GEJ: Why stuff happens

One explosive highlight of the recently published memoir of former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, My Transition Hours, is his assertion that foreign powers meddled in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election.

In the widely anticipated book, the ex-president unleashed some bile against Western actors, notably former leaders of the United States and United Kingdom, whom he blamed for interventions considered to have aided his defeat in the said poll. He accused former U.S. President Barack Obama in particular of downright bias against his candidature and hubristic condescension towards the Nigerian electorate.

Jonathan writes inter alia: “On March 23, 2015, President Obama himself took the unusual step of releasing a video message directly to Nigerians, all but telling them how to vote. In that video, Obama urged Nigerians to open the ‘next chapter’ with their votes. Those who understood subliminal language deciphered that he was prodding the electorate to vote for the opposition to form a new government.”

He as well slammed former British Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for querying a six-week shift in the election schedule. “The United States and the United Kingdom were especially agitated. David Cameron…called to express his concern about the election rescheduling, just as John Kerry came from the United States to express further worry. It was at best unusual and sobering. In fact, John Kerry did not accept our reasons for the rescheduling. It was unbelievable because at the back of our minds, we knew that the agitation was beyond what meets the eye.” In another stroke, he hoisted Kerry for the punch, saying: “How can the U.S. Secretary of State know what is more important for Nigeria than Nigeria’s own government? How could they have expected us to conduct elections when Boko Haram controlled part of the Northeast and were killing and maiming Nigerians?”

There is no question that the former president’s place of honour in Nigeria’s political history is firmly assured because of his altruistic sportsmanship, which really is uncommon to our country’s political class. Also, condescending infractions of our national sovereignty by external forces should on no account be tolerated. But Jonathan’s sour grapes over foreign interest in the Nigerian electoral process need to be interrogated in light of the context and antecedents of the 2015 poll, if only to ensure accuracy of historical accounting.

With the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) then watched over by Professor Attahiru Jega having initially fixed the presidential and national assembly elections for 14^th February 2015, and the state elections for 28^th February, Kerry visited Nigeria on 25^th January – few hours after Boko Haram insurgents attacked a community in Borno State that had been under emergency rule since May 2013 alongside Yobe and Adamawa. That emergency rule had done little to redress the security situation in the affected states and there were indeed profound threats of the crisis spilling over. Still, the electoral commission was making ready for elections in those states along with all the others. But despite repeated pledges of its readiness, the public steadily badgered it with queries on whether / how it would be able to conduct elections in the Northeast states amidst the security crisis, and what the likely implications would be for the presidential poll if it did not.

‘Jonathan administration did not change the 2015 election dates, contrary to the former president’s suggestion in his book’

Rather than frontally tackle down the security challenge with its mandate in power, then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) locked into a fierce partisan duel with opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) on the necessity, or not, of rescheduling the elections. The PDP and its allies wanted the poll shifted while the APC and supporters would just not have it. But the canvassers of election rescheduling weren’t even honest enough to acknowledge the Northeast security crisis as the core of their advocacy; rather, they decoyed with claims of insufficient level of Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) collection by prospective voters and alleged unpreparedness of INEC for the poll.

And the nation’s security establishment under Jonathan fed unreservedly into that duel. For instance, while the security services en bloc pressed the electoral commission behind the scenes to allow them a breather – within the statutory framework, of course – to use the instrumentality of then newly established multinational taskforce in dealing with the Northeast insurgency challenge, former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki seized a global podium at Chatham House, London, on 22^nd January 2015 to openly prod INEC to shift the elections solely because 30million PVCs had allegedly not been collected by registrants!

Such shenanigans only fuelled suspicion about the intention of government in waving the security card to advise a shift in the poll dates. And it isn’t unlikely that it was such abuse the foreign powers fingered by Jonathan pitched in to red-flag. But truth also is that the Jonathan administration did not change the 2015 election dates, contrary to the former president’s suggestion in his book. No government has the power to do that under Nigerian law. Sections 76 (1), 116 (1), 132 (1) and 178 (1) of the 1999 Constitution (as Amended) guarantee the power of the electoral commission to appoint dates for respective election; hence, the decision to shift the 2015 poll by six weeks was essentially that of Jega-led INEC, though at the compelling instance of the security establishment and upon an inconclusive advice by the National Council of State.

Close on the heels of the shift in poll dates, the campaigners, still arrowheaded by the PDP, raised the stakes by demanding that the use of Smart Card Readers intended for the 2015 elections be dumped. That was despite that the nation already had shelled out huge sums in procuring the device, and with some 180,000 units deployed as at then. But they met a brick wall in the electoral commission. And that could partly explain Jonathan’s harsh words in his book for the technology factor in the poll.

Actually, close attention to Nigerian electoral process by the international community did not stop at the run-up to the 2015 poll. After the presidential election on 28^th March, and while the collation of results was underway, Kerry and his UK counterpart, former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, issued a joint statement on 30^th March, warning against “deliberate political interference” in the vote count.

Not that the electoral commission would in the least have yielded to political interference even if there was an attempt. As Jega’s media aide, I knew this too well and said as much to CNN’s Christianne Amanpour when she interviewed me same evening on her programme. But the Kerry-Hammond joint statement was nonetheless very helpful in spotlighting then ongoing process in a manner that restrained the desperation of the political class and further insulated the electoral body. That was the same day PDP’s Godsday Orubebe for no good reason picked a brawl in the collation hall with Professor Jega, and shortly after, that President Jonathan made his famous phone call to concede defeat. Remember?

Experience shows that close attention by the international community to Nigerian electoral process adds great value, never mind irritations as Jonathan’s over national sovereignty. The prevailing culture in our political class has not yet attained the discipline required for an insular electoral system. That is why it is important to underscore a recent call by former Central Intelligence Agency official, Judd Devermont, that the global community need step up to Nigeria’s 2019 poll. It won’t be overreaching for countries to threaten visa bans, asset freezes and International Crime Court prosecution, among others, against any political actor who grossly violates the process or abets violence in the course of the elections. Such interventions will by all means be welcome.