Ayomide
It could not have been a co-incidence that the report of the Justice Uwais Committee on Electoral Reform was released on the eve of the Supreme Court judgment on the 2007 General Elections. It was a well-choreographed effort by the regime of President Umaru Yar’adua to give an impression that the business of state was grinding on, regardless of the uncertainties about the legal position of the regime in power. The other element of the deft move was to make the country believe that the regime was truly committed to a reformation of the nation’s political system through the far-reaching steps which the electoral reform process might entail.
As it turned out, the Supreme Coirt of Nigeria, by a split decision confirmed Umaru Yar’adua, as having been elected in the 2007 polls. What it means is that the regime has found a legal justification for its existence, but implicit in the dissent of three of the seven judges, was that the regime is still unable to achieve the moral legitimacy which allows it to truly say that it rules in accordance with the will of the Nigerian people. Of course, they jubilated at the Aso Rock Villa, and PDP chieftains across the country have been buying spaces in Nigerian newspapers to congratulate themselves; but even they know that they have secured a very hollow victory and the silence of the graveyard in the country in the wake of their victory, is a referendum on the judgemnt which they have earned in the Supreme Court.
Quite a number of people that I know have been disappointed about the verdict of the court, against the backdrop of the massively rigged elections which national and international observers attested to being the worst they have ever witnessed. Even Obasanjo, in the heat of the early days of the perfidy, acknowledged that there were problems with the polls, not to talk of the main beneficiary himself, Umaru Yar’adua, who had the modesty to say that all was not well with the process that made him president. So why will the Supreme Court’s majority of judges still go ahead to affirm the elections? All I can tell those who set great store by the judiciary and were therefore disappointed, is that they might not know or acknowledge it, but the court is one of the main pillars of a class society, and when the chips are down, they would retreat into the mode which aids the survival of their class project. We sat the same thing in 2003, when Obasanjo’s fraudulent re-election was affirmed; so why do people think it was going to be different in 2008?
This point does not in any way erode from the decency and courage exhibited by the three judges who chose to dissent from the position of the majority. They showed that within the conservative redoubts of the courts, there are individuals who can reflect the feelings of the society and use the law to try to help us move in a direction which affirms hope for the people. Unfortunately, it fell far too short and as others have said, in response to the verdict of the Supreme Court, we lost the chance to deal a decisive blow against impunity and a very faulty electoral process, and therefore missed the opportunity to rescue the democratic process. It is looking likely, that Nigeria might have truly kissed democracy by, because there is really no incentive now for anybody to believe that elections can be won in a free and fair manner.
The PDP is a behemoth that is lost in its vote rigging ways, and for as long as it continues to hold sway, controlling the electoral process, the security forces and having so much access to money and state power, it will not be in its interest to have the process any other way. From the way it conducted the riggings of 2003 and 2007, a near flawless template has now been created: elections will be brazenly stolen; Nigerians will make a lot of noise; the tribunals will annul a few of the seats and new elections will be surrendered to opposition forces but at the end of the day, the Supreme Court will adjure that maybe there were irregularities, but they were not sufficient to annul an election which the Iwus of this world would have massively loaded in Favour of the PDP! There is a regularity about this template, you could almost set your watch by it!
But it is clear today, that Nigeria is hopelessly lost in a morass of bad governance as a result of the emergence of regimes all around Nigeria that do not work for the Nigerian people because their mandates have not been a product of the freely expressed feelings of the people. This has deepened despair and those who carry on as if it is business as usual, miss the point that Nigeria is a ticking bomb which can explode at any instance. The party process has become so corrupted that people really can’t make a choice between the six and half a dozen of the main parties in the country today. It was Sam Nda-Isaiah who described Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke, as being chairman of ANPDP, and half jocular as it might read, it underlines the depth of the corrupt party system in our country. Party leaders in opposition spend more time seeking the opportunity to fraternize with the PDP than think of providing alternative platforms around which the Nigerian people can be mobilized to win power.
Let us make no mistake about it, Nigeria needs a patriotic stream of parties and leaders who can provide new directions away from the rottenness which the PDP regimes have instituted since 1999: a dubious privatization process which transferred our patrimony to individual cronies of the regimes; a devaluation of all sections of national life; massive theft of monies meant for development at all levels of our society; a brazen institutionalization of corruption; the deepening of a culture of violence and gangsterism; the deformation of the democratic process and arrest of its development and the erosion of the electoral process. The period since 1999 has been one of consistent denial of the actualization of the promises which the Nigerian people felt that democratization can actualize. If we believe in our country and have the patriotic feeling that we can work for its future, then now is the time to seize the moment to build new party systems.
THE GUARDIAN newspaper of Friday, Decembert 12, 2008, carried a report about the national convention of one of the small parties of the left, Democratic Alternative (DA) which held in Ilorin. The leader of the party, Dr. Abayomi Ferreira, said something which I found very instructive. He argued that “in order to build a true Nigeria state, new values, interest and images, we need politicians who are fully dedicated to the rapid economic development of Nigeria, irrespective of foreign investors. No country has ever been developed by foreigners except for their own interest. Only new political parties that have no historical linkage with the right wing politicians and military dictators who have decimated our country in the past 58 years can do it”. Where are those parties? Well Ferreira listed them: “Such parties are a already in existence, the DA, NCP, NAP and the PRP”. Good point, except that implicit in his list is the problem of positing an alternative to the reigning corrupt orthodoxy of the PDP, ANPP, and so on.
Why is it difficult for the patriotic segment of the Nigerian society to seize the historical moment and come together to form a grand patriotic party? Why must we have insignificant parties in the pockets of the individuals who lead them? PRP and Balarabe Musa; DA and Ferreigra; Labour Party with a few other individuals! Wha Nigeria needs today and for the sake of the future of its people, is a party which will provide a platform of inclusiveness for all who genuinely want to work for the future of the country and its people. If we must pull away from the precipieceo f a failed state, we need political actors, who think; those who are committed to the independent development of our national productive forces as against the present obsession with surrendering to market forces and the diktat of imperialism. It is obvious that the economic politics of the past eight years are a monumental fraud: they have created a few billionaires; they have sold our national assets; created a bandit from of capitalism but have not put the Nigerian people to work. What is on the ground today cannot leader the country on the path of development. The patriotic segments of Nigerian society must know that the new stage today, is to create a new political platform to fight for national liberation; the political economy of the PDP years has reduced us to a fate worse than the classical neo-colonies of the nineteen seventies and eighties. This is a fact!
Ironically, I think that there are significant points in the Uwais Committee’s report that we should help to actualize; they are significant, especially if we also build new political parties. They include the suggestions that we should have proportional representation, as opposed to the winner-takes-all system and the recommendation for independent candidature. These must be pushed for, because they can become useful kernels of democratic consolidation in our country. However, I hasten to add that for as long as the monopoly of the PDP and parties like it is not challenged, then even such reforms will end up a miserable token. What needs to be challenged is the arrogance that the PDP will continue ruling the country, when it is wedded to the unpatriotic economic platform which has ruined Nigeria. The PDP and parties like it are not dedicated to patriotic project of national development; these are parties which represent he complete victory of the worst manifestations of comprador/crony capitalism, without any patriotic content. They surrender our country to bare-faced rape and leave our people in despair. The challenge is how to take Nigeria away from this route; but it will not be done, if we don’t have political parties of patriots, with patriotic ideas willing to build a new future fro the Nigerian people. The riposte that is befitting, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the flawed 2007 elections, is to re-possess the old slogan of the Nigerian left: “Don’t Agonize, Organize”! The time to organize is now!
