The elections are now over except for court decisions on election petitions. Nigerians should accept the “peoples” verdict. Of course we know that it was not really the people’s decisions as illustrated by APC’s selection of Mr. Buhari as the party’s presidential candidate. Mr. SKC Ogbonnia and others were denied the opportunity to contest the primary and Buhari refused to debate Atiku to lay out his manifesto. Be these as they may.
The next step is the governing of the country. In other to do this, Nigerians must make some decisions. Some of the decisions will come from the presidency, some from the judiciary and some from the legislature.
One of the issues that received a lot of debate was the question of “Federal Character”. Many Nigerians feel that the system that makes it possible for a president to do whatever he/she likes is not sustainable as it violets the constitutional requirement of “national character” in appointments. In the old PMB’s government, the heads of services were all from the north, to say nothing about senior ministers of the more important ministries. The decision to come back to national character needs to be made by the president for he is responsible for most appointments. If PMB makes the decision just to satisfy himself and to be comfortable, it creates the precedence for future presidents to follow until it presents Nigeria with some crises conditions.
The legislature also needs to make a decision on the national character question. At the moment, the heads of the Senate, House, and presidency are all from the north. This creates the impression that there is just the north in the federation or at least that although all regions maybe equal, but some are more equal than others. It becomes even more ominous when the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive are all from the same north.
The last bastion of democracy is the judiciary. Bad governance and crises arise when the people do not trust the judiciary. It is the point where people decide to take the laws into their hands. The judiciary is losing the trust of the people because of their inconsistent decisions. In a 2007 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Amaechi would become the governor of Rivers State because he was the lawfully elected PDP nominee in the Rivers ‘state PDP primary elections. But in the Obiechina VS Chime the court ruled differently even using the excuse that new elections had been held even though the case was ignored by the court. There are also confusing rulings on whether non possession of School Certificate disqualifies a person from being a governor or president. Inconsistent ruling makes it difficult for the people to follow the laws and leads to loss of trust. Nigerian judiciary needs to make the decision on how it wants disregarding of its precedence to follow.
The three arms of government need to answer and solve the “Eastern Nigeria (Biafra)” question. A review of the feelings, voting patterns, etc. will show that Easterners do not feel that they belong to the country. Except for Obasanjo’s and Jonathan’s elections SE and SS have consistently voted for the opposition and some presidential candidates have not bordered to visit the region because they believe that the time spent would not pay off. The former Eastern Nigeria is the place where secessionist tendencies are most popular, Republic of Biafra, Ibom People’s Republic, Asari Dokubo’s Delta Liberation Forces, etc. Even though there are as many minorities in the north as in Eastern Nigeria the desire to secede from Nigeria is not as strong.
Nigerians have two options in dealing with this Biafran question. They can pursue the Buhari’s preferred solution to drum into Easterners’ ears the fact of their defeat in 1970. After more than 50 years and they have not heard of it, they should be made to “get it”. This solution will continue to create tensions and possibly another war. Or Nigeria would bend over backwards to win the confidence of the defeated people. This might bring peace on the longer run, but will cost a lot of adjustments on Nigerians.
Politicians need to make decisions about Nigeria’s future. But the rest of the population have decisions to make. The last elections were conducted mostly by university dons. As everybody now knows, it was a flop which shows the professionalism of Nigerian university staff. No invention has come out of any of the 60 universities in the country. No diseases have been diagnosed by Nigerian Teaching Hospitals, etc. But Nigerians that have gone abroad are designing monorails, Curing new diseases, etc. The environment in the country precludes innovations. Nigerian based athletes are not making an waves, but many European teams seem to have Nigerian soccer players. Ditto for US sports teams.
All leaders in all aspects of life, have decisions to make on whether Nigeria ought to be lagging behind the world or to be an emerging African nation.
There is no time to waste.
*** Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba wrote in from Boston, Massachusetts.
