KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
As one of my brothers would say, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the declaration of Mallam Umar Musa Yar’Adua of Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party as the president-elect would be received with a yawn in many parts of the country. The script had lost its suspense since the governorship election on April 14. The déjà vu feeling that had pervaded the air was so thick you could slice it with a knife! So, for many, it’s a case of thanks for the interlude, can we now go on with our lives; if the drudgery that daily living in Nigeria had tended to be could be so dignified?
As we said on this page last week the elections have left our nation deeply divided but at peace; a restive, testy kind of peace, but peace nonetheless. It is peace made possible by the prayer of the saints and the typical helpless surrender of the Nigerian to the rapacious instinct of a so-called ruling class.
But can this peace be sustained? That would seem a most incongruous question to ask in this column because its very raison d'être is the enthronement and entrenchment of the ways and will of the Prince of Peace. It is however an appropriate question because, you see, even the Lord Jesus himself did not mince words about the kind of peace that is sustainable. In Matthew 10:34, he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
He continued: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Matthew 10:35).
A clear understanding of what Jesus Christ said here should give us, all of us including all those patriots who have been calling for calm, food for thought. He is saying my mission is not peace at any cost; my mission is peace anchored on the sword; the sword being the word of God which brooks no injustice, as well as, a symbol of judgment. As one bible commentator explains it, “the gospel brings division and strife in families and nations, because some love and chose to remain in darkness, rather than embrace the light.” So whenever and wherever a section of the people chose not only to embrace evil, but also to impose its rule over the others, division comes and peace is severely threatened.
Today in our nation, the most charitable way to put the state of affairs is that evil is on all fours in our political system. The elections have not only failed to right the wrongs of the past in our leadership recruitment arrangement, spoken about last week, it has in itself become the greatest evidence of brazen injustice.
Different words have been used to describe the election process by some of the participants who felt shortchanged. Armed robbery, daylight robbery, charade, sham are some of the ones that readily come to mind. Tried as international election observers have to couch their preliminary reports in diplomatese, disappointment and disapproval drip from virtually every sentence.
The Chief Election Observer of the European Union Observer Mission, Mr Max van den Berg puts it this way: “The 2007 state and federal elections have fallen short of international and regional standards for democratic elections. They were marred by poor organization, lack of essential transparency, widespread procedural irregularities, significant evidence of fraud particularly during the election collation process, voter disenfranchisement at different stages of the process, lack of equal condition for contestants and numerous incidents of violence”
The National Democratic Institute observer team led by former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also decried the elections as a significant step backward in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
On its part the Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigeria NGOs with the largest team of observers declared among other things that: “…Voting did not take place in many states across the federation, especially in the southeast and northeast and yet results were produced for those states and criminal intents in the depriving those whose mandates were stolen of effective judicial remedy by denying them the result sheets which can be used in the election tribunal.”
The harbinger of most of the problem himself, President Obasanjo had to begin his journey to international rehabilitation by owning up to the “imperfection” of the process. In a radio/television broadcast to the nation, shortly before the presidential election result was formally announced and which was obviously intended to preempt other reactions, he said: “Our elections could not have been said to have been perfect. Specifically, logistical failures which resulted in voting materials arriving quite late in parts of the country inadvertently deprived some voters of their right to exercise their civic responsibility.”
He continued: “Violence in parts of the country resulted in the reported deaths of some 30 policemen and over 35 civilians and the attempted bombing of the INEC headquarters….Cases of electoral fraud have also been reported from parts of the country in terms of multiple thumbing of ballot papers by individuals and groups and ballot box snatching and destruction. On my part, I am disappointed in the conduct of political parties and their candidates that have employed thugs and violent means to secure what they consider electoral victory.”
For purposes of clarification, I hold the President responsible for every one of those things that he decried above. They are all products of his do-or-die characterization of the elections which as we said last week led to violence, fraud, desperation and serial injustices such as erecting multiple barriers on the way of certain candidates in order to exclude them or at least make them ineffective.
Of course, reactions were swift in coming. Chief Tom Ikimi, a former Nigerian Foreign Minister, who represented Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of Action Congress yelled blue murder.
His words: “We have been here since yesterday to observe this collation. We only collated 11 states and the Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, has been so much in a hurry to reveal to the world an election result that they have cooked up, which they believe if they don‘t release in good time, will be difficult to release. Those figures are flawed. Election did not take place in most of Nigeria. We of the ANPP and the Action Congress reject the result and we are going to take this matter legally in court …Agents of the opposition parties were not allowed to question the veracity of the figures being collated in spite of the fact that we have incontrovertible evidence from our agents in the polling booths in the states. The evidence of credible national and international observers also showed that the figures are totally flawed.” Newspaper reports said he was subsequently pushed out of INEC‘s collation centre by security agents attached to Iwu.
In his own reaction, the representative of the ANPP presidential candidate, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, Admiral Lanre Amusu (rtd.), said, “…We were getting results from the resident electoral commissioners from the various states and collating them. We got to the 12th or 13th state when the chairman of INEC rushed out of the room to announce the result to the whole world. We were surprised that he did not give us the result sheets which were signed only by INEC officials and PDP agents.”
He went on: ”It is important to know that in most of the states, all other party agents were driven away from the collation centres. It is no surprise that only INEC officials and PDP agents signed the results from those states…Nigerians are witnesses to the level of rigging that took place this time around. Everyone has seen it. They believe they have perfected their crime but Nigerians are going to oppose it with the last drop of their blood.”
I have gone through what some might consider unnecessary reportage here in order to show how widely unacceptable the process was and, as a result, how really divided the nation currently is and how restive the peace. But as usual we are already being advised to allow peace to reign. Those who lost are being asked to go to the Election Tribunal and even Mr President has advised INEC to cooperate with the aggrieved by making documents available to them. How nice of our born-again due process president! Of course he and his disingenuous democrats know it is virtually impossible for a tribunal to find enough hard-cast evidence to nullify enough votes to affect Umar Yar’Adua’s 18million majority over Buhari, his closest rival?
It does look like a done deal therefore. Obasanjo decided that if he could not continue in office directly, he has to continue by proxy. He picked a candidate and Machiavelli-style, has achieved his goals. But has he? My answer is I sense not.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President-elect says their election is Lord’s doing and I say no, it’s the doing of one man and his courtiers and that man is Obasanjo. How do I know? God is a God of justice and equity; He is also a God of due process. So committed to due process is our God that, he did not snatch control of the world from satan unilaterally when Adam foolishly handed it over to the serpent. Jesus had to come as the second Adam to pay the price for Adam’s rebellion and thus become qualified to retrieve what the first Adam lost. That is due process. Were God to want to install Yar’Adua and Jonathan, he would not use a flawed, fraud-filled and violent process. God is therefore not in this charade and because he is not in it, it cannot stand. 2007 is not like 1999 and 2003. The prophecy is out that 2007 is the year of transition’s end in Nigeria, but it would be transition God’s style. Mark my word.
With REMI AKANO
As one of my brothers would say, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the declaration of Mallam Umar Musa Yar’Adua of Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party as the president-elect would be received with a yawn in many parts of the country. The script had lost its suspense since the governorship election on April 14. The déjà vu feeling that had pervaded the air was so thick you could slice it with a knife! So, for many, it’s a case of thanks for the interlude, can we now go on with our lives; if the drudgery that daily living in Nigeria had tended to be could be so dignified?
As we said on this page last week the elections have left our nation deeply divided but at peace; a restive, testy kind of peace, but peace nonetheless. It is peace made possible by the prayer of the saints and the typical helpless surrender of the Nigerian to the rapacious instinct of a so-called ruling class.
But can this peace be sustained? That would seem a most incongruous question to ask in this column because its very raison d'être is the enthronement and entrenchment of the ways and will of the Prince of Peace. It is however an appropriate question because, you see, even the Lord Jesus himself did not mince words about the kind of peace that is sustainable. In Matthew 10:34, he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
He continued: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Matthew 10:35).
A clear understanding of what Jesus Christ said here should give us, all of us including all those patriots who have been calling for calm, food for thought. He is saying my mission is not peace at any cost; my mission is peace anchored on the sword; the sword being the word of God which brooks no injustice, as well as, a symbol of judgment. As one bible commentator explains it, “the gospel brings division and strife in families and nations, because some love and chose to remain in darkness, rather than embrace the light.” So whenever and wherever a section of the people chose not only to embrace evil, but also to impose its rule over the others, division comes and peace is severely threatened.
Today in our nation, the most charitable way to put the state of affairs is that evil is on all fours in our political system. The elections have not only failed to right the wrongs of the past in our leadership recruitment arrangement, spoken about last week, it has in itself become the greatest evidence of brazen injustice.
Different words have been used to describe the election process by some of the participants who felt shortchanged. Armed robbery, daylight robbery, charade, sham are some of the ones that readily come to mind. Tried as international election observers have to couch their preliminary reports in diplomatese, disappointment and disapproval drip from virtually every sentence.
The Chief Election Observer of the European Union Observer Mission, Mr Max van den Berg puts it this way: “The 2007 state and federal elections have fallen short of international and regional standards for democratic elections. They were marred by poor organization, lack of essential transparency, widespread procedural irregularities, significant evidence of fraud particularly during the election collation process, voter disenfranchisement at different stages of the process, lack of equal condition for contestants and numerous incidents of violence”
The National Democratic Institute observer team led by former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also decried the elections as a significant step backward in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
On its part the Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigeria NGOs with the largest team of observers declared among other things that: “…Voting did not take place in many states across the federation, especially in the southeast and northeast and yet results were produced for those states and criminal intents in the depriving those whose mandates were stolen of effective judicial remedy by denying them the result sheets which can be used in the election tribunal.”
The harbinger of most of the problem himself, President Obasanjo had to begin his journey to international rehabilitation by owning up to the “imperfection” of the process. In a radio/television broadcast to the nation, shortly before the presidential election result was formally announced and which was obviously intended to preempt other reactions, he said: “Our elections could not have been said to have been perfect. Specifically, logistical failures which resulted in voting materials arriving quite late in parts of the country inadvertently deprived some voters of their right to exercise their civic responsibility.”
He continued: “Violence in parts of the country resulted in the reported deaths of some 30 policemen and over 35 civilians and the attempted bombing of the INEC headquarters….Cases of electoral fraud have also been reported from parts of the country in terms of multiple thumbing of ballot papers by individuals and groups and ballot box snatching and destruction. On my part, I am disappointed in the conduct of political parties and their candidates that have employed thugs and violent means to secure what they consider electoral victory.”
For purposes of clarification, I hold the President responsible for every one of those things that he decried above. They are all products of his do-or-die characterization of the elections which as we said last week led to violence, fraud, desperation and serial injustices such as erecting multiple barriers on the way of certain candidates in order to exclude them or at least make them ineffective.
Of course, reactions were swift in coming. Chief Tom Ikimi, a former Nigerian Foreign Minister, who represented Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of Action Congress yelled blue murder.
His words: “We have been here since yesterday to observe this collation. We only collated 11 states and the Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, has been so much in a hurry to reveal to the world an election result that they have cooked up, which they believe if they don‘t release in good time, will be difficult to release. Those figures are flawed. Election did not take place in most of Nigeria. We of the ANPP and the Action Congress reject the result and we are going to take this matter legally in court …Agents of the opposition parties were not allowed to question the veracity of the figures being collated in spite of the fact that we have incontrovertible evidence from our agents in the polling booths in the states. The evidence of credible national and international observers also showed that the figures are totally flawed.” Newspaper reports said he was subsequently pushed out of INEC‘s collation centre by security agents attached to Iwu.
In his own reaction, the representative of the ANPP presidential candidate, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, Admiral Lanre Amusu (rtd.), said, “…We were getting results from the resident electoral commissioners from the various states and collating them. We got to the 12th or 13th state when the chairman of INEC rushed out of the room to announce the result to the whole world. We were surprised that he did not give us the result sheets which were signed only by INEC officials and PDP agents.”
He went on: ”It is important to know that in most of the states, all other party agents were driven away from the collation centres. It is no surprise that only INEC officials and PDP agents signed the results from those states…Nigerians are witnesses to the level of rigging that took place this time around. Everyone has seen it. They believe they have perfected their crime but Nigerians are going to oppose it with the last drop of their blood.”
I have gone through what some might consider unnecessary reportage here in order to show how widely unacceptable the process was and, as a result, how really divided the nation currently is and how restive the peace. But as usual we are already being advised to allow peace to reign. Those who lost are being asked to go to the Election Tribunal and even Mr President has advised INEC to cooperate with the aggrieved by making documents available to them. How nice of our born-again due process president! Of course he and his disingenuous democrats know it is virtually impossible for a tribunal to find enough hard-cast evidence to nullify enough votes to affect Umar Yar’Adua’s 18million majority over Buhari, his closest rival?
It does look like a done deal therefore. Obasanjo decided that if he could not continue in office directly, he has to continue by proxy. He picked a candidate and Machiavelli-style, has achieved his goals. But has he? My answer is I sense not.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President-elect says their election is Lord’s doing and I say no, it’s the doing of one man and his courtiers and that man is Obasanjo. How do I know? God is a God of justice and equity; He is also a God of due process. So committed to due process is our God that, he did not snatch control of the world from satan unilaterally when Adam foolishly handed it over to the serpent. Jesus had to come as the second Adam to pay the price for Adam’s rebellion and thus become qualified to retrieve what the first Adam lost. That is due process. Were God to want to install Yar’Adua and Jonathan, he would not use a flawed, fraud-filled and violent process. God is therefore not in this charade and because he is not in it, it cannot stand. 2007 is not like 1999 and 2003. The prophecy is out that 2007 is the year of transition’s end in Nigeria, but it would be transition God’s style. Mark my word.
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