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It is true that the last has not been heard of the recently concluded February 25 presidential and national assembly elections and the March 18 governorship and state assembly polls, regarded generally as the worst election ever conducted in the history of the country. While Nigerians wait with anxiety over the verdict of the election petition tribunal on the presidential poll following the petitions of the aggrieved parties, the Labour Party (LP), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a few others, the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and their frontline supporters in government are gallivanting the world overheating an already heated polity with their inciting and incendiary comments, which tend to trivialize the issues at hand.
It is not in doubt that the 2023 poll was highly flawed in all ramifications. It is one election in which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) refused to follow its rules, especially in the transmission of election results in real time to INEC’s Result Viewing (IReV) portal using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). It is one election which witnessed massive vote-buying, rigging, voter suppression, harassment and intimidation and threats to people’s lives and property, especially in Lagos and Rivers states. Some markets with high population of non-indigenes were burnt in Lagos. Some are still being burnt. It is one election which caused Nigerians great anxiety and it is one poll with great expectations on the conduct and the outcome. But the shoddy conduct of the poll was a great disappointment to most Nigerians and members of the international community. The election and its outcome opened our fault lines and exacerbated our ethnic and religious differences and biases. The attitude of some politicians and their supporters towards the so-called non-indigenes questioned the concept on one Nigeria and its continued relevance. It questioned our diversity and plurality as one people. The election divided Nigerians more than ever before that it will take a longer time to heal the wounds of this election.
While Nigerians are waiting for the election tribunal to commence hearing the petitions, the APC government is saddling Nigerians with many tales and leveling accusations of plans to form an interim administration, incitement and treason against the opposition, especially the LP candidate, Peter Obi and his deputy, Datti Ahmed. The Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed, had in Washington DC accused Peter Obi of incitement, insurrection and treason. Instructively, Obi has swiftly replied that Lai Mohammed’s allegation was malicious and damaging to the image of Nigeria globally. The unnecessary allegation by Lai Mohammed is too weighty to be ignored. Treason is a serious charge that nobody should play ping pong with. It is neither a palm wine nor a moi moi tale. He should leave Obi alone.
It is my candid advice that Lai Mohammed should not trivialize treason and must weigh his utterances before an international audience. Why going abroad to allege that someone is planning insurrection and incitement against the government he is a serving minister? Why spending the tax payer’s money to embark on an unnecessary media blitz abroad at a time many Nigerians are suffering from excruciating poverty imposed on the people by the APC government? He must desist from his usual propaganda of past years and be thinking of life after government.
The polity is already charged, we don’t need a Lai Mohammed to overcharge it with his fiery rhetoric. He should not use Peter Obi to ply is propaganda trade. He must leave Peter Obi alone and face the challenges facing the APC and its government. This is time for sober reflection on our journey of nationhood and appraise our mistakes and how to correct them. This is time to review the badly conducted 2023 polls and think of ways to remedy its monumental errors. We don’t need a Lai Mohammed to tell us that the 2023 poll was the freest and the most transparent in the history of Nigeria. Nigerians and the international community are aware of the glaring shortcomings of the poll. The minister of information should read foreign papers’ commentaries on the polls before trying to pool the wools over our very eyes and that of the international community.
The trouble with Nigeria is not Peter Obi or Datti Ahmed. It is not the opposition. The trouble lies within the APC and its supporters. The trouble with Nigeria now is the failure of INEC to conduct a free and fair poll as it promised. Muting the voice of the opposition or asking Nigerians to be silent in the face of grave injustice is another way of encouraging the reign of impunity and tyranny. Nigeria cannot exist and develop in the absence of justice, equity and good governance.
The 1999 Constitution allows all Nigerians the freedom of expression. That right include the right to criticize our electoral process, especially a highly flawed one as witnessed this year. The constitution allows Nigerians to criticize its government, especially a government that has failed in all its promises, including the promise to conduct the best poll ever and instill in the polity a legacy of democratic culture. What we have seen is the direct opposite. What is Lai Mohammed really telling the outside world? Nobody has told this APC government what Lai Mohammed told the PDP government under President Goodluck Jonathan before the 2015 polls. There is no bad name they didn’t call Jonathan including being clueless and sundry unprintable words used to harass the then president out of power.
He should not remind us of his propaganda years in government. He should come home if he hasn’t and face the mess left by his party. Under the APC watch Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world. Under the APC watch 133 million Nigerians became multi-dimensionally poor. Under the APC watch, there were plans to muscle the press and the opposition. That plan is still afoot. It is being championed by Lai Mohammed and people like him.
We shall not allow them muscle our views or our right to free speech or our right to hold the government of the day to account. It is never my intention to bore you with the many oddities of the APC administration. It is Lai Mohammed that is making me to remember them. I have since forgotten them in the spirit of one Nigeria and the need to sustain this wobbling democracy but Lai keeps reminding me of them. He should stop reminding them to me. I don’t need such combustive and inflammable reminders to know the wounds inflicted on us by the APC government.
Nigeria belongs to all of us. It is our own. We shall salvage it together. Salvaging it is not by muting the vocal opposition or silencing the critical majority. It is by dialogue, sober reflection and self-criticism. In this salvaging journey, we must tolerate criticisms, no matter how bitter. Nation building is not easy. It is sad that ours has taken a pretty long time and yet, we are not close to it. Instead of dissipating our energies on inanities, baseless allegations of treason, incitement and insurrection or embarking on a spirited campaign of calumny against our political opponents, let’s think of how to really heal a wounded and aggrieved nation after a flawed poll.
No amount of campaign of calumny or propaganda will wish away the wounds or the injustice of the poll. No amount of threats or intimidations will do so either. Where lies our hope? It lies in the judiciary. Will the judiciary rise to the occasion? Only time will tell. Let the judiciary start sitting on the presidential election petitions. There is even no time to waste. The window period of 180 days for the hearing of such matters will soon elapse. Let the matter start in earnest. News from the election petition hearing can douse the tension and anxiety in the country and not the needless propaganda by government officials.
