Of course, it is an awkward moment to ask why the party destined to rule Nigeria for 60 years in the first instance, has suddenly lost grip on power after only 16 years. The time will come when awkward questions such as this will be meticulously examined if only to appreciate the simple fact that robust claims of political longevity bordering on divine imprimatur stem from exaggerated sense of group entitlement. God has no hands in it.
For now, we are in a celebratory mood. Euphoria washes over the nation. There is no stanching it. It is easy to put the euphoria down to a simplistic reading of the outcome of the presidential election. I believe it goes much deeper than that.
We woke up from a nightmare. We are not celebrating because the peace that attended the presidential election has punctured the balloon of our collective fears, apprehension and anxiety. We celebrate because the peaceful and successful conduct of the election confronts us with what we never knew we had – the principle of collective commitment to a national cause.
Important signs flowing from the presidential election draw the line in the sand of our national political development. It may be too early in the day to draw certain conclusions but I think we have enough reasons to believe that the mentality of do-or-die and garrison politics, both of which were replaced in the presidential electioneering campaigns with unprecedented bitterness and provocation has begun the inevitable process of rot and irrelevance.
President Goodluck Jonathan did the smartest thing in his more than five years in power. He did what no president before him had done. He conceded defeat and called to congratulate his APC rival and winner of the election, General Muhammadu Buhari, at least six or seven hours before the results were formally and officially declared by the electoral commission.
In doing so, Jonathan scored two significant goals. Firstly, he took the shine off Buhari’s victory. The important men in and outside the country, surprised by his reaction, are falling over themselves to praise him for his graciousness with an expression of gratitude that borders on the obsequious. Given the tenor of the last six weeks of the campaign, no one expected him to concede defeat, let alone even before the electoral umpire gave us the verdict of the people.
In taking the step he took, he wiped clean the last six weeks of a political campaign marked by bitterness and unwarranted personal attacks that did not do him much good. Now, witha smart masterstroke, he will go into the sunset of his political career in a loud ovation, not in a whimper of public derision. He has rescued himself and prevented his being buried in the political equivalent of Golgotha.
And he has set the bar for how defeat in politics should be taken and treated. Ah, yes, God works in mysterious ways.
There were brief anxious moments at the INEC collation centre on Wednesday when one of Jonathan’s aides, Godsday Orubebe, ordered the INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, to stop the announcement and return to his office to attend to his petition.
We thought it was part of a strategic script by Jonathan and his people to scuttle the process at its most critical moment. Again, Jonathan’s phone call debunked it. We would never know if Orubebe acted alone or such a plan was canned when it became evident that any further attempts to scuttle the process would set the country on fire. We can guess. Orubebe’s adult militancy did not receive Jonathan’s blessing, obviously. Orubebe would forever rue the day he carried out his unwise action. Jega’s cool and calm response to his diatribes and wild allegations put him in his place.
I am sure not too many of us believed that we would live to see real democratic transition in our country. Given the nature of our politics and the cynical capacity of a ruling party to thwart the will and the choice of the electorate, it was a long shot for anyone to even entertain the thought that a man from a rival political party could challenge a sitting president and defeat him. Not with the usual heavy war chest and the security forces engaged in the business of regime maintenance.
March 28, 2015, drew the line on stone.
There is no stopping change whose time has come. On May 29 this year, the sun will formally set for one man and one political party and rise for another man and another political party. And Nigeria will formally take its seat among nations that recognise the people as the true custodians of political power. This may not necessarily be the end of our groping in the dark, all things being usually unequal but it certainly will lock the gate against retrogression. We have stepped across the threshold of a new political era. I feel good.
Victories come with challenges. It is worse in politics. I am sure Buhari knows that only too well. He had been there before and done it before and he knows it would be an expensive mistake to under rate the enormity of the challenges of victory that awaits him. The bitterness of the electioneering campaigns has left deep wounds in the psyche of the political leaders and their followers and left deep fissures in our national cohesion. For the victorious party, this would no longer matter much; but for the defeated party, nursing its wounds, its emotions remain raw. In his brief statement acknowledging his victory, Buhari said: “This is a moment that we must begin to heal the wounds and work toward a better future.”
That is the right spirit. There is no pretending about the fact that there is a victor and there is a vanquished in the presidential election. Buhari, as he did throughout the electioneering campaigns at their bitterest and most provocative, must ensure that his party men and women do not rub the noses of their vanquished political rivals in it.
The general faces critical crisis of expectations. How he manages ii would be important to the ultimate success of his administration. He faced a similar situation in January 1984. He decided to be brutally honest with the people, lest they wallowed the illusion of military magic.
In his maiden broadcast, he said: “Let no one be deceived that workers who have not received their salaries in the past eight or so months will receive such salaries between today and tomorrow, or that hospitals which had been without drugs for months will be provided with enough drugs immediately.”
It is the general’s luck that he faces those same challenges 30 years later. Workers and pensioners in the federal and state public services are owed salaries and payments of between five and seven months. They would expect the general to urgently do something about this. Sadly, despite robust claims to the contrary, our economy is in poor shape.
An important point about the change is that we, the masses, are thoroughly traumatised by the corruption and the culture of impunity that put the rich and the powerful thieves beyond the reach of the laws of the land. We expect that to change as part of the house cleaning that would make a new country out of this Lilliputian giant.
I join millions our compatriots in congratulating him. I wish him well in the tough task of giving us a new, courageous, strong and responsive leadership. The fate of our country hangs on it.
