Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
When Nigeria got independence from Britain in 1960, there was hope that a new powerhouse had been born – a giant that would champion the cause for Africa’s socio-economic and political renaissance.
Although the elections of 1959 that produced the maiden government were characterized by malpractices allegedly masterminded by the British to favour their preferred candidate, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, as prime minister, Nigerians then were so overwhelmed by the joy of freedom from the colonial masters that they did not bother about the deficiencies of that election.
When Nigeria finally became a Republic in 1963, with Dr Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe becoming a ceremonial president and Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa remaining as prime minister and head of government, hopes peaked that the young nation was on course for full discovery of her immense potentials. But alas! The leaders, rather than devise an effective development blueprint and strictly adhere to it, relapsed into self-indulgence, corruption, tribal politicking, nepotism and complacency. They lost the vision and derailed.
Recklessness, looting, witch-hunting, rancour, lack of transparency and accountability became the order of governance.
Azikiwe, with all his famed wisdom and pragmatism, could not save the situation, being a ceremonial president with little or no influence in government. Balewa, with all his intelligence and conservatism, lost focus and the governance clue. Awolowo, with all the foresightedness and realism of the opposition, concerned himself with his people’s development. Sir Ahmadu Bello, with all his godfather status and oversight, was more interested in the North’s perpetual grip on power.
Then came the military. A certain young army officer, burning with a curious patriotic zeal to save the nation from falling into the precipice, decided to cleanse the Augean stable of corrupt governance. To achieve his bold sanitization mission, the 24-year old Sandhurst, England-trained army officer, called Chukwuma Nzeogwu, embarked on a very bloody revolution that would later turn to be Nigeria’s first military coup,
on January 15, 1966. It was a suicide mission. Though he and his team succeeded in killing some of the leaders they felt were holding the nation to ransom by impeding her fast development, they could not carry out the mission to the letter.
But a wrong impression had been created in the North; a bad precedent had been set in the nation; and the result: a counter-coup, a mutiny, a civil war and a long period of coups and military regimes spanning over three decades with short stints of civilian administrations in-between. It was the darkest age in the annals of Nigeria’s post-independence history.
The advent of democracy on May 29, 1999, which marked the beginning of the 4th Republic, was supposed to signal a new dawn for Nigeria as the citizenry breathed a fresh air of freedom from military governance.
Unfortunately, five general elections, five Republics and five presidents later, Nigeria’s socio-economic and political story has not changed. Rather than change, the story has become uglier and more awry as the nation plunges deeper into socio-economic and political oblivion.
Given the little electoral improvement witnessed in 2015 where the outcome of the elections, for the first time in Nigeria’s checkered history, saw an incumbent government being defeated and a sitting president congratulating his winning opponent before the conclusion of the announcement of the result, expectations were high that the 2019 general elections, ushering in the 9th Republic, would record higher improvement in terms of freeness, fairness and credibility.
But the reverse has unfortunately ended up being the case. Rather than improve the nation’s polity, the exercise had returned Nigeria to her dark days of socio-economic and political backwardness, given the malpractices, controversy, confusion, violence and negative reactions that trailed it.
The fact that the 2019 general elections consumed a whooping sum of N200 billion of taxpayers’ money, given to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the federal government, makes it more worrisome.
Ironically, the 3rd Republic election, organized in 1993 by the Prof. Humphrey Nwosu-led National Electoral Commission (NEC) remains the freest, fairest and most credible election in the history of Nigeria, despite the inconclusiveness of the announcement of the result.
Added to the complex paradox is the fact that the acclaimed winner of that 1993 presidential election, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, who was never allowed by the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha-led military regimes to rule as president, has been declared a hero of democracy with May 20 dedicated to him by the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari.
The onus therefore lies on President Buhari and the Professor Mahmud-led INEC to redeem their image and the image of the country by resolving all the raging controversies trailing the elections, especially in Rivers State and then following it up by implementing the entire electoral law to avoid further electoral controversies and rescue Nigeria from the dark age to the light age of the 21st Century.
