Nigeria: Definitely time to give June 12 a decent burial

Making history history

On June 12 2011, I wrote a piece titled Nigeria: Time to give June 12 a decent burial [1] for a number of reasons which already appear in that piece.

Basically, June 12 1993 is an important date in Nigerian history, it presented the opportunity for democratic self-determination but the military junta of that time made the promise unrealisable by annulling those elections.

In essence, the simple analogy that applies is the case of a medical student who came tops in every year of the course but failed for graduate – for all the knowledge that student might have acquired and demonstrated throughout that course that person is NOT a doctor.

Take the lessons but don’t live there

In the same vein, whilst June 12 was a watershed, a standard for what we all agree until the very recent past were the freest, fairest and most credible elections ever conducted in Nigeria, the fact that the results did not result in the winner of the election taking office because of the annulment makes it an unfulfilled exercise in democracy.

There is no doubt that there are lessons of history to be taken from June 12 and it probably sowed some seeds of national consciousness in Nigerians but 18 years have passed and Nigeria is in a different place.

In discussions that followed that write-up the opinions I expressed were termed revisionist and sometimes false. However, none of the assertions I made were without attribution and sources, the standard of my writing is such that corroboration and references are paramount.

A sloppy rebuttal

It is grating that the rebuttal to my piece Guest Post – June 12: Why Bury the Living Among The Dead? [2]fails to meet that standard none of the figures used are referenced, neither are the opinions corroborated and it is for all the intents of the writer more argumentum ad hominem than one that rises to the level of basic scholarly discourse albeit an ordinary opinion piece lacking the support of source material.

I owe no particular allegiance to either June 12 1993 or April 16 2011, the principal beneficiary of the 1993 election is long dead and buried with a memory approaching hagiographic proportions in the minds of certain Nigerians – I am not that persuaded.

In my view, the events and context of June 12 1993 should be taught as part of Nigerian history, it does not need to be hallowed and the needs for reparation or justice in relation to that time are matters of conjecture that honestly bear no relevance to Nigeria of today because a lot has changed since then.

Between 1993 and now

The Nigerian population in 1991 [3] was 88,992,220 the 2010 estimate [4] is put at 158,259,000, in 1993 an estimated 39,000,000 voters registered [5] compared to 73, 528,040 in 2011 [6].

In my original piece I referred to some data in an interview conducted with Professor Okon Uya who averred that the voter turnout was 13% [7] taking the spectre of credibility from the 1993 elections. I extrapolated that view to assert that even the lowest turnout in Ogun State of 28% in 2011 made the 1993 elections suspect.

On examination of new data, Professor Okon Uya was wrong about the voter turnout being 13% in 1993, the data suggests that the voter turnout [5] was 36.65%; however, the voter turnout for the 2011 elections according to INEC figures was 53.67%.

The context still remains valid

In my opinion, based on these new facts we find that the main thrust of my original argument is not lost, only made less extreme in its significance. Apart from the standards of freeness and fairness, voter turnout is also an attribute of election credibility and by that; we can safely state that the 2011 elections have eclipsed the 1993 elections.

The 2011 elections were not perfect, everyone will admit to that and some of the results are in dispute but the declared winners of the said elections have assumed office and will work in that capacity drawing their requisite emoluments until such a time that those election results are reaffirmed, overturned or declared invalid.

Nigeria is not waiting for that to happen even as justice takes its course, the lay of the land in Nigeria today is for the advancement of its people and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and other visionary plans the people who hold the reins of power have espoused.

Nigeria has moved on

June 12, 1993 has its significance to the many who give it some hagiographic importance but Nigeria has a median age [8] of 19 years meaning the core majority of Nigerians will have no particular connection with 1993 apart from them gaining a historical perspective of that event.

As things stand, we are in 2011, the best elections with a result we have ever conducted in all of the history of Nigeria taking note of the medical student analogy I used at the beginning of this piece was the election conducted on the 16^th of April, 2011, regardless of who won and despite the fact that the greater animosity to that election is one redolent of sore losers than other objective assessment.

My views of June 12 are hardly revisionist rather they aim to put two different times in context whilst appreciating how Nigeria has changed 18 years on, my refusal to idolise, eulogise or be sentimentally incapacitated with the subjective discourse making for some sense of greater patriotic persuasion is clear – 1993 is now history.

It is time to give June 12 a decent burial and get on with making Nigeria a country fit to take its rightful place in the 21^st Century.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: Time to give June 12 a decent burial

[2] Guest Post – June 12: Why Bury the Living Among The Dead?

[3] Table 1.3.2 - Numeric and percentage Distribution of the 1991 Census Figures

[4] Nigerian Population estimate for 2010

[5] African Elections Database – Elections in Nigeria

[6] April 16 2011 Presidential Election Results Analysis

[7] The Sun News On-line | Every election since 1922 has been manipulated –Okon Uya, ex-NECON boss

[8] Demographics of Nigeria – Wikipedia

Nigeria: Time to give June 12 a decent burial - Updated!

Yes, the hope died

June the Twelfth, 1993 has for years been marked as the day that Nigeria’s hopes for democracy died or as Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa would have so eloquently put it when he made his speech [1] as Prime Minister of a newly independent Nigeria; our claims to responsible government were rubbished.

After many years of military rule, the military leaders charted a course to return to the barracks and laid out a formula for self-determination and democracy which appeared to run its course to a point.

Parties were registered, campaigns were run, candidates were selected and elections conducted – Nigerians were waiting for the results.

An amazing change beckoned

As the results came in, it became apparent that a political earthquake was about to hit Nigeria and rearrange the topology of the single story that had defined what we knew of our country; the North, the South, Muslims, Christians and its tribal differences.

A Muslim Southerner was taking the spoils in the North and that trajectory was looking like Bashorun M. K. O, Abiola was going to be declared the winner and hence become the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; a harbinger of change the ruling elite could not countenance with unfounded fears.

Unfortunately, just before all the tallies came in to confirm that emerging trend, the military Head of State, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida annulled the elections leaving an inconclusive state of affairs, but with at least enough to draw allusions from which now makes for the memorialisation of June the Twelfth.

It was not perfect

What made the elections of 1993 a benchmark for freeness, fairness and credibility was the voting method adopted that prevented the usual electoral criminality that we had gotten used to in the Nigerian landscape.

The Option A4 voting was an open ballot system where voters openly queued up behind their respective candidates or symbols of their candidates and were counted; the results were then collated up the hierarchy.

That is not to say that the elections of 1993 were perfect, there are ways in which it could have been suborned but I will leave the verdict to the then chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON), Professor Okon Uya, he suggested this year before the elections that all elections conducted in Nigeria since 1922 including that which he presided over in 1993 were manipulated [2]. See note at the end of the blog.

What could have been could have been, Nigeria might have returned to democracy since 1993, the hopes and aspirations of the people could have been realised through the leadership of a man that transcended the stereotypes that defined Nigeria, we could have been a viable member of the BRICS, the ignominy of the Sani Abacha years might never have happened but that all belongs to a parallel universe of time and space; we live in the reality of things that happen and really affect us.

Annulment versus result

It is arguable that the elections of June 12, 1993 are the gold-standard of credible elections to be conducted in Nigeria and one must give allowances to that notion but it needs to be compared with the elections just past, identified by the date April 16, 2011.

The 2011 elections were not perfect, but they did achieve a higher scale of freeness, fairness and credibility beyond many that have been conducted in Nigeria before, the ones in 2007 being the worst ever.

They will also turn out to be the costliest every conducted; that is the price that had to be paid to turn things around and deliver elections that represent as much as possible the will of the people; most of all, despite its failings, it delivered a result that many will find difficult to dispute even though there are many that are disaffected as much as there was voter apathy in many regions too but on average a higher turnout (the lowest was in Ogun State with 28%) than in 1993 (which Professor Okon Uya said was just 13% on average.).

Could have been better

It is important to recognise that the modified open ballot system adopted was a maturation on the Option A4 system, it allowed people to secretly cast their votes thereby avoiding coercion and menace that would have forced voters to queue up openly in support of people they did not believe in and the count was done openly with the results for the count posted at the polling stations and then passed up a chain of custody through collation centres.

Theoretically, every means for having the most credible elections were there, participation was also widespread with the youth representing a burgeoning constituency, technology came to play though it requires more refinement – there is a lot that could be improved upon and the present-day INEC is working on those matters.

Now, this is not to make June 12 insignificant by any means, but it would be unfortunate if we all based our realities on a mirage when April 16 represents the best progress we have made on the democratic experiment in Nigeria so far.

Turn the page of history

In 2011, June 12, 1993 needs to assume its place in Nigerian history, the mourning over the death of democracy and self-determination that it represented has to go; a child born on that day will now be eligible to vote in Nigeria; the clamour about it will make no sense to that child apart from sounding like some fable, a memory, some story and part of Nigerian history as it should be taught.

We need to stop singing the dirges of the yesteryears and arrive at the reality of today; Nigeria cannot be governed by the standards, viewpoints, hopes or expectations of 1993 anymore, the world has moved on and changed; Nigeria is in 2011, it is time for us to seize our present and take our country forward.

The results [3] of the April 16, 2011 elections showed that we do have a national party despite our misgivings about its predominance and its machinations with a number of regionally strong oppositions; it showed a Christian Southerner making in-roads into the presumably impregnable North capturing the 25% threshold necessary across the whole country rather than in some regions; it represented a sea-change that had its Genesis in 1993 which has now been eclipsed.

Give June 12 a decent burial

June 12, 1993 was dead on arrival, a stillborn, a sad narrative, the low point of our democratic yearnings because that the expectations we had were completely snuffed out and it produced no result, the fact is we do not have certified returns and results for that election and that is final, it should not be a subject of supposition or speculation, there is no legally recognisable data to extrapolate the assumptions thrown around like the truth.

It is time to give June 12 a decent burial, build it a mausoleum, if you like, with all the ceremony that can be accorded its significance in Nigerian history, but we need to leave the graveyard of dashed democratic dreams; the dead cannot continue to walk amongst the living like a zombie.

Nigeria with a majority of its population under 35 indicates that majority have no real connection with June 12, 1993 to have been able to influence that situation; the more reason why they should give more credence to the elections they participated in to bring lasting change to Nigeria rather than become cultish worshippers of some ethereal ideal; a Utopian Nigeria that gets trotted out for occasion and slovenly aspiration.

We need to make the best of what 2011 gave us – a new hope, imperfect as it might be, it is a lot better than what 1993 ever delivered.

Sources

[1] Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa Independence day's speech - October 1, 1960

[2] The Sun News On-line | Every election since 1922 has been manipulated –Okon Uya, ex-NECON boss

[3] Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Note: Okon Uya did not preside over the June 12, 1993 elections; rather, he took over from Humprey Nwosu who was dismissed after the elections were annulled.

Editorial: Shedding no tears for INEC staff

Working with bad tools

If anything, one can only commend Professor Attahiru Jega the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission for presiding over the April elections the best he could despite the constraints he had.

He was bequeathed a rotten and corrupt organisation he never had the opportunity to overhaul considering the short time he had to prepare and conduct the elections.

However, the subtle but radical ideas he implemented made for elections that were quite free, generally fair and acceptably credible from the deployment of members of the National Youth Service Corps as ad-hoc staff, the voters’ registration exercise requiring fingerprint identification to eliminate multiple registrations and the use of eminent Nigerians as chief collation officers to spread the burden of responsibility and integrity.

Working the imperfect

The whole process was almost totally sabotaged by incumbent INEC staff that he inherited because they were denied the scope to operate and suborn the system; many times he had to redeploy or even sack staff to ensure that the process was not compromised.

Now, on the whole it was not perfect but it would be unfair to berate the chief in the circumstances he found himself in.

It is however interesting to read that INEC staff are unhappy with their boss for not giving them opportunities to perform their duties which they should have been allowed to do if they did have a track record of honest and impeachable service in the conduct of previous elections.

Given the chance, they messed up

When they did get an opportunity to do all the work in the states where the elections were postponed, it was a debacle celebrating a farce which made the work of the ad-hoc and amateur staff employed before seem both professional and sterling.

Besides the news story, all the comments numbering almost 70 did not find any scope for sympathy for the INEC staff, their actions have done Nigeria down, put us to shame and left many pessimistic of the possibility of credible elections until Professor Jega found ways to side-track and tame their malevolence.

If the INEC staff feel so aggrieved, they should resign, they deserve no sympathy whatsoever.

Acknowledgements

234Next.com ran the story about INEC staff being unhappy with Jega.

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XIII - Ideas for Electoral Reform

As we savour the returns

As the election season ends in Nigeria it is important to lay out in some form a whole series of ideas for electoral reform to improve on the experiences we had for the elections in April 2011.

It goes without saying that despite the view of cynics and sceptics about the elections a lot was done to make them freer, fairer and more credible than any we have had before. Even the much heralded 1993 elections were said to be manipulated [1] as averred by the then chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON), Professor Okon Uya.

The length of the season

It is however the prerogative of those who are aggrieved by this electoral season to avail themselves of the tribunal process with a quest for justice devoid of desperation and considerate of the fact that Nigeria must not be held back primarily for the satisfaction of the ambitions of the few.

These are however the matters that should become part of the discussion for electoral reform and implementation before the end of the next legislative term.

The electoral season should span at least a 12 month period allowing for voter registration, register inspection, party registration, candidate registration, campaign season, voting, results publication and expedited electoral dispute resolution.

Reusable voter registration

It is unlikely that Nigeria is ready for an electronic voting system; however, the voter registration needs to be amalgamated with the National Identity Card Scheme with added biometric information and a fixing with local government area based on the residential address within 6 months of the elections.

Consideration must be given to chipping the identity card and probably adding RFID data that stores allocated Polling Unit which can be updated if the voter changes their address at the local electoral office.

Voters only need validate their registration and eligibility to vote in what should be termed registration clearance months allowing for new voters to be added, the dead to be eliminated, circumstances to be updated and so on.

Competence over age

In terms of eligibility for office, consideration should be given to at least the age barriers to elective office by at least 5 years, the talent pool of the youth who in other endeavours are competent, able and successful are unfairly excluded by reason of age from elective office as political jobbers hog positions indefinitely.

Considering the pool of talent in the Nigerian population term limits should be set on all elective offices to allow others to contribute to nation building, it may also foster better mentoring rather than godfatherism and the nepotism that currently plagues the system.

Term limits

No one should have the exclusive inclination to think no other Nigerian can try for office and possibly perform better, after a set number of terms, two for executive office and a maximum of three for legislative office the said politicians have to give way.

The candidates for office should be known within a minimum of 90 days before the elections allowing for INEC to adequately inform the electorate of the choices they have. All nomination disputes must be completed at least 60 days before the elections.

INEC should have the right to penalise the abuse of equal access to media and resources to engage with the public doing the campaign process. Part of the sanctions that INEC can use should include barring the offending party’s candidate from contesting the elections.

Voting and sanctions

The modified open ballot system should be retained however the reporting process should have the paper trail as well as the use of mobile data transfers from the Polling Unit direct to the INEC headquarters.

Where electoral malpractice has been discovered and fully investigated to identify the culprits, the responsible party will forfeit the votes tallied, if that election remains valid, in the case there the election needs to be rescheduled, the offending party will forfeit the right to present a candidate for the reschedule election and where the offence is egregious the said party under whatever guise should be made to forfeit the right to present a candidate for the next two elections at the level when the crime was committed.

This means a party might forfeit the right for presenting candidates for the State House of Assembly, House of Representatives, The Senate, Governorship or Presidency.

Named persons for each party should be held criminally responsible for electoral offences committed by their party members and they by the strength of the law should not be able to abdicate their responsibilities.

Sanctions like this should greatly minimise incidents of electoral rigging.

Where reports of intimidation, harassment, bias, tampering or observer access is restricted, INEC should err on the side of fairness and make results from such locations tentative pending investigation with the likelihood of those results being voided.

Dispute resolution

After the results are announced and contestants find need to contest the results, all disputes must be completed with 365 days of the election under dispute.

No incumbent whose election is being contested should serve in electoral office longer than one-quarter of the complete term of office at which point the dispute must have been resolved or a new election should hold.

If the incumbent is found to have engaged in electoral misconduct, that person will not be eligible to contest in the new election and the party the person represents should not be able to present a candidate for that election for the next two terms.

The measures have to be draconian with effective deterrents to ensure all parties and their officials play by the rules. The civil courts with respect to electoral matters should work in concert with INEC to bolster its independence and foster a surer democracy by upholding the letter of the law to its full remit.

Miscellaneous reform issues

The use of ad-hoc staff should be encouraged but INEC should expedite all means of payment and provide the maximum security for all engaged staff.

An electoral recall process should be set up to test a vote of confidence in the elected office at mid-term, if the incumbent is unseated the newly elected person shall only serve out the remaining period of the term and have to contest to retain the office.

Source

[1] The Sun News On-line | Every election since 1922 has been manipulated –Okon Uya, ex-NECON boss

Reviews written about the elections

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review I

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review II - New Election Dates

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review III - Who votes on Saturday.

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IV - Part I to Voting

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IV - Part II - We can

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review V

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VI - Report to Prevent Rigging

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VII - Change!

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VIII - A President-Elect

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review X - The North

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XI - A functioning democracy?

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XII - Altogether acceptable

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XII - Altogether acceptable

Looking at the elections

With the conclusion of the elections on the 28th of April 2011, one now has the opportunity to give a general review of the conduct and the results of what was historic in Nigerian history.

So many opinions have been proffered by many about what these elections mean for Nigeria’s future, however, critically, compared to elections held before; these are probably the freest, fairest and most credible ever administered in Nigeria.

It does not mean they were perfect, they were not and they were far from ideal but a considerable improvement time and again at each time that people offered to elect their representatives.

There are a few more results to be released, some inconclusive results and supplemental elections to hold in certain districts but the elections in the main are over.

Where we started

The newly reorganised Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had just about 10 months to pull off this turn-around in electoral fortunes that had long been besmirched with incompetence, mismanagement, fraud and corruption.

The voters registration exercise was first a logistical nightmare that INEC attempted to refocus and manage towards the successful registration of over 73 million voters.

The political landscape was a bit fraught for the opposition which for the last 4 years had remained majorly regional and had only made superficial changes to present a national front such that the merging of the opposition parties would still have been a piddling challenge to the ruling party, however, acolytes of these parties harboured bizarre levels of optimism that had no basis in realistic opportunity for success.

The structures implemented

In earlier reviews, it could be said the that theoretically INEC had put in place a whole series of checks and balances to foster credible elections along with engaging the voting public in participating in ensuring their votes counted.

There were loopholes and flaws in the process which need to be improved on in future elections whilst those who now find fault with the system are best advised to avail themselves of the processes in place for the aggrieved.

Social networking featured greatly in the observance and monitoring of the elections, some of the decisions taken by INEC to review the results and reconsider outcomes came from evidence gathered by non-INEC personnel.

Twitter served as both a useful informative platform as well as one in which reputations will be made or tarnished as it was also a vehicle for propaganda, rumour, untruths, lies and misinformation.

The parties and their options

There were three sets of elections in order for the National Assembly, the Presidency and State representation that included the governors and the state assemblies. In the first only three parties really challenged for positions and those were the ruling PDP, then ACN and ANPP with CPC, APGA and LP bringing up the rear.

In the Presidential elections CPC presented the greater challenge winning a good number of states in the far Northern Nigeria only to end up seizing a state for the governorship in the North-Central region where it lagged the ruling party a week earlier.

It goes without saying that the CPC was created mainly as a vehicle for the presidential aspirations of a messianic symbol and not much else, Nigeria would have been plunged into a stalemate of sots to have a CPC president having to work with elected representatives of other parties holding different principles, agendas and motives.

Much as Nigeria requires competence and probity in leadership, it mostly needs the apparatus of government that is not hamstrung with sapping all goodwill necessary to get the job done – the opposition was poorly organised and ill-prepared to take on the machine of the ruling party nationally and so we have the results that leave the ruling party quite dominant national whilst somewhat weakened in some regional areas.

The election low-point

The violence that arose after the presidential elections were unfortunate and poorly addressed by all those who had leadership positions to contain and ameliorate the enveloping crisis.

The Commanded-in-Chief should have been apprised of the possibilities of unrest and put in place measures to pre-empt the situation and once it had begun, he should have moved swiftly to deploy security forces to quell the problems before it lead to the unnecessary destruction of property and even more the loss of innocent lives prominent amongst which were members of the National Youth Service Corps who had been called into the greater national service of being ad-hoc staff of INEC.

At the same time, it exposed the difference between a general being able to command an army failing in battle as opposed to a messianic leader who could not control a mob that failed to attain its aims.

That became the low-point of elections that at one time were being applauded as one of the best ever conducted in Nigeria raising the esteem of the country internationally.

Moving on from this

It is the prerogative of those who care to maintain a cynical and curmudgeonly view of the elections and the continued dominance of the ruling party which is unfortunate for some.

However, we are presented with another 4 years of governance that have been tested by a more credible electioneering process of whom we are within rights to demand accountability, action and responsiveness to the needs of the electorate.

It is incumbent on the opposition to form a broader based national profile which should be evidenced in the performance of their elected representatives, but the hope of all Nigerians is that anyone with a mandate respects the privilege and gets to work for the people regardless of the party they are representing.

The foundation is laid

Nigeria is a project in flux and constant pressures of conflict, change and possible division, we Nigerians all have stewardship of a country given to us by our founding fathers to hold in trust for those who follow after us, to whom we should bestow a better, more prosperous, thriving and growingly assertive nation ready to take its place as the Giant of Africa and the land of opportunity for all regardless of circumstances of birth or fortunes of life.

The foundation laid by these elections are starting point, they still need underpinning, some reinforcements and viable structures to home the flourishing of Nigeria’s potential, it would be shame to squander the next four years in indifference, apathy or destructive criticism of those who have power today to make a difference in people’s lives.

The pursuit of justice must continue, however, not to the detriment of allowing systems to function effectively and efficiently as we demand and expect that they should.

If there is a greater call to national duty, it remains the ability and wiliness to put the nation before self for the good of the nation and the people at home and abroad.

We need to believe in the Nigeria that we have and work to build it into a greater nation.

Reference material

Where we were 4 years ago Before we lose the Nigerian elections gracefully

The comments about the results are derived from the following sources:

The INEC Nigeria homepage offers a summary of the validated results of the elections.

Punch on the Web: Election Portal | Results of 2011 Presidential and other elections

Home : Nigeria Election Coalition presents an another analysis of the results announced.

Reviews written about the elections

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review I

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review II - New Election Dates

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review III - Who votes on Saturday.

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IV - Part I to Voting

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IV - Part II - We can

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review V

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VI - Report to Prevent Rigging

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VII - Change!

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review VIII - A President-Elect

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review X - The North

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XI - A functioning democracy?

Other issues that arose concerning the elections

Nigeria: A Primer on INEC Elections in April 2011 – Originally published at NigeriansTalk.Org – A compendium of information regarding the elections.

Nigeria: Table of INEC Electoral Chain of Custody – Documents the paper trail put in place to handle the elections and manage the results.

Nigeria: In Support of Attahiru Jega of INEC – Reviewing the mammoth task that INEC faced in trying to offer free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria this year.

Thought Picnic: My Nigerian Philosophy – What informs my stance on Nigerian issues today.

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review XI - A functioning democracy?

The quest for a credible opposition

This must have been one of the funniest blogs [1] I have read in the Economist which started with the line-dancing equivalent of handling a hat and ended with a very serious message. “Democracy does not function without a serious, credible and decent opposition.”

That hit home so hard that I crafted and posted the following tweet. "Democracy does not function without a serious, credible and decent opposition." @TheEconomist #NigeriaDecides to do without one.

The gubernatorial elections were conducted in 24 States yesterday with Kaduna and Bauchi States scheduled to hold on the Thursday, the other 10 states [2] (Adamawa, Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross River, Edo, Ekiti, Kogi, Ondo, Osun and Sokoto) were not contested still having partial terms to run.

However, the elections for the State Houses of Assembly in 34 States but Kaduna and Bauchi were held as well as the 19 Senate and 48 House of Representative seats which were postponed from the 1^st tranche that held on the 9^th of April.

The ruling party rules wide

Nigeria struggles at being a multi-party state with the pervasive representation of the ruling PDP which before these elections had 26 state governors [3] out of 36, 85 out of 109 Senators and 260 out of 360 members in the House of Representatives in the National Assembly [4].

The footprint of the ruling was big and widespread; there was no opposition party or coalition of opposition parties that had the fleeting chance of overturning these thumping majorities.

The best that could be hoped for was to work on unseating the ruling party in many places and thereby reduce their influence in all spheres of Nigerian life but the presidency was still that of PDP to keep for the next 4 years.

A frustrated CPC President

In the presidential elections help just over a week ago, the CPC party mounted a good challenge [5] but technically, to have expected to overthrow PDP at the ballot box in 2011 was close to a pipe dream fuelled with herbs.

CPC, an offshoot of ANPP, had no political representation whatsoever before these elections and having gained some seats in the National Assembly a CPC President of the Federation of Nigeria would have had the almost impossible task of run his agenda through a hostile and aggressively counterintuitive assembly.

The CPC President might will attempt to rule by executive decree and fiat to keep things going with such provisions exist but it would have been a throwback to our old military times as a frustrated president with all his good intentions but lack of powers of persuasion toward a strident legislature would have found and Nigeria would have been so badly served.

Fixing wrong aims

A leading politician needs a working majority but also an effective opposition such that radical reforms would require the persuasion of the some of the opposition through compromise, consensus or deals – that is politics.

In essence, the opposition parties for the 2011 should have had the strategy of extending their reach to a national presence rather than their regional predominance; a feat that they have hardly pulled off and it goes without saying that parties would need to merge to offer Nigeria the semblance of a serious, credible and decent opposition.

The elections

It is against this backdrop that the election violence after the presidential elections was unfortunate and that might well affect that ability for the opposition parties to gain new acreage as people out of fear and terror might have stayed away allowing for the status quo of Nigerian elections to thrive like ballot box snatching, intimidation of voters and observers alike and incredulous results.

The goodwill and praise that mounted after the first two Saturdays of elections seems to have dissipated into fear, acrimony, death and destruction, the fallout has yet to be fully appreciated but its effects will be far-reaching.

Many of the ad-hoc INEC staff comprised of NYSC members failed to show up for duty because they did not receive convincing assurances of safety and security, where they did, some were bullied, harassed, beaten and possibly came to great harm.

Bombs went off in the North and in the South-East there was major unrest whilst in the South-West some political big-wigs strutted around when they should not have and there were signs of apathy again.

The turnout when the figures are tallied might well be lower as reports of voting without accreditation were made on the Twitter hashtag of #NigeriaDecides.

Sitting back

Meanwhile, INEC is yet to declare results for 18 out of 90 Senate seats and 78 out of the 312 House of Representative seats contested on the 9^th of April, it shows how much energy has been expended in the presidential elections to the detriment of the elections that really do matter for making an effective opposition.

The next few days would determine what Nigeria has really decided will be its government for next four years, there is really no case to be made to successfully overturn the presidential election results but there is a bigger case to be made for the emergence initially of an opposition coalition of parties with a national representation and hopefully the evolution of that into a working political party where first and foremost the country is put before self.

Sources

[1] The 2012 Republican primary: The field thins | The Economist

[2] 234Next | UPDATE: The April 26 elections

[3] List of Nigerian state governors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Politics of Nigeria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Thought Picnic: My Nigerian Philosophy

Where I am from

Certain events over the last few days but in process over decades have presaged my writing this blog about my Nigerian philosophy, my tweets have sat in Nigeria as if I was resident, feeling the heat of the sun and hearing the sound of the drums, my blogs even more so.

I was born an Englishman; I had an amazing Nigerian childhood that developed into a turbulent Nigerian adolescence and a rather disillusioned young Nigerian adulthood.

I left Nigeria, the country of my formative years to become an Englishman again and met with the baggage of besmirched Nigerian reputations that had me working harder, speaking louder and showing more clearly that Englishmen of Nigerian heritage and by extension a majority of Nigerians are honest, trustworthy, able, capable achievers.

Ambassadors of Nigeria

The Nigerian-ness followed me by name though there are times people reading my profile have though I was a well-travelled Japanese man, it had its benefits for me and disappointments for those who learnt differently.

I believe that there are many like me, who in past couple of decades have worked to change the impression of Nigerians amongst our local communities, we are unwittingly ambassadors of Nigeria; we are inadvertently helping people decide if we and by extension again Nigeria can be treated with respect, allowed the benefit of doubt and given access to opportunities that were once closed to us.

Nigerians at home may not necessarily see personal ambassadorial pressures as those in the Diaspora do but the truth is we live in a global world, first as our government and their policies; then we as the people inter-connected no more as disconnected from the world because of the Internet and through many other works of endeavour. Our image is simultaneously shaped at home and abroad.

The old narratives of Nigeria need to be discarded and retold to find the truths from the half-truths to debunk the conjectures that make for fact and destroy the stereotypes that dog us each day.

We build and some seek to pull down for their own selfish and hedonistic ends but that is hardly the Nigerian narrative as I concur with Chiamanda Adichie about the danger of the single story [1].

We are not a single story

Nigeria is not a single story of divided, corrupt, ungovernable and failed – those are the easy epithets that make the Nigerian story understandable to the unschooled and the outsider, we risk making it our own story if we hear it long enough.

When we search within ourselves as individuals, we know what we are capable of and there must be a whole range of like-minded and driven Nigerians in Nigeria and around the globe that have the ways and the means to make that change happen for our country.

The recent presidential vote shows that we are not as divided [2] as it once was the single story of North-South or Muslim-Christian fault-lines, we all have aspirations as Nigerians and are working to wrest power from the hands of those who have not served us well for the last 50 years of our independence.

A ship without a rig

We have passed a particular threshold, a president has been elected as some cling to that old single story of the elections being rigged again – they probably were but would the absence of rigging have changed the lay of the land that gave the ruling party the presidency again after 12 failed years? Unlikely.

The reason being, another single story of an opposition, weak, unprepared, selfish and egotistical, unready to put country before self and without the essential national footprint to match the ruling party in all regions of the country to wrestle power from them.

One is found having to make the argument that it is not the job of the ruling party to build its opposition, it is for those who want change that the ruling party does not offer to want it bad enough to start from the grassroots from every corner of Nigeria and build a movement for change that fights for the change we want.

They need to tell a compelling and convincing story that would move the thumbs to the right party spot on the ballot paper.

2011 was definitely not the year for the opposition at the presidency, but they have seized some ground and prominent ones too in the national legislature and they can do more in the gubernatorial and state assembly elections.

The need for government

Government is about being connected to the people, even from my libertarian perspective of individual rights of self-expression Nigeria still needs strong government to facilitate infrastructure issues as power and transport, socio-political issues as education and health, reputational issues as separation of powers, rule of law, corruption and strong institutions and a civil society that believes in the good of their country.

A lot of this is aspirational and there is no clear path to some promised land, there are many who do not believe Goodluck Jonathan is the harbinger of the change Nigeria seeks, that may be the case but if he is going to President for the next 4 years we had better start thinking up how to make him do the work even if he cannot seem to talk the talk.

Only those who have the reins of power can make things happen in government, it is bane of our democracy where the winner takes all and the loser is left standing almost bereft of purpose or fight.

Where we must place ourselves

Nigeria cannot afford to stagnate for the next 4 years whilst we wait for the opposition to get their act together and form a credible united front that can challenge for the greater prize, like a poker game, we have been dealt a bad hand already, we can either fold or bluff.

The bluff should not be taken literally but this is the case to make; this is the first president to be elected with a somewhat credible election, that is new story; it probably means he can face down the usual political jobbers, that is a possible story; an elected president might be better than an accidental president, that is an interesting story.

There are many stories to write about Nigeria as we open this new chapter and in the words of the President – a new dawn – it is however left to us Nigerians if our story will remain the single story that has been told so many times we know the words by heart or it would be a new exciting, interesting, adventurous story that takes Nigerians all to a new place of planning, purpose, progress and peace.

Sources

[1] Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story | Video on TED.com

[2] Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review X - The North

The divides are not there

The Presidential Elections this year afforded us the opportunity to revisit the accepted narratives about Nigeria to see if they still fetch true or they are norms that have been perpetrated without question and analysis.

The situation was such that the abuse of numbers allowed the perpetuation of the narrative and the labels that continually divide Nigeria along regional or religious fault lines.

However, the more one looks at the voting patterns the more it appears these defaults are ready for the scrapheap and a reeducation is needed to understand the complexities of our society rather than subscribe to the simplistic rhetoric that gets exploited for ulterior motives and gains by unscrupulous politicians, clerics and power brokers pretending to be community leaders.

One party does unite

Having performed an analysis of the results [1] of the Presidential elections, one is at pains to continually accept this notion of a North-South divide nor is the oft-touted Muslim dominated North as true as we are made to believe else how would there be clashes between religionists.

Beyond buttressing the case for a united Nigeria what seems to have been lost in the accepted narrative is an understanding of the dynamics of Northern Nigeria.

The real divisions

The BBC in a piece about a divided Nigeria [2] some 2 weeks ago laid out a number of geo-political and socio-economic maps of Nigeria highlighting the divisions in Nigeria. The wealth [Graphic], health [Graphic] and literacy [Graphic] maps are what seem to define the real divisions in Nigeria.

The way it appears, the North has been left behind and successive leaderships in the North have failed to rise to the aspirations of the people as a feudal system appears to thrive making the people a ready mob in the hands of unscrupulous power brokers.

Where the North lags

This view is gains more credence as Salisu Suleiman writes in his blog titled Contextualizing protests in Northern Nigeria [3] where he notes that the post-election violence did target the so-called leaders of the North and I quote, “the political, military and business elite as well the traditional institutions that have held the region back and truncated any attempt to educate the people and free them from the yolk of illiteracy and poverty.”

One can find no greater indictment of leaders in that region who have done little for their people locally and then seek to bring that thinking to the national front.

By the time Suleiman lists the issues of education, healthcare, agriculture, corruption and self-serving leadership you begin to get a good picture of why the North appears to be a powder-keg of discontent ready to go off spontaneously when the possible promise of better opportunity appears to be snuffed out.

The hopes of the North dashed?

Tatalo Alamu who writes for The Nation newspaper on Sundays, in a piece that was written on the 3^rd of April, 2011, titled The messiah and the militia [4], Tatalo frames his discourse in almost Apocalyptic prose starting with the capturing the feel of a typical CPC political rally with Muhammadu Buhari as the flag-bearer, “This is not an exultant crowd waiting for a political emancipator. This is a traumatized mob waiting for a messiah.”

The summary is Buhari appears to represent for these people the escape required by his people from the clutches of leaders before who never addressed the issues that kept them far behind in the Nigeria stakes for progress and development.

His inability to assume power would first be expressed in disappointment, then despair and everything else that follows – there was something quite prophetic about that piece because 15 days on, the hopes were dashed, the numbers did not add up and the Buhari or the Messiah they had hoped will come to their deliverance could not ascend the throne of the kingdom.

What the North needs now

There is no doubt that Northern Nigeria needs visionary leadership unhindered by the smokescreens of religious piety masquerading as a society at ease with itself. They need a new political class of selfless people ready to serve their communities and raise all the standards of living that would give Nigeria the better tale of a nation united in purpose and progress.

The question is whether the Federal Government can spearhead change and local governments would be less the vehicles of promoting serfdom and feudalism in a place that is deserving of a lot more than it has been saddled with for decades.

It is to the shame of leaders of the North that we find ourselves writing about these issues today.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

[2] BBC News - Nigeria: A nation divided

[3] Suleiman's Blog: Contextualizing protests in Northern Nigeria

[4] The Nation - The messiah and the militia in Google cache or as Google Docs archive

Twitter tweet - Northern #NigeriaDecides narrative - The Votes http://j.mp/enh5Aa the Messiah http://j.mp/i0yWnN the leaders http://j.mp/e7aH7o

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review IX - Analysing the Presidential Results

Where we are

There is every need to conduct a thorough analysis of the distribution of votes for the 2011 Presidential Elections held in Nigeria on Saturday, the 16^th of April, 2011.

In about 48 hours after the elections the Independent National Electoral Commission had fully collated the results and announced a winner, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of the ruling PDP party.

Now, the ruling party has been in power since 1999 and for the previous elections there have been irregularities bordering on the abominable that left Nigeria in shame, voiceless and disgraced as unable to conduct credible elections, talk less of them being free and fair.

Credible enough

With these elections, they are acceptably free, generally fair and credible enough according to many observers and though the opposition parties appear to have their misgivings, those will need to be tested in court if they are to shift any of the results in any considerable direction.

As the numbers came through, the situation was hijacked by different interests and used to promote agendas inimical to the well-being of Nigeria and Nigerians. People were ready to purvey all sorts of assumptions about tribalism, religion, region and every differentiating element that gives substance that atrocious idea of some Sovereign National Conference.

Nigeria will endure beyond us

In 2014, Nigeria as an entity will be 100 years old, there are few Nigerian living that saw that day, as an independent country, it has existed for 50 years apart from the years of the civil war between 1967 and 1970; we are now 41 years beyond that time with a majority of our estimated 150 million citizens being under the age of 41.

In essence, we need to find ways to unite, co-exist, collaborate and band together as the nation that preceded many of us and make it work as the entity known as Nigeria and assume with pride the identity of Nigerian.

As far as the elections are concerned, we need to debunk a number of fallacies before they take root and destroy our common purpose as we resolve to make Nigeria great and progress towards achieving its potential.

Arbitrary Nigerian Divisions

I have used source material from the Nigeria Election Coalition website [1] and worked on it to present the data that I discuss in this blog. The graphic beneath this blog supports my analysis.

I will first deal with the notion that the Nigeria was split in half with a North-South divide in terms of votes between PDP and CPC.

Nigeria is divided into 6 geo-political regions [2] namely, North-Central (NC), North-East (NE), North-West (NW), South-East (SE), South-South (SS) and South-West (SW).

Majorities and thresholds

In terms of majorities per state, CPC took 12 states concentrated in the NC, NE and NW regions, ACN took 2 states in the SW region and PDP took 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in 5 regions except the NW.

However, in terms if exceeding the constitutional requirement for over 25% of the votes cast in the states, CPC got 17 states including the FCT in 3 regions where they already have their majorities, ACN got 4 states in the SW region and PDP took 33 states including the FCT in all 6 regions.

In the NE region where the PDP had 3 states under 25%, the PDP still made an average of 34.54% for that region compared to CPC’s 57.63, in the NW where PDP was always beaten into second place; PDP came away with 32.13% compared to CPC’s 60.26%.

When the whole northern regions of NC, NE and NW are taken together, PDP takes 42.66% of the vote to CPC’s 49.61% where they are supposedly strong.

Between regions and nations

According the Machiavellian psephologists, the south is probably the PDP’s stronghold with PDP taking the over 94% in the SE and SW regions of 11 states except Edo State where they bucked the trend with 87.28% and this was the odd state where CPC managed a rather high 2.86%.

CPC had no showing in the South with 0.37, 0.89% and 4.76% for the SE, SS and SW regions respectively and this compares quite unfavourably with PDP’s 98.00%, 95.97% and 57.80% in the same regions. ACN which apparently has the SW region as its stronghold only managed 34.38%.

It goes without saying that CPC is a stronger regional party in the NE and NW geo-political regions but it does not leave PDP far behind in the North as it does not even make a respectable appearance in the South.

One can conclude that PDP offers the promise of a united Nigeria than any of its rivals as it has a good national spread with trouncing majorities in its strongholds of the South.

The warped notion of a divided Nigeria does not pass the muster if viewed through the prism of PDP and it means ACN and CPC have a lot of work to do make inroads in regions outside their strongholds.

What religious divide?

Whilst the traditional Muslim north is concentrated in the NE and NW regions the CPC takes 58.95% of the vote to 33.34% for the PDP – maybe a beating in political terms but PDP is quite visible without doubt.

So, there again, we find that the religious divide when viewed from the CPC perspective is there but not as stark as to make it a case for Nigeria’s division along religious lines.

I would suggest that Nigeria is probably more united than we ever thought it was under one party and it shows what other parties need to do, they need to seek a common platform, merge, consolidate, compromise and work on a consensus or the ruling party will forever rule Nigeria in perpetuity.

Whether there are Nigerians in opposition parties able to put country before self remains to be seen but there is evidence to the contrary.

Enthusiasm and apathy abound

The highest number of voters came out in the NW region with 10,800,075 people representing a 53.75% turnout, the highest percentage turnout was in the SS region with 67.96% representing 6,339,316 voters.

The SW seems to be the most apathy-ridden with just 32.90% voter turnout adding up to 4,613,712 voters and a classic case of the SW abdicating its civic responsibility in a matter of national importance.

All other regions had over a 50% voter turnout apart from the NC region with 46.28%. The state with the most registered voters was Lagos State with 6,108,069 people but only 1,945,044 bothered to get up, the most voters came from Kano State with 2,673,228 voting out of a registered 5,027,297 voters.

The state most excited about this tranche of Nigeria Decides was Bayelsa State, from where the incumbent President hails with a 86.61% voter turnout compared to 28.01% from Ogun State which has suffered the throes of despicable megalomania in the hands of an ex-President, a departing governor and the Speaker of the House of Representatives – the melee must have turned people completely off politics and that is a shame.

Understandable grievances

When you look at the kind of turnouts across the states and especially in the North where the numbers were higher but hardly reflected in the same inclinations of the South, the voters might well be aggrieved if the numbers across the nation do not go their way when you consider their enthusiasm, their willingness and readiness to participate in electing a new leader.

If the bulk of voters were in the North, they would have expected their votes to make the majority for whoever takes the spoils for the Presidency but their patron never crossed the rivers to the south and so the fault lies with that party rather than the people.

The ruling party is ready to rule

People might have all sorts of opinions about the ruling party and it is not one that I have found much inclination to support but the reality in Nigeria is no other party is making inroads across the nation to give the ruling party a real run for their money.

The opposition parties were ill-prepared, poorly managed and lacking in national purpose, the best they could hope for is reduce the regional footprints of the ruling party, it was a rather big ask to expect any of the opposition parties to unseat the ruling party in a presidential contest in 2011.

If others must rule

I would hope the opposition parties work to seize a number of gubernatorial seats from the ruling party, dominate a few more State Assemblies to bring them closer to the people and take the bigger share of the remaining 19 Senate and 48 House of Representative seats to be contested on the 26^th of April, 2011.

In closing, the results show a nation that is one and whole, strong and united, sound and able to choose a leader that we hope will really use the mandate he has received in credible elections to change Nigeria for the better.

I believe in a place called Nigeria, what say you?

Sources

[1] Presidential Election Results: Nigeria Election Coalition:

[2] Answers.com - List of Nigeria geo political zones