From: "Ugorji Ugorji" <dr.ugorji@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 3, 2015 5:56 PM
Subject: JONATHAN AND THE NIGERIAN DEMOCRATIC ENTERPRISE
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JONATHAN AND THE NIGERIAN DEMOCRATIC ENTERPRISE:
A Thundering Reminder from Russia
By Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji
On Friday, February 27, 2015, the world was jolted with the news of the cold-blooded daylight assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent opposition leader in Russia. Nemtsov, a vocal and visible critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down within site of the Kremlin, two days before he was to lead a protest march in Moscow.
The death of Nemtsov quickly brought my mind back to the ongoing campaigns for president by over a dozen men and one woman in Nigeria. Whatever one says about President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, the news from Russia this past week serves as a potent reminder that political assassination of prominent opponents of the president has not been part of our narrative in Nigeria in the past six years. It is not difficult or unfair to assert that this national example on the part of Jonathan may have influenced behaviors at the State levels with governors and other office holders and aspirants. If Jonathan can get through the 2015 elections, win or lose, with this particular aspect of his legacy intact, he would have deepened our democracy in a manner that we cannot measure at this time.
BEFORE JONATHAN
The current democratic enterprise in Nigeria has lasted from 1999 to the present. During the first eight years we saw presidential powers and apparatuses deployed in pursuit of political ends with grave consequences. Sitting governors with constitutional immunity were hounded out of office in very creative ways and arrested; communities were razed down in response to alleged security breaches; and the tactics of withholding funds to some states was used as a wrestling tool against perceived intransigent state governments, including Lagos State under Ahmed Tinubu.
On the assassination front, the Attorney General of Nigeria, Chief Bola Ige, was slaughtered like a chicken in his own bedroom with no one held responsible till date. Harry Marshall was gunned down, also in his Abuja home. In Lagos State, Funsho Williams, a governorship candidate in the PDP, was butchered with knives at his home. Aminosari Dikibo, a PDP national vice chairman, was shot in his car. Charles Nsiegbe was killed in Port Harcourt. In Imo State, Ogbonnaya Uche was shot to death. Bananas Igwe and his wife were assassinated in Anambra. Andrew Agom was killed in Benue, while Dele Arojo was felled in Lagos. Isyaku Muhammed was killed in the Northwest, while Ayo Daramola met those who killed him in Ekiti. These are just a few of the compatriots we lost to apparent political assassination.
May the souls of our compatriots lost to assassinations and the souls of all who have paid the ultimate price for our democratic eneterprise rest peacefully with the ancestors!
THE ENVIRONMENT UNDER JONATHAN
The opposition, including the UPP of Chief Chekwas Okorie (my candidate for president), has criticized Jonathan for many things. But one thing this president has not been accused of with credibility or seriousness is a thirst for the blood of his opponents. This is particularly noteworthy for a campaign such as ours that does not have adequate resources for security.
People around President Jonathan may have fuzzy arithmetic skills with respect to whether 16 was greater than 19 in the Nigerian Governors Forum election for Chairman in 2013, but not even the incomparable Governor Chibuike Amaechi, who ended up with the 19 votes of his colleagues in the Governors Forum, had suffered any serious violence, let alone death.
Incidentally, the African Writers Endowment, which I head in New Jersey, honored and hosted Amaechi in September of 2013. We honored him for his record of accomplishments and in celebration of the designation of Port Harcourt as World Book Capital City by UNESCO. One of the points made in his citation at the event was his courage in resisting undue Federal interference in the running of states in a constitutional federation. But even this battle between him and Jonathan (or Jonathan's enthusiasts) has not resulted in the kind of mortal outcomes one had seen in the past. I pray this remains that way.
While President Jonathan should not be thanked necessarily for doing the right and moral thing with respect to resistance to the use of ordered death as a means to political ends, the message from Russia last week and our own immediate past history reminds us that we must not take this nonviolent engagement of political opponents for granted. It comes from a temperament that should be celebrated.
I urge President Jonathan to remain conscious of and to guard this aspect of his legacy until the break of dawn, whether that dawn comes in May 2019, or in May of this year at the swearing in of Chekwas Okorie as his successor.
The writer, Dr. Ugorji O. Ugorji, is currently the Director General of the Chekwas Okorie Presidential Campaign Organization (COPCO). He can be reached at dr.ugorji@gmail.com.
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