SONALA OLUMHENSE FROM PUNCH
It was in December 2022 that I first saw the chilling video of the then-All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, explaining his political philosophy.
“Political power is not going to be served in a restaurant…not served in (sic) a la carte,” he says to what appears to be an inner political circle. “It is what we are doing. It is being determined to do it at all cost. Fight for it, grab it, snatch it, and run with it….”
“Grab it, snatch it, run with it” as a political principle?
The first image that came to my mind as I heard that was from the early PDP days in 1999 and 2003: thugs arriving at a polling unit in the heat of an election and executing the physical snatch-and-run manoeuvre. I remember rigging activities involving the stuffing of ballot boxes in homes that were then substituted for the legal boxes between the polling unit and the collation centre.
But what the APC national leader and now presidential candidate was saying was far more insidious. It was at once a revelation of ruthlessness of character and declaration of impunity: clarification that every mechanism that yields electoral victory is not just passable but welcome.
For a democracy, it is the very definition of hell. But as scary as the declaration may have sounded three months ago, in the presidential contest on February 25 and even more so in the state elections on March 18, the full reach of Tinubu’s words became frighteningly clear. That explains why ethnic baiting and brigandage were openly and cold-bloodedly deployed in Lagos State following his defeat there.
Evidently seething that he was embarrassed on his own turf, Mr Tinubu has no apologies about the widespread intimidation, ethnic division and suppression that was put in play. He has expressed none that Lagos, Nigeria’s most cosmopolitan state, suddenly became its most parochial and dangerous to ensure that his APC won. Instead, he is asking the security agencies to stop the Labour Party presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, from trying to “delegitimise and discredit” his victory.
He accuses Mr Obi of “going around inflaming passions, spreading lies as if he is still campaigning for the highest office in the land, weeks after the exercise was concluded and a winner announced.”
And he has a message for the National Broadcasting Commission that is a finger in the eye of free speech, asking the agency “to caution TV houses giving Obi the platform to de-legitimise a free and fair election, when he has taken his case to court.”
Only in a scorched earth, “Grab it, snatch it, run with it” world does this appear to make sense. Nothing was “free and fair” in the elections. The law was breached. Guidelines were breached. People were disenfranchised. Vote collation, recording and transmission were compromised. The electoral commission failed.
This is why the so-called election is now in court, and why, properly speaking, there is as yet no such thing as a “president-elect” that normally emerges when the defeated opponent concedes or the judiciary pronounces on the matter.
In other words, any lies being spread right now are on the part of anyone claiming to have “won” a contest that is in dispute. That is mere propaganda and wishful thinking: a victory in the drab colours of defeat is why the streets of Nigeria are wearing the appearance of a funeral. Nothing has been concluded.
Last Tuesday, the President, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), who should have been apologizing for his election mess, hosted Mary Beth Leonard, the outgoing US Ambassador, telling her a fable of elections that are proof of “voter vibrancy and maturity” in Nigeria.
“People are realizing their power,” he said, adding, “Given the chance of a free and fair vote, nobody can tell [Nigerians] what to do.” Sadly, the irony of his own words was lost on him.
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