By Dr Pius Ekemiri
The 2019 Presidential and National Assembly elections have come and almost gone, except for a few local government areas, constituencies, wards and polling units where elections were postponed, suspended or canceled for various reasons. The general outlook was not surprising as it wasn’t a big departure from past elections. As usual there were logistics constraints, security lapses, trust issues and voter apathy.
Whereas the tension generated before the election by various political parties and political actors was palpable, the election was peaceful in most states expect the violence and regrettable loss of lives reported in Lagos, Benue and expectedly Rivers states. As always, there were shouts of rigging, tampering with results and sensitive electoral materials, perceived and deliberate disenfranchisement of voters at selected areas by way of late arrival of voting materials and dysfunctional card readers, harassment and intimidation of eligible voters by political thugs and security agents and many other allegations.
All in all, the 2019 presidential election was a typical Nigerian election. A careful study of the figures released by INEC confirms the pre-election predictions and calculations regarding the popularity of parties and the candidates. It was generally expected that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will do well in southern Nigeria with South-East as the epicenter of PDP’s support and her strength gradually tapering along South-South, South-West, North-Central, North-East and North-West regions in descending order.
Similarly, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was expected to do well in the North, with the North-West region as the epicenter of her support which was expected to taper as we move towards North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-South and South-East regions in descending order.
The reason for this voting pattern can be situated in ethnicity, religious inclinations, and other primordial sentiments but most ardent supporters of the two political parties and their candidates will try to blur or mask their major reasons with other more enlightened and acceptable parameters. Place the performance of PDP and APC side by side the above scenario, the results to me add up.
I never expected the loser of this election to be happy, I never deluded myself in the fact that most people will be comfortable with the outcome of this election which ever way it goes, because the bad blood was too much, the feelings of each camp was very strong and the possibility of either of the two parties winning was almost 50-50.
However, the truth is the contest has come and gone, the result to me seems fair, irrespective of justifiable misgivings, this has also been echoed by most impartial foreign and local election observers. It will be necessary for the good of all Nigerians for the loser to be graceful and the winner, magnanimous, while INEC takes measures to address the glaring inefficiencies in the commission for better future elections. This is not to say that anyone that feels strongly about the outcome of the election should not seek redress through constitutional means.
For APC and President Muhammadu Buhari, this hard won victory should be seen as a second chance given to a candidate who didn’t do well in his first chance to redeem himself as everyone deserves a second chance. The first term of APC as a party in power and PMB as the pilot of the ship of nation was chaotic without reasonable direction. Whatever were the reasons for the poor performance in the first term should have been realized by now and appropriate steps and decisive actions should be taken to correct them in order to move the nation forward as a peaceful, United and progressive nation.
APC and PMB should not wait for six months before the cabinet is re- constituted, in doing so, the party and the president-elect should meet and carefully select only credible, experienced and capable people to be part of the cabinet.
Political affiliations, personal and filial relationships should not be the only basis to qualify for appointment. There is no way PMB should be left to single-handedly choose the appointees, other party leaders should be involved, after all, the election victory has put a lot of people’s image and integrity at stake. The guiding interest should be the well-being of Nigeria. APC as a party should endeavor to support and midwife the emergence of a credible team to manage the National Assembly, a team that will, while maintaining the independence of the legislature, ensure that their over riding objective is to help the executive to achieve set goals for the interest of Nigerians.
There has been shouts of marginalization and accusations against the president for neglecting some parts of the country and not sticking with the principles of federal character in most of his political and none political appointments and to a large extent these accusations are justified. The president and APC must redress this obvious anomaly. Appointment to various sensitive positions must be balanced in a way that will assure every zone of the country her stake in the Nigerian state. Same as the locations of major infrastructural projects.
On security, this second term should be used to tackle the menace of herdsmen, festering and deadly boundary disputes, Boko Haram, cyber crime, kidnapping, armed robbery and other negative activities of criminal elements in our country. Anti corruption which is one of the cardinal issues of the Buhari government should be fought with renewed vigor in a way that will be obvious that it is unbiased without any sacred cow. EFCC should stop arraigning people for arraignment sake, they should build their cases based on strong evidence before arraignment in order to achieve convictions.
One area APC and PMB should have the courage to tackle is power supply. NEPA was unbundled, commercialized and later privatized after $16 billion was said to have been invested on power by the Obasanjo regime. The reason for this privatization was to improve power supply, capacity building and power infrastructural development.
I believe that the government of Goodluck Jonathan and the GENCOS and DISCOS must have a signed agreement, detailing what the firms will do in other to fulfill the reasons for this exercise, which is improvement of power supply. Can anyone say the power situation has generally improved in Nigeria? Can anyone say that these companies have adequately invested in the power infrastructure? The answer is emphatic NO. So the purpose has been defeated. I know a contract was signed and this has to be respected, but part of the contract agreement is for the companies to deliver better and improved power supply to Nigeria’s power consumers and since the companies have failed in their responsibilities, the government must as a matter of fact revisit the entire process for the good of Nigerians, because power is at the heart of any reasonable development plan.
Finally, Nigerians, irrespective of ethnic, religious and political leanings must come together and support those in government so that we can together build the country of our dreams. Resorting to sabotage, negative and destructive propaganda and spread of fake and destabilizing news will not do anyone any good. We have one country and we shall have one president and Commander-in-Chief at a time. Supporting him will include constructive criticism and good suggestions on how better our national issues can be managed.
Nigeria is a predominately religious nation, almost every Nigerian believes and worships one thing or the other; God in heaven, the almighty and omnipotent God worshiped by both Christians and Muslims and the traditional religious worshipers that follow African traditional gods, the owner and controller of the universe.
Before, during and after the election, prayers were said for divine intervention, for peace and for God’s will to be done. I wonder if we believe in God’s greatness, I wonder if we believe that prayers are answered. If truly we believe, then we should submit ourselves to the outcome of the election, though our expectations were not met. Perhaps God is working at something, let’s all be patient and wait and see what God has in stock for our country, Nigeria.
Dr Ekemiri (KSJI) wrote in from Port Harcourt, Rivers State
