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Last Wednesday, a former Vice President of Nigeria and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar made what might well be the defining speech of the campaign by an ill-tempered calls to arms, apparently if he did not win the PDP primaries ticket. In a statement said to have lasted no more than five minutes, Atiku managed to lay bare a lot of what is wrong with the politics of the country and some of those practising it. In an address to his supporters from across the country at an event in Abuja, with the alluring title of: ‘Building a national consensus for national unity,’ Atiku Abubakar warned that a violent change might be inevitable in the country if the present crops of leaders fail to encourage peaceful change.

‘‘Let me again send another message to the leadership of our country, especially our political leadership – those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.,” Mr. Abubakar said, add-ing, almost as an after-thought, that ‘‘But this is not what we want for our country.”

This is a speech that would do a university student trying to impress his teen colleagues proud. But it is hardly appropriate for a national figure of Mr Abubakar’s calibre. It is also particularly damaging when this statement is coming at a crucial stage when political parties are gearing up for their national primaries, one in which Mr. Abubakar is participating.

Cut it any which way, and it is not hard to surmise that the statement is directed at the man who is Mr. Abubakar’s main opponent for the presidential ticket of the PDP, President Goodluck Jonathan. Mr Abubakar and his supporters have long sought to deny legitimacy to the goal of Mr. Jonathan to contest the presidential ticket on the dubious premise that the part of the country he came from cannot produce a presidential candidate for next year’s election. In fact, the fulcrum of Mr. Abubakar’s candidacy has been based on the notion of his being a candidate of a section of the country which he says should be the one to produce the next president of the country.

But that is fair; after all what is politics if not a game where people try to maximize their perceived strengths to win political office. What should not be acceptable are people making petulant calls for a breakdown of the system on their perception that it might not be favourable to them. Which raises the pertinent question regarding Mr. Abubakar’s call to arms: who particularly is making change impossible and what particular change does Mr Abubakar want? And how in the name of all that is good can this life-long politician believe that violence would bring about the kind of change that is good for himself or the country?

To all intents and purpose, the race for next year’s election is on. It is even safe to assume that the electoral programme has not been this good for some time in the past. INEC has a respectable leadership that appears determined to curb the excesses of the past; the political parties are working on their programmes and candidates have taken to the air to sell their virtue to the electorate. The system has been able to check excesses by some political players, including a power grabbing attempt by lawmakers. No one has proclaimed any law stopping anyone from contesting – except if you count the attempt to stop Jonathan – and the race appears open in several instances. It is possible that Mr. Abubakar was clumsily trying to head off attempts to rig the primaries and or the general election. But even that would appear rash.

Until the result of the primaries and the general election is out, no one could really plead that the system did not work. In any case, it is debatable if a resort to violence would be the best response even if there was fraud in the process. As Mr. Abubakar should have learnt from his former associates in the Action Congress of Nigeria, the legal system is actually quite capable of correcting electoral theft.

Although Mr. Abubakar left the party for the PDP before the court ruled on electoral cases in Edo, Ekiti and Osun states, the Action Congress (and Labour Party in Ondo and APGA in Anambra State) has shown that politicians need not waste the lives of others before they get restitution for wrong declaration of results. It will be good if he and other politicians would take the moral of this court judgment to heart. Like in any other race, only one person can win a political contest and the default by politicians to claim they were robbed of victory is a bane of the growth of democracy in weak democracies. It would help all of us if politicians real-ised that it is possible to come short in a race and that does not necessarily mean the end of the world.