Heroes of the March 28 elections

The elections were not perfect, as any honest man can attest, but with them the voter proved that he has become decisive. In the presidential election, he showed his anger not necessarily against President Jonathan as a person but for the ills he has come to personify which Nigerians want a change. The anger expressed […]

The elections were not perfect, as any honest man can attest, but with them the voter proved that he has become decisive. In the presidential election, he showed his anger not necessarily against President Jonathan as a person but for the ills he has come to personify which Nigerians want a change. The anger expressed against Jonathan and other notable politicians send a clear signal that the voter now realizes that he can make and unmake any politician. Those who have said that we have just witnessed a democratic revolution are right. With what has happened, no elected representative will take the people for granted any more. Many Nigerians are particularly pleased with the way the voters dealt with some governors who aspired to become senators. The impunity of governors and other politicians who thought that their positions invested them with power and authority equal to God was becoming too much for comfort. Never again will governors be so arrogant and authoritarian.
In my piece entitled Nigeria will be the winner of the March 28 elections (<http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/daily/opinion/48633-nigeria-will-be-the-winner-of-the-march-28-election>) published on these pages some three weeks back, I had said that the presidential election will usher in an irreversible change in Nigeria’s quest for democracy and development. My small prophesy has come to pass. The event has produced many heroes or winners.
The first, as we have already identified, is the ordinary Nigerian voter who has realized that he possesses within himself an enormous power to crown or disrobe elected officials. And with what happened on March 28, an era of impunity may have been buried and one of healthy respect for the wishes of a majority of the people has been ushered in. Nigerian democracy is the gainer for it. No one needs any more to plead with our political parties to observe and respect the concept of internal democracy which has been so badly lacking in our politics.
Another set of heroes that emerged on March 28 were INEC Chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega and his team of commissioners and the electoral umpire’s rank and file. For the first time in the history of our governance, we had a man in Jega who could own up to honest mistakes made honestly and apologise for same without shouting and cursing those who dared to complain about such mistakes. In Jega and his team, you could visibly read humility, attempts at fairness and impartiality and a desire to discharge a commission to the best of one’s ability in spite of sometimes unfair accusations and other daunting challenges. INEC was by no means flawless but Jega and his men and women proved to all that we have within us men and women of ability and integrity who can be recruited and placed in strategic positions to help us build this nation without our having to look for foreign ‘experts’ from the UN, the World Bank, the IMF or anywhere else to come run things smoothly.
Now that he is down, many may not recognize or even appreciate the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan is another major hero of March 28. For me, I even rank him as the greatest of the heroes for one reason: his liberal democratic credentials or disposition which, to a large extent, helped made March 28 possible. Many Nigerians agree that if it were under former president Olusegun Obasanjo, the merger of the former APP, CPC and ACN to form the formidable APC would not have taken place. Through bribery, cajoling and other strong arm tactics, the APC would not have been birthed. And without a viable opposition party in the APC, what we are celebrating here would have been a non-event.
What more did Jonathan do to earn my admiration and respect and his place as a hero of our recent significant event? He graciously conceded defeat by congratulating the victor General Muhammadu Buhari even before the final count was taken. This is how it should be. You wondered whether this was somewhere else and not in Nigeria. We can only appreciate what Jonathan did when you realize that we are speaking about an African country. It is one thing to win an election in our continent. It is entirely another to be declared the winner and allowed to govern. We have too few good examples.
Although they are now on the losing side, the Ibos, in my opinion, also emerged as heroes of March 28. The Ibos of the South East showed the kind of political cohesiveness that has never been seen among them since after the Civil War. Elections are an avenue for a people to make a statement about how the feel about many things in their polity. And the Ibos, for whatever reasons, decided that they as a nationality would have their best interest served by a Jonathan re-election under the platform of the PDP. And they all massively voted for the PDP. Some people may now taunt them for ‘foolishly’ putting all their eggs in one basket. But because of what they did on March 28, they will now be taken more seriously in the politics of Nigeria. The Ibos have discovered themselves and this is good for Nigeria because they form a significant portion of this country.
Nigeria is supposed to rest on a tripod. The crab-like mentality of the Ibos in the past and their readiness to be hired to pursue mischief and all manner of ignoble political goals made no one to reckon with them in the calculation for the capture of political power at the centre. As a patriot, I believe that each of what constitutes the props on which our nation stands should be strong enough so that each can act as a check and balance on the excesses of the other or others.  With the loud statement made by the Ibos on March 28 that they can indeed come together to pursue what they can identify as their common interest, the competition for political power in Nigeria will be keener and there will be greater assurance that the best talents for running the nation will be recruited for national service.
I am not being anti-Yoruba or anti-North, but being solidly pro-Nigeria in the next statement I want to make: the alliance between the Yoruba South West and the North, which has produced the Buhari presidency, should not be allowed to become a permanent feature of Nigerian politics at the centre. This is because such a state of affair will not produce creative and interesting and productive pan-Nigerian poli-ticking. Rather, it will bring about a boring, routine or too predictive outcome and would, in turn, create a new tension and complaint of marginalisation in our politics. With the new cohesiveness of the Ibos, I want to see some new forms of alliances that can produce a national leader that would command the love, respect and loyalty of all Nigerians.