When you read Sam Omatseye’s brilliant column in The Nation edition of November 24, 2014, titled “Between Jonathan and Fayose”, you’d realize why he just won the DAME award for informed commentary. That piece of write-up could well have been titled “Between Jonathan and Chris Okotie”, because it addressed the same problem of impunity, the federal government’s predilection with lawlessness, and lack of respect for the rule of law.
In a bid to sit-tight in Aso Rock, Citizen Jonathan is employing every means possible to weed out every atom of opposition, both within and outside the government, without recourse to reason. So when another string of disgraceful acts like what the nation recently witnessed at the National Assembly and Ekiti State transpire, it is not hard to figure out whose hand is course-plotting the puppet of INEC’s disrespect for the rule of law. These are just some of many embarrassing incidents which the nation wakes up to every day.
Peter Tosh, the late reggae icon sang, saying, “Everyone is crying out for peace, no one is crying out for justice… give me human rights and justice”. This is exactly what the Fresh Democratic Party, FRESH, has been clamoring for since that faithful morning of December 12, 2012, when the nation woke up to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s sweeping fiat, which sought to bury a select group of political parties, without rhyme or reason.
Rev. Chris Okotie, leader of the FRESH party restated his intention to take another shot at the exalted office of president, come 2015, but President Jonathan has already decided to stymie this quest through INEC, even despite the separate re-instatement verdicts which the party and Hope Democratic Party secured at two Federal High Courts of Justices Gabriel Kolawole and Ademola Adeniyi in Abuja. Even INEC’s belated appeal of the FRESH judgment appears to have been buried. To what extent is he prepared to go to stop new parties like FRESH?
The on-going kerfuffle unmasks what Mr. Omatseye described when he referred to Tolstoy’s distinction of those who went to school and those who benefitted. “He (Jonathan) is no longer the meek President that his quiet deception of mien portrayed… We have a dictator on our hands, who wants to win the elections next year even if it means by undemocratic means. We are already seeing this”.
Explicitly or implicitly, anyway they are dressed; zebra or leopard, the stripes or spots cannot change, but the ruling class is clearly mutating beyond the confines of conventional risk and reputation management. They may be in power, but being in power is not proof of competence. They purport to tell us with excruciating inaccuracy that they are best positioned to determine the course of our individual and corporate existence.
The old prejudice that a gathering of political moss in the corridors of power is synonymous with experience is gone. An assemblage of party stalwarts and political pedigree doesn’t necessarily constitute an effective government, so stampeding opposition to entrench themselves in power cannot be allowed.
This caricature of our expired politicians, which has loomed large on our national psyche seems resigned to entrench poverty and inequality. It has clear and immediate implications of a social problem that obviously hasn’t been recognised. With the present standoff, FRESH knows utopia is not suddenly about to dawn, so, are all these part of the evidences that the proponents of that grim forecast that Nigeria may break-up in 2015 had wind of in making the prognostication?
The murky landscape of Nigeria’s political economy has never been less dismal. Our index of national wellbeing is at an all-time-low, yet Mr. Jonathan claims to have fulfilled Millennium Development Goals, which is the eradication of extreme poverty in Nigeria: He must be living in a different nation. Anyone who does an overview of Nigeria in retrospect will come away with the impression that what started out as a new course for the nation in 1999, has morphed into an international disgrace. The repeated failings of the present leadership, and the daily crisis across the nation that waft into the media are just proof of a dip in our vaunted title of giant of Africa; we are really now just a huge white elephant.
The quest for an elixir of political problems that has been the challenge of many African governments has been disappointing, if not disastrous. INEC’s deregistration experiment will not further Jonathan’s ambition. It is the Olympic syndrome: records exist in order to be broken. Surpassing accomplishments of others is part of human nature, and because of this collectively competitive streak, civilizations have advanced through the centuries. But in Nigeria, it has been used to the detriment of the nation. Here, incumbency has become a rat race. It is an irritating trend because it highlights desperation, rather than substance and transparency.
A lot has been said and written about this government’s disregard for the rule of law, and more will come. It’s surprising that the courts are not filled with charges of treason and sedition by this government against commentators like Omatseye, who cry out daily in the media about the rape of our democracy.Yet, it is important for progress as a nation that government does not sit to judge where the bounds of participatory creativity can be. Change doesn’t accept limiting and jaundiced barriers, and FRESH’s refusal to be pigeonholed by the status quo is a laudable course of action.
–Elakhe, a security/emergency evacuation expert wrote from Lagos.