More than 28 years after Nigeria’s inglorious political crisis, the country under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch appears to be racing back to that era. Former President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, John Nwodo, has said that the delay in restructuring the country is likely to lead to a mass boycott or disruption of the 2023 elections.
Speaking at the 14th Anthony Cardinal Okogie Foundation (ACOF) annual lecture with the theme, Whither Nigeria: Restructuring, Secession or Status Quo, organised by Knights of St. John International and Ladies Auxiliary (KSJI), Nwodo said restructuring is needed for the unity and development of the country.
The disruption of the June 12, 1993, presidential election by the Babangida military administration plunged the country in another worse form of crisis after the civil war. General Ibrahim Babangida who dominated the affairs of the country as Military President, said his administration annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election to prevent a coup in the country.
The June 12 1993 election was widely regarded as the country’s fairest election with Moshood Kashimawo Olalekan (MKO) Abiola in the lead to become president before it was disrupted by the Babangida military dictatorship.
Nearly three decades after the election, Babangida, in an interview on Arise TV said that some top officials in the military would have staged a violent coup if he did not annul the election. “If it materialised, there would’ve been a coup d’état which could have been violent. That’s all I can confirm” Babangida said.
While claiming, “it didn’t happen thanks to the engineering and the ‘Maradonic’ way we handled you guys in the society with a tinge of disdain. But that could’ve given room for more instability in the country”, he said the annulled presidential election had two Muslim candidates – Bashir Tofa (National Republican Convention) from the North and Abiola (of the Social Democratic Party) from the South.
A national protest followed the annulment and forced Babangida to step aside and handed power over to Ernest Shonekan on August 27, 1993, as the head of an Interim National Government. Weeks after, late military dictator General Sani Abacha stagged a coup that usurped the interim government to return Nigeria to military rule.
The Buhari administration in 2018 announced that June 12 will be celebrated in the country as Democracy Day, a national holiday. The day was hitherto marked on May 29. Nigeria’s first elected in about three decades was sworn in on May 29, 1999.
Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12 election, and his running mate were conferred with Nigeria’s highest and second-highest honours – Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, GCFR, and Grand Commander of the Niger, GCON, respectively.
“June 12th, 1993 was the day when Nigerians in millions expressed their democratic will in what was undisputedly the freest, fairest, and most peaceful elections since our Independence”, President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement on June 6, 2018.
“The fact that the outcome of that election was not upheld by the then military Government does not distract from the democratic credentials of that process. Accordingly, after due consultations, the Federal government has decided that henceforth, June 12th will be celebrated as Democracy Day.”
After the June 12 mess, a minor disruption greeted the 2019 polls. The country’s 84 million electorates were set to vote in presidential and federal legislative elections on February 16, 2019. But at 2.40 am that day, just over five hours before polling stations were to open, the electoral agency, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), postponed the balloting.
INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, announced a one-week delay to February 23. He also said governorship and state legislative votes would be rescheduled from March 2-9, 2019.
While the postponement came as a surprise, that of 2023 will not because Nwodo and others have started to ring the alarm. In the case of 2019’s, INEC repeatedly told observers that it was fully prepared to bring off the elections according to schedule.
Voters had gone to bed assured. Some had already gathered around their candidates’ residences, all set to troop to polling stations at dawn. International observers had deployed teams across the country’s 36 states and rented all the meeting rooms at the federal capital Abuja’s five-star Transcorp Hilton Hotel, for use as situation rooms throughout the voting.
INEC itself had set up its National Collation Centre at the International Conference Centre in Abuja, where it was to receive results from the states later in the day.
Yakubu said the postponement followed a review of logistical and operational plans, which showed that proceeding with the polls as scheduled was no longer “feasible”, even though as recently as February 11, he had insisted that it was.
He claimed the commission had been unable to deliver election materials to all distribution centres and polling units across the country ahead of the vote, claiming also that bad weather caused the delays, referring to the harmattan season, a period of dry, dusty wind that blows from Sahara over West Africa from November to about mid-February, often accompanied by a haze that reduces visibility.
The weather conditions, he said, had prevented aircrafts carrying election materials from landing and forced the commission to rely on slow-moving long-haul trucks for ground delivery. Yakubu added that early February fires in three of INEC’s offices, in Abia (February 2), Plateau (February 9) and Anambra states, also hindered its preparations.
All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), The two main political parties blamed each other for the postponement, claiming it to be politically motivated rather than dictated by circumstance.
Nwodo however, said the independence and post-independence constitution were anchored on regional differences, which gave each region a preference to develop along with its revenue capability and needs, adding that, sadly after the 1966 coup, the military created a unitary system for the country to suit its command structure.
He said this structure which should have been discarded was firmly established in the 1999 constitution.
Furthermore, he said Nigeria’s fundamental problem has remained so because the 1999 constitution is not a people-centred document, but a military imposition that gave the north undue advantages over other federating units in the country.
While stating that for the country to make progress, the military imposed Constitution must be replaced with a more people-inclusive document, Nwodo adds, “our expectation now is that our president, will address the situation by constituting a nationwide conversation of all ethnic nationalities to look into the 2014 national conference report and other trending views on this subject matter so as to come up with a consensus proposal.”
According to him, the present APC-led leadership and other political stakeholders must do all they can “to restructure before the next election in 2023, because the level of dissatisfaction in the country as evidenced by the last ENDSARS protest gives one the impression that any delay may lead to a mass boycott or disruption of the next elections to the point that we may have a more serious constitutional crisis of a nation without a government.”
