The military boys have become some kind of political lepers most discriminating Nigerians would not want to touch! This, indeed, has been good for our “democracy” so far. In the not-too-distant past, the military boys would have been called upon, or invited, to expel the politicians whenever their nuisance infuriated us or them.
For instance, Nigerians would have prevailed upon the military to terminate democracy when former President Olusegun Obasanjo engaged in a “political brawl” with his deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in the latter half of his second term in office. The process of political governance suffered, while everything was about an Obasanjo-Atiku imbroglio – something Reuben Abati tagged the “bolekaja presidency”. The quarrel, we are told, was about Obasanjo’s extra-constitutional “third term agenda” clashing with Atiku’s “first term” ambition or aspiration.
Again, what would have been the right timing for the desperate or ambitious coup plotter came when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was dying and his loyalists would want to make us believe he was merely holidaying! The fear that the presidency could be shifting to another region of the Nigerian federation, meant Yar’Adua would continue to be “patched up” even when it had become apparent that he was incapacitated. If it were possible, his death could have been denied! It required the intervention of the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), an ad hoc interest group, for reason to prevail and the reins of political power to be transferred to Yar’Adua’s deputy, Goodluck Jonathan.
Jonathan’s presidency, following the 2011 election especially, has been grappling with insecurity problems. The escalation of violence in the North-Eastern geo-political zone, the Boko Haram insurgency in particular, could have compelled the prospective coup plotter of old to get the marshal music playing. The crisis, escalated as it was in the aftermath of Jonathan’s election, was believed to be politically-motivated. However, the military did not intervene and democracy struggled on.
In all of this, we must thank the regimes of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. The annulment of the presidential election of June 12 1993, during the regime of the former and the madness or tyranny in governance during that of the latter, meant politicians had earned the licence to continue to misbehave in their customary tradition. The military would appear to have been thoroughly discredited and this might have been the saving grace for the democracy of today. It became clear to all and sundry that the military boys are equally as corrupt and purposeless as the political cobwebs they once swept from the corridors of power.
However, it would be too presumptuous to assume that the current licence – a licence to loot and misbehave – cannot expire or be withdrawn. The return of the politics of intolerance, with the police and security agents seemingly compromised, portends great danger to the peace and political fortunes of Nigeria. The Rivers State, where political personalities and their “spouses” have continued to engage in a show of power, could replicate the Western Nigeria of the 1960s. The arbitrary detention of individuals even when all they did was to make “odious” but non-violent statements, runs against the prerequisite of freedom of speech as one of the basic tenets of the democratic culture. Warning all and sundry about the implications of rigged elections in 2015, hardly threatens our collective peace.
It could only have been those planning to rig the election who should be worried!
For instance, the threat of violence should Jonathan not be re-elected in 2015 blackmails Nigerians collectively. One would have thought our President, being one democrat, would condemn such a statement publicly. An independent and professional security apparatus could also have had cause to question those who issue threats of violence against the state and society.
There is this thing I call the “blackmailing influence of oil”. The fear of militants in the oil producing region seems to have gripped the entire nation as well as compromised the sense of honesty and judgement of our leaders and elders. The putative 2015 election would hardly make a difference from previous ones.
The utterances of politicians promise that customary primordial sentiments would always conspire. The series of defections we have been witnessing, especially with latter-day progressives swelling the rank and file of the All Progressives Congress (APC), could have been about Jonathan and the rejection of his suspected ambition.
A rigged or disputed 2015 election, if history were to repeat itself, could mean there would be more jobs for diggers of mass graves.
A pessimistic scenario, this would seem, but not when those we have as leaders lack the talent to work towards peace and accommodation. The prediction of doom, made by foreign busy bodies who very much wished the worst to happen, could have got genuinely patriotic leaders vowing that it would not happen – not just in words but in their collective deeds. There are those who have benefited from Nigeria but whose spirit somehow revolts against her.
Akinola wrote from Oxford, UK
