Before the white people came to Nigeria, the peoples of Nigeria had their different types of pre-colonial governments, which guaranteed peaceful co-existence among them. For example, in the North, we had the Emirate system; and in the West, the Obaship. The Igbo people of the South East of Nigeria, who are republican in nature, had acephalous political organizations. But, till now, the towns in Igboland are ruled by Obis, Ezes, and Igwes.
However, it is an incontestable fact that western imperialism truncated the evolutionary growth of our pre-colonial governments. But, now, our traditional modes of leadership still exist alongside representative government with democratic governance overriding the powers of the ruling monarchs and traditional institutions.
It’s the British colonizers who brought western democracy to us with its major characteristic feature of periodic election to guarantee seamless transfer of political power from one person or political party to another. Election, as we all know, is a necessary and periodic ritual, which presages and facilitates the change of leadership in a country so as to confer political legitimacy on incoming political leaders.
However, dating back to the post-colonial Nigeria, starting from 1960, electoral crises have become major features of our national life. Since Nigerian politicians perceive their occupation of exalted political offices as opportunities to amass wealth, they will employ underhand and sinister means to subvert the electoral processes in order to win elections. Consequently, electoral malpractice has become part of our democratic ethos, now. Electoral malpractices had caused political chaos and troubles in Nigeria, which brought our country to the precipice on many occasions.
For examples, in the 1960s, the Chief Awolowo and Akintola political feud cum personality clash snowballed into a major political crisis, which was one of the reasons for the military incursion into our politics in the first republic. The events of that period, including the massacre of the Igbo people in the North led to the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Millions of human lives were lost; and our infrastructures destroyed. Luckily, Nigeria emerged from that gratuitous civil war not dismembered.
So, we had the military interregnum between 1967 and 1979. But the military struck again to bring to an end the second republic. Their reason for staging the coup was to save Nigeria from implosion as the 1983 elections were marked and marred by electoral rigging and infractions. And in the aftermath of the election, tension was mounting in the country. Perhaps, the soldiers’ reason for truncating the second republic was justified.
Then, Nigeria experienced successive military governments. But they wound back the development of our country by decades. While Gen. Babangida institutionalized and entrenched corruption in our body politic, as well as annulled the 1993 Presidential election, which was adjudged the freest and fairest in our political annals, Sani Abacha, a maximum ruler, stole Nigeria blind, and killed many members of NADECO, an opposition group then.
But, thankfully, democracy birthed in Nigeria again in 1999. And, since then, Nigeria has been practising democratic governance for nineteen unbroken years with one political party handing over power to another. And against all expectations, our country has not descended into a fratricidal civil war. Rather, our democracy is deepening and taking firm roots.
Now, APC, which is believed to be the political party of progressive-minded people, is the ruling political in Nigeria. And President Buhari ,who is at the helm came to power on the coattail of his ascetic nature, perceived probity, aversion to corruption, and burning zeal for political leadership. But he has squandered our collective goodwill owing to his clannishness, tardiness, cluelessness, religious bigotry, ethnic jingoism, and maladministration.
Today, the gale of defection is sweeping across the political landscape of Nigeria. And APC is not spared by the defection scourge. The ruling APC has suffered mass defection with some top members of the party pitching tents with the major opposition party in Nigeria, the PDP. The depletion of its ranks is a portent of doom for it.
In addition to this, countless Nigerians are agreed on the verifiable fact that President Buhari is a sectional leader, who sets store by religion and ethnicity. And that will not bode well for his re-election bid. His religious bigotry, ethnic jingoism, nepotistic proclivities, and clannish characteristic are evidenced in his appointments of northern Muslims into the security apparatchiks in Nigeria. Not surprisingly, the fight against the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast has been suffering upsets.
And his fight against corruption is a witch-hunt of members of the opposition political party. So, has the ruling APC gone for broke in order to retain political power at the centre? But if it decides to use strong arm tactics to emasculate, cow, and brow-beat members of the opposition political party, it will not augur well for the survival of our democracy. Recently, we read in the national newspapers about the freezing of Mr. Peter Obi’s bank accounts. It’s said that his wife’s and relatives’ bank accounts were frozen, too. But EFCC has denied blocking those accounts.
It is advisable for President Buhari and top members of the APC to tread carefully and cautiously, and desist from engaging in deeds that can imperil our democracy. For the government to hurl people into detention for innocuous Face book posts are proofs that it is morphing to a fascist government.
I would like President Buhari to follow the example of Goodluck Jonathan, who accepted defeat before all the 2015 Presidential election results were announced. He deemed the survival of our democracy and the indissolubility of Nigeria more important than his personal political ambitions.
Again, it behooves all the political contestants for elective posts in Nigeria to eschew the politics of bitterness and rancor. They should tell us about their political manifestoes and ideologies rather than engage in splitting hairs over inanities and defamation of characters of one another. Let their politics be issue-based and not political mudslinging.
I pray that Nigeria will not travel the path of perdition.
Chiedu Uche Okoye
Okoye, a poet, wrote in from Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State
