NIGERIA ELECTIONS: Can Buhari tell us how it was rigged?

In continuation of my discourse on the vexed post-elections violence that engulfed Northern Nigeria as the results of the Presidential elections were being released, I want to ask General Buhari some direct open question and offer him some of my sound counsel. 

General, you claimed the elections was rigged in favour of the winner?  How was it done?  Do you have the evidence at your disposal? 

I remember you commended INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega for being forthright and honest days to the elections?  After the declaration of results, you suddenly labelled him "insincere"!  What informed your sudden change of mind?  The International Observers amongst other local observers who were wont to criticize our previous elections have all adjudged this one as free, fair and credible.  Are they also wrong?  Your colleague former heads of States in the persons of President Shagari, President Babangida, General Yakubu Gowon, and General Olusegun Obasanjo have congratulated Jonathan... are they also all wrong?

General, your statesmanship is being questioned at the moment.  I want you to redeem that high profile position by towing the line of honour and concede defeat for the sake of your highly esteemed position because even if you go to courts, I am very sure you will not get a result better than what you have right now.

Let us face it General;  CPC is just less than a year old.  Did you in all sincerity believe you could match PDP which have had a sustained structure across the land for 12 years vote for vote?  Your CPC is only popular in the north only because of your name.  You virtually have no structure in the South East.  That is the reason why your South East leader, Prince Chuba Ikagwu was really embarrassed to learn that you claimed the elections were rigged against CPC in the South East.  He said your party sabotaged itself for not practicing internal democracy.  I agree with him; Katsina, Kano, Bauchi and Taraba state chapters of CPC have disputed candidatures for the April 26, 2011 gubernatorial elections.  How can a house divided against itself stand?  Surely not! 

Prior to the elections, you and your party members became unduly violent in your comments.  How can you encourage your followers to defend their votes through violent means?  You knew very well that most of your supporters are not educated, yet giving them such a blanket instruction was an invitation to anarchy!  General, it is time to own up to being responsible for the carnage that greeted the announcement of the results because rather than go to court, you started making inflammatory statements that further incited your supporters who went on a killing spree.  To worsen the situation, you said the violent protests were "spontaneous" and a reaction to the rigging and that those who "rigged" should be responsible!  How unstatesmanly could you be?

General Buhari, Nigeria has gone beyond ethnic and religious politics.  It is time you come to terms with this and re-educate your supporters and may be salvage whatever is left of your statesmanship.  Many people are hurting and they are right to be hurt!

General, on a final note, I want you to realize that the Igbos in the South East have a right to vote for who they want to vote for and in this case, they voted for Goodluck Jonathan... or do you want to insist that the Igbos voted for you?  Did the Yorubas vote for you?  If they did, how many votes?  Do you have the evidences?  It is time we become truly nationalistic and agree that certain things in life are either lost or won.  I rest my case.

Nigeria Elections: VIOLENT PROTESTS Vs RATIONALE THINKING

Yesterday, I bore my mind on the question "CAN NIGERIA STILL REMAIN A CORPORATE ENTITY" on this page.  I got some reactions and I want to share those reactions first before I further my discussion today under the subject "VIOLENT PROTESTS Vs RATIONALE THINKING".  I am leaving out the names of those who made comments for the purpose of their confidentiality.  

"When Buhari came to campaign in Minna last year he made some inflamatory statements and most of the people that were following him were thugs and indian hemp smokers who were brandishing all kinds of dangerous weapons on d streets of Minna."

"I'm afraid not. What our voting said is, we a better off separated especially those from the South. They put their region ahead of the country and continuing like this won't be good for the country. At least a good deal from the north look beyond region and ethnicity and shown their desire for the country to be a corporate entity" 

"when i told my bosom friend that am not going to vote Saturday for any of the available presidential candidates less did i know that i will a subject of the fury of the political thugs sent out by the inciting comments of our revered political juggernauts......my home was vandalized.....but i escaped with my family miraculously.....what else will I contribute to this discussion without giving away the venom on my spleen......i have no comments.....i just dey laugh"

After taking my readers down memory lane, I merely laid a foundation for a sustained discourse on the NIGERIAN QUESTION  using the recent post-elections violence in northern Nigeria as a platform.  Today, I just want us to reason randomly against the backdrop of the violent destruction of lives and properties in the name of protests.  But first of all, let us look at the comments of the three respondents I pasted above. 

The first respondent is a lady and lives in Minna, North Central Nigeria.  She emphasized the inflammatory campaign strategy adopted by the Congress for Progressive Change candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari.  Those who were in the majority at such campaigns were said to be thugs and "miscreants" brandishing all kinds of dangerous weapons on the streets.  I attest to this because here in Kano, few weeks to the elections, some of the CPC supporters went on rampage on the day their presidential campaign was scheduled for Kano and they did a lot of damage.  CPC is therefore suggested to be home to some very violent and uneducated and unprincipled charllatans who follow General Buhari fanatically.  Anyone desiring to challenge this should write back and make your comments.

The second respondent is a male and appears to be in love with the person of General Buhari and also believes that the north is innocent of my position that it has not dealt well with other Nigerians in the NIGERIAN PROJECT.  He rather claimed the south is putting their region above others.  I disagree with that allusion on the following grounds:

1.  When the military and other civilian leaders in the past from the north dominated the power equation in Nigeria, the south never took up arms to murder northerners living in their domain.  The June 12, 1993 presidential election which produced a muslim/muslim ticket in the persons of MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe was overwhelmingly voted in the south.  Can the north, today vote for a Christian/Christian ticket?  The answer is definitely no.  Buhari/Idiagbon were a pair of muslims who led the country as a military regime.  Nobody complained.  These and other examples validates my argument that the north is pursuing a religious agenda in politics and this is wrong.  It is their attitude that most of the time fuels the animosity that the south is beginning to have about anyone from the north.

2.  Today, in Benue ACN, there is a Christian/Muslim ticket seeking to lead the state.  Benue is a predominantly Christian populated state.  Can Kano for instance ever present a Muslim/Christian ticket?  Be the judge!  Lagos which is completely cosmopolitan in nature has had a Muslim/Christian ticket for the past 12 years!  As a matter of fact, Lateef Jakande is a Muslim.  Yet, in the same Lagos, Christians are in the majority.  Is the Islam practised in the south different from the one practised in the north?  Be the judge!

3.   Our respondent also said the north made a deal.  I am not aware of any deal.  The overwhelming vote from the North was for Buhari.  The South and the middle belt voted for Goodluck Jonathan.  Someone should give those who voted for Goodluck some measure of intelligence.  It is a democracy!  Did Buhari sincerely believe he was going to win the elections?  

WHAT WERE THE PROTESTERS ANGRY ABOUT?

While the results of the elections were being announced, protests began to build up across the north.  Buhari was winning in the North, Goodluck was winning in the South.  Were the protesters angry that the south were voting their choice candidate?  What was the issue really?  Some people said they were angry that the election was being rigged!  That is a subject I want to treat in the next blog.  But even if the election was being rigged, there were legitimate means of pursuing their grievances with the process.  The courts!  Whatever happened to rationale thinking?  While they protested, they did not do a protest march with placards.  They protested with clubs, knives, sticks, bonfires, arson, killings, and burning of churches!  The people who were killed... what were they dying for?  What was their offence?  The Christians whose properties were looted, burnt or destroyed and in many cases killed.  What was their offence?  Do they work for the INEC?  It is meaningless, senseless and barbaric.  

I am more bothered when those who should know better are justifying the violent protest by saying "they were responding spontaneously to the rigging of the election".  That is absolutely meaningless.  I took the pains of discussing this because parents, elders and the elites in the north who were actually fanning the embers of violence had no liver to call a spade a spade.  They were busy calling those they sponsored "thieves, hooligans and vandals" who were only interested in "looting peoples' properties".  Foul!  Hooligans can't afford a 50 liter jerican of petrol (N5,000 in some cases) to burn one church down (and over 15 churches were burnt in a particular area alone in Kano!)  Where would a group of non-entities afford say N100,000 to buy fuel to systematically burn down churches if they were not funded?

My Muslim friends and associates rather than think along this line are trying to defend their region as if I am against them.  No!  Far from it... I am being objective and having lived in the North for 21 years, I believe this place has become home but I am being made to feel like I am not welcomed because I am a Christian and think differently.  For God's sake, this is the 21st century and we are in a democracy!  If my rights as a citizen is limited because I live in a state outside my home state, then we should begin to think differently about the Federal Republic we call Nigeria.

CAN NIGERIA STILL BE ONE CORPORATE ENTITY?

It took me a while before I settled down to write this note.  I am very sad and angry.  I carry a pain that only true change for the better will heal.  It is a pain about my nation - Nigeria.  In just 3 years, we will celebrate our centenary anniversary as a nation-state having been foisted to live together since 1914 by the British colonial masters.  I now see the lack of wisdom of the amalgamation which only served the interest of the British.

The colonialists were not bothered about the differences in culture, values and lifestyles of the people they forced to live together as a nation.  We are today suffering from the decision of some selfish colonial masters who were only interested in their imperialist agenda.

The fact that we are a union of strange bed-fellows reared its head early in our quest for independence.  The Southern part of Nigeria through their representatives in the Parliament under the British asked for independence in the early 1950s but the North stated that they were not ready.  Why?  They must have seen that the gap that existed between them (the North) and the South educationally was very wide and so they felt they weren't ready just yet.  Finally, when it was obvious that independence couldn't be stopped and we got it in 1960s, the North did everything possible to hold on to power.  The discontent in the nation and the inability to co-exist because of the wide differences led to the first coup and then the counter-coup and then the Civil War where over 1 million lives were lost.

After the Civil War, Northern military officers held on to power till 1976 when General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated in a bloody coup.  General Obasanjo's hurried hand over to Shagari, again a Northerner is a further confirmation that the north has always had political power but never developed the economic and educational capacity of its people.  Shagari's reign was interrupted after he won a 2nd term in office in 1983 by a fellow northerner - Major General Muhammadu Buhari.  Babangida took over and in 1993 after the transition program failed and Chief M.K.O. Abiola was denied his mandate, Abacha was left behind and he carried on till he died in 1998.  Abdulsalam Abubakar's 11 month transition program birthed an inevitable democracy in 1999 when Olusegun Obasanjo took the reins of power.

The north has had its fair share of rulership in Nigeria.  See where our nation is with all they had "contributed" through their being at the top.  If indeed we are ONE NATION as we are often acclaimed to be, why should the north rise up in anger when a southern minority is positioned to becoming a leader?

The elites in Northern Nigeria are not helping matters.  They whip up religious sentiments amongst their uneducated followers and they create a mob mentality that endanger the corporate existence of the nation.  The average man on the street in the north does not see why he should allow a "kafir" (an infidel - someone who is not a Muslim)  rule over him as a leader - even if that person gets a democratic mandate from the generality of the people.  He has been brain-washed by his elite leaders and his religious preachers that no infidel or Christian should be allowed to lead Nigeria.  As far as they are concerned, Nigeria is about the north, about Islam and about them!  This is what is at the core of the constant religious and secterian riots in the north and it is the reason why Christian targets like businesses, churches and personalities are always attacked.

I will be discussing the NIGERIAN QUESTION in the next couple of days... Are you a Nigerian living in Nigeria or you are in the diaspora (including African Americans whose roots are traceable to Nigeria)?  I want you to join issues with me as we discuss the future of this nation.

Stay connected and keep your prayer line up to heaven open.  God bless Nigeria.