The Presidential
election in Nigeria of March 28th 2015 is no doubt provided a defining moment
in the political annals of our nation state. Apart from the election producing
for the very first time a Presidential contender who as an incumbent resisted
the uniquely Afrocentric political tendencies of clinging on to power even when
the signals are so loud and clear demanding a fundamental change of status quo.
Good luck Ebele Jonathan an academic doctorate degree holder in a very rare
scientific field Zoology entered Nigeria's political lexicon as the first
incumbent President to willingly accept defeat in a hotly and closely run
election even before the umpire seen by some to be bent on foisting a
particular regional candidate as the eventual winner. Those who followed the
coverage of the Presidential election on the Sky news television crew in Kano
state would have seen the chaotic scenes created by supporters of the All
Progressive Congress who nearly mobbed a PDP party agent for daring to raise
his voice against widespread manipulations of the collation of votes in Kano.
There were also cases of underage voters that turned
out in huge numbers in most parts of Northern Nigeria whereby the APC candidate
produced monumental results against his rival- the incumbent President. The All
Progressive Congress also raised considerable concerns on how the electoral
process were manipulated reportedly in Akwa Ibom, Rivers State and some parts
of South East in favour of the incumbent President and the candidate of the Peoples
Democratic Party. For the fact that Jonathan refused to play the usual dirty
politics of most incumbents to circumvent the popular will of voters means that
no matter how you may hate him he has made a landmark political achievement as
a legend of democracy. Whenever the most objective history of Nigeria's
transitional multiparty democracy would be written his name will occupy a pride
of place. Ironically the newly elected President is the only Nigerian alive
that has had to wage the most relentless political litigations in the various
election petition Tribunals to challenge his defeats in the past.
Well, the
concession speech of Jonathan is a topic for a more elaborate essay some other
time but for now my attention is focused towards addressing the 'lizard
-headed' triumphalism of some commentators who have hurriedly criticised the
Igbo for overwhelming throwing substantial percentage of their Presidential
votes to the incumbent President and the candidate of the outgoing national
ruling party in the March 28th Presidential and National Assembly elections-
PDP. These idiosyncratic and warped -minded commentators also attacked Igbos
verbally for failing to produce a Senator under the platform of the emerging
national ruling party-APC. They said Igbo by this 'miscalculation' has lost out
in the national power equations. They forgot about the giant contributions made
by some members of APC in the South East towards projecting the Buhari
candidacy.
There's this
'holier-than-thou' kind of hollowness embedded in this kind of eccentric and
egocentric arguments that because Igbo may not emerge as Senate President
therefore the tribe is politically diminished. This is a stupid red -herring
because if I remember vividly in the last six or eight years Igbo never
produced Senate President or Speaker neither did Igbo produced the President
nor the vice and these kind of half- baked rants didn't come up and Igbo were
not sent on political exile into Siberia. Where cometh these smelly and
senseless analyses suggesting that the Igbo will pay political penalty for
simply exercising their constitutionally guaranteed human rights during the
March 28th 2015 Presidential election? Why are these busy bodies carrying a non
existent political head ache? Who says that under constitutional democracy that
an Ethnic nationality with such enormous potentials and with a hugely influential
republican population scattered all around the World like Ndigbo will simply
sit idly by and allow some opportunistic politicians to deny them of their
constitutional rights as citizens of this nation state? Who says that Buhari
can govern well without the Igbo? To think this way is to contemplate political
suicide.
I'm sad that we are busying ourselves in Nigeria
engaging in infantile and largely unproductive and indeed poisonous
postulations on which Ethnic Nationality should be bewitched as a result of the
spectacular political loses suffered by the Peoples Democratic Party even when
our contemporaries all over the developed World and even the fast developing
societies are busy developing their scientific and human infrastructures to
place their nations and people at higher pedestals of human history. Our
contemporaries in Europe are busy building up their technological wherewithal
whilst we in Nigeria still engage in 14th century road side arguments around
mundane parochial issues of which tribe and religious groups should produce the
various holders of national political offices. We are so backward in our
peculiar unintelligent way of driving our political process that some states in
the North spend huge public resources to marry wives for their adults who are
not even in the economically and emotional state of mind to settle down to
build their homes. In Imo state for instance Governor Rochas Okorocha at a time
gave N250,000 to all autonomous communities in the state to organise Christmas
parties. Such is how unproductive our political drivers are. Come to think of
it those clamouring for the political exclusion of Igbo in the distribution of
political offices have forgotten or now suffer from the collective amnesia of
forgetting that virtually all leading actors of the incoming national ruling
party were products of the PDP which they now demonise.
I strongly believe that voters in any part of Nigeria
must not be victimised because of their popular choices unless we are spoiling
for a very prolonged divided nation whose people will become farther and
further apart from each other. The danger in allowing these poisonous
narratives to shape the texture and components of the coming federal executive
cabinet and other national offices is that the little gains made by such
agencies as the National Youth Service Corp ( NYSC) will be lost forever and in
no distant time serious agitation for breakup of Nigeria will become so
disturbing that we will have no choice but to conduct a national referendum to
determine our future as a Federation. So General Buhari must watch his steps
and follow his conscience in carrying out his national duties in strict
compliance with the letters and principles of the Nigerian constitution which
in May 29th 2015 he will swear before God and the Nigerian people to adhere to.
Let General Buhari not allow tribal and religious warlords to dictate the pace
of his administration. He must know that Nigeria is now gravely divided and his
first job is to unify all Nigerians to work in partnership with his
administration to build a vibrant nation. In seeking to unify Nigerians who are
now so fragmented the Presidency of Buhari must stay away from these Ethnic
jingoistic Igbo haters and treat all component parts of Nigeria as one.
Anything short of this will be resisted vehemently. Igbo haters should let
Buhari be.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko is the Head of Human
Rights Writers Association of Nigeria and blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com,
www.rightsassociationngr.com, www.huriwa.org.
12/4/2015
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