"If the Anambra election can be manipulated with little or no resistance, then 2011 will similarly be a rigger’s bonanza."
Anambra and Nigeria’s burden
By Okey Ndibe
(okeyndibe@gmail.com)
In eleven days – February 6 – Anambra voters will go to the polls to (attempt to) elect the state’s governor for the next four years. They have a full field of candidates to choose from, and they certainly have a hard task discerning the wheat from the chaff.
The election, by every measure, is a profoundly significant contest. There’s no question in my mind that Nigeria’s deeply entrenched anti-democratic forces will seek, yet again, to thwart the popular will. Will they succeed in their sick mission? Will Nigerians awake on February 7 to realize that the hijackers of power had plied their trade once again, and imposed a candidate the people did not elect? And if so, what are the likely consequences?
My opening sentence speaks, advisedly, about the electorate “attempting” to elect a new governor. Nigeria’s electoral history has been marked by such honest attempts marred by massive rigging abetted by the police, security agents and electoral officials. That practice has brought Nigeria’s by-name-only democracy to the brink of utter collapse. Time and time again, voters’ efforts to hold up their part of the bargain by going – under rain or shine – to cast votes have been sabotaged by those who prefer stealing power to licitly earning it.
Are there any grounds, speaking objectively, to expect that things would be different in Anambra this time around?
The answer is yes and no.
Let’s dwell, first, on the yes. Umaru Yar’Adua’s apparent incapacitation and likely absence from the country strike me as holding out hope for a credible election in Anambra. Despite his posturing as an agent of electoral reform, Mr. Yar’Adua has earned a reputation as a ruthless, shameless apostle of hijacked elections.
His record as far as electoral probity is concerned is, to be sure, a wretched one. Yes, he’s talked electoral reform, as he’s talked “rule of law,” but he’s been a hypocrite on both issues. In fact, it’s impossible to reconcile his words and his actions on the two fronts.
A comatose steward at Aso Rock, Mr. Yar’Adua has been content to slumber at moments of national crises that called for stellar leadership. But he’s woken up and risen to every partisan occasion when his party sought to re-steal a governorship election – in such places as Kogi, Adamawa, and Ekiti.
It is no secret that Mr. Yar’Adua and his wife, Turai, played key roles in the still questionable decision to hand the PDP’s governorship ticket to Charles Chukwuma Soludo, the immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Were Yar’Adua in operation, there’s no question he’d try to put pressure on the malleable leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to call the election for Mr. Soludo, regardless of how the people of Anambra think about the matter.
The subtraction of the Yar’Adua factor and threat bodes well for the Anambra election. Goodluck Jonathan, Yar’Adua’s deputy, is in a too precarious position to mount decisive on the electoral body. And without strong covert pressure being brought to bear on INEC, it’s unlikely that the Nigerian police as well as other security agents and the military would be marshaled to choreograph the election for the PDP candidate.
In effect, Mr. Soludo must strive to win on his own steam.
Nigerians are aware, as never before, of the cost of letting politicians (and especially mediocre, unscrupulous ones) to usurp power. Since Anambra will give us the best preview of the shape of elections to come in 2011, one foresees less tolerance of rigged elections.
Incidentally, the fear is that – precisely because the stakes are so high, not only for Anambra but also for Nigeria as a whole – the merchants of stolen mandates will make heavy investments in Anambra. If the Anambra election can be manipulated with little or no resistance, then 2011 will similarly be a rigger’s bonanza.
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