Settling the great questions

By

Paul Odili

PRESIDENT Charles De Gaulle of France once asserted that for any great nation to attain its greatness, that nation must engage in a great enterprise. To achieve what De Gaulle had in mind, such an enterprise summons a nation to show will; to show truth; to show vision; to show boldness; to stand firm, and to show commonsense.

The recently concluded general elections has produced ramifications that are staggering. Yet, there appears a deliberate attempt by some to sweep the great questions of the day under the carpet. This need not be so. What demand to be answered with forthrightness are: Are the elections free and fair? Was the electoral process tampered with? Who are those behind it? Was state structures seduced to produce the final outcome? Were critical officials of state compromised to aid the victory of political parties party or a party? Is the mandate being claimed actually a true reflection of the will of the people? Did the winners knowingly cheat to procure their victory? Did the losers cheat, even though they lost? These are the simple questions of the day. And it is foolish to pretend that asking and answering them truthfully will not enhance democratic rule.

Democracy as a political system is built on liberty and trust; liberty to make a choice unhindered. It is a liberty the state has the onerous responsibility to protect. For as is commonly known, the greatest duties of a democratic state is protection and freedom of her citizens. However, when it is sensed that the state has begun interfering with the choice of the people, that state begins to lose some of its legitimacy. For a discredited system cannot produce a legitimate state. If it happens, that state is hobbled by crisis of legitimacy and credibility.

The world over, there are two ways a state can come into being: Either by coup, at which it sustains itself by terror. Or by a democratic means, at which it depends on popular support of the people to survive. Therefore, it is not possible to have a half- way house in a democratic system. It is either the support is genuinely derived from the people or it is not. When a state attempts to cheat, it should be expected to be challenged, especially if the state lacks the courage and will to come clean about its role.

As such, the only way such a state can survive is either by bribery or suppression. Or by atonement and reforms. Nigeria would have been better served had the state quickly intervened by asking the relevant institutions to conduct open enquiry and take remedial actions over questions of electoral fraud. Rather, what the state and the ruling party had done was to organise a victory treat, at a time the election tribunals were being inaugurated. Such crass misjudgments lead to hardening of the opposition, and viscerally denigrates the integrity of the judicial system.

Already a lot of people with genuine grievances have declined to take advantage of the judicial process because of the suspicion that they may not get justice. When people lose confidence in the system and bottle up their grievances, they let it out by finding ways to sabotage the government in place. Thus Col. Abubakar Umar’s thesis that a rigged election is better than a coup is faulty. Both are evil and portend the gravest danger to the nation. It is foolish to pretend that a mandate of dubious validity should be embraced just because it is exercised by civilians.

History shows that a civilian dictatorship can be as vicious and venal as a military dictatorship. So, it is too soon to forget that in the second republic, the NPN government faced by implacable opposition over its dubious legitimacy had begun to wear a fascist face, before it was terminated by the military.

At the present time one of the biggest hidden danger with the results of the election is that Nigeria cannot afford to entrust unwholesome power to one party, and a president with military reflex and instinct. If Nigerians could find the will to fight military dictatorship, it must find the guts to resist a burgeoning one party state. The truth is that there are variety of yet unresolved issues, which a one party state may attempt to suppress. Which when forced under ground, would incubate and explode at some unexpected point in future. As things stand today, the most pitiable figure in this unfolding national tragedy is President Obasanjo. By one miscalculation he has moved from being a leader to a dealer. He has moved from being a statesman to a pock barrel politician shackled by allegations of winning elections dubbed fraudulent. He cannot expect that nationally, but in particular internationally, that he can exercise the same authority and influence as before.

Nevertheless, the President has the option to restore his moral authority by taking steps to dialogue, and to encourage reform of the system based on full disclosure of what he knows about the process that produced his second term mandate. He can even begin by asking INEC to look at the votes he got from his native Ogun state, and across the nation. It has been said, and it is probably true that he could still have won without all the rigging that had gone into his victory. Now he is tarnished, but by enquiring into the conduct of the elections and taking steps to reform the system could be a way of helping the polity to stabilise. It will also be a way of building institutions to support democratic rule.

May 2003