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Nigeria is clearly sitting on edge over the thorny issues arising from the outcome of the 2023 presidential elections. It all began with the electoral commission’s programmed and calculated acts of deception. Just before the last ballot was cast, the commission’s chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, acted in ways and manners that left no one in doubt about his dubious intent. He did not only observe the commission’s rules in breach, he came like a thief in the night with a hurriedly concocted result.
Since then, Nigeria has been in a state of suspended animation. Neither Mahmood nor those that gave him the odious assignment is having a good sleep. They are on edge over the unsettled and unsettling state of affairs. They have since realized that they handed over a poisoned chalice to the victor. That is why the victor cannot celebrate. He is in a duel with legitimacy. He has on his hands a Pyrrhic victory made more burdensome by an inward sense of guilt and criminality.
But then, as is the case with accustomed wrong doers, the conspirators have tried sometimes to put up a bold face in order to escape, even if momentarily, from the excruciating sense of guilt. Yet, the burden has refused to go away. As the May 29 date for inauguration of a new president approaches, the country is still grappling with uncertainty over what is to come. The government that midwifed the election and the contraption it handed over victory to are still running from pillar to post. In their insistence that the inauguration must take place, they see subversion in anything and everything that that is not in tune with their unidimensional sense of reality. They want to force their conspiracy down our throats. Those who do not want to swallow the phlegm are packaged and sold as enemies, real or imagined.
But the plot and ploy are not working. Mahmood, the culprit-in-chief, is still stewing in confusion. The figures he hurriedly announced in the unholy hours of the night have refused to add up, months after. That is why he and his commission are opposed to live telecast of the Tribunal’s proceedings. They do not want Nigerians to witness first hand the sleight of hand that went into the computation of the results. In the same vein, Bola Tinubu and his party want the proceedings to be held off camera. Like the electoral commission , they want to hide behind the scenes. They want to reduce the burden of guilt to the barest minimum. They do not want Nigerians to be brought face to face with the roguery that took place. We understand their worries. If the electoral commission and the Bola Tinubu camp do not have anything to hide, they would have felt free like the other parties in the dispute over a possible live telecast of the proceedings. They are running away from what promises to be a telling embarrassment.
It is in this state of anomie that the BBC has stepped in with its damning expository on the disputed elections. Using Rivers State as case study, the broadcast medium has told the chilling story of how the results of the presidential election were falsified and altered to ensure a Tinubu victory. It also presented us with a detailed expose of how Peter Obi’s votes were wantonly suppressed, criminally discounted and, in most cases, fraudulently credited to Bola Tinubu. Even though we were fully aware of these infractions before now, the BBC Report has finally lent credence to what we already know.
We have heard some people say that the case in one state alone is not enough to delegitimize the result of the entire presidential election. But we know what they are up to. They want to run away from the facts. The truth they are reluctant to acknowledge is that Rivers is not an isolated case. It is just a case in point. What transpired there must have taken place in a number of other states. Nigerians know this. The evidences have since been compiled and presented to the appropriate quarters for adjudication. The BBC report has just presented our courts additional raw materials to work with.
Strangely, in the midst of all this, the United States, the world’s watchdog, which recently placed a visa ban on Nigerians that undermined the 2023 elections, one way or another, is beginning to attitudinize with the product of an illegitimate electoral outcome. It was reported a few days ago that the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, called Tinubu to pledge his country’s readiness to strengthen US-Nigeria partnership with the incoming administration.
This volte face by the United States has left many wondering. Why will the US, the supposed bastion of democracy, be romancing with an arrangement that does not meet the minutest requirement of a democratic order? Agents of the US government were here when Nigeria was brazenly raped through a sham election. They witnessed the wanton subversion of the democratic process perpetrated by Nigeria’s electoral commission. It was so bad that, for the first time in Nigeria’s democratic journey, there is so much hoopla over what to do with the blatantly compromised election. Issues surrounding this have led to uncertainty over what the Inauguration Day of May 29 will look like.
This is the dilemma that Nigerians are facing. As they wait for matters to come to a head, they are taking consolation in the fact that the courts are there, hopefully, to right the wrongs that took place. Until that is done, they had thought that the United States, a country that flaunts so much democratic credentials, would suspend judgment on the outcome of the hotly contested elections until the courts make the final pronouncement. Strangely and surprisingly, the US is endorsing an order that is patently undemocratic. The contradiction is too bemusing to be comprehended by those who believe in democratic tenets and ethos. If the US government under Joe Biden goes ahead with the endorsement of the rape of the democratic order that took place in Nigeria, America will no longer earn the respect of friends and advocates of democracy anywhere in the world. Indeed, if the US turns a blind eye to the situation in Nigeria at moment, it will become clear to one and all that America should no longer be seen as a model to be aspired to in the area of democracy and good governance.
But there is an embedded message in what the United States is trying to do. That message is that the country does not, in truth, care about the developing world such as Nigeria. America will not lose sleep over Nigeria. They expect you to fight your own wars. In other words, we as a people and a country, we should take our destiny in our own hands.
