I have no empirical scientific evidence for this, but I am prepared to stand by my guess that election protest is the face of a deepening democracy in action in our democratic nation. The belief among Nigerians that an election must go only one way, my way, is the beauty of our cultural democracy. What is the use of an election if I do not win?
The simple logic is that I am in it to win. The logic posits that if I win the chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, is then the best thing to happen to Nigeria. He is upright, honest, competent, and incorruptible. Bless him. But if I lose, something no one should contemplate, the same Yakubu is the worst thing to happen to Nigeria. He is unfit for the high and sensitive office and must resign or be sacked. Pox on him.
It is the loser’s game. And it is a dangerous game. It is difficult persuade a man who contested an election that while he may, in his mind, be the best thing about to happen to the country, the law requires him to submit himself to the judgement of the electorate which he and the rest of us must accept.
You see, the problems with our elections are too complex and too complicated for anyone to fully process. They go much wider and much deeper than vote buying, ballot box snatching, under-age voting and all the mago-mago and wuru-wuru that together spell one detestable word: rigging.
2023 polls vs June 12, 1993 polls
Before an election we are warned about some shady characters have already perfected an evil plot to rig it. In the process of voting, we are warned that the evil characters have come to town and are executing their plot to give a fraudulent electoral victory to an election thief.
After the election, the flood gates of condemnations are thrown wide open. The informed, the uninformed and the mischievous stream in with well-oiled vocal cords to pour scorn on the conduct of the election, the chairman of the electoral commission, his commission as well as members of the commission. Next stop: the election tribunal and thence to the courts where justice is supposedly dispensed to cure electoral injuries inflicted on losers.
Every presidential election must go through this process of strident condemnations before things, as they are wont to do, mellow down and the results are eventually accepted. But the mathematics of election victory tends to confound the most intelligent among us. Each of the presidential candidates, including those whose political parties cannot boast of membership beyond husband and wife as leaders and followers, believes he too won the election but was robbed of victory. He is busy condemning Yakubu. The condemnation of INEC declaration of Ahmed Bola Tinubu as president-elect is the most important political business in town today.
We have hired crowds at election rallies; and we have hired men and women who take on the task of insulting public officers and impugning their integrity by simply peddling lies they do not even understand. No nation muddies the waters of its elections this way and expects the rest of the world to respect its elected political leaders. Some foreign media have invited themselves to join in condemning the conduct of the election and the declaration of the winner. Ah, yes, this is Nigeria. The world makes allowances for our peculiarities.
If Yakubu had asked me I would have advised him to save himself from the threat of drowning in opprobrium by issuing a return certificate to each and every one of these redoubtable men, some of whom had been assured by their pastors and imams and chief priests that the job is theirs. If everyone won, then his commission must have achieved a feat unknown in the political kingdom anywhere else in the world. That way, we could have peace, but I know we could not have a government.
The primary purpose of an election is leadership recruitment. This makes it obligatory for the electorate to choose only one man or woman out of the many. Its judgement may be flawed but the rest of us must accept it. Our laws provide for presidential candidates to market themselves, but they do not provide for self-election. For a man to lose an election but still insists he won is to substitute self-election for a general election and make a mockery of our leadership recruitment process based on the wisdom or lack thereof of the electorate.
The loser’s game is a dangerous game because of its tendency to morph into a lingering war of attrition and the physical settlement of the dispute. People who have nothing to gain from another man’s supposed victory put their lives on the line in zealous defence of his claim and die in the process. It is a dangerous game because it is easy to whip up sectional, tribal, religious, and other sentiments in the service of a personal ambition.
It is hardly a matter of national pride that in nearly 63 years of independence, we have disputed every presidential election, every governorship election, and every legislative election. The reason is hidden in plain sight. We love political power but are uncomfortable with the nuances of democracy and are unable to live by its tenets. My pet theory is that where there is trust deficit among the people, nothing is seen to go right. Every action or decision by government or its agency opens itself to controversy and condemnation.
Election disputes in the first republic turned parts of the country into war zones. Those of 1964 knocked the bottom out of the pot. The generals took steps in their transition to civil rule programme in 1979 to create a legal avenue for redress and to prevent the resort to clubs, guns, and petrol to settle election disputes. They created election tribunals as the courts of first instance whose decisions could be challenged up to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. And many a struggling lawyer mined and mine election disputes to turn the colour of ink in their bank accounts from red to black.
In 1979, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, presidential candidate of UPN, believed he won the presidential election. He disputed the victory of his NPN opponent, Alhaji Shehu Shagari. He dragged him to the tribunal, and thence to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. The justices at the tribunal and the Supreme Court found no merit in his challenge and told him so. The sage went to his grave convinced that he won the election but was robbed of victory. He convinced his supporters that Shagari stole his victory. They dupped it the stolen presidency, an attempt to undermine its legitimacy.
Three times before 2015, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari contested the presidential election and three times he refused to accept that he lost. Believing that he won in 2003, 2007 and 2011, he took his case each time to the tribunal and thence to the Supreme Court. The justices did not agree with his claims of victory.
In each of those cases, the now President Buhari who is conducting his second and last general elections, let loose the cane across the back of INEC for doing a shoddy job that robbed him of victory. In trying to put his own judgement above that of the people and the electoral umpire, he impugned the integrity of the commission and the conduct of the elections. I do not recall he complained when he won the election in 2015 and 2019. I suppose Buhari knows that some of the mud homing in on the face of Yakubu are actually directed at him. What goes round comes round. Okonkwo’s law, I think.
Only one presidential election has ever gone unchallenged by the defeated so far – and that was the 2015 presidential election which put Major-General Muhammadu Buhari where he had always wanted to be – in Aso Rock. President Goodluck Jonathan remains the first and the only presidential candidate to accept defeat and congratulate his opponent even before the thumb print dried on the ballot paper.
Jonathan could have followed the beaten path, challenged INEC in giving the victory to Buhari and then dragged the case through the legal route walked by Buhari himself, seeking to invalidate the victories of Obasanjo (2003), Yar’Adua (2007) and Jonathan (2011). He chose not to do so because if he whipped his supporters into a frenzy there was no knowing where it would end. At least he knew that heads would be broken, and the grave would receive the bodies of some misguided and overzealous young men. He carved a niche for himself as an uncommon statesman in a country in want of statesmen.
Both Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and Peter Obi (Labour Party) have claimed they each won the election. Both men are challenging Tinubu’s victory in court. They have whipped up their supporters into a frenzy. Some things never change in our country.