By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Published: November 22, 2011
Professor Chinua Achebe, Africa’s most famous novelist, and Nigerian patriot par excellence, rejected the offer of the Commander of the Federal Republic medal, the nation’s third highest, last week as he did seven years ago.
When he first did in 2004, the globally acclaimed literary icon lamented the parlous state of the polity, caused by the disingenuousness and mendacity of the political leadership. That was when President Olusegun Obasanjo’s shenanigans in office almost reduced Nigeria to a banana republic. Achebe was particularly irked that Obasanjo was overtly indulging malcontents and lawbreakers in his home state, Anambra.
“For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay,” Achebe told Obasanjo in his rejection letter. “I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”
More than four years after Obasanjo, the brash and impetuous General left office, Achebe is still saddened that nothing has changed even when President Goodluck Jonathan, the self-acclaimed good man, is on the saddle.
“The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed, let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must, therefore, regretfully decline the offer again,” the literary icon said in a terse statement.
But Jonathan thinks Achebe got it all wrong. A lot has changed, and positively so, he declared. This is the golden era of Nigeria’s democracy and nobody is complaining, which makes Achebe action regrettable.
Jonathan said Achebe was grossly misinformed, irreverently advising him to come back home. “Coming as it does, against the background of the widely acclaimed electoral reforms undertaken by the Jonathan administration, the claim by Prof. Achebe clearly flies in the face of the reality of Nigeria’s current political situation,” the President through his spokesman, Reuben Abati.
“The Jonathan administration has made tremendous efforts to positively change the political architecture complained about by Prof. Achebe and others.”
But rather than Achebe’s, it is Jonathan’s claims that flies in the face of reality. Proof? The murky Bayelsa political waters and brazen manipulation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election preparatory to the February 11, 2012 governorship poll by the President himself.
Like Obasanjo, Jonathan is brashly trying to impose a Governor on Bayelsans. Is the manipulation part of the administration’s “extensive electoral reforms to institute a regime of electoral integrity that all Nigerians can be proud of?”
For reasons that are at best self-serving and not altruistic, Jonathan does not want Sylva to have a second term. While I believe that the embattled Governor is not an exemplar of good governance, Jonathan did not do better when he was the governor of the beleaguered state and, therefore, has no moral authority to cast an accusatory stone at successor.
But what is even more worrisome is the President’s crude manipulation of the democratic process to ensure that his godson, Seriake Dickson, presently a member of the Federal House of Representatives, is foisted on hapless Bayelsans as their next Governor, willy-nilly. Is that the new Nigeria Jonathan is boasting of?
Alhaji Balarabe Musa, former Governor of old Kaduna State has decried the shenanigans. “The President is directly responsible for the situation because he has a problem with the Governor. But we know that other incumbents tried this before, with serious consequences on them. It is unfortunate that Jonathan cannot learn from those mistakes.”
So, what is the substance of the President’s self-acclaimed political re-engineering? How different is the Jonathan political architecture from that erected by his mentor, Obasanjo? Put differently, what has changed?
To ensure that the President’s anointed candidate becomes Governor regardless, PDP ignored a court order restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the PDP and its National Chairman, Alhaji Abubakar Baraje from “conducting, organizing or holding any meeting or ward congresses and from embarking on any activities leading to the holding of any fresh gubernatorial primary election” in the state.
Yet, the party had nothing to lose by obeying the court order or getting a superior court to vacate it because it had enough time to do either. The February 11, 2012 date for the poll gave the party a grace of 84 days from the November 19, 2011 date it fixed for the primary poll. The political parties have a minimum of 60 days within which to submit their candidates’ names to the INEC as prescribed by Section 31 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended). So, why the indecent haste?
But the PDP went ahead to conduct the primary election, declaring Dickson the winner with 365 votes. Chairman of the PDP Governorship primary electoral panel and Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade (retd), who announced the results said other aspirants, Fred Ekiyehga and Austin Febo, polled two votes each, while Francis Doukpola and Michael Kalango scored one vote each.
Yet, this was a primary election shunned by INEC, Jonathan himself, Sylva, his deputy, Werinipre Seibarugu, federal and state lawmakers, council chairmen and councilors, and 102 other delegates who banded under the aegis of Concerned Statutory Delegates. Three of the aspirants, Austin Febo, Christopher Fullpower Enai and Bolobou Orufa, staged a walkout.
To secure this victory for Dickson, Jonathan literally locked down the entire state, deploying thousands of heavily armed security men, including soldiers, mobile policemen, air force and naval personnel and operatives of the State Security Services (SSS). Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and helicopter gunships were deployed. What desperation! This is bad politics. Obasanjo could not have done worse.
The only reason why Dickson will be installed Bayelsa Governor in February is Jonathan and that is not democracy. The will of one man flies in the face of democracy, which promotes the will of the majority.
If this is what the so-called transformation agenda is about, then, Nigerians are in for it.
Even if we give the President the benefit of doubt and concede that he is throwing caution to the winds to manipulate the system because he is not sure that the democratic institutions will guarantee victory for the best candidate, assuming he genuinely believes that Dickson is the best candidate, what then is the worth of the electoral reform he is ululating about?
The truth is that the President is living in denial. He knows elections under his watch are as fraudulent as they have ever been. Nigerians have realized that their President is the archetypal Nigerian politician – opportunistic, egoistic and selfish.
There is nothing transcendental about Jonathan’s leadership. Unbridled arrogance of power and contempt for due process cannot be ingredients of a transformation agenda.
The unfortunate drama in Bayelsa represents the worst of Nigerian politics. So, Achebe was spot on when he said nothing has changed.
I can understand the President’s angst. It will only take a moral colossus like Achebe to deconstruct the Jonathan myth, which spin doctors have labored so hard to build.
But embedded in Achebe’s rebuke is the age-long saying that it is only a mad people that will do the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result.
