Presidential Muhammadu Buhari made a promise recently to leave a legacy of clean and fair elections with 2023 general elections as the bet. Some politicians and Nigerians did not take him serious. They do not believe him. Governor Nyesom Wike, that political gadfly of this dispensation is one of such politicians. Governor Wike was indeed cynical about that presidential promise as he instantly retorted that President Buhari allowing clean and fair elections was tantamount to sentencing his party, the All Progressives Congress to a life bereft of electoral victories in Nigeria. But President Buhari in an effort to convince skeptics cited the recent governorship elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun States as proof of his presidential integrity. But skeptics point to the peopling of INEC with members with APC partisan loyalties. Echoing President Buhari’s promise the Independent National Electoral Commission had also at various fora made similar promise but people do not actually place any premium on INEC’s promises as it is anything but independent and free of manipulations by the controlling powers that live above the law.
However, it is possible that President Buhari meant what he was saying about leaving behind clean and fair elections in 2023 as his legacy to Nigeria. Why do I say this? Certain recent happenings in the polity including the consistency of presidential declarations regarding clean and fair elections seem to bear out Mr President in his avowals. Ekiti and Anambra State governorship election, apart from the vote-buying incidents which the police and other security agencies failed to stop was fairly clean and fair. Osun State governorship was a litmus test whereby president did not allow INEC to play its subterfuge of ‘inconclusive election’ despite alleged pressure by APC henchmen on president Buhari to nudge INEC to do something. If anybody should be an apostle for clean and fair election, it should be General Buhari. In the first place, President Buhari remains the best known beneficiary of clean and fair elections in Nigeria. This is because since 2003 when he started contesting presidential elections in Nigeria he has always alleged that he lost the election because of rigging and other political manipulations. And in those elections (2003, 2007 and 2011) he never believed that he lost fairly but that he was a victim of the evil system. And you dare not refer him to his January 1st speech as Head State after his December 31, 1983 military coup where he analyzed parties ‘roles in the rigging of 1983 general election which by analogy means that his respective parties (APP, ANPP and CPC) were also guilty of indulging in rigging and doing any of the manipulative acts other parties did relative to their strength (materially and otherwise), and still do to win elections. Deconstructing his condemnations of those presidential elections prior to 2015, or indeed his body language, Mr Buhari never seems to believe in the political truism that a party is only as strong to rig an election in its area of strong footing, acceptance and followership. So in actual fact under present dispensation, President Buhari remains the very first beneficiary of clean and fair elections which the very beloved former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, his kinsman made possible by doing the most unlikely political act in Nigeria of condemning the very election that brought him to power and vowing to carry out a drastic and comprehensive electoral reforms. He did not live to see through the reforms or to witness the end product but his protégé and successor; President Goodluck Jonathan remained faithful to President Yar’Adua’s testament by carrying through the reforms and even willingly sacrificed himself and his presidential term to actualize it. So, it is possible that a pang of conscience is stalking President Buhari to do the needful to have a peaceful retirement from politics. After all, what does he want out of politics that he has not accomplished byway of taking care of himself and his family and entrenching his Fulani group. And by intuition, he may have surmised that it is possible that bad politics, rigged elections in favour of his APC may set off a chain of socio-political upheaval and turmoil that may destroy all these personal achievements thereby endangering him and family and ethnic group as was the case with General Abacha. And one never knows, whether the president has had a premonition that the incubus he foresaw in the 2015 general elections when he threatened that unless the government conducted a clean and fair election that the baboon and the dog will soaked themselves in blood may yet come to actuality in 2023 given the youthful seizure of the political space, a foretaste of which was the ENDSARS.
Furthermore, the president, prior to his present disastrous politics and governance was caste in the mould of an impeccable, incorruptible and sincere soldier who would rather die for his beliefs and integrity than allow corruption and vile acts of any kind to taint that reputation. But all sincere officious-by-standers are ready with their verdicts that the politics and elections thereto under President Buhari between 2015 and 2021 have been anything but good. Elections have been blatantly rigged and even a new system of manipulations called ‘inconclusive elections’ and vote-buying’ was added to the other evils that define politics and elections in Nigeria. What president or leader would like after benefitting from a good system enthroned by his predecessor allow the alternate angles to this good system, that is to say, evil system of rigging and manipulations to be ascribed to his posterity? Nobody! Surely not this man Allah has blessed with uncommon grace of becoming ruler of Nigeria both as a soldier and a civilian. Finally, it is possible that President Buhari might have reasoned that 2023 like 1993 will be a watershed in Nigeria and unless the politics and electoral system are made right Nigeria’s existence may be threatened as the public anger like an active but dormant volcano may explode and wash Nigeria off in a torrent of seismic lava. Nigerian youths’ anger currently is a simmering active volcano that has somehow been a tingling sensation which a rigged or manipulated election may set off in 2023. Certainly, Mr President would not like to witness such occurrence or be the leader through whose actions or inactions made such occurrence possible.
So, having reviewed the possible reasons for President Buhari’s present determination to have a legacy of clean and fair elections, skeptics like Governor Wike have pooh-poohed the President thus electing to be the Biblical Thomas that must see to believe. Some believers in Buhari’s cause are already enthusing his patriotic qualities and his claimed incorruptibility. But there are also those that stand to lose from President Buhari standing on his avowals and determination to have clean and fair elections as his legacy in Nigeria in 2023. These segments of Nigerian society are his political party, the APC and its partisans and apparatchik who are afraid as Governor Wike alleged that they cannot win any election in any clean and fair electoral contests. Having observed the disturbing declarations by President Buhari to have clean and fair elections in 2023, APC’s governors paid him a visit at his presidential palace and had him on the hot seat to repeat what they have been hearing in the public space from him. Trust President Buhari in his good elements to be frank and brutal. He told the governors and their APC party leaders to go back to their party and states and work to win elections on a clean and fair template or else forget counting on presidential manipulations or interference. There is one aspect that excites my curiosity about that presidential dressdown of the governors, that is, that he would neither “allow anyone to use personal resources nor their influence to intimidate” voters nor tolerate “intimidations materially, morally or physically” in the electoral processes. According to President Buhari, only a leadership that comes through clean and fair elections will stand in a sound footing to lead positively. This declaration is plain in its denotative and connotative meanings to include presidential fatwa against ballot snatching and other violent acts, vote-buying with cash and materials or coercing subjects by traditional rulers and even governors. This is a tall order but we trust that President Buhari will be equal to this task.
When I read the President’s declaration to the APC governors what immediately set me thinking is that President Buhari may have resolved given the reasons earlier adumbrated in preceding paragraphs of this essay to bequeath clean and fair election to Nigerians as his claimed eternal legacy. Mr President has never ceased from extolling and honouring President Jonathan’s handling of the 2015 presidential election and his subsequent act of conceding defeat even before final collation of the votes which act shocked Mr President. So, if President Jonathan could bequeath such fantastic political feat and have as a result become a darling of Nigerians and a toast to the honoured circles of international community while not him. Or why should he risk the judgment of posterity or even endanger Nigeria by allowing or even being a party to rigging or manipulating elections for those who may not, and are incapable of exculpating him from such treasonous act against his beloved Nigeria. An election rigged in favour of his party will haunt him forever and remove whatever honour or credibility that remains of his stellar reputation that post 2015 politics and governance seem to have eaten away a substantial portion due to pandering to party leaders’ idiosyncrasies and baleful ethnic and religious inclinations. Conducting a clean and fair election in 2023 will be a means of restoring a badly battered reputation or redeeming it like President Jonathan’s 2015 general elections or the June 12 Presidential Election remain a watershed and a reference point for General Babangida even though it had been annulled. This is wishing President Buhari God’s speed and protection from the wiles of political sharks and barracudas of Nigeria’s monster-infested political waters.