"He used the power of incumbency, including access to facilities provided and run by public funds; massive funds from patronage seekers, and “policy-bribes” to muscle his way through. He simply threw out the rule book, because he had the power to do so. That is not character, and certainly not Christian."
As we have said, it is a sad irony that a widely acclaimed “free, fair and credible” general election has led to violence involving colossal loss of lives and properties, which has led to public confrontation, accusations and counter-accusations of culpability, and/or wrong-headedness, not just within the political class, but also within the rank of our religious leaders, left our nation to such level of dividedness that we have not experienced in a long time.
Many, who invested a lot of time and energy into forcing the hands of both the executive and the legislature into opening the national treasury and poured resources into the process of making the election more credible, might even be wondering, if it was worth it. Particularly so, now that it seems the harvest was a bit of shaking for the status quo, accompanied by massive death and destruction. But they need not worry or wonder, for as we stated last time, “the so-called post-election violence was not caused by how free or fair the elections were. They are the result of frustration arising from the fact that a northern Moslem candidate lost to a southern Christian, in circumstances that were seen as brazen use of state power.”
We have noted that, inconvenient as it is, we must engage with the fact that “there are obvious substantial linkages between the faith and region of origin of the winner/loser and those of the perpetrators/victims of the violence. The winner is Christian and southern and so are majority of the victims of the violence and vice versa.” The point was made that many who privately agree with this point of view are too politically correct to state it publicly. Of course, there are also those who would disagree. Such people will find corroboration from the fact, as has been widely publicized by CPC chieftain, Nasir El-Rufai, that in Christian-dominated Southern Kaduna, most of the victims were moslems and mosques were also torched. It would very educative to find out when the riots started in that area, and whether or not, they were reprisals. Whatever the case, however, the preponderance of evidence, confirms the substantial linkage we posit here.
It is this linkage that explains some public utterances including that of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and co-chairman (with Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto and President-General, Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA) of the National Inter-Religious Council (NIREC). Among other things, he had located the cause of the violent uprising in the zoning controversy within ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party preceding the election. His words: “I believe we are experiencing violence in parts of the North because certain highly placed persons in this country magnified the PDP problem of zoning offices and gave the impression to the electorate and the generality of Northerners, especially the gullible illiterates that it was their turn to rule. Basically, what we are seeing today is the fact that they feel that it is their turn to rule…”
This obviously agrees with my thesis above that the credibility or otherwise of the elections has little to do with the violence. It was the perception that, what was due to the north had been taken to the south. And while the pre-election zoning controversy did play a major role, I am fully persuaded that a people, who habitually stay glued to BBC Hausa service cannot but remember how it all started. Their man who could have been in office for eight years died in office and, his place was taken by somebody from the "other side", supposedly for a season, but then used the power of that supposed short stay to seize power! No, such people require very little push to “fight for their right.”
That is why I am unable to agree with the CAN President that General Buhari was a major factor in the crisis. With all due respect, the respected man of God did not put the appropriate weight upon his own prognosis that the noise made by proponents of the zoning/rotational policy of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the north was yet to serve out its eight-year term had something to do with it. The people felt cheated at the PDP level, invested their hope in Buhari and, irrespective of the integrity or otherwise of the election process, felt they had lost all. This should explain why some of their own leaders, perceived to have sold out, were not left out of the mayhem.
In concluding last time, I quoted from a statement recently issued by former military president, Ibrahim Babangida, commenting on what he described as “a 360-degree U-turn on zoning.” Permit me to quote a bit more because in my opinion, it speaks to the root of our national malaise. Wrote the General: “…those who aspire to lead the country at different levels of government must come out with certain qualities that would portray them as patriotic and nationalistic…If those who shouted hoax over the issue of zoning in the PDP yesterday, [saying as it were, that the Party’s Constitution could be jettisoned], are now made to be beneficiaries of zoning in the Party today, then we all are doomed as a nation. What manner of supposed leaders are we nurturing? What character of leaders are we building?”
The issue here is character, even if you might wonder about the preacher! It’s about not changing the rules in the middle of the game. Irrespective of arguments to the contrary, it is true that there’s a consensus among the Nigerian political class that the way out of marginalization of the minorities within the country was rotation of the presidency and equitable sharing of other offices among the geo-political zones. The PDP wrote it into its constitution and it was operating fine until Yar’Adua died and Jonathan, against both the letters and the spirit of that agreement, decided to run. He used the power of incumbency, including access to facilities provided and run by public funds; massive funds from patronage seekers, and “policy-bribes” to muscle his way through. He simply threw out the rule book, because he had the power to do so. That is not character, and certainly not Christian. Make no mistake about it: those who kill and maim and destroy properties, including houses of worship, must be made to pay the price; and they sure will, whether human governments do their duty or not. But we must reduce to the barest minimum those incentives to violent behaviour by enthroning justice and fairplay in all that we do. Jonathan said, correctly, during his campaign that his ambition was not worth the blood of any body. But I wonder, would those 10 youth corpers and the thousands of other Nigerians have died, if he had stuck to that zoning agreement and not run? It’s food for thought – for all of us.
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