Truth be told, the country did not heave a collective sigh of relief when the fourteen (I can see and hear only two) presidential candidates signed a five-point peace accord on January 14. At best we treated it with caution. We had travelled on this road before. Promises by our politician often tend to blow in the wind. Nothing changed anything. But there is always a reason for hope; the simple explanation is that today is useless if it is not an improvement on yesterday. In other words, what did not work yesterday could work today.
The importance of the accord lies in its symbolism. The renunciation of violence and negative campaigns by the men who hold the key to either a peaceful election or one more marred by violence ought to symbolize the steady progress of our democracy along the path of sanity and civilized conduct.
The peace accord came at the right time in response to the growing tension generated by the rising tide of negative campaigns and incendiary advertisements. On top of all that was the rattling of ethnic, religious and sectional drums of war. Each day lengthened the shadow of Armageddon over the land. My hope was that if the agreement succeeded in dousing the tension it would have more than lived up to its billing. There can be no greater relief than knowing that through the agreement the forthcoming elections would not be a civil a war by another name.
The terms of the agreement spoke to our fears. The parties pledged to, among other things, “avoid religious incitement and ethnic and tribal profiling; refrain from making public statements, pronouncements or speeches that have the capacity to incite any form of violence before, during and after the election; to speak out against provocative utterances and oppose all acts of electoral violence,..”
The decision to sign the agreement showed that the candidates are as worried about the negative campaigns and the tension that foolish threats have generated as the rest of us. But I always knew that the fault did not lie with the candidates but with their foot soldiers. The candidates may be decent men who abhor language but their foot soldiers, eager to please, are a different breed. One week after the agreement was signed, Ayo Fayose, governor of Ekiti State, published his morbid advertisement whose principal argument was that Buhari at 72, was too old and if elected, would die in office as three other northerners before him – Murtala Muhammed, Sani Abacha and Musa Yar’Adua – had. In his book, death is by old age. He was roundly condemned by many Nigerians, including, if only reluctantly, his party, PDP. Unrepentantly, he said he had no regrets putting out the advertisement. Why should he? After all, President Jonathan, for whom he published the advertisement, did not condemn him. He probably failed to appreciate the damage it did to him and his quest. In civilized countries, it could have ended his campaign. Luckily for the man whose first is Goodluck, this is Nigeria.
The tragedy of our situation is that since the agreement was signed, things have progressively gotten worse. The campaigns have become more negative and dirtier. Pronouncements have become more irresponsible. The smear campaigns have taken on a life of their own. The drums of war are getting louder. The tension keeps rising, heightening fears of a possible violence before, during and after the elections.
The current situation points to two fundamental problems. Firstly, it shows that the candidates are not in control of their campaigns; their foot soldiers are and they do not give a damn how the campaign is conducted. They only care for the outcome of the elections, particularly the presidential election, given its high stakes.
Secondly, the accord actually came too late. By the time it was signed, negative campaigns, negative advertisements and the mind-boggling smear campaigns and unwarranted personal insults had been accepted by both sides as the right way to go in capturing power where it matters most, the centre. The accord did nothing to change this mindset. If anything, it fired the foot soldiers to do even worse in the vain and foolish hope that when the spoils of the elections are shared by the winners, those with the foulest mouths would get the lion’s share.
PDP, the party rightly afraid of losing power at the centre, has become more and more desperate. It is natural for a party facing a formidable challenge such as it is facing from APC and its presidential candidate. The PDP foot soldiers truly believe they have something to gain and nothing to lose by directly insulting and demonizing General Muhammadu Buhari. Perhaps all is fair in politics as in war. But the party went too far when it organized violence against the campaign convoy of the president in Bauchi and Jos and pinned it on APC without sparing a thought for the consequences of its action.
We must be grateful to Isa Yuguda, governor of Bauchi, a PDP state, for exposing this new and dangerous tactics in his state. The governor fingered the minister of FCT, Bala Mohammed, as the organizer and the mastermind. It is a thousand pities that a man at that level of national responsibility fails to appreciate that what he did was capable of causing the violence we are all trying to avoid in this election. He was encouraging PDP in other states, particularly in the South-South where the drums of war have almost become deafening, to revenge by attacking APC. It did not bother him that could be the beginning of a mindless orgy of violence before, during and even after the elections.
I do not think Mohammed is the only one in his party who believes in this wretched recipe for retaining power. But let them know that those who fear the loss of power and want to bring the house down with them would not be the victors but the victims of their own perfidy.
We should all be saddened that the most keenly contested presidential election since the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo left the scene has been turned into a contest for foul mouths and not the contest for bright and pragmatic ideas that should change Nigeria from being a potentially great country to a truly great country. Once again, we, the people, have been cynically denied the right to participate in the leadership recruitment process. This, to me, is the real tragedy of our country.
Many of us choose to view this election in a limited sense, i.e. electing a president. I think it is much more fundamental than that. This is not about Buhari and Jonathan. It is about the future of a country whose development is tied to the millstone of corruption and good governance deficit. It is about the paradox of the only rich but poor nation in the world. It is about the 70 per cent of our fellow citizens who live below the poverty line. It is about our right to ask what has happened to the over 400 billion dollars our country earned between the 1970s and now. It is about the thriving corruption industry that has weakened and indeed wrecked our institutions that should protect our collective interests such as the judiciary, the police and the regulatory agencies. It is about who has the mental capacity and the moral stature to fix our problems. It is about the squandering of our riches and opportunities and the freeing our country from mediocrity and the reign of foot soldiers who care less about the country and more about their mess of pottage.
In his book, Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama raises these two fundamental questions about our country, the only with a chapter devoted to it: “Why hasn’t democracy made a significant difference? Shouldn’t opening up a political system to the free flow of information and democratic contestation lead ordinary people to vote for candidates who are more honest or who provide public goods for everyone rather than just their supporters?”
The foul mouths have seized the centre stage and denied us the right to ask these and other equally fundamental questions about the present and the future of our country in this election season. It is such a crying pity that the most populous African country with the largest economy on the continent plays catch up less with endowed African nations.
