I have always described Nigeria as a country where the people love democracy and the leaders routinely subvert democracy. The only reason that we have been able to sustain the Forth Republic for sixteen years has been the dogged determination of the Nigerian people to keep up the struggle against kleptocratic cabals whose only object of existence is to kill the country through mega looting while dividing the people along ethnic, religious and regional lines to cover for their murderous intention towards the Nigerian State. It was appropriate that the 2015 elections were scheduled to start on Valentine Day, which would have been an appropriate moment for the people to renew their love for democracy. It was not to be. The statutory body with responsibility for organising elections INEC announced it was ready, Nigeria’s security agencies decided that they would not allow the elections to proceed and blackmailed INEC into postponing the elections by creating a regime of active non-cooperation with the election management body.
We first realized there was an issue when the National Security Adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki announced from London that INEC was not ready because it had not completed its duty of the distribution of Permanent Voters Cards and therefore some voters might be disenfranchised. When it became clear, from the numbers released by INEC that they had already distributed much more than the numbers that the NSA provided, a second reason was found. The President called a meeting of the National Council of State to discuss the matter and a day before the meeting, the NSA came up with another reason, that all our security agencies would be fully committed to the war against the insurgency in the North East and would not be available for their constitutional duties of providing security cover for the elections. He demanded six-weeks postponement as the conditionality for doing their work and INEC was forced into endorsing the position.
Nigerians are politically smart and immediately smelled a rat. The insurgency in the North East had been raging for almost six years and the security agencies had been unable to contain them. The insurgents have gained confidence and did their transformation agenda from the hit and run tactics they were using previously to taking and keeping territory. They were able to take over a total of at most 24 Local Government Areas in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States, which was about 3% of the total number of 774 LGAs in the country. This meant that it was possible to run elections in 97% of the country. It was not to be and they insisted on postponement by six-weeks. For most Nigerians, the conclusion was easy; they need the time to plot something against free and fair elections and against democracy. The watchword became vigilance.
To express our love for democracy, civil society organisations and Nigerian citizens under the leadership Nigerians United for Democracy and the National Consensus Movement organised a Valentine rally and March at Unity Fountain on Saturday. The purpose was to advocate for increased vigilance to ensure that the powers of incumbency are not used to derail Nigerian democracy. The need for vigilance was enhanced when in his media chat last week; President Goodluck Jonathan stated that the NSA did not consult him about the letter he sent to INEC. This is deeply disturbing. Given the sensitivities around the issue, its difficult to believe that security agencies will make such a bold political move without consulting their commander-in-chief. If indeed they did not, it means the boss has abdicated his responsibility of supervising the security agencies.
The crisis of confidence between Nigerians and the presidency is partly rooted at the growing concerns of politicization and blatant partisanship of the armed forces and security agencies. For the first time since the Abacha regime, we now have highly ranked officers of the armed forces directly involved in the organisation of electoral fraud and in harassing leading members of the opposition in their houses. The pledge by the armed forces in 1999 that they would steer clear of partisan politics is crumbling before our very eyes. Today, we have senior members of the police hierarchy making public statements that they would commit mass atrocities by killing twenty civilians for any one policeman that is killed. What is shocking is that no one is calling that officer to order. More generally, the security agencies have demonstrated that they are part of what is being planned to negate the successful organisation of free, fair and credible elections. They must renounce their partisanship and return to the path of professionalism.
It is always a dangerous game for democratically elected civilian leadership to encourage the politicization of the armed forces and security agencies. Nigerians have had and fought against thirty years of military rule. The President should be careful that he does not push us back to a situation we all hope we have left behind. The real issue before us as a nation is that INEC has made arrangements to organise free fair and credible elections and some people within the establishment are frightened. The object of their fear is the permanent voter cards and the card readers. The technology that has been developed would make the organisation of “invented” voters impossible. Using security agencies to move Nigeria back to a regime of electoral fraud would delegitimize the whole democratic system and lead us back to non-constitutional rule.
As I expressed in my introduction, Nigerians love democracy and are committed to exercising their franchise. The electoral management body INEC, political parties, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces all have a responsibility to ensure the general election holds on the rescheduled dates and must ensure that the new dates are not changed again, under any circumstance. Similarly, the handover date of 29th May 2015 is non negotiable and must remain sacrosanct as any attempt to tamper with it will amount to truncating our democracy and putting the peace, unity and political stability of our nation at risk. Nigerians would love a President that does not try to manipulate elections whatever the outcome is likely to be. Goodluck Jonathan should be that President. For our part, we the citizens of this country will remain vigilant and ensure that our mandate is not stolen. We do so because we are in love with democracy.
