INEC, desperadoes and a military in decline

I could very easily have titled this piece “The last kicks of a dying horse” to mimic the words credited to the retired Admiral Murtala Nyako, in his immediate reaction to the EFCC which declared him (Nyako), and one of his sons, wanted over graft allegedly perpetrated during his tenure as the executive governor of […]

I could very easily have titled this piece “The last kicks of a dying horse” to mimic the words credited to the retired Admiral Murtala Nyako, in his immediate reaction to the EFCC which declared him (Nyako), and one of his sons, wanted over graft allegedly perpetrated during his tenure as the executive governor of Adamawa state. The message may have been the erstwhile governor’s reaction to the audacity of the EFCC, but it was in reality targeted at President Goodluck Jonathan who, until last weekend at least, risked being decisively voted out of office on the 14th of February, 2015.
With the benefit of hindsight, it now appears that Nyako celebrated too early. The shocking reality of the postponement of the elections by INEC must now count as a useful lesson to all of us in view of Nyako’s chosen metaphor of the dying horse. Why? Well, horses are animals in case we need reminding. And cornered animals can be extremely dangerous foes. Did Nyako bother to contemplate what the reaction of a wounded animal would be like when boxed into a corner with all avenues of escape seemingly cut off by its predators?
Admiral Nyako may have chosen his words lightly in his poke at President Jonathan’s fading and badly executed campaign for re-election penultimate weekend, but the animal instinct in the president, and his co-traveller’s in their fast moving train to the Hall of shame and ignominy, ensured that INEC was decisively coerced to buy valuable time to ensure that the President’s kicks, as Nigerians lustfully counted the days as he was being dragged towards certain humiliation at the polls on February 14th, did not become terminal after all!
Before the postponement the contest promised to dispense with one of the last myths of our half-baked democracy since its return to these shores in 1999, with the overwhelming prospects that an incumbent president would be de-robbed for the first time in our history. Today, with the virtual arrest of our hard-earned democracy last weekend, few Nigerians are even sure whether the elections will hold on the new dates announced by INEC.
Tragically, even President Jonathan’s promise that the May 29, 2015 handover date is sacrosanct has been met by scorn and derision. His words no longer mean anything. He has failed to keep the few promises he made to Nigerians since he assumed office including the one he made to his own party to run for only a single term. To Jonathan, and the tiny cabal of Nigerians who have fed fat on his misrule, the day of reckoning with Nigerian voters remains a nightmare that must be differed at all costs.    
In that quest, it did not matter that his administration is crawling with felons. It mattered even less that he has scored so many own goals with his embarrassing comments, actions and inaction on critical matter of state. He does not also give a damn that his party that has run out of lies to feed hapless Nigerians yearning for change, or that hyper-divisive figures like Femi Fani Kayode, Doyin Okupe and Olisa Metuh are actually ruining, rather than running his campaign for re-election which appeared doomed from the onset.
Now, the tragic reality is that the president knows all these. Forget the justified concerns on the genuineness of his PHD, what Jonathan has in abundance, is the typical cunning and native intelligence of the average Nigerian! He knows his hopes of winning a free and fair election on his sordid record is bleak. That explains why his campaign team has focused on a single strategy of demonizing his principal adversary General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress (APC). But if ever Nigeria had a Teflon politician worthy of the name, Jonathan, and his fellow desperadoes in the PDP, along with fronts in the private sector, discovered one in Buhari!
With increased endorsements at home and abroad, the savage negative campaigns to discredit Buhari have apparently failed while his popularity continued to soar. They desperate aim to dent his formidable armour of honour and integrity has backfired. President Jonathan, in the meantime, wasted valuable time doing what he knows how to do best – visiting churches in the vain effort to polarize Nigerians for political capital. In 2011, the strategy worked to perfection. In 2015, however, it seems more like peddling expired drugs.  
Six years of failed promises and incompetent leadership made worse by endemic corruption and general insecurity have made Nigerians increasingly wary and wiser. Buhari’s choice of the widely respected Yomi Osinbajo also rendered Jonathan’s religious card a less potent weapon. Hunger and death in the hands of rampant insurgents did not respect any particular religion. More than half of the girls abducted from Chibok were Christians.
And then there must surely be millions of other proud Nigerians who are yet to come to terms with another sobering reality. The once formidable Nigerian military which restored hope to Liberia and Sierra-Leone through its professional intervention now runs from a ragtag army of insurgents. The same military is now incapable of any offensive expedition! We now depend on Chad and Cameroun for the liberation of parts of our own country!
Never in our history had Nigerians seen so much incompetence and uninspiring leadership. And never, in my opinion, had any Nigerian leader so much primitive abuse of executive privilege. Jonathan deliberately decided to be a ‘’ruler’’ when the situation, and our democracy, yearned for competent leadership. Nigeria, under Jonathan, attracted unsavoury remarks from a certain Robert Mugabe. A lowly South African parliamentarian also openly derided for his deafening silence in the immediate aftermath of the massacre of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram at Baga.
But the same status-quo is also what makes Jonathan, the PDP, and the tiny clique of corporate blood-suckers such dangerous desperadoes. The prospect of defeat at the polls is not even an option they are willing to contemplate. It amounted to a death sentence for some. Valuable time must be bought to clean up the books at the NNPC, just in case. If the PDP rigging machine was previously unprepared, it should be by March when the elections are now scheduled to hold.
Within the same period, the military will also be prepared to disrupt the electoral process like they allegedly did in recent revelations concerning the last gubernatorial elections in Ekiti State. As reprehensible as the postponement appeared to millions of Nigerians, it was all about that base animalistic instinct of survival for President Jonathan and his desperadoes.
And talking about desperadoes, it will be highly misleading for anyone to believe that the military was a reluctant party in the postponement of the election. In the six years since Boko Haram raised the ante in their deadly onslaught against the Nigerian state, trillions of Naira was appropriated to the military for the fight against the insurgents with little impact. If anything, many whistle blowers, including one audacious letter directed to the President, revealed that many officers in the higher echelon in the military have become stupendously rich due to the insurgency and have little interest in ending it! They are buoyed by the fact that the president has shown little appetite in investigating the allegations against them. Therefore, like the President and the many interest groups pitched against the legitimate aspiration of Nigerians for change, the military is also an interested party.  
But their excuse for not supporting INEC on the earlier dates scheduled for the elections are hollow. Conducting elections is not warfare. Besides, INEC had earlier rejected their presence in the immediate vicinity of polling situations. All that is required for the conduct of credible elections all over the world is the presence of policemen for perimeter security. The same military which failed to rescue our Chibok girls since their abduction over a year ago, wants Nigerians to believe they can tame the Boko Haram in six weeks.
As things stand today, the Nigerian military under its present leadership is already badly diminished in stature and respect. The involvement of the army in the crude attempts to discredit one of its most respected alumni – General Buhari – was a slur on all Nigerian soldiers dead or alive.
After destroying his own party and hopelessly polarizing the nation along its fault lines, it seems that next target for President Jonathan is the Nigerian military. Sadly, it is a monumental folly the nation is unlikely to survive.