Even before one ballot was cast in the March 28 presidential and legislative elections, few could resist the temptation to see the election as a referendum on the Goodluck Jonathan government rather than an endorsement of Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate. Gen Buhari is undoubtedly qualified to rule, and he brings into the presidency rare qualities seldom found in Nigerian rulers, to wit, discipline, honesty, reliability and determination. But Dr Jonathan’s weaknesses were even more striking and electorally damaging than the general’s strengths were electorally productive and praiseworthy. Though the APC candidate trumped his PDP opponent by a robust two million plus votes, the winning party must judge the strength of the foundations upon which its March 28 victory is built if it is to finalise the design and construction of the former opposition party, achieve success, and build a lasting legacy.
As comprehensive as the party’s victory in the North may appear, and as solid as that victory may seem in the North-Central and in the Southwest, APC’s electoral performance, which will most probably be replicated in Saturday’s state polls, may be more tentative than the party may want to believe. While its victory is unprecedented, making it the first time in Nigeria a ruling party was defeated by the opposition at the national level, it is not clear the party’s success is due mainly to the strength of its manifesto or to the voters’ love for the party. The opposition party’s victory is of course not attenuated by fears of future disappointment; but given the scale of the rot left by Dr Jonathan and his team, and the drastic remedies the winner will need to administer very deeply and quickly, the infatuation between the voters and the APC could very quickly turn into frustration or, worse, repudiation.
If the APC is able to measure the structure and amperage of the victory it secured over the PDP last Tuesday, it will put things in the right perspective. It will easily recognise that the talents and industry it required to defeat the PDP and Dr Jonathan are somewhat fundamentally different from the qualifications and attributes it needs to manage its success and govern well. There is nothing in their short pedigree, having come all of two years, nor in the rapid and drastic manner they secured victory, to suggest they do not have the men to lift the party above the common level, or the tactics and strategies to cobble together a great and successful cabinet.
The party appears to know already the priorities of the electorate. First is the economy, which decline is indicated by revenue shortfalls and states unable to pay salaries or execute major projects. Second is insecurity, also depicted by the humiliating help Nigeria is receiving from neighbouring countries and mercenaries to fight Boko Haram. On Friday, the Chadian army chief publicly mourned the near absence of Nigerian troops on the frontlines. Third is the abducted Chibok schoolgirls whose rescue and return the country craves badly. And fourth, on the aesthetic level, is the need to build the support pillars of Nigerian politics and democracy, a task the PDP forsook for 16 years.
The APC made history last week by winning the March 28 polls, and changing the face of the incoming National Assembly; it stands on the threshold of a much bigger history if it manages against all predictions to assemble a competent multicultural and multidimensional cabinet to right the wrongs of decades past. It will need the disciplined commitment of the president-elect himself, the energy and vision of men like Bola Ahmed Tinubu, guardians of the constitution and civil rights like the incoming vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, and the maturity of party elders like John Oyegun and Ogbonnaya Onu. Atiku Abubakar will have a say, though he had often showed a willingness to run with the hare and hunt with the hound; and so, too, will former president Olusegun Obasanjo, notwithstanding his imperiousness and messianism.
Though he is a man of few words, yet even in his quietude, Gen Buhari has given the impression he is loth to inquire into the financial and probably also political madness that unhinged the country and predisposed it to disequilibrium. However, he really has little choice but to probe the past, for the scale of the madness must be investigated and requited if similar malfeasances are not to be repeated. There was hardly any election in much of the Southeast and South-South last month; even if the APC will not head for the tribunal, it must document what went wrong, and in the case of criminal acts, such as were orchestrated in Rivers State before and during the presidential poll, those indicted must without fail be brought to justice. Dr Jonathan appears to have got some soft landing; but everyone knows he opened the country’s financial tap and let loose a gale of subversion of the people’s will through unrestrained inducement. Surely, the money came from somewhere. The country needs to know, if not immediately, then sometime in the near future, how and why institutional controls failed so woefully. If perpetrators are not called to account now, nature itself will withhold its goodwill. The blood of the innocent must be avenged in Rivers State and elsewhere.
The nature and dynamics of the APC victory is in many ways instructive of the present and the future. The Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, actively campaigned for Dr Jonathan on the dubiety that voting for APC was an endorsement of the enslavement of the Yoruba by the North. But both the results of the 2011 and March 28, 2015 polls showed clearly that the nature and dynamics of Nigeria’s electoral politics had changed considerably. No zone, let alone a cabal, can win elections without an active alliance with some other zones. Dr Jonathan realised this in 2011 but strangely failed to nurture and sustain the alliance that brought him to power. Gen Buhari failed in 2011 because he embraced the old politics of dominance, but succeeded last month partly because he embraced the new politics of accommodation. If its victory is not to be a fluke, the APC must recognise and nurture these new dynamics. Despite the shape of its electoral performance, especially its near zero impact on the Southeast, it must not fail to bring into the cabinet great minds from that protesting or absentminded region, men and women like Charles Soludo, Pat Utomi and Victoria Ezekwesili. There is no room for the bitter, malicious and acrimonious politics of the past, the kind still risibly and anachronistically subscribed to by Afenifere.
Above all, the APC must assign itself the legacy responsibility of laying a solid foundation for democracy, the best in Africa. The PDP failed disastrously to carry out this responsibility. Now is the time for real democratic and structural change. To this end, APC must reform the system fundamentally and build and defend national institutions, including the security services bastardised by Dr Jonathan. It must also ensure that subsequent elections improve on the use of technology as well as neutralise violence in politics. The party won a historic election; after April 11, it must now settle down to its historic duty.
NATION
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