2023 Presidential Poll: Nigeria Drawing Back the Hands of the Clock?

Frisky Larr revisits the recently concluded presidential election in the country and submits that the outcome of the poll leaves much to be desired.

The day February 25, 2023 has marked yet another turn on Nigeria’s journey to self-destruction, backwardness and the perpetual self-immolation.

For some unexplainable reasons, the country has transformed into one with informed expertise in drawing back the hands of the clock and standing down its quest for greatness to the indifference and applause of its suffering masses.

Having started on a highly promising note in the early post-independence years, observers and analysts, who expected the emergence of an African ‘Switzerland’ in Nigeria, have helplessly watched the disintegration and collapse of this dream as the years progressed.

How the regular five-year-development plans of the Gowon era steadily morphed into inability to pay salaries and wages in government establishments, is a major feature in the country’s daylight display of hopelessness and a bleak future.

Today, ironically, it boasts a catalog of conscious retrogression that is, regrettably, openly celebrated as progress, by the very victims of the system that are caught in crossfire.

While military governance, in all its dictatorial and sometimes, brutish manifestation, produced a large chunk of the, now dilapidating, infrastructure that Nigeria still falls back upon today, citizens and structure have been convincingly sold the dummy by foreign powers, that democracy holds the only key to the country’s problems.

Funnily and ironically, the embrace of constitutional democracy seems to have, arguably, hardly brought up forward movement to Nigeria and even stands out as the first major step in retrogression.

In fact, my book “Lost in Democracy” worked on this subject in all possible ramifications.The first civilian government of the 1999 constitution ended with three crucial ‘highs’ that have remained insurmountable till the present day.

This goes without prejudice to other ‘lows’.

This too, has been detailed and dissected in my very first book “Nigeria’s Journalistic Militantism”. The government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo succeeded in paying off a huge chunk of Nigeria’s foreign debt to the Paris Club and placed the country on a ‘reset’ path.

It launched a formidable structure to usher in a system of stable power supply, contrary to disinformation advanced by vested interests.

The National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) produced six new power stations that only waited to be fired by turbines to boost the overall grid (see “Nigeria’s Journalistic Militantism” for more details).

Unfortunately, the successor government ignored the project and the turbines supplied and wasted time and resources pouring recriminations on fictional investment figures in a populist disinformation drive.

Many progressive policies of the predecessor were reversed without replacement, much to the applause of the hate-filled intelligentsia, who hid behind media collaboration but should have known better.

Today, foreign and domestic debts have mounted again to uncontrolled heights in a toxic future for upcoming generations. The power project has long fallen behind all progressive indices in human record when the government exited in 2007.

The hands of the clock were deliberately drawn back at the time, in the face of regional rivalry seeing the northern region baiting for blood in a quest to assert perpetual, irreversible dominance. Finally, it created institutions to fight graft in the country, that were not built upon by successive governments.This was quickly followed by the declining health conditions of the President and the attendant concept of medical tourism that cropped up in its aftermath.

Rulership by proxy and surrogate Presidency was born in its infancy until the President died. Regional rivalry and the battle for supremacy was blown open for the very first time. The North sought to invoke its turn to rule in the spirit of the gentleman’s agreement on the federal character and sought the resignation of the Vice President, to enable the North nominate another President. The constitution, on the contrary, mandated the Vice President to take the saddle of the Presidency on the demise of the incumbent. Intervention by foreign forces ushered in the Doctrine of Necessity and the Vice President was allowed to succeed the President.

We thought we had made progress.Then the new President served out his term and insisted on doing a second term against all wise counsels.

A coalition of odd bedfellows emerged to stop the  regime of President Goodluck Jonathan, under whom free-for-all indecency became the norm. Hope was, then, seen in a retired military General, whose short dictatorial reign in the past stood out for the positive rigidity of his No. 2 man in a war against indiscipline, who has long died. We gave Muhammadu Buhari the credit all the same and ascribed ‘integrity’ to him.

We saw a Messiah that was on a rescue mission. The election was won and lost and the losing incumbent President called the victorious ex-General and congratulated him in a very rare display of the decency that his corrupt regime did not show.

Nigerians were elated and we thought we had made immense progress.When ex-General Muhammadu Buhari took the reins of power, however, Nigeria, shockingly, transgressed from the proverbial frying pan to raw fire.

Despite a brilliant start clamping down on corruption and restructuring a few lines of state functionality, it soon became clear that the President’s priority lay visibly in the completion of the regional project of reclaiming dominance as launched by Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

The glaring and undisguised focus on Fulani empowerment and domination of the country by the northern elite triggered a loud cry of wanton divisiveness that was also, wantonly ignored by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The problem remains unsolved while the ethnic aggressors were largely claimed to have been allowed free access into Nigeria from neighboring countries to boost the ethnic population for electoral gains.

All the gains made and assumed consolidated under President Olusegun Obasanjo, particularly in the area of regional parity in the distribution of political power, were swept away under President Muhammadu Buhari, in one fell swoop in addition to the accumulation of national debt as a burden on future generations.

Electoral transparency that we thought we had slowly converged on through the concession call of an incumbent President, was wiped away overnight, by President Muhammadu Buhari, in his desperation for a second term in the Presidency. The emphasis on power being with the North was over-emphasized in the systematic marginalization of the Southern Vice President, who exercised his legal powers to act viably whenever the President was out and incapacitated.

Rulership by proxy that had its infancy under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua gained full-blown adulthood and maturity under President Muhammadu Buhari.

In fact, President Buhari seems to have left no stone unturned, in turning back the hands of the clock in Nigeria’s struggle for civil, political and economic maturity.

Now, he promised Nigeria a parting gift to conduct the fairest and most credible presidential election that will be marked in history.

Now, the election has come and gone and has been marred by accusations of open brigandage with thuggery and widespread forced overt and covert alteration of result sheets that have, clearly, exposed the electoral commission (supposedly neutral electoral umpire) to accusations of partisanship, corruption and electoral larceny.

The unpalatable art of rulership by proxy will not only be representing a tragic drawback of the hands of the clock while the unsuspecting folks frantically expect a kick-off of developmental strides, it will also mean an uncomplimentary expertise and progress in the diabolic sinking of everything that values and decency represents.

The forced overt and covert alteration of result sheets by constituted authority and the storming of polling units by armed thugs as reportedly happened in several locations, do not only represent several steps backwards in a process that saw hope triggered in the once celebrated concession call by an incumbent President but also underscore the helpless return to infancy, of an electoral umpire, who, either lacks the will and courage to assert its authority or is deliberately compromised and complicit in truncating a system that is fragile by default.

While the declaration of a winner under these circumstances is tragic enough in the face of glaring occurrences that should, ordinarily, have warranted a rerun in multiple locations, the region of origin of the declared winner is the most compelling absurdity since the birth of the current cycle of civil leadership.

The zoning arrangement may not have been spelt out in bold terms constitutionally. As a gentleman’s agreement, it was considered sacrosanct and stronger than a formal law.

With the inordinate ambition of two candidates and a glaring conspiracy by a section of the northern elites forcing the temporary obliteration of this arrangement, one candidate even unleashed a slap on the face of political decorum by talking down the arrangement and claiming that “We have moved past that”.

Now, the forces have suddenly discovered the essence of democracy and rule of law asking aggrieved individuals to go to court after they, themselves, have conveniently turned a blind eye to brigandage, lawlessness, and thuggery to help them achieve their obnoxious strategic designs. Yet, they shunned and ignored these same courts in other cases, when it suited and served their deceptive purposes.

Regrettably, the nation as a whole is too cowardly and feeble-minded to sacrifice lives and is yet unprepared for a cleansing revolution that would have sent impunity to the gaol at home or abroad. Lesser evils have triggered much more wide-ranging repercussions in other climes. Our evil politicians trust in this feeble-mindedness and fear of death by individuals, whose lives have been reduced to the vegetative state, to ply their trade. It remains to be seen how long this will hold. There will, definitely, come a generation, one day, that will avenge the desecration of human dignity and exploitation of the collective stupefaction of the folks in Nigeria. It is a matter of time.

-Larr writes from Abuja