Monday
February 8, 2010 |
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Last Saturday, voters in Anambra State
came out in impressive numbers to elect a governor. The stakes were
extremely high, and the obstacles formidable, but the people of Anambra
did themselves great credit. After it was all over, incumbent Governor
Peter Obi made history as the first two-term occupant of the Government
House. And Anambra put itself forward, in my view, as a pivot for the
democratic renewal that Nigeria so sorely needs.
It was a fitting and welcome transformation – a kind of revenge, in
fact.
Anambra has been a victim of some of the most tragic and traumatizing
schemes in Nigeria’s political history. It’s been a turf for the
depraved antics of so-called political godfathers who exploited their
connections to the seat of power in Abuja to make the state virtually
ungovernable. It’s been run, and ruined, by the human disaster called
Chinwoke Mbadinuju. This man, a genius at quoting scripture but less
than adept at living it, holds the unflattering distinction of presiding
over a year in which the state’s children didn’t go to school – because
their striking teachers were not paid.
There was more: the brazen kidnap of former Governor Chris Ngige, a man
smuggled into office by the ruling party and then hounded when he
refused to surrender the treasury to his sponsors; the three-day spree
of arson against public property carried out by thugs who may have been
empowered by the highest authority; and the short-lived imposition of
Andy Uba as governor.
With this history as background, and Nigeria’s current climate of
uncertainty, so much rode on the Anambra election. Local and
international pundits, deeply troubled by Nigeria’s penchant for
fraudulent elections, tagged Anambra’s Verdict 2010 a veritable window
into the shape of general elections to come in 2011. At a December 11,
2009 colloquium convened at Brown University by Professor Chinua Achebe,
speaker after speaker was at pains to underscore the point that, as
Anambra went last Saturday, so would Nigeria go next year. These
speakers, Nigerians and foreigners alike, also warned that the country
could ill afford the manipulation of the Anambra election, and may not
survive another of the kind of electoral farce we got in 2007.
Bearing this onerous burden, Anambra made Nigerians proud. Anambra, the
erstwhile headquarters of anarchy, has become a beacon of democratic
hope for all Nigerians.
Last week’s election was, I stress, a truly Nigerian affair. By the same
token, it was a triumph for all Nigerians, not just the residents of
Anambra. I had never seen a state election that generated as much
interest across the spectrum of Nigerians as that of Anambra. It was
clear that Nigerians, and in some ways the world, paid attention to the
election. It called up the best – the deeply patriotic – in many.
Let me illustrate. I signed up to participate in a project called
Anambra Election iReporters. Initiated by Okwy Okeke, an energetic and
passionate patriot, the project entailed monitoring the progress of last
week’s election by phoning observers right there in the field – and then
posting our findings on numerous websites. Mr. Okeke, who holds an MBA
and works for a large American corporation, saw the project as one way
that we could invest in the cause of credible elections.
Several of us, including Okeke, are from Anambra, but volunteers came
from other parts of Nigeria. I rose at the crack of dawn on Saturday and
immediately began to make calls to our contacts in Anambra – some of
them lawyers sent by the Nigerian Bar Association to observe. What
struck me was the number of participants in the exercise, in Anambra as
well as abroad, who are not from Anambra. If you ever wondered whether
pan-Nigerian collaboration was still viable, perish your doubt. From my
small corner, I beheld the cooperative spirit that’s alive among
Nigerians when the challenge is to reclaim their badly battered lives
and commence the task of mending.
Given Nigeria’s long habituation to scams dressed in the garb of
elections, it’s understandable if some are in a hurry to declare the
days of rigged elections over. Nothing is farther from the reality. At
any rate, to mistake what happened in Anambra as spelling the demise of
electoral hanky panky is to both underestimate how impermeable our
politicians can be and to risk slipping into complacency.
Complacency is a virus that Nigerians can’t afford now. Vigilance and a
state of heightened alert, not a slackening off, are called for. This is
a time to consolidate the gains from the Anambra election – and to think
about how to vastly improve on them in 2011 and beyond.
We’d do well to remember that as many things went well in the Anambra
election as went wrong. Two or three persons called or wrote to me
waxing ecstatic about the electoral commission’s conduction. One
trumpeted Maurice Iwu, the commission’s chairman, as a born-again
champion of credible polls.
Not so fast, I retorted. What transpired in Anambra should not really be
regarded as epitomizing superior performance by INEC. Nor should
Nigerians hasten to canonize Iwu for overseeing an election in which the
voice of the voters was permitted to prevail. Transparently free and
fair elections are the right of Nigerians, not a privilege that Iwu may
– according to his mood or whims – dole out to us or withhold.
There were indeed heroes in last week’s elections, but Iwu doesn’t make
my list of them. In the 21st century, his electoral body failed to
produce serialized ballots. Then its voter registers were, for the most
part, an anthology of missing names.
The foremost heroes were the voters who, undeterred by past experiences
of stolen mandates, came out in droves to vote. The images of determined
voters, many of them waiting for hours in the sweltering heat before
voting materials were produced, reflected a widening quest by Nigerians
to reclaim their country from the calloused hands of its destroyers.
Then there were the troop of monitors, their eyes set on the
proceedings, determined to keep everybody – police officers, polling
officials, party partisans – honest. And then there were the officials
who must have decided not to lend themselves as instruments for would-be
riggers.
Some of the governorship candidates ran vibrant campaigns that managed
to touch on such urgent matters as security, educational collapse, and
festering joblessness. Those of them who agreed to take part and spar in
a televised debate also deserve commendation for taking Nigerian
politics in a salutary direction.
As we celebrate, we must also take stock of the areas where we failed.
I’m a Catholic, but I abhor the insinuation of religious sentiments into
partisan politics. I was thoroughly ashamed to hear that some priests
abused their vocation by campaigning from their pulpits for Governor
Obi. Clergy, like other citizens, reserve the right to have political
favorites. But it’s nothing short of scandalous and dangerous to mount
political campaigns from inside the sanctuary.
I hope that Mr. Obi did not himself go out to seek endorsement as the
Catholic candidate. If he in any way orchestrated this facile notion
that he was his church’s choice, then he has done grave disservice to
the voters – who are from across an array of faiths. Sectarian
adventurism has no place in a political contest, much less in a country
like Nigeria with a terrible history of religious fanaticism. The
church’s meddling in politics must be discountenanced both by candidates
and clergy.
