Can Jonathan Rise
Above Himself?
I am afraid!
The signs are ominous.
When I set out to write last
week’s piece, I had actually begun by stating the fact that it was ten days to
the presidential elections but I also included a caveat that that was subject
to how far the determined interests and voices calling for a postponement of
the exercise were ready to go. The bit did not make it to the final piece
because I overwrote, so it had to be expunged.
But what I have learnt from
last Saturday is to take my hunches and instincts a bit more seriously, in
spite of every evident fact and logic. I make this point because I was right in
the hall of the National Reconciliation Committee meeting, chaired by Gen
Abdulsalami Abubakar on Monday the 2nd of February, 2015, when the
security chiefs, including the Inspector General of Police, gave all
assurances, as reported in newspapers, that they were set for elections, come
February 14. Whatever it is that must have caused the security chiefs to review
their position between Monday the 2nd and Friday the 6th,
or even between Thursday the 5th at the Council of States meeting
and the very next day, must have been very serious and enough to cause
trepidation among Nigerians.
Of course many Nigerians are
not sold to the idea that the armed forces need the six-week postponement
period in order to engage the Boko Haram insurgents and to recapture lost
territories. The obvious fallacy of that has been stated: you cannot claim to
want to do in six weeks what you have not been able to do in five years! If you
are able to do it, then, all the while, you only prevaricated for some sinister
ulterior motives, against the common good. If you are not able to do it, then
it is clear that the postponement was to achieve something other than the
stated. Head or tail, you are in a quagmire.
Moreover, resettling displaced
people back in their villages is not a one-day thing. So even if the fourteen
LGAs were recaptured from the terrorists, you cannot hope to bring back these
people to their homes and for them to be able to take part in the polls all
within six weeks. In any case they no longer have home because these have been
looted and razed down.
The argument, therefore, that
the postponement is a machination of the ruling party in order to gain time to
possibly garner some more momentum is plausible; for TV in Nigeria have been
aggressively awash with pro Jonathan/PDP campaign ads since last Sunday. The
newspapers are not left behind: columns and op-eds either selling the Jonathan
candidacy or just maligning the person of Buhari are having a field day. By the
time you are reading this piece, the president would have held a media chat on
the national broadcast stations. Talk about putting some six weeks to good use.
When Sambo Dasuki first flew
the postponement kite, a friend quipped that that was simply to stretch the
purse of the opposition. It seems to make sense. Add that to the suspicion that
the ruling party intends to erect rigging structures using the security corps
Ekiti-style. We are watching.
My trepidation is borne out of
past events, which is why I wonder if the president can rise above himself and
put Nigeria first. In 2010, when MEND ushered the first of this kind of bombing
in Nigeria, he was quick to point fingers elsewhere, claiming, even after they
owned up to it, that he knew MEND and they were incapable of the act – it was
interesting that he would turned his own narrative on its head during his
campaign inauguration in Lagos this year.
After the April 16, 2011
election, riots broke out across the north. The president would not address the
nation to call for calm until the Thursday after; mind you the skirmishes began
on that very election Saturday in Kaduna. That would be five days after; his
opponent then, as now, who had no constitutional authority, called for calm via
the BBC two days ahead of him.
All the while as the insurgency
was raging and gathering momentum, the president never stepped foot in the
north-east even after he declared the State of Emergency there. He would go to
Maiduguri in May 2013, a week after a new party, APC, went and walked the
streets there. The Chibok girls were abducted and he never said a word until
after about three weeks following pressure from all over the world.
Interestingly also, despite the heat of the insurgency, he went to Maiduguri
twice during this electioneering.
Last year too, the former CBN
governor got the boot, apparently for asking the wrong questions even though
some other reason was given.
All of these, including the
suspected reasons for the election postponement, seem to suggest that Jonathan
seems to act and determinedly get his way when his considered interest is at
stake.
Another kite is airborne, that
Jega will not conduct the March 28 elections. There is no telling what danger
that possibility portends. Even though INEC has refuted that, my hunch warns
me. I only hope that, as determined as he is, the president can rise above
himself.
BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thur Feb. 12, 2015; p3
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