Follow Us on Google
“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.”
—Elbert Hubbard
By Omoniyi Salaudeen
All eyes are now on the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) for the anticipated release of the final outcome of yesterday’s Presidential and National Assembly polls. Unlike in the previous experiences, this is by far the most existential and consequential election for Nigeria’s democracy, owing to the controversial circumstance under which the exercise was conducted.
All the while, President Muhamadu Buhari had consistently assured that he would leave a legacy of free, fair and credible election for posterity.
Elected twice on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), in 2015, in the first instance, and in 2019 for a second term, he needed to do that to cultivate the confidence of the generality of the people as well as the international community to give legitimacy to the transition process and by extension the incoming government.
Following the successful conduct of the election, both domestic and international accredited observers have filed their reports, but the ultimate verdict as to the credibility of the process will still depend largely on the way the state gladiators are going to react to the final results.
Due to the fact the political class has developed notoriety for electoral contestation; there is no convergence on what constitutes a credible poll. In their queer and weird understanding of the usage of the word, an election is credible in the eyes of the state actors only in as much as its favours a particular party and its candidate. On the other hand, the process is fraught with irregularities if the result turns the other way.
For this election, there can only be a change of narrative if the losers would be magnanimous enough to accept the outcome of the polls in good faith and congratulate the winners, and the winners in turn would be mature enough to celebrate victory with modesty and decorum.
In that event, President Buhari would go down in history as the real founder of renascent democracy in Nigeria, for he would forever be remembered for demonetizing politics and politicking in the country. Should the process end in a fiasco, however, his integrity would suffer severe damage for putting the masses in needless pain over the naira swap policy as a way of curbing vote-buying. And he would be de-robed of his toga of integrity.
To be sure, Saturday’s election marked the sixth civilian-to-civilian transition since the advent of the present political dispensation in 1999. But in all the 24 years of the unbroken democracy, none of the past elections had been as controversial as yesterday’s poll. None had generated as much suspicion as the naira redesign policy, which the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, foisted on the people less than three weeks before the election.
Some unfortunate relations of the victims of the protests that trailed the wrong implementation of the policy are still out there nursing the wounds all alone, while the gladiators carry on as if nothing has happened. The outcome of this election will determine the success or failure of this policy.
Of course, the contention here is not so much about the propriety or otherwise of the policy as to the inauspicious timing of its implementation. More fundamental also is the issue of consultations with relevant stakeholders before Emefiele went on air to announce the decision to redesign some naira denominations (N200, N500, and N1000. Section 19 of the CBN Act 2007 empowers the apex bank to issue the national currency in “such forms and designs and bear such devices as shall be approved by the President on the recommendation of the Board.”
As experts argue, it is a global practice for the central banks to redesign, produce and circulate new legal tender every five to eight years. But the standard way of implementation is to allow old and new currencies to circulate concurrently over a period of time until the latter is phased out as legal tender.
But in Nigeria, what is considered normal in other climes is not always normal. And so, Emefiele, leveraging the fire brigade governance style of President Buhari and his obstinacy to public opinion, went to duty with frenetic energy, which some people found to be more alarming than assuring, declaring December 15, 2022, as the commencement date for the circulation of the newly redesigned notes and January 31, 2023 as the deadline for the swapping of the existing currency.
Yet, with all the resistance and political brouhaha that compelled a slight adjustment to February 10 and the subsequent ruling of the Supreme Court asking the parties in contention to allow the old and new currency to circulate, none is available to the citizens to spend. The nation’s economy has been literally shut down in the face of anger and misery, which the masses have had to grapple with.
For being unable to convince President Buhari to halt the policy, APC as a ruling party has been put on the defensive, while the opposition parties have cashed in on the public discontent to discredit the present administration for its abysmal failure in the last seven and a half years.
But as the governors are insisting on maintaining the status quo, so has Emefiele continued to defend the policy with malicious gusto, arguing that it is the only way to reduce the N3.32 trillion excess liquidity cash in circulation to just N500 billion to lower the rate of inflation in the country.
No economic expert has found merit in the argument. It rather raises public suspicion about the motive behind the obstinacy of the President on the issue. This is particularly more so given the surreptitious manner with which Emefiele unilaterally initiated the idea of the naira swap cum cashless policy, as well as other sundry issues associated with the implementation and the attendant anger and misery.
First, it is inconceivable that the CBN would bypass the parent ministry to seek the approval of the president for the policy even without considering the enormous cost that would come with its failure in terms of economic and political implications. Though the core mandate of the CBN is to issue currency and distribute it within the economy, the 1997 amendment made the CBN directly responsible to the Ministry of Finance.
But Emefiele erred by circumventing the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, even though the President had to later admit in principle that the authority to do so emanated from him, purportedly to checkmate vote-buying, banditry, kidnapping, and ransom-taking.
This sounds quite convincing, but in a way, it is a fundamental error of judgment for the president to have given his approval without carrying the minister along. For doing so, one could blame the minister when she declared before the National Assembly that she knew nothing about the policy, warning of the dire consequences on the economy. Now, the fear of the possible economic and social disruptions that may arise from the implementation of the policy on the fragile transitional process is a real and present danger.
It has become Buhari’s style of governance to look the other way while his lieutenants are fighting in the open over matters that could be ordinarily resolved within the cabinet. Some people believe that Emefiele capitalized on this apparent weakness to sell the dummy about the naira redesign to him, playing on the sentiment of the past experience of 1984 when he (Buhari) was the military Head of State. It is a sublime irony that Nigerians are once again made to go through the unpleasant memories of that era of dictatorship under a democratic government.
The implications are far-reaching for the polity. One, because the policy is fraught with certain irregularities – wrong timing, short deadline, sinister motive, and political undercurrent, for whatever motive, Buhari has tactically created room for disputation of results which may be very difficult to handle at this time.
The APC governors who are leading the pack of opposition elements against the policy believe that the wrong implementation of the policy would put their presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at a disadvantage vis-à-vis his other contenders who have elected to maintain a conspiracy of silence on the issue to score cheap political points.
It’s a time bomb. For the first time, Buhari has inaugurated a transition committee to monitor and ensure a seamless transfer of power. This is more suspicious than assuring because the results of the election have to be accepted to be credible in the first place before a change of baton can take place. Whether the nation will get it right or not this time around, the next few hours will determine.
General Muhammadu Buhari was the military Head of State between December 31, 1983, and August 1985. After nearly three decades out of power, he got elected in 2015 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress with its change mantra and was re-elected again in 2019.
