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Now that elections are won and lost, By Lekan Sote

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Barring a court ruling setting his election aside, Bola Tinubu, who polled 8,794,726 of the votes cast on February 25, 2023, will be sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on Monday, May 29, 2023. Because he is leading in just 12 out of 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, this may not be an exactly tidy win.

Yet, he garnered the highest number of votes, and scored at least 25 per cent of votes in 30 states, to satisfy Section 134 of Nigeria’s Constitution, which says, “A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where… he has the majority of votes cast at the election; and he has not less than one quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”

You’ll wonder how the election, that is not exactly flawless, could have been rigged for Tinubu if he, Director General of his campaign council, and other chieftains of his party, the All Progressives Congress such as the President, APC Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, APC Secretary, Kano State Governor Ganduje and Kaduna State Governor Nasir el Rufai, lost their states.

But that is something for the courts to sort out. Some of the contestants, like first runner-up, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party and second runner-up former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi of Labour Party say they will go to court.

The Director of Public Affairs of the Abubakar Campaign Council, Senator Dino Melaye, says Tinubu’s winning of the presidential election is “a grave injustice which will not stand.”

Obi said, “We will explore all legal and peaceful option(s) to recover our mandate. We won the election and we will prove it to Nigerians.”

Abubakar and Obi rebuffed Tinubu’s peace offering and asked the courts for leave to inspect the election documents. Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Sokoto states that asked the courts to declare Tinubu’s election as null, void and of no effect, have withdrawn their petition, which their lawyer hints may become fodder for a presidential tribunal.

Abubakar led top chieftains of the PDP, all clad in mournful black clothes on a protest march to tell INEC that the presidential election result is unacceptable to them. Also, an Igbo group was reported to be on the march demanding Obi as President.

Tinubu, who probably realises that he will inherit a fractious nation, should be magnanimous in victory, and avoid gloatful celebration. Thankfully, he told his fellow contestants, “I extend the hand of friendship… Let’s collaborate and work together.”

Some suggest that Tinubu should form a government of national unity, because northern region of Nigeria, that fielded former Vice President Abubakar, demanded a make up for the four years of Goodluck Jonathan presidency, which, they argue, should have been the second term of President Umaru Yar’Adua, had he not died.

The Igbo of South-East Nigeria certainly feel that by denying Obi the presidency, the rest of Nigeria has once again conspired to exclude them from the inner court of Nigeria’s political commonwealth.

President-elect Tinubu must urgently begin to gear up for his duties by engaging his counsellors to come up with appropriate strategies to consolidate his (contested) victory, heal the wounds caused by the rhetoric of the campaigns, unify the country and turn the economy around.

He needs to start to assemble the men and women who will help him further articulate and achieve his policies and programmes. A friend has suggested that very few of the “community” of 18 presidential candidates adequately articulated their manifestos. The campaigns have largely been much mudslinging, fake news and hate speech.

If the President, Major General Muhammdu Buhari (retd) does not speedily rectify the botched naira recolouring policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the President-elect must immediately speak to the issue. He must think of a strategy to contain the needless crisis caused by the poor policy implementation. Yet he must not act as if he wants to wrestle Buhari’s presidential powers.

Incidentally, a member of the media team of APC Presidential Campaign Council and former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Kehinde Bamigbetan, has already spoken on this issue after the grand finale of the APC presidential campaign held in Lagos.

The President-elect must speak and comport himself in a manner that shows willingness to overcome the trust deficit engendered by the government of President Buhari. His utterances and conduct must henceforth be the building block of the implementation of his government’s policies and programmes.

If well handled, his pronouncements and actions may begin to significantly reduce both the inflation rate and the foreign exchange rate, the way it happened in 1993, when inflation rate was dropping as the National Electoral Commission, led by Prof Humphrey Nwosu, was announcing the presidential elections results presumed to have been won by Bashorun MKO Abiola.

Though, when the devil in the military government of Gen Ibrahim Babangida (retd) reared its head, stopped the announcements and annulled the election, with an unsigned statement, the prices of all goods, as well as foreign exchange rate, shot up like projectiles of water from a geyser.

And things have never been the same since. So, this President-elect must understand the nuances of speech and actions, which communication scientists describe as semiotics; the use of symbolism, and act accordingly. If he can pull this through, maybe half of his battle is won.

But it does appear that he understands that the issues that confront Nigerians are insecurity, poverty, corruption and infrastructure deficit. He has promised to re-engineer Nigeria’s security architecture to enable farmers return to their farms, enhance the government’s capacity to generate more revenue to fund development projects, and ensure uninterrupted generation, transmission and distribution of electricity.

As he waxed poetically in his acceptance speech, Tinubu managed to promise, “Where there is poverty, let us create prosperity and jobs. Where there is hunger, let us feed the people, chasing hunger from their midst. Where there is scarcity, let us rediscover abundance. Where there is brutality, may we replace it with brotherhood.”

To the aggrieved and disillusioned youths, vanguards of the #EndSARS movement that seems to hate his guts, he assures, “I hear you loud and clear. I understand your pains, your yearnings for good governance, a functional economy and a safe nation that protects you and your future.”

But he must immediately demonstrate ability and intention to deliver on the hopes he has raised.  It was deeply reassuring when he told the world that “The Nigerian Eagle shall fly.” On the other hand, President Buhari, who promised security, improved economy and a fight against corruption, woefully disappointed with actions that didn’t match his words.

The President-elect’s PR team must activate a communication strategy to re-sell and re-connect him to his constituency, the business community, the professionals, trade unions and workers, to ready them all for seamless take-off of a more robust economic future for Nigerians.

And he can’t drop the ball of commitment to a vision of Nigeria’s economic renaissance. In addition to the security of the lives and property of Nigerians, their economic prosperity is Job One.

  • Twitter@lekansote1, lekansote.com

Strictly Personal

Off we go again with public shows, humbug and clowning, By Jenerali Uliwengu

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The potential contestants in the approaching elections are already sizing themselves up and assessing their chances of fooling their people enough for them to believe that they are truly going to “bring development” to them.

 

I mean, you have to be a true believer to believe that someone who says they have come to offer their services to you as your representative in the local council or in the national parliament and they tell you that they are going to build your roads to European standards, and your schools are going to be little Eatons; your hospitals are going to be better and more lavishly equipped than the Indian hospitals, where many of our high-placed people go for treatment, and your water supply will be so regular that you have to worry only about drowning!

 

I mean no exaggeration here, for the last time we had the occasion to listen to such clowns — five years ago — we heard one joker promise he would take all his voters to the United States for a visit.

 

He was actually voted to parliament, or at least the cabal acting as the electoral commission says he was. He has never revisited that promise as far as I can remember, but that must surely be because he is still negotiating with the American embassy for a few million visas for his voters!

 

Yes, really, these are always interesting times, when normally sober people turn out to be raving mad and university dons become illiterate.

 

Otherwise tell me how this can happen: Some smart young man or woman shows up in your neighbourhood and puts up posters and erects stands and platforms for the campaign and goes around the constituency declaring his or her ardent desire to “develop” your area by bringing in clean and safe water, excellent schools, competent teachers, the best agricultural experts as extension officers, etc, etc.

These goodies

At the time this clown is promising all these goodies, you realise he has been distributing money and items such as tee-shirts, kitenge prints, khangas, caps as well as organising feeding programmes, where everyone who cares can feed to satiation and drink whatever they want with practically no limitation.

Seriously, I have been asking myself this question: Would you employ a young man who shows up at your front porch and tells you he is seeking a job to develop your garden and tells you that, while you are thinking whether to employ him, “Here is money for you and your family to eat and drink for now!”

Now, if we think such a man should be reported to the police or taken to a mental institution, why are we behaving in exactly the same way?

Many a time we witness arguments among countrymen trying to solve the conundrum of our continued failure to move forward economically, despite our abundant resources, and it seems like we haven’t got a clue.

But is this not one of the cues, if not probably the most important clue, that we have not found a way to designate our leaders?

It ought to be clear to any person above childhood that this type of electoral system and practice can never deliver anything akin to development or progress.

Now, consider that we have being doing this same thing over and over — in many of our countries elections follow a certain periodicity like clockwork — but we have not discovered the truth.

Put simply, our politics is badly rigged against our people, and elections have become just devices to validate the political hooliganism of the various cabals running our countries like so many Mafia families.

Knee-jerk supporters

We have so demeaned our people, whom we have turned into knee-jerk supporters of whoever gives them food and drink around election time, that now they say that at least at election time it is their turn to eat, which means, naturally, that at all other times it is the turn of the ones who “bring development” to the people.

Clearly, this is not working, and it is no wonder that dissatisfaction and frustration are rife, as our people cannot put a finger to the thing that holds them back.

Apart from these sham elections, from time to time, the rulers organise shows designed to make the people believe that somebody is concerned about their problems.

We have one such masquerade happening in Tanzania right now, where public meetings are organised so people can vent their frustration. But these will never solve any problems; they are just shows.

If the elections we have been holding had any substance, there would not be any need for such public shows, except those organised by those people we elected.

Where are they? What is the use of spending so much money and other resources to erect and maintain a political system that has to be propped by public shows, where people come to vent their grievances over the hopelessness of the system in place?

I am just asking.

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Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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