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The topic of this week’s column is not mine. It was deduced from the reaction of a young Northern Nigerian cerebral Medical Doctor from Taraba State to our last week’s article on this column titled “KWANKWASO V. OBI: WHICH WAY TO GO?”. Hear him, “Your description of the political aspirants and their situations vis-a-vis the political exigency in Nigeria right now is apt. Justice, fairness, inclusiveness, competence and youthful energy have put all the odds in favour of Obi, but the question is: Can the Igbos all stand up and be counted? Can the youth all come out and be counted? Can the political umpires stand to be counted? Can Nigerians rise above religious pettiness and tribal bigotry and be counted? We have a good chance to rewrite the history of the nation Nigeria!”. He has said it all.
Nigeria has had a chequered history from the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates in 1914 to independence, to the first military coup in Nigeria, to the civil war, to the first, second and third Republics, to the many military coups that interrupted the Republics, to the cancellation of June 12 presidential election, to the democratic movements against military rule after the cancellation, to the emergence of the fourth republic which we are in now. It is by miracle that we are still together as a country. Last week we observed that the two major political parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have failed the country and the country is groaning under bondage, eagerly and earnestly waiting and yearning for the manifestation of saviours and leaders who will deliver us from these powers of darkness and translate us into the glorious destiny which Almighty God created Nigeria to be. We concluded that we need a democratically engineered disruptive change that will crystallise this dream. We compared the two emerging political parties and their arrow heads and came to the conclusion that the Labour Party, led by Peter Obi, stands the best chance to lead the charge. Nobody imagines it will be a walk over. For Obi to overcome, a lot of structures must be put in place and a lot of groups must stand to be counted.
We were surprised that this Northern Nigerian Doctor, while agreeing with us that Peter Obi should represent the third force that should rescue Nigeria, was most wary about whether Obi will get the support of Ndigbo for the Obi project. It is surprising because Obi is Igbo himself. He must have raised this alarm because since the inception of this nascent democracy in 1999, Ndigbo have sheepishly voted for the PDP without negotiating their interest in exchange for their votes with the attendant consequence that after 24 years of the arrival of our democracy, the PDP did not consider the people of the South-East qualified to be either the President or the Vice-President. This means that all the 95% votes Ndigbo invested in the PDP since 1999 were wasted votes. However, his fears were not unfounded. After the great assault on the psyche of Ndigbo by PDP and APC, which jettisoned the zoning formula, simply to frustrate the emergence of a presidential candidate from the South-East, one would have thought that every politician of note from the South-East would have risen to the occasion and vociferously joined the quest for an Obi presidency. But this was not exactly what happened.
We saw politicians like Ike Ekweremadu openly campaigning against the candidacy of Obi, claiming he cannot win the election. He said this, standing right in front of the presidential candidate of the PDP, who, knowingly, usurped the position of the South-East in the presidential ticket. He said this, knowing that his action will put a seal to the injustice done against his own people but he didn’t mind. He was willing to take the crumbs that fell off his masters table.
In the APC, David Umahi, the Governor of Ebonyi State, who rightly left the PDP because of his conviction that the PDP is a fraud against Ndigbo by denying them of their turn at the presidency, despite the overwhelming support of Ndigbo over the years, joined the APC to actualize the ambition of becoming President through the platform. When he received the same treatment from the APC that he decried in PDP, one would have thought that he would have given the APC the same treatment he gave the PDP and evacuated himself and his supporters from APC to actualize his ambition, but he rather turned round to blame everyone, but himself, for the failure and surprisingly pledged his support to APC and its candidate, after accusing the party of perpetrating injustice against the people of the South-East. By declaring his support for the injustice perpetrated by APC against the South-East, he has become an accomplice to this injustice and is liable for any act of further denigration of the South-East people in APC. We have no doubt in our minds that the acquiescence of these South-East politicians for the injustice committed against Ndigbo is emboldening these parties to become insensitive to the yearning of Nigerians. PDP rigged its Vice-Presidential candidate election in favour of the loser, while APC resorted to a Muslim-Muslim ticket for this election. This is why the legitimate question of this cerebral Northern Doctor is germane. “Can the Igbos all stand up and be counted?”. If a Northerner is yearning for an Obi because he is convinced Obi will better his life and that of his family, it then bothers on share stupidity and foolishness for any Igbo person not to stand up for his own.
This Doctor did not stop there, he challenged the youths on Obi. In this regard, he was also intentional. When Buhari was signing the not too young to run bill into law, he promised to hand over power to a more youthful candidate. He understood the difference in the energy level of a youthful person and an elderly person because he was Head of State and President at the two stages of his life. President IBB called for a more youthful candidate for the 2023 presidential election. He was firm on excluding politicians who had exceeded 70 years of age. Indeed it is crystal clear that any aged person will not be able to carry out the activities required to bring this country out of its doldrums. This situation is complicated if such aged persons are unhealthy in addition. Unfortunately these two political parties elected two National Chairmen of about 80 years of age and complemented them with the election of two presidential candidates of about 80 years of age who are known to be having health challenges. Both of them have permanent suites abroad where they regularly visit for treatment. It is not an offence to be sick and it’s natural for aged people to be prone to sickness. What is abnormal is that a leader knows that he is old and sick but he wants to assume one of the most stressful jobs in the world. It’s obvious that this is the time for the youths who have been taken for granted over the years because of their docility.
The combined effects of age and sickness will inevitably result in failure of the leader which will leave the country at the mercy of cabals who will utilise the opportunity of his absence to hijack the levers of power and continue the ruining of the country. Obi and Datti are the most youthful of the contestants and the Doctor was right in asking “Can the youth all come out and be counted?”. If the youths fail to stand up to be counted, they must realise that this generation of vipers have destroyed their own generation and have now turned to the next generation to destroy them too. They have been at home without education while all the old politicians have their own children being educated abroad. They line up for hours waiting to buy fuel from the filling station at an ever increasing price for a product which is flowing in their land like water. This government has borrowed money which the next generation may not be capable of paying. Their future is already being mortgaged by these conscienceless leaders. If the youths can only stand to be counted, they may just be on their way to rewriting their histories in Nigeria for the peace, order and good governance of Nigeria. If they decide to sell their votes for money, they would have themselves to blame when their destinies are destroyed by the greedy leaders they will enthrone in office.
Can the political umpires stand to be counted? Following the build up to the 2023 general elections, the electoral umpire asked for major ammendments to the Electoral Act and got substantial portion of their proposals. They do not have any excuse not to perform. They must be wary of politicians who are experts in circumventing beautiful pieces of legislature to perpetrate unlawful acts to achieve unfair advantages against their opponents. We used to hear about ballot box snatching when manual collation was the only thing allowed by law. Now that we are graduating to electronic transfer of results, ballot box snatching is increasingly becoming unbeneficial. It is gradually being replaced with vote buying. Illicit manipulation of the poverty instincts of the voters with monetary inducement to unnaturally sway them to vote for their unpreferred candidates. The Commission must devise a method to deal with this. Rigging must not be limited to ballot box stuffing, over voting, manipulation and falsification of election results. It must be extended to the elimination of child voters, violent interruption of voting of the supporters of opponents in areas where the opponents do not have firm representatives.
Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation. There’s no doubt that we must factor in the idea of balancing our ethnic and religious diversity in the composition of our government. However, once the ticket is well balanced, in accordance with the relevant laws, we must choose the best that will deliver peace, order and good governance to us, whether the ticket accords with our own premodial sentiments or not. We must rise above religious pettiness and tribal bigotry and be counted. A good Muslim is better than a bad Christian and a good Christian is better than a bad Muslim. It is in consideration of all these qualities that made this Doctor to conclude that all odds are in favour of Peter Obi, a Southern Christian with another cerebral Vice-Presidential candidate in Datti Baba-Ahmed. These two look quite cool, calm and calculated to qualify as agents of disruptive change that can rewrite the history of this great country. Question is, can you stand up to be counted?
