A CULTURE OF PROTEST
By
It is a well-known fact that Nigerians are not good participants in competitive activities as they are both bad winners and bad losers. Neither is there sufficient grace in our victories nor gallantry in our defeats. It ought to be a matter of common sense that anyone who is afraid to lose a contest should never participate in it because by the nature of things some would win while some would lose. There cannot be two winners in a win or lose game and politics is by its definition one of such games. The case of Nigeria is however quite different as everyone thinks of himself as a natural winner, irrespective of his fundamental disabilities and glaring personal incompetence not to talk of the element of luck.
There is no better example of this culture of protest than the way politicians who lost the just concluded elections have been crying foul all the way. Some have indeed resorted to very mean and unorthodox tactics to express their disagreement. It is quite shameful that individuals that thought of themselves as capable of leading their communities and, in deed, the nation, have also fallen for this degrading culture of irresponsible and unprincipled protestations of unfavorable results. For a politicians who was beaten squarely at the polls to be claiming foul play and rigging is not only anarchic, it is also a grave disrespect to the people who, in their sovereign wisdom, have placed their votes at the disposal of his opponent.
While one cannot say that the last electoral exercise was perfect, it is however a proposition too plain to be contested that it substantially met all the essential criteria for a free and fair election and all those who participated in it, winners and losers alike, ought to be satisfied that the will of the people has finally prevailed within the framework of constitutional democracy. But the failure to appreciate this fundamental goal of the electoral process has led some undemocratically minded people to be thinking of their defeat as evidence of personal failure which must be repudiated at all cost even if that ultimately means giving the electoral process an undeserved tarnish. That is a very wrong understanding of what democracy is all about. And for us in Nigeria, any election that we are able to successfully conduct goes to deepen the fledging democratic process which is an additional assurance that there is yet another chance to try again. That really is the beauty of democracy we all seem to hanker after.
We are certainly not doing the nation any good by falsely exaggerating the limitations in the electoral process. The phenomenon of rigging in Nigerian elections has been blown out of proportions. Surely, there are riggings and this is almost by all the parties. In fact, the theory is that most Nigerian contestants rig or would want to rig, one way or the other, in constituencies where they are strongest and the stronger the parties are the more their potentials for rigging. Crying fouls by any loser is therefore a confirmation of his relative weakness. And if politics is a game of numbers, then, he really does not deserve to win. In other words, the allegation of rigging is merely a-post contest attempt to "rig" the results by manipulating the choice of the electorate to his favor even if he was indeed a clear loser. It is therefore with a pinch of the salt that we should listen to those now ranting about rigging instead of acting sportsmanly and accept the verdict of the people.
There is no doubt that any form of rigging is an unfair attempt to undermine the choice of the voters which is by itself a cardinal political sin and a great disservice to the system of participatory democracy. On the other hand, it is also a very grievous political misbehavior to be alleging rigging where none existed, hoping in the process to discredit the electoral system by deliberately exaggerating the faults therein. Most of those now crying foul in Nigeria and threatening to bring down the roof cannot claim ignorance of the great electoral abuse that took place in Florida during the last presidential election in the US where the ballot cast by thousands of voters or potential voters were deliberating excluded or out rightly denied the rights to vote altogether. The incident was hotly debated and claims of "the stolen presidency" rented the airwaves but not for one moment did anyone resort to or threaten social unrest or boasted to inflict mayhem on the nation. It is to the credit of Al Gore, the man who was the victim of the saga, who in the interest of democracy and the nation eventually conceded defeat, and immediately embraced George Bush, the beneficiary of the whole drama. Heavens did not fall. Instead America moved on. That to me is a good example of statesmanship.
Nigeria must learn to encourage contestants to accept the results of games they voluntarily entered into. The tragedy of the whole affair is that it has indeed become a national culture, a way of life, to habitually disagree with results we do not like. Our footballers, for example, do not just lose their games. A referee must have robbed them of their victory even if the game ended 5-0. Students who flunk their examinations would blame their teachers and smear them with all possible allegations and, as parents, we do not bother to tell our children that if they really want to do well in examinations they must study harder. Instead, we shamelessly stuff them with money with the hope of forcing the teachers to change their marks unfairly. Quite unfortunately, and in some cases, they succeed in thus manipulating the results to their advantage thereby destroying the credibility of the examination system. That child grows up to believe that he can never lose in a contest as long as he can bribe his way through life. With that mindset, he is bound to think that those who defeated him must have bribed the most. By and large, we have come to trust that we can always influence the outcome of every deliberative process from court judgments to the sermons that officiating priests give in church service.
There is no better evidence of our embarrassing the culture of protest than when we purportedly rejected the well considered decision of the International Court of Justice (the ICJ) over the Bakassi litigation with Cameroon. I recall counseling Nigerians then that it does not project us before the outside world as a law-abiding people if we could so anarchically ‘reject’ the decision of such an august panel just because the outcome was unfavorable to us. Like I told the nation in the aftermath of that case, we lost Bakassi to our opponent right here in Nigeria when the Abacha government spitefully put in place, for reasons already legendary, a defense team that would have done better in a local Alkali court and certainly not at the Hague. Whether we like it or not a decision has already been made and that court is now functus officio, as we say in law. Whatever we do subsequently about it must be confined to the realm of diplomacy and real international politics but baselessly accusing the learned judges of bias as some supposedly ‘patriotic’ Nigerians have done is unwittingly foreclosing those other options that I suggested. We have no choice, if we are to respectfully participate in the comity of nations, but to learn to accept judicial pronouncements as given because if the Rule of Law and democratic constitutionalism are to have any meaning with us, at all, decisions of an unbiased umpire ought to be gracefully respected by all the parties to the dispute. Nigeria cannot be an exception. This may sound bitter, but it is the plain truth and the earlier we adjust to this civilized juridical reality the better for our society.
In many respects, the current acrimonious rebuttal of the election results as released by INEC is a confirmation that we are still a lawless people. Nigerians must learn to play by the rules and it is a mark of indiscipline and irresponsibility to be disputing election results the way we do. The right place to go if genuinely dissatisfied is the tribunal and never to the gallery of the pliable and unsuspecting masses. And whatever the tribunal decides should be final. It smacks of national idiocy that almost every candidate is crying foul when indeed only one president can be elected at the end of the day.
It is an open secret that there are many people outside the country who would want us fail in our new democracy project. We only unwittingly give our enemies ammunitions by giving false pictures about our failings to them. We should not forget that many still think that that the Black man cannot run a successful democracy. We ought to work hard to confound those people rather than confirming their derogative expectations about us. It Do those now wailing over the loss of candidate Buhari and others in the just concluded presidential election really serious? You have to be naive, politically speaking, to expect that Buhari was going to win the election knowing his enormous political liabilities. No doubt he is a fine man, more likely to keep his words than his opponents are. But let us not forget that this election was not designed to pick the nicest man from the lot. It was meant to elect the most popular candidate.
Any honest observer would concede that, apart from those who truly know the enormous good personal quality of the man, he was an unpopular candidate outside of his immediate terrain. Let us also not forget that many people continue to hold Buhari personally responsible for the premature demise of politicians like the late Prof. Ambrose late and Bisi Onobanjo and many others who could not survive the torture ad inhumanity which they suffered while the first Buhari military government jailed them. As for the Press, it have not forgotten the obnoxious decree 4 and it did not disguise its apprehension and the general critical public also did not seem to have been fully satisfied by his alliance with the late Sani Abacha when he headed the almighty PTF. There was also the stigma his opponents placed on him which was that he is someone with some sectarian agenda and when he started to harp on his plan to extirpate corruption from Nigeria, I knew a gang-up against him from across the political spectrum that is neck-deep in corruption was the last hurdle hw would have to cross.
We should also not discount the fact that Buhari came into the fray a little too late and did not seriously energize his campaign beyond the strong academic support he got by those who may not even have registered to vote. His running mate Okadigbo, was no to be counted on to augment Buhari electoral chances. If at all, it was a liability of sort. I must not here be understood to be giving the reasons or justification as to why he lost. I am merely proffering certain possible factors that could have contributed to the loss, which should therefore not surprise any objective analyst. Yes, in the crowd that was competing for the plum job of president, he surely had an outsider chance of winning but that possibility should not translate into a guarantee. To have expected so, only evinces our very poor understanding of hard politics.
It should also be said that those who are fortunate enough to have won the various elections should take it upon themselves to reconcile with their erstwhile opponents. Taunting losing opponents and resorting to naked braggadocio only inflame already incensed passions. Let us therefore give peace a chance by respecting the results as INEC deems them fit. It is undemocratic not to accept the outcome of an electoral contest just because it is not favorable. Otherwise, it would be anarchy for the nation from which no one wins but anarchy.
April 2003