SONALA OLUMHENSE FROM PUNCH
Remember that on February 25, some outgoing governors who were seeking to transit to the Senate were rebuffed at the polls.
Now, we wait.
We wait for the results of yesterday’s state elections. For results that promise to alter Nigeria’s political landscape for the next generation. Last week, governors seeking a second term were suddenly in retail campaign mode, showing up in places where they had never bothered to go, and speaking to the man in the street. It is doubtful that any of them got some sleep last night.
So now we wait.
Remember that on February 25, some outgoing governors who were seeking to transit to the Senate were rebuffed at the polls. Such governors usually line up their successors, in a bid to hold on to power even after they have left the building. This week, we will find out what voters had to say about that age-old trick yesterday.
Of particular interest to me are the Houses of Assembly. For two decades, one of two tricks has been deployed to enable the governor to do as he pleases: either his party packed the House with its members, or he would intimidate or buy off the loyalty of each one of them.
In that regard, there could be governors this week who find that they have sailed too far into the water but with no way of returning safely to shore. Some will find that they can no longer simply be manipulators of men and money, but also must rule. We wait.
Some of yesterday’s contests will go to court. That is the system, and I celebrate it.
So we wait.
The presidential contest, amateurishly bungled by the electoral commission and desperately rigged in location after location, is already in court, with two of the larger political parties challenging the process. The declared winner, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC, last week accepted this course of events.
“This is inherent to the democratic process,” he said in a statement in which he described his election as ‘fair and credible,’ and that he defended the right of the aggrieved to exercise the legal rights Nigerian law allows them.
But he also interestingly observed that there have been times in Nigerian history “when our governing institutions created more questions than they answered.”
On that point, he said that the arc of our political history gives him confidence that Nigerians can overcome that past. “We have walked through the thick of the night to emerge into the light of brighter days to come. There is no good reason to retreat into the darkness of years past.”
Fascinating reflection, given that his party has for eight years made Nigeria a jungle, and Nigerian citizenship a source of dismay and regret. In January 2019, with every soul on earth clearly able to see how much of a catastrophe his government had been, Buhari infamously proclaimed that he had fulfilled the campaign promises he made in 2015.
Worse still, he returned two months ago and repeated the baseless claim that he has humbled insecurity, revived the economy and combatted corruption.
In what country did Buhari fight insecurity? In a report last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cited the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for north-east Nigeria, which was launched in Yola last month. It seeks $1.3bn to provide critical lifesaving assistance to six million people.
