Nigeria Content Online

This article was written before the election for
president was held yesterday. When you are reading this article you may
already have a reasonable idea as to who is going to be the next
president of Nigeria. On the other hand, the election might have been a
much closer race than most people thought and the final result might not
be known for some days. Either way, when it comes to an analysis of the
elections, the winner is…Nigeria.

By all standards the conduct of the 2011 elections
in Nigeria has raised the bar on the conduct of elections among African
nations.

While one death is one too many, the fact is that
electoral violence in the current elections has been stemmed from the
terribly high numbers seen in previous elections.

The three key players in making the 2011 elections a
significant improvement on those gone before are INEC chairman,
Attahiru Jega; national security adviser, Andrew Azazi; and Nigerian
president, Goodluck Jonathan.

President Jonathan should be congratulated for
kicking Maurice Iwu out of the INEC Chair. That wasn’t enough to fix
INEC. The choice of Jega was not sufficient in itself. Jonathan gave
Jega a clear directive to improve the election process. To fulfil this
mandate INEC required resources and Jonathan has ensured they have been
provided.

The appointment of General Azazi (rtd) to replace
Aliyu Gusau as National Security Advisor in early October 2010 was a
major statement by Jonathan. This was a significant challenge to some
PDP ‘big men’ and forced Gusau to declare his hand in running for the
presidency in the 2011 elections. In fact, Gusau had stepped down a few
weeks earlier because he knew he was about to be replaced and thus
avoided embarrassment. Kayode Are, the former DG-SSS was acting NSA
following Gusau’s departure. Colonel Kayode was Gusau’s man and so the
status quo seemed to be maintained. But this was merely temporary.
Appointing Azazi over Kayode was another signal from Jonathan that he
was not afraid to confront the SSS and reform the security services.

Azazi was faced with a very formidable task of
securing the loyalty and control of Nigeria’s security services at a
time when there was instability in the south, the middle belt and the
northeast. Azazi was appointed just days after the bombings at Eagle
Square which symbolically struck at the heart of the nation. To compound
the situation, there were those who fuelled conflict with the intent of
showing that Jonathan did not have control of the security situation
and thus should not be president. All-in-all, with less than six months
at his disposal to deliver a workable level of national security, Azazi
seemed to be set on mission impossible.

Jonathan became president of Nigeria in May 2010.
He appointed Jega as INEC chairman in June 2010 and Azazi as NSA in
October 2010.

At a time when the president was expected to be
focused on running hard for election and securing every political
advantage possible, we saw Jonathan going out of his way to create a
situation which drastically reduced opportunities for the incumbent to
unfairly influence election results. This is what Nigerians should
expect from their president. The outcome may not be perfect but it is
hard for any reasonable person to argue that the 2011 elections have not
been a significant improvement on previous elections.

There is room for further improvement in the
conduct of elections in Nigeria and on this point the next president of
Nigeria must give a firm undertaking to the people of Nigeria to
continue the process of electoral improvement that Jonathan has not only
initiated but pressed hard to progress.

In his brief term of office as president of
Nigeria, Jonathan has done much more than merely be a caretaker
president. He has taken major risks in propelling Nigeria forward both
internationally and domestically. In the recent ECOWAS meeting, Jonathan
challenged other African heads of state to share responsibility for the
demise of the people of Cote d’Ivoire and by example sought a solution
that would ultimately remove Gbagbo from office. Previous attempts at
similar action in respect to Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, that
should have been championed by South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma,
have repeatedly failed.

Domestically, Jonathan has taken Nigeria a quantum
leap towards free and fair elections. These gains can be eroded but it
is up to the people of Nigeria to call for continued improvement in the
election process.

Through the conduct of the 2011 elections, Nigeria
has shown other African nations that democracy does work. The people do
have a voice.

If Jonathan has been elected president, then Africa may have a new
leader who can show by example that progress can be made in nation
building. If Nigerians have elected another candidate to the presidency,
then that person will have to work hard, for Jonathan has certainly
raised the bar in what can be expected of Nigeria’s president.