USAfrica: Jonathan vs Buhari election of February 2015 will come and go; Nigeria will not disintegrate.

Jonathan vs Buhari election of February 2015 will come and go; Nigeria will not disintegrate. 

By Dr. Ken Okorie

Special to USAfrica multimedia networks, Houston,                                                                                                        Follow USAfrica at Facebook.com/USAfricaChido , Facebook.com/USAfrica247 and Twitter.com/Chido247

“The country [Nigeria] is heading into these elections with insufficient preparation, extreme tensions, and wracked by Boko Haram, the brutal Islamist insurgency whose murders and kidnappings have shocked the world.”  This quote is from Princeton N. Lyman, Senior Adviser to the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace and U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria (1986-89) in a January 27, 2015 article in Foreign Policy magazine titled “Staving Off Nigeria’s Next Train Wreck.”

It is neither unusual nor a surprise that the upcoming 2015 Nigerian election has polarized the polity and made consensus or even commonsense seem far less familiar to, or plausible for, Nigerians.  

I am quick to add that no polity ever prepares sufficiently for elections, especially if it is a truly democratic system.  Politics and elections in the United States is routinely marked by Republicans and Democrats being at each other’s throats way past elections, to the point that one wonders if the American election cycle ever ends.

But that is what genuine democratic process is about. Opponents look at the same things but see and characterize everything differently. Most likely it would not be democracy if this were not the case.  Contrast this with Russia and China where elites of very few predetermine the outcome of elections. In Russia, Vladimir Putin alone decides when he becomes President, who succeeds him, and when he takes back power.  The people have no say; hence there is no polity.

If Nigeria’s opposing political parties and their candidates simply kissed and pretended as though they had no differences, the country would really be in trouble because (a) the hard questions would never get asked, and (b) the political class would simply collude and manipulate the system to its demise.  The concept of democracy would be history and not apply.

Active and vocal opposition is what democracy thrives upon. How former Ambassador Lyman thinks this is, or should be, different for Nigeria is hard to understand.  Having served as American Ambassador in Nigeria, one expects better understanding from the diplomat. Could it be that reasoning like his informed the alleged CIA forecast that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015?

My forecast is that February 14, 2015 will come and go, the elections will hold, legal challenges will follow, and in May 2015, someone will sit in Aso Rock as the elected President of Nigeria.  Most significantly, Nigeria will not disintegrate.

On what do I base my optimism, one may ask?  Well here it is.  Historically (except in Western Nigeria of 1959, 1964 and 1965), violence is not a usual or common election phenomenon.  Political opposition and debate has always been open, notorious, loud and vibrant.  But somehow once the votes were cast everyone found a glass of Kool-Aid and chilled after the stampede.  Invariably, from the debris of those vibrant contests also emerged political alliances that once seemed impossible or strange at best.  If this were not the case, how would anyone explain the improbable alliances that have been repeated between the North and the East, and currently expressed in the All Progressive Congress (APC) that has brought together elements of the Southwest and factions from the North? 

What we are seeing in the 2015 campaign is not much different.  In all the referenced instances from the past, the eruption that followed elections did not come from the polity; they invariably came from the military.  And that is where the concern should still reside with respect to the 2015 contest.  That is, assuming that the strategic restructuring of the military by former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, has not built serious barrier to military intervention.

Remarkably each military eruption left the system more weakened and Nigeria much worse off. The polity appears to have mastered this lesson. One hopes that the military has also learned the same lesson and curtailed political ambition within its ranks.

Secondly, all political groupings in Nigeria (North, East, West and now South-South) have invested so much in the country and have better appreciation for its possibilities and potentialities that none should have defensible or sustainable interest in destroying or disintegrating it.  The North has often ascribed to itself some ordained right to rule, and could not expect to realize that ambition by destroying Nigeria.  If Nigeria disintegrated, what would the North rule?   Various components of the political South that insist on equal right to control the country and its resources do so out of the belief that Nigeria is worth striving for; otherwise what would be there to control?  This is the pivotal mindset that cuts across Nigerians, regardless of ethnicity or geographic affinity; everything else is either subordinate or a facade.

Therefore, too much should not be made of the fact that Nigerians get very loud and passionate in expressing their political views.  Strictly speaking, there are not many Nigerians that are not animated and passionate even in matters non-political.  This is an attribute or phenomenon that is easily appreciated at cab stands where Nigerian drivers stand around arguing politics, social and other current affairs as they pass time waiting for passengers.  The unseasoned eye would think a mini war is about to erupt.  But that is the passion of Nigerians.  We are simply an emotional people, and quite loud in expressing our views.  Some of this is at play on the campaign trails.

Finally, Nigerians often exhibit greater sense and understanding of situations than their loud, yet seemingly compliant, appearance suggests.  Might anyone have truly believed that Nigerians could defeat General Obasanjo’s third term ambition as civilian president?  For that matter, might anyone have believed that the enigmatic General Abacha would eventually subside?  And when one takes time to analyze the sentiments that flowed with these two landmark events in Nigeria’s political history, it is difficult to tell the Northerner from the Southerner.  

Other pointers to the sophistication of Nigerians (political and otherwise) deserve mention here, because they truly confirm that the county is advancing rapidly both as an economy and as a socio-political system.  At times one can’t help wondering if it is all a dream, given the decay (moral and environmental) that still abounds.  

One instance was the collapse of a building on September 12, 2014 at the Synagogue Church of Nations run by the rather remarkable Pastor T. B. Joshua.  The level and sophistication of the forensic investigation and public discourse that followed were quite impressive.  Despite lots of teasers and distractors planted to keep the people from getting to the facts, the discourse went on and at a rather high intellectual pace.

Before that incident, the eruption of Ebola in Nigeria in July 2014 and the manner the system arrested and managed the crises spoke volumes about where Nigeria is.  The international community gave Nigeria kudos for being able to track and surveil on contacts and suspects in a country most thought it was most unlikely to meet an unfamiliar face more than once in a lifetime. Even the United States sent experts to study how Nigeria did the magic!  

While it would be disingenuous to present Nigerians as all angels, anyone who has lived in, or is familiar with the Western World (the US in particular), easily realizes that Nigeria often gets undeserved bad rap.  The reason may be that Nigeria has become the convenient whipping boy for anything corrupt or fraudulent, even when its nationals are not involved or implicated.  But the scale of frauds that go on in various places within the American system but do not involve non-Indigenes (assuming such term exists) compels wondering about the moral justification for persistent broad brushing of Nigerians!  

In the area of physical crime, the typical evening news in a major American city reads like police crime beat report. Despite the picture often painted of Nigeria as a crime haven, the country does not record in a year the number or scale of horrible crimes that happen in several American cities in a week.

So much for the digression!      

The point is that when you sit back and observe the tone of intellectual exchanges in parts of the Nigerian society (often present in the media), one realizes that Nigerians are up with it.  As I see it, Nigeria’s primary drawback is that people are often too selfish or corrupt to apply the full measure of human capital and knowhow available to the country.  But most of all, Nigerians lack the basic discipline required to free the country of these and other afflictions. 

Yes, Boko Haram is real and deadly; it is also despicable.  But these are new phenomena not previously part of the political process. Nigerians know what is what.  Take, as an example the issue in the current campaign around General Buhari’s West African School Certificate (WASC), which goes to his qualification to be president under the constitution.  The exchanges that have taken place on this subject (some available on YouTube) confirm that Nigerians are not as far behind as pervasive corruption in the system misleads the world to suspect.

If these views appear optimistic, none should expect an apology.  I simply believe that, perhaps, except for Boko Haram, no Nigerian wants the country dead or destroyed.  Most recognize there is far more to lose than gain in such event.  Nigeria’s prime national challenge is how to equitably or fairly divide its cake?  What it lacks most is the discipline to understand the challenges and thereby find a solution.

• Okorie, Houston Texas-based attorney for 29 years, a member of editorial board of USAfrica and contributing editor of USAfricaonline.com is the first Secretary General of the World Igbo Congress.

Boko Haram, Baga and Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity.                            By Dr. Chido Nwangwu.

Boko Haram has turned Jonathan’s Nigeria, with brazen impunity, into what I call Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity. Borno and nearby  areas have become Boko violent playgrounds, the capital territory of their medieval Caliphate. We cannot have two Commanders-in-Chief in one country: Abubakar Shekau and President Jonathan. For President Jonathan, again, stand firm and Be Nigeria’s duly elected and only Commander-in-Chief; or….. 

https://usafricaonline.com/2015/01/12/boko-haram-and-nigerias-federal-republic-of-insecurity-by-chido-nwangwu/

USAfrica: BOKO HARAM’s latest killings sharpen divide for security team at Nigeria’s presidency. By Chido Nwangwu
https://usafricaonline.com/2013/10/21/usafrica-boko-harams-latest-killings-sharpen-divide-for-security-team-at-nigerias-presidency-by-chido-nwangwu/

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Dancing with “ghosts” of BOKO HARAM, President Jonathan, Sultan Abubakar and Nigeria’s national security. By Dr. Chido Nwangwu
https://usafricaonline.com/2013/04/05/dancing-with-ghosts-of-boko-haram-president-jonathan-sultan-abubakar-and-nigerias-national-security-by-chido-nwangwu/

VIDEO of the CNN International broadcast/profile of USAfrica and CLASSmagazine Publisher Chido Nwangwu.   http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/07/29/mpa.african.media.bk.a.cnn  

Forthcoming 2015 BOOK: In this engaging, uniquely insightful and first PERSON reportage book, MANDELA & ACHEBE: Footprints of Greatness, about two global icons and towering PERSONS of African descent whose exemplary lives

 and friendship hold lessons for humanity and Africans, USAfrica Founder Chido Nwangwu takes a measure of their works and consequence to write that Mandela and Achebe have left “footprints of greatness.”

He chronicles, movingly, his 1998 reporting from the Robben Island jail room in South Africa where Mandela was held for decades through his 20 years of being close to Achebe. He moderated the 2012 Achebe Colloquium at Brown UNIVERSITY IN Providence, Rhode Island.“I’ll forever remember having walked inside and peeped through that historic Mandela jail cell (where he was held for most of his 27 years in unjust imprisonment) at the dreaded Robben Island, on March 27, 1998, alongside then Editor-in-chief of TIME magazine and later news chief executive of the CNN, Walter Isaacson (and others) when President BILL Clinton made his first official trip to South Africa and came to Robben Island. Come to this island of scourge and you will understand, in PART, the simple greatness and towering grace of Nelson Mandela”, notes  Chido Nwangwu, award-winning writer, multimedia specialist and founder of USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned U.S-based newspaper published on the internet, in his first BOOK; he writes movingly from his 1998 reporting from South Africa on Mandela. http://www.mandelaachebechido.com/