In his seminal account of the tumultuous events which led to the coup d’etat in Braumaire in the Center of France by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, a young aspiring journalist who went on to great renown, Karl Marx surveyed the unfolding drama with his adrenalin shooting up. ‘Men’ Marx observed, ‘make their own history but they do not do so, of their own free will’. To take from Marx in Nigeria’s unfolding political drama, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has made history ‘in a way and manner he would certainly not have asked for nor wanted’.
He could not as a man of honour have wished for nor desired the manner of his ascendancy into the presidential villa. However, today he is there and his tenancy has now been renewed with a Pan-Nigeria mandate. He deserves it and this newspaper offers its hearty congratulations. The massive endorsement that he obtained across the length and breadth of this very diverse country has edified his presidency. There are echoes here of that other game changing triumph on June 12, 1993. The Jonathan victory has seen the president polling close to 60% of the valid votes counted. His electoral spread was also commendable. The President scored the required 25 per cent in 32 states and the Federal Capital Territory, which surpasses the constitutional requirement of at least a quarter of the votes in 24 states. That the spread is national cannot be controverted. None of the other contenders came anywhere near to achieving this feat.
We are satisfied that Nigeria’s ‘festival of democracy’ is heading in the right direction. What we witnessed on Saturday was a remarkable, more edifying departure from the debacle of 2007. We must therefore commend the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for putting up a credible outing. From the way it is shaping up, Professor Attahiru Jega may yet escape the curse of the Electoral Commission as the elephant’s graveyard of reputations. If his reputation remains in tact after the elections he would have broken the mould and he would have earned it. We must also shower kudos on the Nigerian people. We must praise our people for their fortitude and patriotic zeal. With the celebration of democracy we are seeing, any one contemplating an alternative such as the now totally discredited, ‘…fellow countrymen…’ had better not even think about it. The national mood in the last three Saturdays has been decidedly in the direction of, ‘democracy has come to stay’.
In congratulating all those who competed so gallantly for their fortitude and circumspection, we must also state that this cannot be the time for any form of triumphalism. Any whiff of triumphalism will be clearly out of place, in very bad taste and potentially perilous to the nation’s cohesion.
With curfews being imposed in a few States, no one needs to be reminded of the need for circumspection. Unpalatable as it is, there are unfortunately significant doubts about the empirical veracity of some of Saturday’s election results. Soviet era style 90% turn outs in an election beggars belief. For even in Australia where voting is compulsory by law, such figures are not heard of. Therefore, there is still a lot of fine turning to be done. In addition, we must not pretend that the old national bugbear and fault lines did not re-emerge. They did. A study of the electoral map proves this convincingly. This is therefore a time for healing. For if the fault lines so painfully revealed on Saturday are not skillfully checkmated, then, we could sadly be sitting on a time bomb.
The President as a man inclined to self analysis must be aware in his moment of victory that there is a perception, probably erroneous that he is not his own man. This perception to plead in mitigation could be as a result of his being painfully aware that he did not have a direct personal mandate of his own. Now that the debilitating bugbear has been shaken off, with one leap and bound he is now free. From now on, he is now his own man, ready to face the critical, decisive issues of our time. He must put at abeyance all special interests and self-serving praise singers. A pan-Nigeria mandate is an honour given to few men and it must be treated with and wielded with respect.
India’s first post independence Prime Minister, the highly revered Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru often observed, that “A politician thinks about the next election, the statesman about the next seven generations”. Now that the cut and thrust of electioneering is over, we expect Dr. Jonathan the statesman to emerge. For a start, there is very littler time for him to insert his own agencies. He has no choice but to hit the ground running. For he has promises to keep. If he puts in a sterling performance, Nigeria and indeed Africa, that much maligned entity, will be better off. To do this he must assemble a world class, credible government made up of all the talents in order to ensure his place in history. This cannot possibly be the time we must warn for jobs for the boys.
Nigeria’s situation today is perilous. The country is in economic dire straits. We face the ‘Nigerian paradox’ in which in spite of record earnings from the sale of crude oil, living standards are in continuous decline. More disturbing is the fact that Nigeria today is sitting on a demographic time bomb. The overwhelming majority of the population is below 30 years old. Where are the jobs for them? What does the future hold? It was precisely the absence of employment opportunity for a university graduate which unleashed the momentous events in Tunisia and the Arab World, it is a cautionary tale.
In wishing the man of the moment, our affalable President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan a happy tenure, we cannot but remember other seemingly understated historical figures who rose to great heights. For example, Sir Winston Churchill dismissed his opponent the diminutive Clement Attlee as ‘a modest man, with much to be modest about’. Clement Attlee however confounded the many doubters and end up as the greatest British Prime Minister of the last century. Those who thought that Harry S. Truman could not fill the shoes of the great President Franklin Roosevelt were comprehensively proved wrong.
As Dr. Goodluck Jonathan embarks on his tryst with destiny, we commend to him the words of the American poet, Edgar Allan Poe, made famous when it was found on the deathbed of Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru in 1964. “The hills they are lovely, they are dark and they are steep; there are mountains so high to be climbed; and rivers so wide I must cross; I have a lot of work to do and promises to keep before I sleep”. May our great Republic flourish and prosper at the time of Goodluck.
independentngonline.com/DailyIndependent/Article.aspx?id=32375
No comments:
Post a Comment