President Goodluck Jonathan appeared to have embraced his defeat until Thursday 30, 2015. At the submission of the report of the PDP Presidential
Campaign Organization in the State House, he said, ‘’if you look at the result, the difference is just over two million votes.
And if you look at the areas where it is perceived that PDP scored so low, PDP couldn’t have gotten those kinds of scores but the elections are over; we put the country first’’.
Paraphrase: My party remains the darling of majority of the electorate. The margin of votes that put my rival in the lead was unreal. I was cheated. The candidate of All Progressives Congress, Muhammadu Buhari, did not swat me down by two million votes. INEC contrived that outcome. Buhari won by
favoritism and I lost to partiality. It sounds familiar. It is an Orubebe echo from another voice.
Peter Godsday Orubebe, former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs
and one of Jonathan’s loyalists, sought to wreak havoc on
the last lap of the collation of results, when it was becoming
increasingly clear that his patron had lost.
Orubebe grabbed a microphone and began to hector and
heckle. He called INEC Chairman, Prof. Jega, ’’ biased’’, ’’
tribalisitic,’’ ‘’partial.’’ Orubebe demanded that ‘’if you want
peace in this country’’ the collation of results be suspended
and his complaint against the results from some Northern
states accepted.
Jega’s mouth and wisdom saved the day. He didn’t descend
into the swamp to wrestle with insanity. He gave Orubebe a
didactic rebuke that seemed to exorcise the legion of demons
that had possessed the ‘’Elder’’. And the collation continued.
Orubebe’s dare-devil stunt trended on Twitter. He garnered
generous views on Youtube. He provoked sympathy, comedy
and ridicule. He also stimulated questions.
People asked what may have inspired him. Na only Orubebe
waka come? Did he conceive and execute the plot to
incommode that very delicate moment alone? Did the temerity
that energized him to attempt to hijack the collation originate
from his own person? Or was he intoxicated by the insurance
granted him by the Sovereign on whose behalf he was
venturing?
The questions are now answered. They have been solved by
President’s Jonathan’s invocation of Orubebe’s outburst.
There was a method to the madness. Orubebe had taken the
brief of his master. And that produced the tragedy Jega
helped to deflect.
This is a positive revelation. It separates the mask from the
man. It bares the true face of the man who has managed to
convince some Nigerians that he wears a crown of halo.
President Goodluck Jonathan had played like he took his
defeat in its stride. He had affected good sportsmanship. He
called Buhari to congratulate him before the final vote tally
was concluded.
Jonathan made a pacifist telecast that brought a sense of
relief to many people who were worried over some bloodshed
that had been forecasted to lie on the other side of the
announcement of the election result. He consoled the Peoples
Democratic Party, asking its members not to assume his loss
an occasion to mourn.
A lot of Nigerians praised Jonathan for achieving the feat of
acknowledging defeat. They thanked him for rejecting the
temptation to explore other options that could have
precipitated a national crisis.
World leaders followed our lead and kissed Jonathan better.
They sent him tributes. And he liked the appreciation of his
stock. His re-election loss, rather than diminish him,
burnished his profile. Who has ever had good luck enough to
earn global acclaim for declining to pretend that they had lost
an election?
To cement his status as a statesman, Jonathan had his aides
propagate a recording of his stilted one minute telephone
conversation with Buhari. Call it a breach of protocol, but it
further skyrocketed the loser’s rating. Some began to
campaign that Jonathan has paid the full price for a Nobel
Peace Prize.
Jonathan waived his right to challenge the election. He swore
that he would not question Buhari’s victory at the tribunal. He
even prevailed on the leadership of his party to drop its plan
to file a petition.
President Jonathan would later make a remark that seemed to
represent gratitude to his non-voters as well as his
perspective of the upside of the truncation of his political
career. He said his defeat was a welcome release. He has
been in the cage of power since 1999, when he became
Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State.
It’s the selfsame Jonathan who is projecting himself as a
casualty of electoral fraud. He is the one calling a pity party.
But Jonathan need not abandon himself to grief.
There is a good chance that a mix of factors is exacting a
heavy toll on Jonathan’s psychology: The desertion of his
regular hangers-on, the escalation of the work of the FG and
Buhari Transition Committees, and the epiphany from the
sight of his aides packing his personal effects in preparation
for existence outside the Presidency. But Jonathan has no
reason to badmouth a vote he has would rather not dispute.
There is a prescribed way for interrogating the integrity of an
election. If Jonathan is wiser now than before his concession,
he can seek redress. If he just awoke to the fact that he was
rigged out, it is still morning. He should instruct his lawyers
to use the window of opportunity allowed by the Electoral Act
and file a petition. Not complain as though he was helpless
and hopeless.
He cannot claim to ‘’put the country first’’ when he is
contesting the legitimacy of Buhari’s mandate outside the
bounds of the law. He cannot erect the credentials of a
peacemaker on mischief.
President Jonathan doesn’t have to acquiesce to a perceived
injustice for the sake of peace. Peace is not superior to
justice. He should approach the court, if he thinks he has a
valid case. His judicial challenge will profit the country more
than his bitter murmuring.
Nigeria is a democracy. The only acceptable pathway to
power is elections. If the process of an election is
compromised, the entire citizenry is shortchanged. And the
injury is not done to one contestant; it is done to all everyone
whose quality of life will be governed by the result of that
declared vote.
To ‘’ put the country first’’ means to be a patriot. If President
Jonathan would let Nigeria to be ruled on an untenable
premise in order to procure for himself the reputation of a
peacemaker, he has put self ahead of country.
Jonathan’s presumed discovery of an anomaly of that order
imposes on him the obligation to help in the purifying the
Nigerian electoral system. He would be cooperating with the
perpetrators of the felony, if he allows the violation of the vote
to go unchallenged. He needs to let the country profit from his
grievance.
The very process of determining the merits of his case will
illuminate that election and properly characterize it as an
incident of history. His election petition will task the judiciary
to examine whether INEC demonstrated substantial
compliance with extant provisions of the law. The judges will
examine on the basis of evidence whether some freebie votes
advantaged lost Jonathan victory.
When the truths of the election are verified and validated,
competing fictional narratives fall by the wayside. As the fact
is extricated from fiction, we gather what to store and what to
discard, we acknowledge any inherent shortcomings and learn
the lessons, and the country takes one more step towards
progressive growth and maturity.
President Jonathan knows that making allegations of electoral
fraud doesn’t achieve any good thing. It doesn’t correct the
supposed flaws. It doesn’t proof the electoral system against
future manipulation.
Insinuations of rigging can only serve as fodder for gossip.
Beyond words, it stokes ill will in millions of voters who are
still ruing Jonathan’s defeat and resentment in millions of
others who are still celebrating Buhari’s victory.
It’s ironical that President Jonathan is promoting himself as a
brand of peacemaker who cannot hold his peace. That’s an
illustration for oxymoron. Peacemakers bear fruit worthy of
the name.
A lover of peace in Jonathan’s shoes (no pun intended) will
not be working hard to revise the context of his defeat. He
would be focused on managing a seamless transition. He
would be busy clearing his desk. He won’t run the risk of
inciting his support base.
We know of a certain Dame, who while actively instigating
anarchy in her home state, settled for an alias that was oddly
antithetical to her exertions. She christened herself Mama
Peace and commanded to be so called!
It was Mama Peace who mounted a campaign rostrum and
authorized thousands of attendees to stone their neighbors to
death for the heinous crime of chanting the other party’s
slogan!
Nigeria needs a calm atmosphere in the run up to the
inauguration of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari. Not some
Papa Peace fanning public disaffection.
Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu
@emmaugwutheman
emmaugwu.com
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment