Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Nkem Ekeopara is a contributing editor of USAfricaonline.com
Our Igbo elders say that it is good for the wind to blow so that you can see the rump of the chicken.
There’s nothing that has presently validated this wise saying than the British government’s shameful reaction to the recent and terribly flawed 2023Nigerian elections, especially the presidential election.
The British establishment bear a vicarious responsibility for the recent killings and attacks on the Igbo and anyone that looks like them in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria, again.
I say again, because I’m a member of the remnant that survived the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970).
Painfully, let me recall that the then, Prime Minister of Britain, Harold Wilson at the height of the crisis, did say: “I will accept a million dead Igbos (sic) if that’s what it will take me to keep Nigeria one.” This is a notorious fact!
Well, Mr. Wilson and the cohorts of Britain in Nigeria ended up killing a conservative estimate of 3.1 million Igbo and their neighbors in the former Eastern and Midwestern Regions. Of this number, the majority were children, who died of hunger and starvation.
The British government not only armed Nigeria, they robustly supported them to use hunger and starvation as a weapon of war.
Clearly, this was against Fourth Geneva Convention that protects civilians from being targeted, during a war.
On February 25, 2023, the Nigerian people, especially the youths, woke up in their numbers and excitedly thronged the 176, 846 polling units scattered across Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy. It’s important to note that of this figure, 56,872 polling units were additionally created in 2021 as part of INEC’s so-called preparation for the just concluded fraudulent 2023 elections. Young people constituted the majority of the voters.
They were out to peacefully elect a president that can reset their country in all ramifications. They wanted to speak through their Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) in anger and anguish what they tried to do, in like manner, before the Nigerian security goons sputtered the white part of their national flag (Green White Green) with their blood on October 20, 2020.
Simply put, Nigerians thronged the polling units to elect a president that can bring succor to their lives after eight years of a very corrupt and disastrous government once described by a former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, as “fantastically corrupt”.
They thronged the polling units not only to elect a president that is mentally and physically fit but one whose competence, capacity, character, empathetic disposition and indeed, records of achievements in governance are verifiable.
In my commentary published on January 30, 2023, here on USAfricaonline.com titled, “February 25 Presidential Election and Nigeria’s fate”, I underscored the importance of this election.
In it, I placed the onus on the “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC). I implored them to Strictly apply the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the conduct of the elections. Implicit in that call was the confidence INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu and retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari instilled in the populace by constantly reassuring them that the elections in 2023 will be transparent, free, fair and credible. Prof. Mahmood Yakubu asked and got a humongous N305 billion in order to deliver on his and his employer’s reassurances.
Further to that, was the fact that some us understood the workings of BVAS designed by my schoolmate at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Engr. Chidi Nwafor (aka Chidi Electronics).
To our collective peril, we believed them! We believed them not just because they were trumpeting it. We believed them, because BVAS has been tested and successfully used in some off cycle elections. These elections include the Isoko South Constituency by-election in Delta State held on September 10, 2021. Also, it has been used in the Anambra State governorship election on November 6, 2021, and in the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. In these elections, the outcomes were believable unlike the February 25th and March 18th, 2023 elections.
I have keenly followed the comments of International and local election observers; major global media outlets, those of countries, organizations and individuals alike. The conclusion of their views has been nothing, but bringing Nigeria back to its pre-1999 pariah status.
Expectedly, the only exception has been colonial Britain’s Prime Minister of Indian descent, Rishi Sunik, its former Nigerian envoy, Catriona Laing and unfortunately, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, a former President of a free multiracial South Africa. Mbeki was Head of the British lacky Commonwealth Observer Mission.
Professor Mahmood made his infamous declaration of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) at about 4:00 am (WAT) on March 1, 2023, as the winner of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023. When darkness vacated for light that day, we saw Tinubu being issued with a Certificate of Return. And this was an election in which some opposition parties staged a walkout, because they felt that INEC had clearly sabotaged the process. While the National Assembly Election was being uploaded real time on INEC’S viewing portal, the presidential election was not being uploaded, curiously. Yet, within hours Tinubu received the Certificate of Return, Sunik took to his twitter handle to congratulate the “President-elect” ,Tinubu, for emerging victorious in the presidential election. He twitted:
“Congratulation to@officialABAT on his victory in Nigeria. The UK-Nigeria relationship remains strong. I look forward to working together to grow our security and trade ties, opening up and creating prosperity in both our countries.”
To further strip Nigerians of their right to choose their leaders, Catriona Laing, the former British High Commissioner to Nigeria, was quoted by mainstream media in Nigeria as saying:
“Nigeria’s 2023 elections fascinating and positive.”
Fielding questions from journalists, she said Nigerians should be “proud of the presidential poll despite setbacks.” She chose to say this while visiting Ahmed Lawan, Nigeria’s Senate President. Senator Lawan has just been “re-elected” to represent Yobe North by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Yes, you read me right. The proper owner of that victory is Machina. Machina was robbed by the Apex Court of the mandate his people gave him.
Lawan contested for the APC Presidential ticket with Tinubu and others and lost. He didn’t participate in the APC primary for his senatorial quest as constitutionally required. But the Apex Court had no moral burden in awarding the seat to Senator Lawan.
Not done, Laing tweeted a hasty congratulatory message to the female governorship candidate of APC in Adamawa State, Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (BINANI). In her tweet, she said that Aishatu has just been elected the first female Governor in Nigeria. Reading the tweet, I was like didn’t this London School of Economics (LSE)-trained envoy know that the global face of Obidient Movement that has shaken the Nigerian political landscape, Peter Obi, as Governor of Anambra State, had a female Deputy called Dame Virgy Ngozika Etiaba? Didn’t she know that Dame Etiaba was sworn in as the first female Governor in Nigeria on November 3, 2006?
Former Governor Etiaba performed well within the period Obi was in court to recover his mandate temporarily truncated by the dark and evil forces that still abound in Anambra State, today.
Later, Laing deleted her tweet. I don’t know whether she felt any shame while deleting the tweet in question. But if I was her, I’ll utterly feel ashamed of myself for, bringing to question the reputation of the institution(s) that trained me as well as the process that handed me such a high and prestigious position.
If you juxtapose Laing’s and Sunik’s activities in these elections, and the US reaction through a Press Release by the State Department on March 1, 2023, signed by Ned Price, former spokesperson for the State Department, you’ll understand that America is a country of carefulness and class.
First, President Joe Biden didn’t rush to his twitter handle to congratulate someone whose records in the United States of America is tainted with criminality in drug deals and certificate forgery.
Anyone who reads between the lines will appreciate the fact that the Americans were cautious and measured in their reaction.
Further, they have since consolidated their image as the shepherd of democracy around the world by granting approval to the Nigerian American Coalition for Justice and Democracy (NACJD) permission to use their hallowed grounds and institutions to protest against the worst cycle of elections in the history of Nigeria. On Monday, April 3, the Nigerian Diaspora (still disenfranchised in Nigeria— even when their annual remittances remain the major inflow of dollar into the country’s economy) marched from the Lafayette Park in front of the White House, then, to the US Capitol and ended at the Department of State.
Expectantly, they delivered a formal letter of demands to the Department of State.
Perceptibly, this will be filled with what the United States could and should do to rescue, refine and deepen democratic governance in Nigeria.
Nigeria claims it’s a Federal Republic and runs a Presidential System that they borrowed from the United States. But that’s in name, only. It’s in actuality, a Unitary State in which those who hold power abuse it in various ways, including disobeying the orders of courts of competent jurisdiction and outright perversion of justice.
It was not just Sunik and Laing that tacitly approved the violence, vote-buying, all other sorts of electoral maleficence, intimidation, killings and impunity that attended the elections. The former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, who was the Head of Commonwealth Observer Mission to Nigeria disappointedly, described the election as “fair and credible”. I was shocked! Mbeki was not just speaking for himself, but for the Commonwealth. Mbeki, who inherited the fruits of freedom after Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of suffering and humiliation in Robben Island, allowed himself to be used to perfume the rotten outcome of the Presidential election, in particular.
I’m so glad that a Nigerian who is on ground could so graphically put down everything that happened during and after the general elections that produced nothing but charred outcomes.
I’m so pissed off by the reactions and body language of British authorities to the ugly outcome of that election. Britain has not helped the progress of democracy in Nigeria especially as made manifest in the latest elections. The British government needs to rethink about its role in trying to foist a very unpopular government in Nigeria. Nigerians will resist it to the very end. That is the truth of the matter.