got it all wrong. A lot has changed, and positively so, he declared. This is the golden era of Nigeria’s democracy and nobody is complaining, which makes Achebe’s action regrettable.
Jonathan said Achebe was grossly misinformed, irreverently advising him to come back home.
“Coming as it does, against the background of the widely acclaimed electoral reforms undertaken by the Jonathan administration, the claim by Achebe clearly flies in the face of the reality of Nigeria’s current political situation,” Jonathan said through his spokesman, Reuben Abati.
“The Jonathan administration has made tremendous efforts to positively change the political architecture complained about by Achebe and others.”
But rather than Achebe’s, it is Jonathan’s claim that flies in the face of reality. Proof?
The murky Bayelsa political waters and brazen manipulation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary preparatory to the February 11, 2012 governorship poll.
Like Obasanjo, Jonathan is brashly trying to impose a Governor on Bayelsans. Is the manipulation part of the administration’s “extensive electoral reforms to institute a regime of electoral integrity that all Nigerians can be proud of?”
Because of self-serving reasons, Jonathan does not want Timipre Sylva to have a second term. While I believe that the embattled Governor is not an exemplar of good governance, Jonathan did not do better when he was the Governor of the beleaguered state and, therefore, has no moral authority to cast an accusatory stone at his successor.
But what is even more worrisome is Jonathan’s crude manipulation of the democratic process to ensure that his godson, Seriake Dickson, presently a member of the House of Representatives, is foisted on hapless Bayelsans as their next Governor, willy-nilly. Is that the new Nigeria Jonathan is boasting of?
What is the substance of his self-acclaimed political re-engineering? How different is his political architecture from Obasanjo’s? Put differently, what has changed?
To ensure that Jonathan’s anointed candidate becomes Governor regardless, the PDP ignored a court order restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the PDP and its National Chairman, Abubakar Baraje, from “conducting, organising or holding any meeting or ward congresses and from embarking on any activities leading to the holding of any fresh gubernatorial primary election” in Bayelsa.
Yet, the party had nothing to lose by obeying the court order or getting a superior court to vacate it because it had enough time. The February 11, 2012 date for the poll gave the party a grace of 84 days from the November 19, 2011 date it fixed for the primary.
The political parties have a minimum 60 days to submit their candidates’ names to the INEC as prescribed in Section 31 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010. So, why the indecent haste?
But the PDP went ahead to conduct the primary election, declaring Dickson the winner with 365 votes. Chairman of the PDP governorship primary electoral panel and Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade, who announced the result, said other aspirants, Fred Ekiyehga and Austin Febo, polled two votes each, while Francis Doukpola and Michael Kalango scored one vote each.
Yet, this was a primary election shunned by the INEC, Jonathan himself, Sylva, his Deputy, Werinipre Seibarugu, federal and state lawmakers, council chairmen and councilors, and 102 other delegates who banded under the aegis of Concerned Statutory Delegates.
Three of the aspirants, Austin Febo, Christopher Fullpower Enai, and Bolobou Orufa, staged a walk out.
To secure this victory for Dickson, Jonathan literally locked down the entire state, deploying thousands of heavily armed security men, including soldiers, mobile policemen, air force and naval personnel and operatives of the State Security Services (SSS). Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) and helicopter gunships were deployed.
What desperation!
The only reason Dickson will be installed Bayelsa Governor in February is Jonathan, and that is not democracy. The will of one man flies in the face of democracy, which promotes the will of the majority.
If this is what the so-called transformation agenda is about, then, Nigerians are in for it.
Even if we give Jonathan the benefit of the doubt and concede that he is throwing caution to the winds to manipulate the system because he is not sure that the democratic institutions will guarantee victory for the best candidate, assuming he genuinely believes that Dickson is the best candidate, what then is the worth of the electoral reform he is ululating about?
The truth is that Jonathan is living in denial. He knows elections under his watch are as fraudulent as they have ever been. Nigerians have realised that their President is the archetypal Nigerian politician – opportunistic, egoistic, and selfish.
There is nothing transcendental about Jonathan’s leadership. Unbridled arrogance of power and contempt for due process cannot be ingredients of a transformation agenda.
The unfortunate drama in Bayelsa represents the worst of Nigerian politics. So, Achebe was spot on when he said nothing has changed.
I can understand the President’s angst. It will only take a moral colossus like Achebe to deconstruct the Jonathan myth, which spin doctors have laboured so hard to build.
But ensconced in Achebe’s rebuke is the age-long saying that it is only a mad man that will do the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result.