Few subjects excite political journalists more than elections.
To size up the major candidates – digging into their backgrounds and records, pointing up contradictions in their utterances and their biographies, weighing their grasp of issues domestic and foreign, evaluating their trustworthiness as well as their preparedness for the offices they are seeking, indicating who is up and who is down, and generally presenting pictures on which the attentive public can ground their choice: this, in brief, is the responsibility of the political reporter.
The job guarantees access to the candidates and their associates, often makes them privy to all kinds of secrets; it tests where the reporter’s allegiance lies – to the candidate, with whom he or she may have developed close ties, or to the public, of which he or she is a representative. This vital distinction is often overlooked, but it remains a bedrock principle of political journalism.
I have tried to follow most elections in Nigeria and indeed here in the United States, in that tradition of political journalism.
Last week’s gubernatorial election in Kogi was different, however. I had a vested interest in the outcome. The race was between a divisive, incurably parochial, lethargic, do-nothing incumbent, and a challenger who had been there before and performed creditably but was heavily tainted, not without justification, by grave charges of corruption, and by delusions of grandeur.
I communicated this intelligence to the APC hierarchy and suggested that they talk Audu out of it and assure him he would be accorded the place of “Father of the APC in Kogi”, with all the attendant rights and privileges. After all, he had served as elected governor of Kogi twice. No luck.
In the primaries, Audu won more delegates than the rest of the field put together; none of them could match his financial muscle. He had the numbers, and since democracy as they say in Nigeria is a game of numbers, he was for all practical purposes the people’s choice.
He had run a good race, and based on the plurality of his votes, the online newspapers Saharareporters projected him the winner. Even if Wada won overwhelmingly in Abaji, he would at best come a close second. In the event, Audu won in Abaji, and it was no longer whether the official election umpire would proclaim him winner, but when.
The column you are reading now was going to be an open letter to Audu congratulating him on his epochal victory and entreating him to make his sojourn in Lugard House a mission of public service and personal redemption. No personal aggrandisement; no imperial airs; no hubris; just devoted service to the public with humility, and in a spirit of reconciliation.
I called the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to congratulate him. His phone rang busy. Perhaps he was taking calls from jubilant associates and supporters. Some thirty minutes later, my call went through. I congratulated him on the hard-fought victory, saying that it presaged the prospect of change, real change, coming to Kogi.
His voice was flat, bereft of its usual animation. It did not sound like the voice of a person who had just wrought another political miracle. He said he was attending to an emergency, and that I should call him later.
What emergency? I wondered. Surely, the usual suspects could not be trying to fix the results, certainly not with a new sheriff in town. Besides, the Arch Fixer who always did their dirty work has been sent on permanent retirement, together with his infernal bag of tricks. What emergency could Tinubu have been talking about? What was going on?
All this was before INEC declared the election inconclusive, because Audu’s plurality is smaller than the number of registered voters in precincts where the poll was cancelled for one reason or another and would have to be repeated.
Still, it seemed to me that as morning shows the light of day, the figures now available indicated powerfully that Audu and the APC would win, no matter how they dressed it up.
All this was academic, however. Audu had died even before they began collating the field reports. But only those in his innermost circle were privy to the fact. News of his death was first broken bySaharareporters in a terse bulletin. If I did not know that online newspaper’s scrupulous commitment to getting the news fast and getting it right, I would have dismissed the bulletin as a sick joke.
I called professional colleagues in Lagos for confirmation. They said they had been working the phones but could still not confirm. Next I called Kogi. Some of the political figures had not even heard and were asking me for details. Several expatriate Nigerians here in the United States also called, believing that I would be in a position to confirm the news and provide details
For me, confirmation came from Premium Times about an hour after Saharareporters broke the news.
Pulling the strands together, I now realise that the “emergency” Tinubu said he was grappling with was Audu’s death. In retrospect, it is a wonder that he could keep so calm under circumstances that would have rendered a person of lesser straw apoplectic.
By some accounts, it was INEC’s declaring the election incomplete that induced the condition – was it a stroke, or a heart attack – from which Audu died. That was not the case. He had died, it is necessary to repeat, before INEC began collating the returns.
The emerging truth is that he had been in poor health, and his condition was exacerbated by the rigours of the election campaign, to the point that it was with great discomfort that he turned up to cast his ballot on Election Day.
His death has plunged Kogi and indeed Nigeria into murky constitutional waters, with some persons learned in the law asserting that Audu’s death had rendered the poll a nullity, and that a fresh gubernatorial election would have to be held.
Others just as learned in the law insist that Audu and his running mate had won the election outright, because even if the votes cast in the supplementary election INEC says it is going to conduct in the 19 wards where no voting took place – if all the potential votes from those precincts went to Governor Wada, he would still have polled less than Audu overall.
They might have added Audu that won in 16 of the 21 local government areas in Kogi, whereas Wada carried only five.
Abubakar Audu lived a rich and textured life, the stuff of a Sophoclean tragedy. His death is likely to generate more sympathy and admiration than he enjoyed while he was among us.
NATION
END
So painful.