By Jude Opara
There is an Igbo proverb which says; “Ana ebido n’nwata mara onye ga eji ugwo”, which translates that you will identify a debtor right from his early life.
As the country marches towards the 2027 general elections, there are ominous signs that the election will have a lot of challenges and stories built around it. With about nine months to the exercise, politicians and their supporters have started setting the stage for an exercise that may either make or mar Nigeria.
I’m not a prophet of doom, but the signs I’m seeing are not too encouraging, they are not showing that the election will be crisis free, to the extent that those who will lose will quietly accept the outcome and openly congratulate the winners.
Rather, all the available signs point to an election that will be highly controversial, with the attendant crisis and outright rejection of the result by those who will not be so lucky to be returned elected.
From the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and their boisterous posture to the now embattled members of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC) who are equally yelling their own battle cries, irrespective of the fact that the recent actions of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have technically sidelined them from the processes leading to the elections proper.
Another disturbing factor is that politicians have succeeded in pitching the masses against themselves mostly along ethnic lines. These obviously blinded supporters have forgotten that while there is nothing different between somebody from say South East and another person from North West, there are a world of difference between them and the politicians, whether they are from the South South or North Central. The politicians always congregate and agree whenever their interests align, they hardly consider tribe or creed!
However, a casual observation on any of the social media platforms will reveal how sharply the ordinary citizens are divided along ethnic and religious lines. They haul all manner of insults on each other at the slightest opportunity. In fact, one would wonder if these people are actually citizens of the same country judging by the way they abuse and denigrate each other.
So, one does not need a soothsayer to understand or project that the forthcoming election will be very toxic. The APC is already rearing to go in its quest to retain the coveted seat of the President and Commander in Chief of the country. At the last count, the party is controlling 31 states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where the Minister, Chief Nyesom Wike though a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is seriously campaigning for the reelection of the APC government.
In fact, many analysts believe that Wike is one of the egg heads involved with the strategy on how to ensure the return of President Bola Tinubu to office in 2027. Apart from holding down the PDP, he has openly told anyone who cared to listen that he will work for the victory of the APC administration.
The way and manner most of the governors who were members of the PDP jumped into the APC following the protracted crisis that rocked the once ruling party showed that the average politician is more interested in his political ambition than upholding any party legacy.
Members of the opposition parties have continued to accuse the Tinubu government of plotting to throw the country into a one-party state, an allegation the APC has continued to deny.
Addressing newsmen last week shortly after the party was delisted by INEC, the factional National Chairman of the ADC, Sen. David Mark pointedly said; “The ADC has risen as the last bastion between Nigeria’s democracy and full-blown dictatorship. What is now unfolding is a concerted effort to dismantle that last bulwark. If we allow this to happen, it will signal the end of our democracy as we know it. We therefore hold it a duty to democracy and our Nigerian people to say No”.
But in a swift reaction the following day, the APC who spoke through its National Secretary, Sen. Ajibola Basiru while debunking the allegations of involvement in the ADC crisis, urged the opposition parties to look inwards and solve their problems.
Basiru further mocked the factional leadership of the ADC, alleging that they didn’t do their due diligence before joining the party from their previous parties.
“Nigerians must know that the present predicament of David Mark and his ilk has to do with the untidy way they hijacked the leadership of an existing political party without carrying along all stakeholders resulting in court litigation before the Federal Hight Court and the adverse judgment of the Court of Appeal upon which the INEC predicated it decision not to recognize any of the two contending parties for the leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) pending the determination of the pending suit by the court.
“The ADC went to the Court of Appeal over an internal leadership dispute that was still ongoing at trial court, and in doing so, made a fundamental legal mistake. The appellate court found that the lower court had not granted injunctive reliefs sought but merely asked the defendants to show cause why the others sought should not be granted implicating that Senator David Mark’s faction appeal was built its appeal on a faulty premise”.
Before coming to the ADC, it’s important to address the issue of INEC who unfortunately is being mentioned in a manner that ought not to be because the body is supposed to be an unbiased umpire.
But regrettably, the body appears to have put forth a very wrong leg which has forced many commentators to question its expected neutrality.
The crisis between the ADC and some of its members was magnified on April 1st when INEC in attempting to address the position of the Court of Appeal delisted the party from all its programmes pending the determination of the suit that all parties should maintain “status quo ante bellum”.
Unfortunately, the above Latin phrase has been interpreted differently by different lawyers, probably depending on where they are standing on the matter. While almost all the lawyers I have heard agreed that status quo ante bellum, means that all parties should maintain the position before the conflict, but they have remained divided on whether the INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan was right in saying he was not going to deal with any of the factions, or that he should have approached the court to interpret for him what it meant.
The ADC and their sympathizers believe that the best INEC could have done was to continue to deal with David Mark pending the determination of the substantive suit. They believe that considering the time constraints and the congresses that ought to have taken place before the general elections that the action of INEC has taken the party out of the election.
Now some social media experts have dug out old posts allegedly by Prof. Amupitan showing support for President Tinubu and the APC. This has added to the allegations that the INEC boss is not likely going to conduct a free and fair election.
The trouble here is unless the unlikely situation of Prof. Amupitan resigning happens; no opposition politician and his supporters will accept that the election was not manipulated if President Tinubu wins. That means that there will be a lot of litigations.
All said and done, the political class must remember that there will still be Nigeria after the 2027 elections, so making it a do or die affair is not and can never be in the interest of the country. They should play the game with the utmost civility and discarding the “I must win mentality”. It’s the people of Nigeria that are supposed to elect the leaders they want.
INEC should, therefore, purge itself of any act that tends to suggest that it wants to favour any particular political party.
