By midnight of penultimate Wednesday, 2014 hit the exit route in a backward movement, while 2015 made a triumphant entry through the front door. That is how it has always been since the world was created, and seasons were added.
Across the world, shouts of Happy New Year tore through the night. Frightening sounds of crackers, a familiar signature-tune of the annual ritual, created a stampede of its own.
Here is a refreshing new year trailed by not-too-positive predictions. Nigeria seems like one country populated by too many prophets of doom. Even those who preach the good news of Jesus Christ are not exempted from this drama of negativity.
These days, journalists seem to be competing with politicians in the ugly game of predicting a dark future for Nigeria. One factor that has drawn the two to a common platform is the pending elections across the country.
The thinking is that 2015 elections will be a bloody nightmare. As one journalist put it: the just-concluded party primaries in most states of the federation are clear pointers to the fact that something bloodier lies ahead.
Somehow, he has a point. If people could be slaughtered with such ease during party primaries, which are strictly internal affairs of individual political parties, then what do you expect during elections when two or more parties are involved in deciding which candidate emerges the winner? Heads are likely to roll.
One brilliant writer has made a fantastic prediction. It is nothing positive; though you can’t but accept his prognostication as a possibility. Some truths are like bitter pills. He reduced the envisaged crisis to the battle for the presidency of Nigeria, which is now a straight fight between PDP and APC. Decently summarised, the battle is actually between President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP and General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) of the APC.
The respected writer observed that if Jonathan wins, the North will boil; and if Buhari wins, Niger Delta will explode in fury.
My thinking is that the reaction of supporters after the declaration of results will depend on a few factors. One of them is what the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) makes out of the election. INEC has become so independent that it believes it is answerable only to itself.
I am not an authority on INEC matters. But if what I read in the papers or watch on television is anything to rely on, our greatest worry should be neither what the Niger Delta boys will do or how the North will react to the result of any election; but what INEC has up its sleeves.
Truthfully, INEC has not convinced anybody that it is ready for the forthcoming elections. I have heard its chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, say many times that INEC was ready for election since last year. That’s the problem with people who believe they know it all.
So, as far as the 2015 elections are concerned, INEC is my greatest headache. It’s more like a toothache. If INEC conducts elections that are seen (yes, seen) by everyone to be free and fair, and stop parading laughable native intelligence, I don’t think we have much to worry about.
But that is not what is happening, or what is being expected. For instance, INEC has sufficiently trained staff to conduct elections. But Jega does not seem to have confidence in them.
Instead, he has a soft spot for kids sent on national service with no training whatsoever in election matters. He also believes that his colleagues in the university are better suited for election assignment than his staff.
These kids and university teachers worshipped by Jega and branded as incorruptible are Nigerians, just like INEC staff. In fact, there is a rumour that he is about employing – if he has not done that already – about 42 university teachers as directors in INEC.
What this means is that career public servants in INEC presently occupying the position would be sacked in the name of retirement, while some deputy directors who are already qualified to be appointed directors would be stagnated. Does this sound like good news in an election year?
Let me return to the issue of predictions in 2015. The only positive prediction I have heard about 2015 came from Bishop David Oyedepo. The Apostle over the Living Faith Church had, during Shiloh, the yearly spiritual programme of the church, said that 2015 will be heaven-on-earth for every believer.
He went ahead to state, with Biblical citations, how we can experience heaven on earth, instead of bloodshed, in 2015. He did not say there would be no bloodshed. What he said was that even in the Biblical Egypt when plagues ravaged the country, the children of Israel lived in peace completely excluded from the catastrophe.
Oyedepo explained heaven-on-earth to mean experiencing the realities of heaven in the now. It simply means that whatever is not obtainable in heaven, where the throne of God is, is not permitted to be found around those who believe in God.
What this means is that if we put our trust in God (and not in INEC or the politicians), the conduct of the election will be heavenly because nothing goes wrong in heaven: no rigging, no violence, no hijacking of election materials, and no bloody reaction to election result by any militant group.
Happy New Year.
