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The autobiography of Alhaji, Sir Ahmadu Bello,
K.B.E., M.H.A., Sardauna of Sokoto and the first premier of the
Northern Region of Nigeria in 1954, entitled “My Life,” may seem an odd
place to search for guidance in the face of the unfolding Ivorian
crisis. But, as I read about this statesman and a bit of the history of
his part of Nigeria, I realized that it had lessons for 21st century
Africa and that usurper Laurent Gbagbo.

What lessons could so-called “feudal” Africa have
for we “educated” 21st century Africans? Let us start with the art of
losing political power. The Sardauna of Sokoto, a scion of the house of
Fodio, was a descendant of the famed Fulani founder of the Sokoto
Empire, Shehu Usman dan Fodio. That empire, exercising suzerainty over
several Hausa emirates, lasted approximately a century until it
succumbed to the British colonial power in 1914 or thereabouts. How
could the Sokoto Empire last that long? Among other things, by the
subtle exercise of the art of losing political power; no system of
government can endure if it does not have a way of incorporating losers
of political office into its ongoing daily existence.

Listen to the words of the Sardauna of Sokoto:
“When the Shehu died in Sokoto in 1817 he expressed the wish that Bello
should succeed him as Sarkin Musulmi, or Commander of the Faithful for
the Western Sudan, while remaining as ruler of Sokoto in charge of the
Eastern Empire. However, this was not known to the Shehu’s brother
Abdullahi, who was at Gwandu at the time and who thought he would
succeed his brother as a matter of course. No sooner had he heard the
startling news that the Shehu had willed otherwise than a rising broke
out at Kalam Baina, near Gwandu, whose people had gone over to a
rival…but Bello…sent men to his assistance and the revolt was crushed.

“The two rulers met after the victory. Bello was
on his great war-horse, Abdullahi on a mare, as befitted his position
as a learned Mallam. Bello, being the younger man, made ready to
dismount to salute his uncle, following strict etiquette; his uncle
waved him to stay where he was and then bowed in his saddle and greeted
Bello as Commander of the Faithful. Thus by mutual tact the rift was
closed. What might have been a disastrous breach was healed, and ever
since then our two families have lived in perfect friendship and
amity.”

Even if one assumes that this account is
mythical, it illustrates how victors in the battle for ultimate
political power should treat the vanquished and how the vanquished
should behave to elide the distinction between victor and vanquished.
Contrast that behavior with that of Mr. Gbagbo and Mr. Ouattara and it
is clear that Mr. Gbagbo could learn a bit from Abdullahi. It is tragic
that so many so-called “educated” African politicians stand in dire
need of lessons today from Abdullahi.

Sir Ahmadu’s autobiography combines prophetic
streaks with sensitivity to the powerful ethnic identities, which drive
much of Africa’s politics. In congratulating the people of Ghana on
attaining independence in March 1957, he said: “Ghana will have many
hard tests to face. Perhaps the sternest test, which Ghana will have to
face, is the preservation of democracy. It is up to the Leader of Ghana
to resist all anti-democratic influences; and to resist using
undemocratic means to retain control over the country. Nigeria herself
will have to face such a test, time and time again during this century.

“The second test which confronts Ghana is the
danger of internal strife. It will be many, many years before the
peoples of Africa will respect political boundaries higher than tribal
boundaries. For many years the leaders of countries in Africa will have
the difficult task of welding together the peoples of their countries
within the political boundaries which have been artificially decided
upon by the colonial powers within the last hundred years.”

Both Ghana and Nigeria failed those tests for
several years. Mr. Gbagbo continues to fail those tests. Yet, the
resolute actions of Ecowas against Mr. Gbagbo and Cote d’Ivoire suggest
that West Africa’s leaders want to entrench democratic norms in their
region.

I am confident that 2011 will show Nigeria’s rulers abiding
internally by the democratic principles they preach outside Nigeria.
But, Nigeria requires better still. It needs incorruptible leaders like
Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto.

The remark by
Adeyemi Ikuforiji, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, that
the executive arm of government is more corrupt than the legislature
was the second thing last week that reminded me of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s
observation: “There is no settling the precedence between the flea and
the louse.” Announcing the formation of a pressure group for
legislators, Ikuforiji was indignant (and rather too garrulous) on
behalf of his colleagues:

“Right now, the
whole Nigeria is shouting down on lawmakers but what they are stealing
is not as much as that of the executive. They complain about us buying
cars. Is the money we spent buying cars up to what they spend on
parties in the governor’s office? Is it as much as what they spent on
announcing the governor’s 100 days in office? When commissioners
collect cars, who speaks up? They make a noise about lawmakers as if
they are the only ones who are corrupt.” So that’s alright then.

The other thing
that reminded me of the same Johnsonian wisdom was the struggle within
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party over its presidential ticket, and
the release by the Atiku camp of the Jonathan’s alleged campaign
strategy, “The Man – Mr. Fox. A profile.” Perhaps not so much the flea
and the louse, as Mr. Fox and Mr. Tortoise.

The Jonathan camp
has denied authorship of the document. But, to paraphrase Mandy
Rice-Davies upon being told that British Defence Minister John Profumo
had denied any relationship with Christine Keeler, mistress of a Soviet
defence attaché: They would say that, wouldn’t they? Nobody willingly
admits damaging facts unless they are inescapable, and/or they have had
time to massage public opinion round to the idea that the facts – in
this case, the plans – are no big deal, at best just one possible
blueprint of whose acceptance by President Goodluck Jonathan there is
no proof. (Except of course, the uncanny coincidence between his recent
programme and the plan!) It may not have been accepted, or even been
seen by Jonathan, but the ring of authenticity comes from not just the
cynical calculations about using what ought to be independent organs of
the Nigerian Federation such as the judiciary, the Nigeria Police Force
and the Police Service Commission, or the meetings designed to showcase
Jonathan as the forward-thinking, non-sectional, father-of-all (yet
young) President of tomorrow, or even the entertainment celebrities and
journalists who are to be brought (or bought?) onside to polish his
image.

What gives it the
stamp of authenticity is the hopeful thinking reflected in the
assessment of support for the pPresident and his chief contender, Atiku
Abubakar, across the country. Only in his home state is ‘Mr. Fox’
allowed as much as 30%. For the rest, apart from Borno, Abia and Imo
(20%, but ‘OBJ’ is going to work on those last two states), Lagos and
Rivers (15%) and Enugu (10%) he is allowed only 0-5% support in the
remaining 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Mr. President on
the other hand, can expect as much as 90% support from some states.

Thus have
political fixers ever deceived their principals;. oOr mentally psyched
them up: after all, what’s the point of going into the thing as if you
don’t believe you can win? It’s the same ‘Ko ni FAIL’ imprecatory
approach of the roadside mechanic who knows full well that you can’t
get more than 250 metres with his emergency repairs, yet hope springs
eternal … These figures seem to have been the result of soundings made
before December, and luckily for Mr. President, only relate to
delegates in the PDP. Because if, after the near-unrelieved blackout
with which the majority of us ‘celebrated’ almost the whole of the
Christmas holidays (while complacent – or is it complicit? – newspapers
reported record power generation figures), soundings had to be taken
among the actual electorate; even the ‘Ko ni fail’ brigade would have a
job to massage the results.

But if the
intra-PDP struggle is uninspiring and deceitful, we should not be
mesmerised into forgetting that there is life outside the ruling party
or convincing ourselves that any opposition candidate ‘can’t win’ and
see them as nothing more than foils to allow the ruling party candidate
to claim that there will indeed be a ‘democratic contest’ (but not, as
the Mr. Fox profile suggests, too democratic) once the PDP has sorted
itself out.

With Nuhu Ribadu
at last putting his candidacy on something more solid than
‘anti-corruption’, and the ACN and CPC having to ask themselves some
hard questions about how far each of them can go it alone, we have the
makings of a real contest at the presidential level for 2011.

The PDP victory in
the Ikorodu by-election should serve as a reality check for the ACN
after the euphoria of the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial victories. It
really isn’t good enough for it to whine about PDP dirty tricks. What
did it expect? More importantly, what is it expecting next year? Or had
the Lagos party started to believe the hype about Governor Babatunde
Fashola (and by extension, his party) walking on water? Not to Ikorodu
he doesn’t.

But that’s apparently something that Speaker Ikuforiji could have told us anyway.

Congratulations
indeed! That you are reading AH-HAA this second day of the year is
great news: I’m sure you know that some persons couldn’t cross into
2011. And that fact makes me ponder the words of a Christmas card sent
to me by my sector commander at the Federal Road Safety Commission
[FRSC], Jonas Agwu:

“If we drive
responsibly, we will celebrate this season and many more seasons in
2011. Remember, a road crash is someone’s fault: Don’t let it be yours”.

The message is apt,
yet sobering. One is aware that there are over nine million ways to
die; should one not be reducing one’s chances of causing anyone’s death
inadvertently? There is a tendency for us as a people with so much
‘religion’, to accept that it is the will of the Almighty that certain
things happen when they do. One agrees! But one draws the line where we
fail to accept that the same Almighty could never have intended anyone
to die through deliberate, intentional and STUPID acts of omission or
commission that could cause the death of another, inadvertently or
otherwise.

The logic rankles;
the appeal to one to roll over and accept the fact that any death was
intended by God, no matter how the death came about, really gets one’s
dandruff! I will NEVER accept that God intended for a man to jump a red
traffic light, on a Sunday morning at 6.15am when traffic is almost
non-existent, only to murder a wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunty
and mentor, walking to morning Mass, as she had done daily for thirty
odd years. NEVER!

Why then do we have
laws that recognise manslaughter and murder, even if by accident? Are
we now saying that there is no such thing as an accident, because no
incident can be an accident, since God sanctions all actions? Is it not
a failure of our institutions to provide the needed succour to those
who suffer as a result of accidents that has made many Nigerians ‘leave
everything in the hands of God’? Would people be leaving simple matters
to GOD if they got justice here on earth?

Weeks ago, I was a
part of a group privileged to watch video footage of gruesome accident
scenes at the FRSC office in Lagos; I urge the Commission to please
show this film on Television as well, especially during this holiday
period, to put things in perspective for us all. I believe we need to
be shocked out of any delusions of grandeur about how insulated we
think we are from fatal road accidents. When you see a headless body
still seated at the steering wheel of a smashed car, you’ll wonder
where on earth he or she could have been rushing to, and if the deal
didn’t still go ahead even with him or her dead!

Pay more attention
people! Was it a bad thing that we got cell phones, for instance? Why
then should anyone decide to answer a ringing phone while driving? If
you crash and die while answering the phone, will the caller not have
someone else to hire? Or will that chore not get done in the end? What
about texting while driving? Done it before? Gotten away with it? So,
you are an expert now? Guy, you were just lucky; your Guardian Angel
may not always be there to shield you.

Jumping the red
traffic light? When last did you do something silly while using the
road? And did you not know you were being stupid?

This is not only
about the drivers, but also about ALL users of our roads. Government
says to protect us, we should wear helmets while riding motorcycles;
but we know too much! We say it disturbs our comfort: doesn’t sit well
on hairstyles or headgear as the case may be. Government says do not
carry baggage on motorcycles, but we say it are conspiring to reduce
our daily income. Don’t drive on the bus lane; we do, just because we
can. Then you are involved in a ghastly accident and vilify the same
government that sought to protect you from yourself, and berate the
inadequacy of the hospitals. Would a hospital have been needed if you
had simply obeyed the law?

Well, you are
reading this Sunday, good for you! Imagine if you were responsible for
someone not making it into 2011, and missing all the drama and
intrigues that Nigerian politics is promising us this year. Most will
die avoidable deaths; recalcitrance, selfishness and negligence of
fellow human beings will be the probable cause. That’s what happens
when no one is paying attention to road safety. You never imagine that
you will have any cause to think about certain things until that same
thing has an unforgettable effect on your life.

Here’s to no hurting in 2011!

As we usher in the year 2011, our national resolve
is that this must be the turning point when we move from our long
history with electoral fraud to a brighter future based on credible
elections. The phrase that I have repeated the most over the past two
decades is that the majority of Nigerians are deeply committed to
democracy but the bulk of the political class is extremely competent in
the techniques of subverting democratic processes.

When we review our 89 year-old history with
elections, it is clear that the quality, integrity and credibility of
the voting process has been declining steadily and the reasons are
political rather than technical. Our elections started on a wrong
footing in 1922. In 1920, the educated elite in colonial Nigeria had
established the National Council of British West Africa to demand for
the introduction of the elective principle in selecting some members of
the Colonial Council.

The governor, Sir Hugh Clifford was livid with
anger at the idea. He declared that the group was “self-selected and
self-appointed (and were) trying to break out of their tribal
obligations and duties to their own natural rulers.” He added that they
were not representative of “the cannibals Mama hills, the determinedly
unsocial Mumuyes of Mubi Province or the equally naked warriors of the
inner Ibo country (see Coleman’s Nigeria: Background Nationalism, page
193).

Clifford, the English white conqueror, defined
himself as more representative of the people because he was on the side
of the “natural rulers” of the people. The elections of 1922 were
therefore limited to electing three representatives of the educated
elite in Lagos and one from Calabar to represent their “Europeanised”
colleagues in the Council.

This trend in electoral injustice was confirmed by
the Colonial Administration during the 1950-1951 elections in Northern
Nigeria when they taught the emerging political class how to subvert
the people’s mandate. Following the victory of radical NEPU candidates
in the first round of the elections in December 1950, the furious
British Administration changed the rules, injected a large dose of the
Native Administration into the Electoral College and eliminated all the
NEPU candidates who had won in the first round of the election. The
result was the creation of a conservative political class in Northern
Nigeria under the control of the Northern Peoples’ Congress and their
British friends.

Subsequently, except for the first round elections
in 1959, 1979, 1999 and maybe the 1993 June 12th elections, all other
elections were massively rigged. Nigeria then engaged upon the path of
elections suffering from the “progressive deterioration” trajectory as
seen in the 1959 to 1965 elections, 1979 to 1983 elections and the 1999
to 2007 elections. This demonstrates that the historical problem of
general elections is not the electoral system per se, but the will and
above all, the capacity of the political class to subvert it.

The most important aspect of our elections was the
transformation of the techniques of electoral fraud from the analogue
to digital technology of rigging. Analogue rigging involves ballot box
stuffing or stealing, under-age voting and multiple voting. It consists
of techniques to illegally increase the votes cast for a party.

Digital rigging was invented by the National Party
of Nigeria in the Ondo State 1983 elections. The party was determined
to take the state but the gap against their candidate, Akin Omoboriowo
was so massive that manipulation of numbers could not work. The
electoral body then known as FEDECO simply set aside the results and
invented completely new figures that declared Omoboriowo winner. The
people’s anger was so high that the NPN candidate barely escaped with
his life and the judiciary quickly stepped in to restore electoral
justice.

It was General Olusegun Obasanjo who perfected the
techniques of digital rigging during the 2003 and 2007 elections and
completely confiscated the franchise of the Nigerian people. The
People’s Democratic Party took over the reins of political power
without the mandate of the people. The courts were able to restore
electoral justice for some candidates but in most cases, injustice was
sustained by the judicial system.

The task for 2011 for Nigerian citizens is
therefore the restoration of electoral justice. This can happen if
civic consciousness is raised and citizens count, protect, escort and
protect their vote because their lives and livelihoods depend on it. It
is this citizens’ commitment to protecting their mandate that will
create the conditions for the Jega led INEC to reverse our long history
of electoral injustice. We know our political class will not give us
democracy. Let’s all make the New Year resolution of struggling for
electoral democracy in our country.

On Awolowo Road in S.W. Ikoyi, just around the corner from my house, a clown is directing the traffic.

Considering how
busy the road is, what with petrol stations, banks, shops, travel
agents and so on, he’s not doing a bad job either.

If not for him, one
might be tempted to conclude that the affairs of the nation are being
run by clowns. But that would be unfair to clowns. And we aren’t really
laughing either. I mean, because I worked from home on that day, I was
lucky to avoid the mayhem and chaos that President Goodluck Jonathan
caused in Lagos last week when he came to launch the hard copy of his
dialogues with his Facebook ‘friends’.

The Third Mainland
Bridge, critical artery of the city, was shut down for hours, but his
cheerleaders and apologists have been defending that monumentally
selfish act. Nor is it the first time Jonathan has shut Lagos down
because he is disturbing – sorry – gracing us with his presence, he’s
been here before with similarly disruptive results.

His Facebook
friends should tell him that Lagos is not a civil service town, and
people there have to work for their money: no work means no results,
and no results means no income. That applies almost as much to salaried
employees in private companies which have to deliver on the bottom line
as it does to the majority who are self-employed.

Even in Abuja,
where some peoples’ ‘job’ consists of dancing attendance on some
government person with an inflated sense of their own importance or
taking a daylong nap in government offices, there is still a large
majority that has to get to the office and do their work.

To be fair to
Jonathan though, even the most popular national leaders in these days
of crazed lone killers might hesitate to disdain the advice of security
agencies as, some 500 odd years ago in another country, a ruler –
Elizabeth I of England – disdained the advice of her own security
advisers not to venture among her rough and ready soldiers at Tilbury
with the famous words: “Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved
myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and security
in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects.” Well, despite that
bit of bravado, Elizabeth I did face an assassination attempt, and she
didn’t find it funny either. So even without former vice-president,
Atiku Abubakar’s observation (or warning?) that “Those who make
peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable” precautions
are only prudent for rulers who don’t merit loyal hearts or goodwill.
Still, one can only shudder at the level of incompetence that is unable
to provide security without such chaos and the cocoon of complacency
with which our president must have surrounded himself to let it happen
a second time within such a few short months.

As for Atiku –
although pro-Jonathan apparatchiks are up in arms demanding that he be
arrested for causing disaffection (and he, Atiku, is just dying to be
arrested so that he can acquire some official oppression and possibly
even a bit of prison ‘cred’ for something other than the whiff of
corruption that continues to dog him) – he isn’t really saying anything
new.

Former Chief
Justice Fatai-Williams quoted the same words of U.S. president John
Fitzgerald Kennedy in his lead judgment in the challenge brought by
then Senator Abraham Adesanya over the appointment of the head of the
2nd Republic’s election management body. Of course, lazy as we Naijas
are about these matters, the word ‘change’ has been substituted for
‘revolution’.

But before you get
to violent revolution, surely you must pass the peaceful change
impossibility test. Nigeria, preparing for elections, can hardly be
said to have reached that stage yet.

Even the ruling
Peoples Democratic Party, for all its reputation as a ‘nest of killers’
cannot be said to have made peaceful change impossible, despite the
unsporting pinpricks to which Atiku has been subjected since he emerged
as the consensus candidate among four northern aspirants within the PDP
(revisiting his re-admission to the PDP, removal of a favourable
opinion poll from the PDP website etc.). So, as ‘Baba’ himself might
say, everybody should calm down.

Nobody is revolutionising anything.

And as I would add,
especially not in the PDP! Outside that hothouse, whose leaders (to
adopt the words of British Liberal Democrats talking unguardedly but
truthfully about their Conservative counterparts) don’t seem to know
how ordinary people live, what with their four-hour shutdowns and $40
million transfers, civil society gathered to celebrate the living proof
that peaceful change remains possible in Nigeria with a reception for
Kayode and Bisi Fayemi, marking the former’s accession to the
governorship of Ekiti State.

It’s true that the
gubernatorial party had to arrive late due to Arik Air’s “operational
reasons”. Arik probably has serious people in charge of operations.
Maybe they ought to try something different.

Like sending in the clowns.

Only a
non-Nigerian, would read any sinister meaning into that debacle at the
airport this December 2010. As we love to say: ‘NA TODAY?’ For years
now Nigerians and other visitors to the country have had their luggage
pilfered at the airport; it’s no big deal! In fact, I am sure that even
people in ‘power’ have had the experience. Add to that the fact that we
do not expect the luggage to be found either; the only luggage we often
recover is that left behind by an airline in the country from where you
came, and that’s because you left it behind! Once luggage arrives here
and goes missing, perish the thought of recovery! It would be so
amateurish of airport ‘rats’ that are normally quite ‘sharp’ about
these things, with buyers and fences waiting to move the goods along
too. We just LOVE imported things and that is the attraction for goods
coming in through any of the ports.

The solution is to devise ways to frustrate the person who nicks your luggage.

Don’t put the parts of a whole unit together in the same package; for example,

separate your shoes
by putting all left feet in one bag and right feet in another. Take
pleasure in knowing that even the taker won’t enjoy the shoes.

And that seems to
be what saved the day for us! What was stolen were parts of a whole,
which meant nothing could be compromised as far as the elections were
concerned. Therefore the only reason we heard about this particular
airport theft was because of the nature of the stolen items: election
materials, no less! Of course, we all know that these Direct Data
Capturing [DDC] machines cost us N87b which demand Professor JEGA, the
Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission [INEC], had sprung on
us suddenly Furthermore, we were told that without that money, the
Commission could not guarantee anything.

Naturally, one’s first thought that some N87b had gone down the drain.

Thankfully, it’s nothing like that. At least, that’s what I think- and I’ll tell you why.

Even as you read
this, things are still being pilfered at the airport, and they will
still be going missing till the end of time, because we never did
anything to stop the thefts when they started. We were only momentarily
embarrassed about this because the world is watching to see what we
make of ourselves in 2011. If we were bothered, don’t you think someone
would have been sacked for incompetence, negligence or whatever ‘-ence’
one can dream up or, (heaven forbid!) actually resigned?

Yes, laugh! Even I
chuckle at the thought of someone resigning for anything, even if the
incident fuels continuing cynicism about who we really are. Why? Am I
not a Nigerian? Don’t I, of all people, know the constraints we all
labour under? The ‘special advisers’ will soon advise us that it is a
‘systemic failure of all of us’; after all, if the minister,
subordinate or even the cleaner is sacked, will that stop the pilfering
at the airports?

NEXT newspaper
carried reports about how amused members of staff who worked at the
airports were, over the furore the missing DDC machines caused.

And they were not being cynical: it was just a statement of fact that things ‘walk’ at the ports.

Secondly, one
refuses to accept that the people who want to rig elections are so
scared that they’ll resort to stealing DDC machines at the airport.
Please! You credit them with too much sophistication. Why anyone will
not pay good money [which they have!] to get professionals to do
something well beats me. Or how do you explain an election result where
someone won by 15,000 votes, when only 12,000 voters were registered in
the place, and yet the winning party was not the only party that got
votes?

We don’t rig by
stealing machines; imagine the stress of finding who will operate the
thing? We do not pay attention to detail in that forensic mathematical
way you see in FBI documentaries. We rig openly because nothing ever
happens to riggers anyway.

Did you not know that some people had INEC registration machines in
their homes before the 2007 elections? Did anyone get prosecuted? So,
it is not a big deal to get a DDC machine if you are determined to have
it and the authorities don’t mind you having it. The electoral
commission has never come out to denounce the voters’ registration
lists that emerged from such a compromised environment, has it? Have
they refused to use the lists? The theft of the DDC machines is only
another small evidence of the larger picture we now see: FAILURE!