Several potent statements credited mostly to the leaders of the main opposition Party, All Progressives Congress (the APC) should send the jitters down the spine of any normal person. Some members of the ruling Party, the Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP, have also made some reckless statements at some points, all heating up the polity. If these scary statements do not elicit such chilling effect, it only further illustrates how inured and benumbed many Nigerians have become in the face of the horror being visited on the polity on daily basis in the name of freedom of speech and politics.
Apart from these statements being anarchistic, anachronistic and possibly treasonable, they actually have their inherent merit of being a foreboding of an impending doom if law and law enforcement mechanisms remain complacent. The most recent of these rash clamors should be that of the Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, who at the Walk Rally of the APC in Abuja, said the Party would form a parallel government should the 2015 elections fail to meet their expectations.
For the avoidance of doubt, Amaechi stressed that the opposition APC would spearhead civil disobedience across the country. The Governor, who is himself a chief security officer of a State, added that the days were gone when any figures like 20 thousand would be ascribed as votes for former Head of State and presidential aspirant, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, by the electoral umpire in Rivers. Amaechi, who conveniently forgot that it was under his watch that 20 thousand votes was ascribed to Buhari, was at the same time unwittingly giving the hint that his Party had closed the door for its Presidential ticket to Atiku, Kwankwaso and Nda-Issiah. What is more, Amaechi made it clear the APC would not go to court this time around to seek redress. Rather, anarchy is to loosed upon Nigeria after the 2015 Presidential Election, thus foreclosing possible civilized methods of resolving any emergent conflict.
At that self-styled “Salvation Rally”, where Amaechi set the tone for the events to come, the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, spoke in the same anarchic vein. Here him: “If we do not see any discernible change of attitude on the part of the government, then we will move to the next stage on the list of actions that our party intends to take to stop the rot being perpetuated by the PDP-led Federal Government.”
From what Odigie-Oyegun had said, it is fair to conclude the Party may no longer wait for the unfavourable outcome of the Presidential Election to unleash the promised mayhem since he said the party organised the rally to sensitise Nigerians on what it called “a practical demonstration of our lack of confidence in the ability or willingness of President Goodluck Jonathan to organise a free and fair election come February 2015”. APC Chairman gave their reasons as the shoddy way and manner the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, is distributing the Permanent Voters Card. in this fiasco, what must engage the attention of Nigerians more is the dangerousness of the allegation by Odigie-Oyegun that INEC’s ICT Department deliberately corrupted the system to favour the President and his Party the PDP. In his words; “The truth of the matter is that the ICT Unit of INEC, which is working hand in gloves with the Presidential Villa, deliberately corrupted the system in order to disenfranchise voters in APC-controlled states…”
One looming danger is the basic interpretation of Odigie-Oyegun’s allegations is a rejection of the 2015 elections results in advance.
The highly inciting statements of Amaechi and Odigie-Oyegun appear also to be a culmination of similar statements by other leading members of the Party. In 2012 in Kaduna, while identifying three types of Boko Haram in the country and saying the Federal Government was topping the list, followed by those he described as criminals who steal and kill Nigerians in the name of religion, with the third group as the original one led by late Muhammed Yusufu, General Mohammadu Buhari, rtd,had said bluntly that 2015 Polls will be bloody if the elections were not transparent.
Nasir el-Rufai was summoned by the Directorate of State Service over his comment on not just the possibility of violence erupting if next year’s general elections were rigged but for allegedly adding that such violence would be necessary if it was the only way to ensure the removal President Jonathan from office. He maintained that his comment was in line with his freedom of speech as enshrined in the amended 1999 Constitution. And that “The statement I made was based on historical fact because it happened in 1964, 1983, 2003, 2007 and 2011.” Rather work for prevention of such history recurring, the likes of el Rafai are working hard for its repeat.
In June 12, 2012, the same El-Rufai accused Jonathan’s men of planning Friday violence in Kano after Friday Prayers. In a statement El Rufai had said: “Tomorrow is Friday. We have credible information that Jonathanians in Kano and their agents have received huge sums of money to get youths to protest massively and cause mayhem after the Juma’at prayers. The Jonathanians hope the protests will lead to violence, destruction and loss of lives, while the federal security agencies watch helplessly, thus giving President Jonathan the excuse to declare a state of emergency in Kano State, remove Governor Kwankwaso and depose Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi…” This allegation never came to pass and nothing also happened to El Rufai.
Few weeks ago, Bola Ahmed Tinubu equally alleged that the INEC and the PDP are Siamese twins.These are a few samples of very destabilizing comments made by some politicians as the nation gears up for a crucial election. The dangerousness of these statements ought to weigh in balance and checked now. The most dangerous is the fact that opposition politicians appear fully prepared to levy war on Nigeria if they do not win the Presidential Election. They have promised it and have openly rejected the legal option.
Apart from doing practically nothing to ensure free and fair election by way of proposing reforms where necessary, opposition politicians have clearly said they do not believe INEC can conduct a free and fair election. The implication of this hardened position is that the only way the 2015 election results would be acceptable to them is for APC to be declared the winner of the Presidential Poll. Such blackmail and call for anarchy is laying a firm foundation for massive blood bath, which is avoidable if the people making such reckless statements are dealt with according to the laws of the land.
For wrong measure, the Governor of Katsina State, Ibrahim Shema, in what sounds reminiscent of the Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsi disaster, asked his supporters to attack and crush his opposition like “Cockroaches”. In the entire history of Nigeria, there have not been invitations to “Blood Shed and Carnage” than these comments, some of which have attracted national and international.
The Electoral Act elaborately provides enough to guarantee free and fair elections in Nigeria, and ensuring that it remains so is more of the duty of the voters who should protect their votes. If votes are counted openly to the hearing of all voters in the various polling booths and announced and copies collected by Party Agents, any alteration of results thereafter would be futile since the signed results at the polling booths, when computed by anybody would yield the same result. It is the Judiciary that must declare so and some anarchists.
How elections are rigged in Nigeria come in other forms and all the political parties are guilty of it. So for opposition politicians to foreclose court option and democratic process and settle for self-help, anarchy and violence is the most uncharitable posture to be assumed by any group or Party which claims to be pursuing democratic rights.
Rule of the jungle or application of the atavistic principle of nihilism is not an option. Those who are promoting it should realize that it is impossible to control it once it gets started, as no group has monopoly over violence. This call for anarchy and violence, on a closer inspection, sounds like coup in other forms or a direct invitation for military coup. Those who would want power at all costs because they know not any other way, are the ones prescribing violence, but should bear mind that it is bound to precipitate sorrow, tears and blood.
Nigerians have opted for democracy, which is a process and not an end in itself. The duty of opposition is to keep working for ordered change and an enduring polity through reforms and institutional building, and not through anarchy and violence. Worse still, it does appear those running from the long arms of the law as their immunity expires are now promoting anarchy and violence as a haven, to escape accountability.
Such politicians should realize that the anarchy and doom they are preparing for rather than for a win through votes has an indeterminate end and beyond anybody’s control once it gets into gear. When the heavens fall they do not fall on some persons’ heads alone but on everyone. This politics of bitterness consuming the land has to stop, for there will be no politics or politicians without a nation. Nigerians have but only Nigeria to call their own.
- Law Mefor, Forensic Psychologist and Journalist, is National Coordinator, Transform Nigeria Movement (TNM), Abuja; Tel.: +2348037872893; email: lawmefor@gmail.com
