Eddie Iroh : Shall we tell the President?

by Eddie Iroh

Of course I have granted that Jonathan has the right to question the result of the elections, although one has to recognise that, unlike many previous Nigerian polls, no such questions had been raised about Muhammadu Buhari’s victory, the very basis of Jonathan’s reservations, by any of the local and international observer teams.

I was quite taken aback when I read that President Goodluck Jonathan had questioned the validity of the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the foregone presidential election. I saw it first in an online publication, which quoted the Punch newspaper, that the president made the remark while receiving the post mortem report carried out on the election by his campaign organisation headed by former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman, Senator Ahmadu Ali.

Now I know that Punch is an authoritative and quotable newspaper, respected in the industry as what we call a newspaper of record. But even as it became clear that other media had reported the story, one still had to hesitate before accepting that the president could actually have said that to the hearing of another person, let alone a group on what was more or less a public occasion; and that he really did not consider the import of such a remark and its potential impact on the uninformed who could give it their own ethnic, religious or partisan political interpretation. Hard to believe too that he could not have taken into account the rather tenuous post-election peace in Nigeria and the pregnant air in the polity just a mere one month after the presidential poll. Thus initially I was minded to take a deep breath and a pinch of salt before I could swallow the report of the president’s remarks hook line and sinker.

But in the instant communication world we live, the report went viral, as they say in social media, as other mainstream newspapers plus radio and television carried the story. I was left with nothing less than a big lump in my throat and a great sense of both regret and foreboding. Regret because such a statement is not only akin to campaigning after elections, to put it mildly, but also quite ill-advised. Indeed outright tendentious even in the president’s lame duck state. And foreboding because this is the sort of remark, that in the ear of freelance trouble seekers, could readily provoke unintended consequences.

Let’s be honest, Jonathan like any Nigerian is entitled to his opinion as well as the right to lick his wounds and grieve his loss of power as probably the most powerful elected president in sub-Saharan Africa. No one doubts that such loss can hurt like a punch in the solar plexus. And as Ndigbo will say, you cannot smack a child and then deny him the right to cry.  Others have also said that Jonathan was only expressing his personal opinion. Some claim that there is more than meets the eye in the foregone elections.  All these are totally valid viewpoints whether one agrees with them or not. But when we are speaking about the president of a nation there are a number of caveats.

The first is that as I pointed out earlier, the consequences of one misplaced presidential remark in the present political climate are not hard to imagine. It is common concern that there are some elements who have been looking for the most innocuous pretext to topple the present fragile calm and amity. To arm such people with a presidential expression of reservation is to throw dry firewood into a glowing fire. Secondly it is my firm belief that the President of the Federal Republic is not just any citizen who can express a personal opinion on any issue especially sensitive political ones. It is my experience that presidents and heads of governments are usually extremely circumspect about expressing personal opinions on even the most mundane issues. That is because as the nation’s Number One Citizen he is the nation’s number one public property and is thus inclined to be mindful that it is not always easy for the ordinary citizen to make a distinction between the president as a person and his position. This is even more the case in our nation of rabid ethnic and religious passion often bordering on fanaticism.

The third point to consider is the potential for self inflicted injury. Such a remark could easily devalue Jonathan’s statesmanlike and graceful acceptance of defeat, an action for which the world and even his worst critics at home have hailed him. One disappointed social media commentator Sony Olisaemeka put it more strongly: “My fear,” he wrote, “is that he has squandered the last political capital he managed to scoop… Leaving those who are nominating him for various awards with a black eye.”

Of course I have granted that Jonathan has the right to question the result of the elections, although one has to recognise that, unlike many previous Nigerian polls, no such questions had been raised about Muhammadu Buhari’s victory, the very basis of Jonathan’s reservations, by any of the local and international observer teams. But I believe that there is a time and place for presidential private opinions on some of the things that happened under his watch. One such place is the memoirs of a president. Privileged information is the stuff of great memoirs. For as Ndigbo will say, Diochi – the palm wine tapper, does not disclose everything he sees from the vantage top of the palm tree. At least not while he is still up there. No one doubts that a president with at least no less than 12 intelligence and security agencies at his beck and call has more privileged information on all matters of state than the rest of us (which is why it has been a puzzle for ordinary folks that we have not been able to establish the source of arms for Boko Haram and plug it, but that is a different matter). But I dare to restate that there is a time and place for disclosing sensitive privileged dossier, essentially for the sake of peace at a time of transition the type of which Nigerians had never experienced in their chequered political history.

Then there is the matter of Jonathan’s legacy which some insist consists entirely of the manner he accepted defeat. Now such comment, as he made, could quite easily lay him open to taunts of what Nigerians call “bad belle” and the British term “sour grapes”. All these are pejorative terms that would tend to vitiate his earlier post-election graciousness (I know some referred to his gesture as magnanimous; but that is totally wrong. Winston Churchill put it as in victory, magnanimity: “Magnanimity is thus the prerogative of the victor, not the vanquished”). To make a statement that could devalue that “legacy” would amount to offering the gracious gesture of cooperation and fellowship to his conqueror with one hand and then seeking to take it back with the other hand.

The other point to ponder is something more troubling for me in the president’s afterthought, which I had alluded to earlier but repeat here for emphasis because of its import. Nigerians are a people who can never see a political loophole, however deep and dangerous, without jumping into it. And if there is religious, ethnic or political capital to be made from it, the more attractive they will find it. Thus no smart politician should go about waving a red rag to a bull, or bringing a child close to the dangerous attraction of roaring flames. You only need to look at the history of Nigeria’s many political crises as well as the sounds of war that preceded the recent elections to realise how fragile the post-election peace in the country is. In spite of the current mini-euphoria no one can deny that there is an underlying sense of unease, for it is not often that an entrenched political party with all the advantages of incumbency as well as the apparatus and levers of power can be voted out of office in Africa let alone Nigeria, without resultant mayhem and even civil war. Jonathan, to his credit acted quickly to disperse the pregnant air by his sensible decision to be gracious in defeat. But no one will deny that there are quite a few sore hearts in the PDP camp and, if truth be told, in Jonathan’s Niger Delta. Thus we see a situation that can play right into the court of those who might have been priming themselves for mayhem before the president stole their thunder with his graceful concession. Now the president could just as easily hand back the thunder to mischief-makers by his public questioning of Buhari’s victory. Having extended the gracious hand of acceptance of defeat he cannot just as ungraciously begin to question his own judgement. It is true as he said that he was in a vantage position to know what happened including anything that might have gone awry. After all he is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic. But again I say, he can reserve that for his memoirs.

Already, and I hope the president has noticed, hard on the heels of his remarks a number of hitherto silent chieftains of his party have begun to express similar dissatisfaction with the polls. Chief Bode George has now accused Professor Attahiru Jega of conspiring with APC to deny PDP victory. No do, no do the country could easily snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Further more, and this is just as worrisome, a group calling itself the Lower Niger Delta Association met just last week, even before the ink had dried on the thumb prints on the ballot papers, and made calls for self determination for Nigerian ethnic nationalities. Some even called for a referendum or plebiscite to determine whether Nigeria should remain one nation because, according to them, last year’s National Conference did not satisfactorily address the issue. Never mind that this demand had not been expressed by this group at the time of the conference, or whether it even existed then.

Now put all these developments together and I can see the gathering of firewoods around a tinderbox that if ignited by one careless action can provoke a national conflagration and unmake the history that the president made last March.  Such avoidable scenario will give credence to the doomsayers who predicted the disintegration of Nigeria come 2015. Ambassador John Campbell, the author of the book Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink, would then be laughing all the way to the bank to cash more cheques from the increased sales of his book.

Finally, while I am giving the outgoing president an ear bashing, let me have a word or two in the ear of the incoming president. The first thing Muhammadu Buhari and his aides should be wary of is the risk of squandering his post-election goodwill and honeymoon even before the wedding takes place. Buhari’s first faux pax was not realising that the aides of Nigerian leaders are generally overzealous little Hitlers who are often more presidential than the president when he is not looking. Whichever of his aides who unilaterally put out that banning order on AIT did not do the General any favours. And if Buhari does not fire the person he will cause him more public relations fiasco in the future. Secondly, the Nigerian public does not want to know who or what the incoming administration will probe or why. As the Nike advert will say, Just Do It! Telegraphing your punch in this manner can also bring about mountains of pressure and lobbying and you end up not doing it.

Already, Buhari is being accused of running a parallel government and I imagine that the actions and utterances of some of his aides have lent credence to this charge. If it sticks in the public mind his honeymoon with Nigeria will not last the traditional 100 days. Goodwill is more easily lost than gained. But its loss is more painful when it is caused by people who do not have to pay the high price for it. This is therefore the time for Buhari to let his staff know that there is only one president and that they cannot act on his behalf. He cannot always tell Nigerians that he read of a drastic action like the AIT ban in the newspapers like the rest of us. That is not the response of a chief executive. Presidents don’t pass the buck, because as Harry Truman said, the buck stops here (at the president’s desk).

In conclusion, need I remind the former army General what Admiral Horatio Nelson told his troops before the epic battle of Trafalgar: “

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