Nigeria’s Super Tuesday and its aftermath

In any year of America’s presidential election, Super Tuesdays are the most decisive dates in the country’s political calendar, bar the day of the presidential election itself. Super Tuesdays are the Tuesdays following, first, the Iowa caucus and then the New Hampshire primaries, in which no less than 24 of the country’s 50 states pick the presidential candidates of the country’s two main political parties, the Republican and Democrat. Invariably those who win the race go on to clinch the presidential tickets of their respective parties.

Nigeria had its own Super Tuesday last week, not on the hustings as in America, but at the courts. As we all know by now, the presidential election tribunal chose the day to announce its verdict on the petitions brought before it against the election of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua by two leading opposition candidates, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari and former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar.

In what seemed like a prelude to our Super Tuesday, the courts chose the Saturday before to announce their verdict on the petition against the election of the Senate president, David Mark. By late afternoon of that day, news had gone out that they had nullified the election.

However, in what looked like a Solomonic judgment of something for each of the parties in dispute, they declined to grant the prayers of the petitioner, Alhaji Usman Abubakar, aka Young Alhaji, that he should be declared the winner. Instead they ordered for fresh elections in two of the nine local governments in the senatorial district in dispute. These were the two that had purportedly been won by the Senate president. Both parties have since headed for the appeal court.

The somewhat qualified nullification of Mark’s election fueled speculations that the opposition presidential candidates too would succeed in their petitions. Such nullification would have been the first in the country’s rather disputatious presidential elections. Naturally this heightened political tension in the country to the extent that you could almost slice it with knife.

However, by the Monday before judgment day, any expectations that the courts would make history by annulling the presidential elections began to fade. First, the president decided to proceed with his official trip to China on the very judgment day itself. On the surface there was nothing wrong with that since the trip had been fixed long before the courts chose the day to deliver their verdict. But then surely the president must have known that a president with a nullified mandate hanging on his neck would have been in a weak position, legally and even more so, morally, to negotiate or even discuss deals abroad.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the authorities approved an unprecedented live coverage of the court proceedings by the mass media. It was very unlikely that this would have happened if the authorities were uncertain of the outcome.

And so it was that our Super Tuesday that was initially expected to explode with a big bang, imploded (if that is the right word) with a whisper. The greater surprise, however, was not so much the tribunal’s decision itself as the dismissive and derisive tone with which it did so.

The petitioners had variously complained that, among other things, there was no proper voters’ register for the elections and that the ballot papers were without serial numbers and were not in booklet forms with counterfoils to allow for cross-checks. They had also protested the deployment of the armed forces in an apparent attempt to intimidate voters.

The courts not only refused to take judicial notice of these and other notorious facts of attempts by the authorities to fix the elections, they dismissed the opposition’s petitions as “miniature complaints”! Yet these were fundamental flaws in the very foundation of the elections

Predictably the opposition parties have headed for the Supreme Court in the hope that they will get justice. I doubt that they will. True, the personal intervention of the incorruptible Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, seemed to have had a dramatic effect on the attitudes of the election tribunals whereby back in 2003 they routinely dismissed opposition election petitions on mere technicalities. But no matter how incorruptible Kutigi is, he alone or even working with his likeminded colleagues cannot change the socio-politics of the judiciary overnight.

If appealing to the Supreme Court is likely to be futile, should Buhari and Abubakar have proceeded there as they have? I believe they should if only to exhaust all the means for seeking redress. This way they would establish clearly before the public eye that fighting for redress in the courts of law in this country is ultimately a complete waste of time.

There is, of course the danger that heading for the streets instead of the courts could ultimately provoke anarchy. But then it could also lead to a healthy respect of the voters’ choice by politicians as we have seen in Kenya where the opposition held out against intense international pressure to completely negotiate away their mandate that was so blatantly stolen by the ruling party.

In Nigeria, the prognosis for avoiding anarchy looks rather bleak. First, the upturning of the results of so many legislative and governorship elections does not seem to have had any salutary effect on the conduct of the recent Local Government elections which were characterized by widespread violence and blatant rigging. Second, the conduct of the congresses of the ruling PDP in the run-up to its national convention this weekend shows clearly that it is simply incapable of shedding its so-called “garrison democracy”, at least as long as the present crop of leadership remain in charge.

Third, and most importantly, the leadership of the armed forces which should maintain neutrality in the country’s electoral disputes has since become blatantly partisan. Not for the first time this leadership has issued threats to opposition elements to behave or face a crackdown. Last week, the Chief of Defense Staff, General Patrick Azazi, told Nigerians without any elaboration that his office had it on good authority that the opposition had plans to disrupt the country’s peace. “This”, he said, “is not the right way to go and does not represent the peoples’ quest for national security.”

Azazi was merely following the footsteps of his predecessor, General Martin Luther Agwai, who issued similar threats back in January 2006 when opposition mounted against Obasanjo’s attempt to give himself a third term, possibly a lifetime, as president. Then as now the armed forces leadership showed itself to be part of the problem rather than its solution apparently because they have been direct beneficiaries of the decision of their commanders-in-chief to politicize the military in spite of all claims to the contrary.

This leadership which has been declaring its allegiance to incumbent presidents rather than to the country have all overstayed their tenure in their various services; in accordance with their regulations they have served for well over their 35-year limit or have reached 55 years of age or, in some cases, both. Obasanjo’s decision to leave them behind was clearly for political expediency and not for any professional reason. Yar’adua, his successor, has apparently decided to let the status quo stand.

This, however, can only build up frustrations within the rank and file of the armed forces. This, in the long run, is dangerous and self-defeating.

As the ruling party and the leaderships of INEC and the armed forces congratulate themselves over the verdict of the presidential election tribunal, they should remember the words of President Obasanjo himself, as the principal architect of the on-going political debacle.

Exactly fourteen years ago last month, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as a self-appointed conscience of the nation, told an audience during a workshop on “The State of the Nation and the Way Forward,” that “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” He said this as the keynote speaker at Arewa House, Kaduna on February 2, 1994.

Our own Super Tuesday and the reactions it has provoked suggest that we have indeed forgotten our past. Only a miracle can save us from being doomed to repeating it.