In memory of Ambassador John Campbell

Ambassador Campbell was called names and received the bashing of the insensitive and sensational dominant Nigerian press. Immediately I got to know about the statement, I sorted it out, read it and found that in fact there was nothing sensational or pecuniary in the whole frank issues raised by the diplomat. For the sake of […]

Ambassador Campbell was called names and received the bashing of the insensitive and sensational dominant Nigerian press. Immediately I got to know about the statement, I sorted it out, read it and found that in fact there was nothing sensational or pecuniary in the whole frank issues raised by the diplomat.

For the sake of those reading this piece, Ambassador Campbell was the United States Ambassador to Nigeria during the 2007 elections. He was in the picture of the rigorous brinkmanship that brought the idea of zoning as a resolution of the national leadership question and especially the brazen manner General Obasanjo supervised over the 2007 General Elections. Nigeria is a peculiar scenario like many other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It is dominated in land and people by the North while the South is made up of intellectual and economic elites. It is easy to hear the views of the minority than those of the silent majority. The reason is of course related to the above.

Ambassador Campbell saw the desperation and the desire to use every means available to hang on to power by President Jonathan, and a few other members of his cabals of course actively corroborated by a cross section of the Northern political establishment- those who call themselves the middle belters, and of course other hungry hangers-on from the fringes of the far North.

The intention was not to cause disruption but highlight on very critical issues that are capable of bringing Nigeria to its knees. If what the Ambassador said was not heard or believed, I am of the view that the statement from some states in the North after the rigged presidential election of April 16 which some Nigerians especially  the major beneficiary of the fraud, President Goodluck Jonathan have since tried to trivialize  was a vindication of Ambassador Campbell.

In democracy, standard is essential. Integrity is critical while attitude is cardinal. When the agreement to rotate power by the PDP was started, it was received by a chunk of the citizens especially from the South as a welcome development. The reason is clear; they knew they could not win in free and fair elections if the concept of one man one vote is adhered to. Ironically, they broke the chain when it was convenient to them.

Even by the 2011 voter register, it is clear that the North made up of 19 states and FCT constitutes more than 60% of the nation’s voting force. However, the manipulation of April 16 only revealed the fact that fraud related to elections may not be out of the nation’s political lexicon in some time to come.

The events of April 16 will go a long way in shaking the foundation of Nigerian unity. It may look as simple as it is at the moment but I am of the view that the latent implications of the multi-dimensional hi-tech fraud both in the refusal of the zoning concept and arrangement and the manner in which the last was made to become the first could be the very ingredients that may ultimately lead to the unfortunate scenario which Ambassador Campbell talked about.

Agreed that orderly lines were observed during the presidential elections, also that votes were counted at the polling stations, the magic that took place in the process of collation is what is responsible for the structural rigging which the PDP accomplished.

Adding salt to injury, the South East with a total of a little over 7, 036,000 registered brought in over 5 million votes to the PDP. Without any technicality, this is fraud and a massive abuse of the fundamental rights of Nigerians to freely elect their leaders as well as a truncation of the sanctity of the peoples’ votes.

The difference with what Obasanjo did in 2007 was that semblance of elections were observed this time around but the truncation of the peoples votes in my view were similar. On camera, things looked pretty okay but in reality they were as worst as was the case in 2007.

In my view, the bold-face politics by the president regarding the protest in the North again represents the incapacity that some of us are talking about. I thought what needed to be done was for the president and his men to appreciate the issues at stake and come out with human resolutions not this fire-spitting polemics which may only succeed in proving the lack of innocence of the government as far as the claim to rigged election was concerned.

I want to submit once again that the president will suffer tremendous legitimacy crisis in the next four years. Of course he told a lie when he claimed there was no zoning in the PDP and I expect it will be another lie by the time the hawks would come over and request him to run for a second term in 2015. Those who will be alive will hear what the new sing-song would be.

I am of the view that the statement made by Ambassador Campbell which caused so much ripple in the polity may yet come to pass if great care is not taken. There is the need to review issues in perspective; otherwise Goodluck Jonathan may as well be the last president of a united Nigeria.

The feeling on the part of President Jonathan and those who have rigged him in may be well that ‘we have made it, we have beaten these people’. It may really not be so. I appreciate the fact that President Jonathan is the first presidential candidate in the nation’s history to take his campaigns to the church or mosque. He has more than any other one behind him subjected Nigeria to so much threat of survival just because he desired to get what he got after April 16.

The nation’s unity is as its lowest now more than ever before. I agree with Atiku Abubakar when he said during their party’s primaries in Abuja that Goodluck Jonathan’s inordinate ambition may as well be Nigeria’s bad luck.