Another brilliant commentary on the elections by Mahmud Jega. I particularly like his rebuke to those who have been trying to whitewash and explain the post-election riots as either a rational "revolution" or a product of poverty and unemployment. The latter explanation is patently preposterous since unemployment and poverty is a national scourge and does not eventuate in the mass murder of innocent religious and ethnic Others and destruction in other parts of the country. Like Jega, I am not inclined to give murders a dignified alibi for their targeting of mostly innocents in their murderous mob violence. More power to Jega for powerfully emphasizing the shameless pro-Buhari Islamic mobilizations against Jonathan and his Southern and Middle Belt supporters in "thousands" of mosques in the North ("Let us also remember that thousands of local Muslim clerics all over the North openly campaigned in this election using religious parameters, a clear violation of the Electoral Act, though that aspect pleased the rioters").This politically correct canard of not condemning religious extremism and xenophobic religious politics and mobilization at the Northern Nigerian grassroots has to stop so we can begin an honest conversation about what ails the North of our country.
Who angered the Greek goddess?
In the wake of horrific events in Northern Nigeria last week, a prominent cleric reminded me of the old story in Greek mythology of the young girl Arachne who was so proud of her expertise in weaving that she refused to pay compliments to Athena, the Greek goddess who invented weaving. Athena punished Arachne by turning her into a spider, to go on weaving forever.
We are mostly monotheistic here, but this land appears to have been visited with the terrible wrath of the Greek gods, what with all the blood-letting in many cities, towns and even villages, with the very nasty reprisal attacks, with the injuries suffered by hundreds, with so many burnt houses and offices, with previously unheard-of attacks on traditional rulers' palaces, with so much suffering and economic losses caused by 24-hour curfews, and with all the angry text messages and rumours flying around. Let us hope this Greek-type wrath's visit here is temporary.
With our young boys in their early teens killing, looting and burning last week, all in the name of protest or reprisal, I could not help but think that our combined social systems of family upbringing, religious education, traditional hierarchy and modern schools have all collapsed woefully. Think about a contrasting episode in Britain 60 years ago. In 1940, when the first troops of the British Expeditionary Force [BEF] arrived in Belgium and northern France at the start of World War II and engaged the Germans in a fierce 3-hour battle, it was discovered at the end of the battle that three-quarters of the British soldiers, mostly young recruits, did not fire a single shot for fear of killing someone. That was in a war! BEF's commanding general, Field Marshal Lord Gort later explained, "Our lads are not killers by nature." What he meant was that even military training failed to make a dent on the combined teachings of family, schools and the church for a young lad not to kill anyone!
Why were our own lads burning and killing during a civil protest? The rioters themselves had no official spokesmen, so we as newsmen had logistic difficulties in establishing the exact reason for the riots. However, there were many people from all over the affected areas who claimed to know the real reason for the riots. These unofficial riot spokesmen offered many reasons, some of them contradictory. Let us examine some of them that were widely touted.
Rigging by Excel computer programme in Kano and Katsina. General Buhari personally emphasised this point in his interview with BBC, that a computer was programmed to reduce CPC's votes by 60%. INEC later explained that there was a glitch with the Excel worksheet in the two states, that it failed to accommodate several local governments that had already been manually compiled, that this affected all the parties [CPC more than others, since it had more votes there], that this was corrected before the final results, that in any case it was the manual register that was used, the Excel thing being but a backup. Let us hope an election tribunal or the Judicial Commission of Inquiry promised by President Jonathan will unravel this matter.
PDP got too many votes in the North, more than its popularity warranted. Personally, I do not think that this charge holds water. Of the 11 states where some form of rioting took place, all but Kano and Yobe have PDP-controlled state governments, with so many commissioners, advisers and assistants [some of them in thousands], local government chairmen and councillors, federal and state legislators, board chairmen and members, assorted contractors and party chieftains. Given the way politics works here, the fact that this huge PDP assembly was defeated in all the affected states was something of a miracle. Yet, they were certainly capable of delivering 25% of the vote to Jonathan, especially since it was said that they deployed tons of money.
PDP bribed traditional rulers and clerics to work against their people's interests. I cannot attest to this allegation one way or another, but the fact that so many people believe it is bad enough for the leaders in question. In Nigerian politics, every important presidential aspirant in the last 50 years, except Chief Obafemi Awolowo, visited traditional rulers in their palaces during his campaign and sought their blessings. In Nigeria here, when a VIP visits an emir or an oba, he is expected to drop some money for the palace courtiers. Whether he also left some money for the emir, I cannot now determine, but it hardly warrants an attack. Let us also remember that thousands of local Muslim clerics all over the North openly campaigned in this election using religious parameters, a clear violation of the Electoral Act, though that aspect pleased the rioters.
Votes were inflated in the South East and South-South. Of all the charges made, I personally regard this one as the most serious. As some NGOs have shown, increased voter turnout in most states, North and South, was within a reasonable range, but it looked outrageous in Imo, Enugu, Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom states. At what stage did things go wrong? The polling units appeared to be okay and serving university Vice Chancellors manned the state collation offices. Maybe I am not cynical enough, but I don't think any serving VC of a federal varsity could willingly inflate election figures, so most likely, the outrage occurred at some ward and local government collation centres. It is remarkable that this escaped the attention of the army of domestic and foreign observers, but it is entirely possible to unearth this at the tribunals. Will it affect the overall results? I doubt it.
Now, since the Second Republic, results from some of these same states have always been rather incredible. Sometimes Northerners loved it. In August 1979, I was among those who watched Adamu Augie's great Verdict '79 programme on NTA. With returns trickling in from the states, UPN's Chief Awolowo had about 4.7m votes at some stage and NPN's Alhaji Shehu Shagari was having serious trouble catching up, with most results already in from his Northern base. Then came results from Rivers; Shagari got 600,000 votes and when these were splashed on the Verdict '79 screen, he swiftly overtook Awolowo and went on to win with 5.4 million votes to Awo's 4.9 million. There were wild cheers all over the North that day; today, our lads are greeting Rivers' results with a riot. How times change.
"Buhari won the election and he was not given." This was what on old woman told me. Once there is evidence that votes were tampered with at any stage of the process, and then of course voters can reach any conclusion about the outcome. However, as a political reporter for four major magazines and newspapers for 21 years now, I cannot fail to say here that from all that is known of the operative Nigerian political condition, it was very unlikely that General Buhari could win the presidential election without a CPC/ACN alliance, with almost no support in the entire South, with weak support in many North Central states, and without the support of the Northern political elite. The Northern Muslim masses' support all alone, however fervent, cannot win a presidential election. Personally, I said so in many couched phrases even before the election, so it is not a conversion on the road to Damascus.
There is too much hunger and unemployment in the North. You see, anyone who earns a salary here, as I do, must listen everyday to stories of suffering from desperate kinsmen asking for help. Surely we are not alone in this condition as to maim and kill? Anyway, all those people in the South who know that they voted for Jonathan purely on regional and religious grounds will rue their action somewhere down this road. Five or ten years hence, someone will be saying to them, as people are saying to Northerners today, "Shut up! Is it not your brother that caused this mess?"
Northern political leaders such as NPLF and the media set the stage for the violence with all the talk about zoning. Well, well. Maybe if Nigeria had something akin to the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution that says a man cannot be forced to give a testimony that incriminates himself, many people here will be saying, "I take the Fifth!"
Which brings us to this week's governorship polls. A friend told me yesterday that there will be trouble if CPC does not win most of the Northern governorships. I think it is unfair to say that unless an election is won by a particular party, then it must be rigged. However lopsided the odds are, any side in an election contest, much like in a football game, could win the match. Would you say that in a match between Manchester United and Ranchers Bees, the match must be rigged if the Bees win?
So, the best advice for CPC supporters is to turn out en masse this week and vote. If last week's election had been a governorship poll instead of a presidential one, CPC would have won 12 governorships. One cannot on that basis assume that CPC must win 12 governors this week or else, because no two elections are the same. If the National Assembly polls had been guber polls, CPC would have won only two states. Also, PDP's win in many of the same states during the National Assembly polls on April 9 did not translate into an automatic win last week. There are reasons to suspect that many of last week's grand votes were personal to Buhari, not to CPC. In any case, CPC has trouble with its guber candidates in at least three states. So it could end up winning many Northern states, but maybe not all the 12 states it won last week.
While CPC chieftains and its zealous supporters are calculating big wins tomorrow, better to also reflect on this. If the party wins many governorships this week, its centre of gravity will soon gravitate away from TBO, the die-hard circle around General Buhari. Some people will not take that lying down.
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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
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