VANGUARD
By Tony Eluemunor
Hey, could you please allow me to begin this piece by making two important explanations. First, I deliberately chose to recall the novel Cyprian Ekwensi published in 1960 because I wanted to recall in the minds of those who have read that unforgettable story how something as ordinary as a traveler’s passport could form an important part of a book.
Now, an ordinary passport has become an important national discourse, and who knows, a judicial dissertation on it could soon become one of the burdens weighing on our over-burdened judiciary. Oh, Ekwensi’s book had the intriguing title of “The Passport of Mallam Ilia”.
My second explanation; ordinarily, to call a Moslem Mallam is to call him a scholar or leader. I have the example of Mallam Aminu Kano, the extraordinary leader of the Northern talakawa to guide me. His followers included both Chinua Achebe and Wole Syoyinka, let alone Abubakar Rimi, Tanko Yakasai and Bala Usman. In these present times, Nasir el-Rufai has prefaced his name with that title. So, too, my good friend and respected journalist and newspaper Editor, Mallam Garba Shehu.
The 2023 election must go down in Nigerian history as the most disappointing and most dramatic. Or, has there been an election in which a newspaper, such as the Premium Times, have openly published that it had reviewed the results relating to a state (Rivers) using materials uploaded in INEC confirmed portal and arrived at a result totally, radically, dramatically, unmistakably different from the result INEC announced?
According to that online publication, Labour Party’s Peter Obi, won the presidential election there, and roundly defeated All Progressives Congress party’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the man on whose head INEC had placed the victory crown pertaining to Rivers state election as well as nationally. I have waited for INEC to show the Premium Times how a want of brains on the part of its Reporters and Editors could have led to that conclusion – but that reaction has yet to come, surprisingly.
Then as sheer drama goes, nothing in Nigeria’s history could beat that nasty narrative from Adamawa state where a man who has no business with announcing a state’s result mounted a podium, and in the presence of the news media as well security agents, announced the result of a state while the collation of the election result was still on? On what foundation did that effort rest? Or was that official actually following the example laid out for him by INEC headquarters? How could nothing have agitated the mind of that dysfunctional official that he was embarked on a disgraceful journey and was, apart from attracting odium on his person and INEC, was disgracing Nigeria? That sorry story added to the “sorryness” of the sorry story which Nigeria has become.
Yet, despite the sordidness of that dastardly act, another sordid aspect has been introduced into the annals of the 2023 election. And it has to do with the alleged passport of the APC candidate in the
presidential election; Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Sincerely, what has a passport got to do with the qualification of a candidate in the race to become Nigeria’s president in a free and fair election? We must accept that a constitutional demand is that a candidate in a presidential election must not have dual nationality. That is a given. But a passport? That is a big but…
