With sundry conflicts round the globe, fuelled in part by religion and politics, Nigeria’s forthcoming general election in February amid insurgency in the North East part of the country worries the United Nations secretariat, writes Correspondent, SAM NWOKORO.
Definitely, United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has a lot to worry about global security from now till next month, and even afterwards. The year had opened for him with embarrassing events bordering on global security. Not that the subject has not been his priority all along, but that some high calibre security-threatening events, which heralded 2015, are such that will keep him thinking deeply these days.
The terror attack in Paris, France, at Charlie Hebdos’ publishing house, re-awakened global shivers about human safety, if such a place as Paris – the world’s remaining symbol of mankind’s most sought-after religion: freedom – could be so brusquely assaulted by terrorists in the second week of January. The tranquility of Paris was shattered and the entire world rose in unity against terror.
On January 7, 2015, two masked gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. They killed 12 people, including the editor, Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, seven other Charlie Hebdo employees, and two National Police officers, and wounded 11 others. The weekly had attracted attention for its controversial depictions of Muhammad (the Islamic prophet). In the streets of Paris, dozens also lost their lives.
The outrage had hardly died down when news went round the world about the massacre of more than 200 Nigerians in yet another terrorist attack in a market in Borno State, North East Nigeria, which had fallen into regular terror attacks since 2009.
In fact, since the botched attack before Christmas by the Nigerian military, no single day has passed without threats from terrorists, especially in the volatile states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Lately, states like Plateau and Kaduna have been added to the list.
Of recent, towns such as Potiskum, Dutse, Mubi and Bagga have become synonymous with bloodbath, as political campaigns kick off in most parts of the country.
The two main political parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), holding sway at the centre, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) – kicked off their presidential campaigns with unusual emotional outpour, as each try to excuse perceived foibles before an aggrieved populace who have not enjoyed good leadership since Independence.
President Goodluck Jonathan is PDP’s presidential flag-bearer, while former Military General, Mohammed Buhari, flies APC flag.
Unceasing torments from Boko Haram insurgents, the pre-campaign issues regarding power shift from South back to North, the constitutional dusts the 2015 electoral process have been raising among Nigeria’s disparate nationalities, and other issues are weighty enough to give world leaders, not only Ki-moon, cause for apprehension.
UN’s worry
According to news reports, the United Nations Security Council, through the Office of the Secretary-General, has received some dossiers about Nigeria regarding the poll which starts February 14. While the Security Council was receiving the briefing, Ki-moon pleaded for Nigeria to be able to conduct a peaceful poll. He described the contest between Jonathan and Buhari as “a grave test”.
Speaking with journalists penultimate Thursday afternoon, Ki-moon said: “We face another grave test as Nigeria readies for its election next month.” His special representative in West Africa, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, also explained to the Security Council that Nigeria’s general election “is taking place in an increasingly tense pre-electoral environment”.
One Nigerian major daily reported that “both Ki-Moon and Chambas link their worries mainly on the unrelenting Boko Haram insurgency in the North Eastern part of Nigeria”.
Ki-Moon reportedly noted that Boko Haram has continued its violence, killing Christians and Muslims, kidnapping even more women and children and destroying churches and mosques. Mayhem has spread across the region and is now having a direct impact on Cameroon and other countries. Urging the terrorists to cease their assaults against the nation and the region, he appealed for unconditional and immediate release of the Chibok girls abducted in April last year, insisting that the international community will not tolerate impunity.
Chambas, who was Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) chairman said: “The risk of pre and post electoral violence requires the international community to engage further with Nigeria to address its ongoing challenges and to support the holding of a credible and peaceful election throughout the country.”
He also told the Security Council that since the abduction of the over 200 girls, the international community has been supporting Nigerian government’s efforts to address the problem, disclosing that the UN Counter-terrorism Implementation Task Force will hold the first in a series of workshops for law enforcement officials on human rights, rule of law and prevention of terrorism in the third week of January.
Chambas was in Nigeria in his capacity as UN High level representative to Nigeria to consult with high level government officials and other stakeholders to build a common ground to face the threat of Boko Haram and assess the potentials of election-related violence. He expressed regret that the insurgency in North East Nigeria has displaced more than 300,000 persons.
Other concerns
Other world leaders are not left out in expressing concern over Nigeria’s election.
Kofi Annan: Ki-moon predecessor and Chairman of the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security, Kofi Annan, also on Wednesday, January 13, urged Nigerians not to resort to violence, should their choice candidates fail to win at the general elections.
Annan, while addressing a coalition of over 60 civil society organisations in Abuja, on the roles they are expected to play to ensure electoral integrity, warned politicians to be careful with their language to avoid post-election violence, which he described as the bane of elections in Nigeria since 1999.
He added that many elections that were conducted across Africa within the past two decades painted democracy in bad light. “Flawed elections have eroded the trust of citizens in the democratic process.”
The former UN scribe maintained that Nigerian leaders should think about the next generation rather than focusing on winning the next election at all costs.
“What the experience of the last 20 years teaches us is that elections are not enough, if they are not conducted with integrity and able to reflect the real will of the people,” he said.
To give effect to these concerns, Annan committed the presidential candidates of the two main political parties, into signing an agreement that none of them would provoke restiveness, if he fails the election. At the signing ceremony chaired by the former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku, nine other presidential candidates of other parties appended their signatures to the five-point accord.
The pact read in part: “We, the undersigned presidential candidates of the underlisted political parties contesting in the general election of 2015, desirous of taking proactive measures to prevent electoral violence before, during and after the election, anxious about the maintenance of a peaceful environment for the 2015 general election, reaffirming our commitment to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, desirous of sustaining and promoting the unity and corporate existence of Nigeria as an indivisible entity, determined to avoid any conduct or behaviour that will endanger the political stability and national security of Nigeria, determined to place national interest above personal and personal concerns and reaffirm our commitment to fully abide by all rules and regulations as laid down in the legal framework for elections in Nigeria, hereby commit ourselves and our party to the following: to run issue-based campaigns at national, state and local government levels.
“In this, we pledge to refrain from campaigns that will involve religious incitement, ethnic or tribal profiling, both ourselves, and agents acting in our names, to refrain from making or causing to make our names, or that of our party, any public statements, pronouncements, declarations or speeches that have the capacity to incite any form of violence, before, during and after the election; to commit ourselves and political parties to the monitoring of the adherence to this accord by a national peace committee made up of respected statesmen and women, traditional and religious leaders, all institutions of government including INEC and security agencies, must act and seen to act with impartiality and to publicly and to forcefully speak out against provocative utterances and oppose all acts of electoral violence, whether perpetrated by our supporters and/or opponents.”
Other political parties that signed the accord include Action Alliance (AA), Alliance for Democracy (AD), Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), African Democratic Party (ADC), Hope Democratic Party (HDP) and Kowa Party (KP). Others include: National Conscience Party (NCP), United Democratic Party (UNDP) and United Progressive Party (UPP).
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega; PDP National Chairman, Adamu Muazu; APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun; and Chairman of Inter-party Advisory Council and Presidential Adviser on Inter-party Matters, Ben Obi, witnessed the commission the event. Jega delivered a lecture titled ‘Tenets of Non-violent and Peaceful Elections: Lessons for Nigeria’.
Barack Obama: United States President, Barrack Obama, has also promised his country’s support for Nigeria, but warned that the election should be credible to be acceptable to Nigerians. He assured that the activities of the Boko Haram would not be able to disrupt the election.
Delivering Obama’s message, U.S. State Department Spokesman, Ms. Jen Psaki, said the federal government should ensure that it is not discouraged from conducting credible and peaceful elections that would reflect the will of Nigerian people, even in the “face of all terrible attacks from Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations”.
Farida Yusuf: Also the National Vice President of Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN), Farida Yusuf, has lamented the incessant cases of violence in the North East, but promised that the association would deploy over 2,000 Muslim women to monitor the elections.
Global terrorism versus Nigeria
In the past 10 years, especially since 2010, following the rise of the Arab Spring, the world has been more insecure than ever, prompting some to fear that the much-prophesied end-time is around the corner. In fact, prediction about Nigeria’s dissolution was rampant, some coming from concerned friendly national leaders, and some by independent rating experts. One of such gloomy predictions, which has engaged Nigeria’s elite since 2010, was the prediction of a British-American diplomat and teacher of international affairs, John Negroponte, that Nigeria may not exist beyond 2015.
That prediction has since kept Nigerian state managers sub-consciously on edge. Its ominous coincidence with a chain of unsavoury events in the land since the ascendancy of a non-core oligarchic president from one of Nigeria’s minority tribes, in circumstances made necessary by leadership vacuum in 2010, has more than rekindled fears about the occurrence of Negropontes’ ominous predictions. No doubt, the general election, even going by the tenor of its campaigns and surrounding events make one squirm with trepidation that should the contenders fail to hold their emotions, things could go awry.
No factor accentuates this fear than the fundamentalist-inspired terrorism plaguing North Eastern Nigeria. In fact, it could not be an exaggeration to say that the entire North East and North West states of Nigeria, to some extent, presents very uncomfortable profile of a country where one can confidently expect free and fair elections in February, unless some concerted efforts are made to achieve a modicum level of security for voters and election observers.
In the last 10 years, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which builds global terror database in collaboration with the University Of Maryland, U.S. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism, over 125,000 terrorism cases have been reported to date.
The 2014 Global Terrorism Index, its second edition after 2012, showed Nigeria placed fourth with 8.58 points in a survey of 43 countries. Pakistan was ranked third with 9.37 points. Afghanistan, with 9.39, came second, while Iraq took the first position as the most terror-plagued country in the world with 10 points. Thus, the trend shows that Nigeria’s susceptibility to terror threats has been on the upside year by year.
Obviously, it is this fearful terror profile with its attendant impact on the outcome and quality of the election that may have raised this pessimism. As Chamba noted: “It is considered rather unusual in the UN diplomatic community here in New York that a country, which is a member of the council, is now a security concern and subject to the council.
“The West African region remains vulnerable to terrorist threat.”
Other surrounding factors behind the UN’s early worries is the antecedents of political events that have been taking place around Nigeria’s neighbours in the Sahel, Middle East and North Africa. There is palpable fear, as election approaches, that its result do not create another round of the proverbial Arab Spring, which a significant part of Nigeria believe the present regime does not deserve.
Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations, both non-violent and violent, in the Arab world that began on December 2010 and spread throughout the countries of Arab league and surroundings. While the initial wave of revolutions and protest had expired by 2012, some occurred later in 2013, which is the ongoing large-scale conflicts in Middle East and North Africa.
Nigeria’s political atmosphere has been adjudged to be far from the circumstances that led to the Arab Spring both in context, content and form.
Why Nigeria matters
Nigeria is rated as one of the leading economies in Africa after South Africa. She leads in the ECOWAS region, with a rebased economy of more $510 billion. In the last couple of years, the present regime under Jonathan has notched up series of investment flows into an economy that was once without shape nor plan.
“A lot of foreign investors’ money are in Nigeria’s economy today than before. So the world has reasons to worry about election outcomes in Nigeria more than it does worry before,” says Lagos-based businessman, Eromosele Aliu.
Not only that, Nigeria belongs to committee of ECOWAS heads of state and other regional and sub-regional terrorism combat strategy committees. Even as a non-permanent member of the UN, Nigeria played key roles in peace-keeping operations, both at regional and global crisis spots. Also, the big powers of the world continue to look upon Nigeria as the pilot of African economic rejuvenation and democracy after decades of ideological politics between East and West.
A political crisis in Nigeria is feared to have the capacity to spread to other African countries, most of who harbour fearful number of terrorists. It is also feared that Nigeria’s forthcoming elections, given the hype that has been made of it, is capable of derailing further search for investment inflows, if things go awry after.
These, perhaps, are major reasons concerned global stakeholders in Nigeria are urging the politicians to gauge their utterances while campaigning for votes, and to tailor their speeches on the practical steps they would adopt to correct whatever they believe is wrong with Nigeria.
