WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com | justme4justice@yahoo.com
While I already had my topic written up for the week, I cannot but take a detour to comment on the content of the EU’s unexpected 2023 election observers report. Since I read the so-called report, I have asked myself for an umpteenth time if it was the same election I witnessed that the EU observer team reported on. It is unfair to Nigeria and Nigerians that at a time like this when we already have a determined, baseless objection to the sanity and sanctity of the process apparently by the Peter Obi-led Obidients as they are called in the manner of the Donald Trump baseless 2020 US presidential election result denial, the EU would choose to take the position they have taken from non–logical premises.
The EU observer team faulted the composition of the INEC personnel as a core base for the conclusion it made; yet, this is a system that is perennial to the country since independence. We have had previous elections with the same EU team not bothered by the procedure for the appointment of the INEC leadership and its personnel, so why now if not that the team was bent on creating dubious premises for its determined report content.
I wonder how a team that monitored elections in apparently less than 5 percent of all polling units nationwide would be able to statistically conclude about the elections as they roundly do. What amuses me most is the fact that the same EU team did not see or care to report the elements that gave unprecedented credibility to the February 25th election; the EU team did not see the ruling party losing in almost all its bookmaker strongholds across the country and only able to go ahead to win the election because it was able to come second in most of those state and as a result of the internal division in PDP that ended up splitting the votes of the party in favour of the APC flag bearer.
If APC had planned to influence the election through rigging, wouldn’t it have been in Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, and Katsina as points of contact. Yet, the party convincingly lost in those states; even in Tinubu’s Lagos State. The EU team did not see all the incumbent governors and long serving senators who lost out in an unbelievable manner; in a system where it was a tradition for them to win elections without stress. Apparently, to the EU team, incumbent governors of state losing election bids were not enough to give credit to the process. What a disservice to the country.
It is obvious and unfortunate that the EU team chooses to side with the Obidient mob led by the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi. Bent on disputing the election results because the IREV did not upload the presidential election results in real time, yet they presented agents across the polling units who obtained authentic copies of results on behalf of the various parties. Common sense and logical summation would suggest that we should have a problem with the polling unit results not tallying with final results and not uploading of results. All these come back to a desperate decision to undermine the electoral process and the umpire and to keep some element politically relevant in the country.
Now, to my piece for the week; it has been 35 days since the new Administration took the mantle of leadership of Nigeria. How has the country fared so far? Many would be of the opinion that 35 days is too early to judge a government, and they would be right. We cannot sufficiently pursue policy directions after just a month. Yet, unlike many other administrations before it, the current president has chewed so much in such a period to drive home the fact that he would not be judged like others.
In just 35 days, we have seen the discharge of policy decisions that the country has repeatedly mulled over in the last twenty-four years since 1999, and even before then. We have seen the enactment of policies, though severely affecting the capacity of the citizens to survive in these times, yet they are taking it with equanimity, apparently accepting the policies because of the greater future benefits for all. We have seen policies that presently put households and businesses in the country under intense inflationary pressure; we have seen a direct hit on the energy prices in the country, with the price of PMS most hardly hit with the removal of subsidy payment by the Federal Government. All these have immediately created an inescapable (though maybe temporal) and increased hardships on Nigerians as costs of transportation, and access to basic needs skyrocket.
Yet, it appears Nigerians in the majority are prepared to give the “RENEWED HOPE POLICIES” a chance despite the apparent hardship resulting from the implementation so far and the unwritten and expressed fear of uncertainty of the success of the policies. There are hopes; the stock market is responding very positively, trust in the nation is spiking in investors, our international economic rating is rising and projections beam hope. But there are still palpable fears that these may yet be another business as usual for Nigeria and Nigerians. For good measures, and by antecedents, we would not blame Nigerians for it, or doubting that their sacrifices are worth it.
As a country and people, we have gone through phases, once and again of dispensation of deceits and abuse of trust by those we voted to govern us. In 1999, when PDP won the first election that returned the country to a democracy after the military’s long shot at power; ordinarily, the expectation of many were that coming from among us and aware of the gross deprivation of the country and the difficulties its people are passing through, these men and women, would salvage the country, right the wrongs of the past and set the country on a fresh pedestal of growth and development. Unfortunately, as time tells, the opposite was the dealings the country and its citizens got from these people, that is, the civil leadership that took over democratically. This was despite a thousand sugarcoated policy directions that look too good to fail and mammoth dissemination of national funds to implement programs and projects that eventually brought nothing to Nigeria and Nigerians.
There is a hell lot of work ahead of the current Administration; and it is beyond having the will to effect the promised change, but more necessary to convince Nigerians that they are not suffering in vain. The fact is that Nigerians had hoped in the past; the common men on the street have been told a million times they would have to bear pains to get changes over and over again with little to no change in their material condition.
Another job the government would have to do is to live by example. It would be absolutely inappropriate to ask Nigerians to make sacrifices that the leaders are not willing to make themselves. Nigerians are crying, they are unable to move freely any longer because transportation costs have gone overboard, yet politicians continue to flaunt affluent on the street, while they continue to live on public funds. It appears the politicians wouldn’t understand what the people are going through to be able to stand in the position to offer changes, if they would continue to live large on mammoth salaries, allowances and continuous stealing of public funds without check. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would do well to show the citizens he meant well and meant business by addressing the obvious class inequality between the ruling class and the Nigerian masses.
The third reality the current Administration must face is the fact that unless what has to be done to unite the various conflicting interests in the country are done, we are not yet set to sail to the promised changes. There is no strong and thriving nation like a united people; and of all the elements of national growth, development and survival, unity stands aloof and supreme. When at any point in time, we do what has to be done and abandon sentimental attachments to factors that separate us and take away unity from us and recognise what our common problems and national challenges are and set out to confront them as one and united people, then, we would begin to see results; otherwise, our nation would remain as bad as we had taken it down by our many infighting, ethnic, religious and social bigotry that bred and present mammoth destructive disunity, which is our greatest enigma as a nation and a people. It would be immaterial how committed the government is to bring changes, if the critical issue of unity is not properly addressed in present times.
We cannot have any development without first establishing political stability that is built on a political development and trajectory that turns out leaders with the political will to effect the needed changes for the nation’s desired growth. I will wait to see the final and eventual composition of the president’s cabinet before taking my position eventually about the Administration.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
