Opinion
By Anthony Akaeze
THESE are depressing and interesting times to be a Nigerian. Depending on where one stands, the mood could be one of indifference, sadness, or hope. Indifference suggesting a probable feeling of helplessness, an admittance that the situation is beyond one; sadness at what the present and future holds or hope that no matter the bleak prospect, it could still turn out good in the coming days, weeks or months.
This backdrop is in regard to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria comprising of the presidential, national and state assemblies and gubernatorial elections, the first and second of which held on February 25.
In every respect the elections generally lived up to the billing–if not surpassed the standard of a typical Nigerian election: voting in many polling units failed to kick off on time; thugs descended on polling booths, threatened and assaulted voters, snatched, upturned, destroyed election materials, mutilated and rewrote figures with support of staff of the electoral umpire(INEC) and security agents; the police, in some places, looked away or showed no interest in arresting the thugs, then INEC went ahead and declared a winner of the presidential election (All Progressives Congress) despite the protest of many Nigerians who insist that the elections were flawed.
As is the case in all but one of previous national elections since 2003, the loser or losers this time have gone to court to challenge the result of the election. These include the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, which placed second and third respectively in the presidential election result announced by INEC.
As the nation awaits the decision of the court on the petition, restiveness is a word that best captures the mood for me. Many are eager to see how this will end. This is even as some express no hope in the judicial system. Not a few persons hold the view that the judiciary in Nigeria today is as corrupt as the executive or legislative arms of government and therefore do not think that the victory of the All Progressives Congress, no matter the avalanche of evidence against it, can be upturned by the court.
But we wait and see!
Prior to the elections I was one of those who hoped that the February 25 presidential election offered the opportunity of a new beginning for Nigeria. A country on its knees as I consider Nigeria to be, needed to be helped up. Many Nigerians agree that their country, despite its enormous natural endowments, doesn’t work as it should for its citizens and the result is clear for all to see: rising joblessness among its youth, hunger and poverty that all indices show to be worsening by the day, insecurity and the decrepit state of infrastructure across the country. It is for these reasons and more, that one Nigerian, assessing the presidential aspirants for the February 25 election, said that the outcome of the election will reveal the number of mad people in Nigeria. By that he meant that no reasonable person in Nigeria should toy with the opportunity of voting into office a candidate he considers the best of all: Peter Obi of the Labour Party, a man who, after leaving office as governor in March 2014, stated that he left in state coffers $86bn for his successor, at a time many other states across the federation were struggling to subsist.
There have been rejoinders by some Obi antagonists over the years, including his successor Willie Obiano, accusing him of overstating how much he left but Obi has never shied away from responding to his critics. In an interview with Vanguard newspaper published on April 25, 2014, Obi, in response to a question, said: “On the 8th of March, I called Nigerians from all walks of life and presented what I called my “End of Tenure Report.” I explained where I met Anambra State and where we are leaving her. I made it clear that we did not borrow a dime neither did we issue bond. I mentioned our investments and savings in banks. For example, I mentioned that we saved $156 Million Dollars through buying local and foreign denominated bonds. The Managing Directors of the banks where these money are-Fidelity, Access and Diamond Banks- were present. It baffles me that some people would come up to cast doubts on people’s mind just to pull Peter Obi down,” he said, adding, “All I can say is that what we said we did, the money we said we left and all that were properly documented and certified. With the Freedom of Information Law, one can actually apply to those institutions to know if the money are there.” He continued, “Let me take this opportunity to clear one misconception, I did not say I left all cash in the banks. I made it clear that some were by way of investment. For example, Anambra State invested money in some of the companies we attracted to the State. It is important to let you know that we were able to save money in the State because we made a law that Anambra must save a minimum of N100 Million Naira monthly and I obeyed it religiously.”
Obi then went ahead to reveal something about himself that some people may consider astonishing in a country with a corruption problem where many leaders are known to live large at people’s expense. “When I was the governor, I did not use sirens, I carried my bags, checked into hotels myself, bought my tickets and did my bookings. I queued like other Nigerians and flew business and economy classes. Now that I am no longer the governor, basically the same lifestyle goes on. There is nothing to miss. I am one person who does not eat as if I would die tomorrow or build edifices as if I would live forever.”
Nine years after that interview, there have been more revelations about Obi. He is probably the only Nigerian former governor who doesn’t receive monthly (usually humongous) pension from his state; who did not allocate any land to himself as governor of a state and who was not indicted for corruption by any of the anti-corruption agencies in Nigeria.
It was in recognition of the man’s qualities and record of achievements in public office and placed side by side with his competitors in the presidential race, one of whom-Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress-is alleged to be a drug dealer and at a point forfeited $460,000 to United States prosecutors that probed into a drug cartel in Chicago decades ago, and another-Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party-that allegedly laundered millions of dollars abroad and is suspected to have made money from his days as an employee of a government agency and later, top government functionary, that made the Nigerian, in the state that Nigeria currently finds itself, to wonder which sane person would jettison Obi for Tinubu or Abubakar or any other opponent for that matter.
But hey, many things go into determining who wins elections. For one, giving the irregularities that marred the elections, it is arguable the declared results were a reflection of the majority choice and while Nigerians await the court’s decision, a lot of drama has unfolded involving Obi and Tinubu.
The first was the release of an alleged phone call Obi had with Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel, one of Nigeria’s best known Pentecostal pastors, urging him, prior to the February 25 election, to appeal to Christians in his south west and middle belt part of the country, to vote for him. That wouldn’t have been anything to ponder about but for the fact that the voice in the audio alleged to be Obi’s, in his plea to the cleric, described the upcoming election as a “religious war.”
Another was the news of the alleged arrest of Obi at a London airport. It was revealed that immigration officers at Heathrow airport stopped and slammed Obi with a detention order and quizzed him for hours. Nigerians later got to know from one of Obi’s former aides, that someone had impersonated Obi and the implication of that is that the imposter is roaming about free and likely committing fraud in Obi’s name in the UK.
Both of these news were celebrated largely by Tinubu’s camp who consider Obi and his supporters as their major headache to attaining power. Many of them have refused to accept Obi’s defense that the audio clip of him and Oyedepo was doctored and that he never at anytime said the election was a religious war. They continue to talk about the clip in a way as to arouse sympathy of Muslims and diminish Obi’s support among Muslims in a deeply religiously sensitive country like Nigeria and have called on Obi to also shed light on his purported arrest by UK immigration officials.
But the buoyant mood in the Tinubu/APC camp was soon punctured by the revelation by a Nigerian investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, that Tinubu holds a dual citizenship that he failed to declare on his INEC form. Hundeyin published on his Twitter page, the data page of a passport showing Tinubu as a Guinean citizen and his INEC form where he marked no to the question of whether he holds another citizenship outside Nigeria’s.
This was followed by a video of Tinubu and a man described by Hundeyin as having “been identified and tried for being part of a cross-border drug trafficking ring,” flanked by Tinubu’s protégé, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos State, in “a Guinean presidential helicopter” now making the rounds. Hundeyin pointed out that the video was “apparently leaked by an insider in Tinubu’s camp.”
These reports on Tinubu were well received by Obi’s supporters who mainly go by the nickname “Obidients.” They insist that Tinubu, in failing to declare that he’s a Guinean citizen, has committed perjury and should, for that reason, be disqualified from assuming power as president.
In some, if not all these revelations, the invisible hands of politicians or their supporters seem to be at work. But the courts ultimately will have the final say in the petition before it.
In the responses that have trailed these news on Obi and Tinubu, depending on which side one is, insults and ethnic hate are spewed without let. While Obi’s support base is presumed national, even with the limited votes he got from the core northern states, there are those from the opposing camps who choose to see it as limited to Obi’s Ibo speaking ethnic region.
Some Ibos, on their part, feel that the Yoruba ethnic group where Tinubu comes from, and the Hausa/Fulani ethnic groups in the north are opposed to an Ibo man becoming president.
Online exchanges between die hard people of these ethnic regions (or those falsely hiding under those identities) generally considered to be the three major ethnic groups in the country, has added a worrying dimension to Nigeria’s problems. So bad is the situation that some people fear the animosity, if not halted, could descend into something worse.
The prospect of war in modern day Nigeria, is one some people consider impossible. Well, I did think of insurgency that way too. One Iraqi had, in his assessment of his country post Saddam Hussein, said he could hardly recognize his country anymore. He was talking about the killings and destruction that followed the invasion of Iraq by US soldiers in 2003 under the guise of searching for weapons of mass destruction.
Prior to 2009, I never could imagine that my country could descend into the kind of bloodletting synonymous with it now. But there is something about the human mind that you never know. Simply, never put anything beyond it. It’s about will or gut. Of people, mostly teenagers and youth recruited and trained by their patrons to hate and kill people for heaven knows what! That’s how Boko Haram grew to be the scourge it is today and transported their evil to neighboring Cameroon, Niger Republic and Chad.
Nigerians, therefore, would do well to eschew their hate for one another. We all found ourselves, from circumstance of birth, emanating from somewhere. It doesn’t make us superior or inferior to people of other tribes.
Endlessly blaming our problems on other ethnic groups or even Britain for coupling diverse ethnic groups together to form one country hasn’t helped our situation as we all are stuck in it.
Given what we all know about leadership failure in Nigeria, the best solution that democracy offers people, is to elect leaders, irrespective of tribe, that will best serve their interest at state and national levels.
That’s how Nigeria could begin to change the course of its chequered history, and look forward to building, in no distant time, a country younger generation of Nigerians will be proud to call theirs.
Anthony Akaeze is an award-winning journalist and author of four books and co-author of the recent book published by Taylor and Francis in the UK titled Media Ownership in Africa in the Digital Age: Challenges, Continuity and Change.
A.
Tags: ANTHONY Akaeze Bishop David Oyedepo David Hundeyin
