Not an election – it is a war

Elections – the selection of people into office by votes, right? Not in Africa. When democracy’s First Nations hold elections, they make it look enviable. They do not shut down borders or block communication lines; while citizens vote, non-citizens and those allergic to polls go about their lawful businesses unhindered. That was until Donald Dumb […]

Elections – the selection of people into office by votes, right? Not in Africa. When democracy’s First Nations hold elections, they make it look enviable. They do not shut down borders or block communication lines; while citizens vote, non-citizens and those allergic to polls go about their lawful businesses unhindered. That was until Donald Dumb appeared on the scene showing that even Western politricians would put their ambitions over and above the lives of voters and the dumb would put their lives on the line for politricians to spit on their graves. Dumb encourages his fans to punch his opponents with promise to foot the legal bill.
Now a friend of mine has offered to send election observers to Washington DC later this year and I have generously offered to lead the Naija-American symposium on election coverage for their media practitioners. There are no takers yet, but we won’t give up, because as Idi Amin once said – what is good for the Jews is good for Uganda!
Last weekend was dubbed Super Sunday on the African electoral calendar. Polls were held in utter disregard to the sanctity of Palm Sunday, which could make Kaduna religious zealots hot under the collar or turban. Elections held in Congo-Brazzavile, Niger, Benin Republic, Zanzibar and Cape Verde while a referendum held in Senegal.
Prelude to that was the war in Port Harcourt, the battleground between the Party of Desperate People, PDP and the All Promises Compromised, APC (apology to Femi Aduwo). This exercise like ones before it, questioned the integrity of INEC’s past activities in larger areas of Naija. It started years back when Naija’s new transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi fell out with his quondam political godmother, Lame Pat over Okrika market rights forcing Amaechi to port to APC, the other side of the same coin. Lives were lost and many were maimed but the winners are celebrating and the losers won’t stop scheming because none of them is likely to be a casualty of the war.
When Africa is forced to embrace an alien concept, it changes the definition. The West may be inured with virtuous polls, but in the black continent, control of the only aphrodisiac that spins money without losing its potency is war. African wars practically show us what happens when two elephants fight. No arsenals are left in the armoury. In Rivers, all parties involved generously deployed guns, knives, cutlasses and all state and non-state instruments of coercion against the very people they hoped to govern. If you think that Donald Dumb is master of hate speech, check the rhetoric of Nyesom Wike and Rotimi Amaechi and you see why politics is a do-or-die here, except that protagonists are too defended to be the victims. INEC that held elections in 36 states is now finding it hard to conclude polls in one. It is an unsolved riddle.
Let’s leave Naija and take a flight to Congo Brazzaville where Denis Sassou-Nguesso is renewing the 30-year mandate of misery over his people. A fractured opposition’s only hope of displacing Nguesso was that the polls end in a run-off and force opposition supporters to rally behind one opponent. Last Sunday, electoral eggs were dissipated in several baskets making it impossible to shake an entrenched Nguesso.
In Niger, Mohammadou Issoufou hoped to win the first ever second round presidential against hospitalized rival Hama Amadou. Only 20 to 25% of the electorate turned up and Issoufou need not worry, Niger is not known to have too many surviving ex-presidents; they usually end up as casualties of their own inordinate ambitions. If Issoufou hangs in long enough, he may end up like his predecessors leaving his country in much the same mess.
Benin Republic may become the poster boy of successful transitions. Having peacefully dropped Matteu Kerekou and now Boni Yayi, the electorate has passed a vote of no confidence on Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou and placed the garland on cotton merchant Patrice Talon. When a man is named like the foot of an eagle, you know there’s something to him.
The Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar went through a second round on Sunday, a re-run that the opposition asked its members to boycott which helped the ruling CCM party walk over with 91.4% of the votes. Observers are crying foul and that’s how it usually ends, in Africa, nobody ever goes to jail for inciting electoral violence.
In Cape Verde’s parliamentary elections, opposition Movement for Democracy upstaged the ruling Cham Cha Mapinduzi party with 53% of the votes to break a 15-year jinx. In Machy Sall’s Senegal, it’s better late than never. In 2012, he promised to reduce the seven-year term to five and not to run again. Four years down the line, he is fulfilling the first promise.
Now, if elections are about representation and good governance, why is the life of the represented worth nothing to the potential representative? We asked Bob Dylan who responded – the answer, my friend is blowing in the wind!