DONALD TRUMP AND THE ELECTORAL INSTITUTE
The voting public must learn to rebuke and punish politicians who act as ’rogues’, writes Okello Oculi
On 28th August, 2023, Professor Adele Jinadu ritually preached to a youthful audience about ‘New Hope’ for achieving virtuous elections in Nigeria. His pulpit was INEC (‘’The Electoral Institute’’) at the 4th Memorial Lecture in tribute to intellectual leadership of Professor Abubakar Momoh, a deceased former chief executive of the institution.
The date was without an intended coincidence with legal troubles of former American president, Donald Trump, for the possible crime of demanding a reversal of votes for Candidate Joe Biden. The top official in charge of guarding election results in the State of Georgia was captured on television refusing to obey President Trump’s order to ‘’find’’ an arithmetical ladder for him to climb over a cruel wall of defeat mocking his ambition.
Professor Jinadu did not mention Trump’s struggle against a judicial crucifixion by Biden’s gang who Trump regards as daylight robbers of votes cast for him. He gave prison cameras a photo pose (or ‘’Mug Shot’’) which showed him glaring like a fuming buffalo. His propagandists gladly printed it on T-Shirts. It instantly sold for seven million dollars for his election campaign.
He was a model for the Opposition Party in Zimbabwe and coupists in Gabon who rejected victories of incumbent presidents Mnangagwa and Bongo, respectively in Zimbabwe and Gabon.
Jinadu had fumed at the behavior of Nigeria’s politicians over electoral competition. He declared that it was imperative that there be a change ‘’in the DNA’’ of politicians. There must be a ‘’TWIN’’ of changes: a change in the ‘’ATTITUDE of politicians’’; and in that of voters. The voting public must learn to rebuke and punish politicians who act as ‘’rogues’’. ‘’We must all be Policemen’’ to defend the growth of ‘’good election culture’’, he thundered.
Dr. Kole Shettima, the Africa Director of MacArthur Foundation, injected, what he called a ‘’Political Economy’’ of electoral contests, to Professor Jinadu’s call for a new DNA of politicians. When politicians regard politics as a means of ‘’economic survival’’, it is to be expected that they will become ‘’bad’’ people.
The seemingly cynical and repeatedly inciting use as a campaign slogan the ‘’LIE’’(as asserted by election officials), that votes cast for him were stolen, was echoed in Jinadu’s assertion that the call for the ‘’Rule of Law’’ is futile if there is no ‘’shared values’’ in the political arena.
Most American voices reported by ‘’liberal’’ American media, lament that Trump’s appeal to a loyal and significant sector of society, fans intolerant and violent political actions.
On January 6th, 2020, a mob that foamed- in- mouths with rage and chants for hanging the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, exposed the latent civil war that the lack of ‘’shared values’’ arouses during election contests.
In Nigeria large quantities of guns are imported in seasons of voting.
Jinadu’s dictum that the ‘’best law in the land’’ without corresponding internalized good attitudes is valueless, hinted at desperate ‘GAMBONIAN’ change. A celebration of passive voters surging forth to vote in the 2023 elections, did not reach for exposing what was at the root of past anomies. A cold silence which met a claim that politicians are passionate patriots, gave a hint of ‘sleeping disgust’.
Jinadu had bashed political parties for falling back to sins which Justice Uwais and his team of holy political surgeons had recommended as remedies for faults which President Umaru Yar’Adua had boldly promised to dredge out. These included the merit of each political party allocating 35 per cent of candidates to women as insurance for breast feeding Nigeria’s democratic process.
WRAPA (Women Rights And Political Action), and other Civil Society groups, have published researched high quality studies to support lobbies for the inclusion of women in elected and appointed bodies that make government policies. Male-owned political parties remain blind, illiterate haters of women’s access to money pots.
‘’Lack of honesty’’, fraudulent mathematics (which calmly reduced one thousand votes cast for women to one hundred and twenty five votes), was reported by Eniola Cole, a female Election Observer from Lagos. A ‘’Code of Conduct’’ to be used vigorously by a body inside each political party was suggested.
A major unstated target of Jinadu’s criticisms was disgust with the roaring popularity of Donald Trump ahead of other contestants. In the first televised debate Republican Party contestants lacked courage to criticize Trump due to fear of annoying his adoring supporters. In Nigeria those who use Trumpian appeal to tribalism and religious hatred in election contests, have shed blood as a language of debate.
Jinadu and Shettima also punched Media and Civil Society activists for partisan loyalty, and facing the truth with fractured dark glasses of corruption when bashing election officials. Hope has costs.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
