By Rotimi Fasan

APPARENTLY exasperated by the shenanigans of the Sani Abacha junta to both extend the life of their regime and, as well, transform the head of the junta into a civilian president, assassinated Attorney General of the Federation and former Minister of Justice, Bola Ige, had chosen to sit back and watch or, as he had put it in earthy pidgin, ‘siddon look’ at how things would end with the Abacha political programme and its ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’, a clear reference to the five political parties that were hurriedly clobbered together  to smoothen Abacha’s transformation agenda.

But years before Bola Ige coined his ‘siddon look’ metaphor that summed up his attitude to the Abacha civil rule programme, the late Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, had in one of his unreleased masterpieces of songs, reflecting on the Nigerian condition, concluded that his reaction to the fumbling antics of our leaders was to simply look and laugh.

Roughly translated, I just dey luku an’ laafu as Fela constantly chanted in the song means ‘I’m simply looking and laughing’.  And so one is tempted to react to the botched polls to the National Assembly on April 2 but for the colossal loss of over N4 billion, besides lives and property, that the unrealised election had cost Nigeria.

In my last comment here on the election, I had chosen to take a retrospective as opposed to a prospective look at how things might go with the election. My reading of the situation told me then that there was indeed little to look forward to in the elections as Nigerians might never have the opportunity to vote at all. As I said in  that piece of April 5, ‘…one could only take a retrospective look into how things had gone before the elections to have a glimpse of how they might go during and after Nigerians would have cast their votes- if they ever had the opportunity to do this.’

My conclusion was based on my reading of INEC’s inadequate preparations, a point I had, like other Nigerians, raised in the February 8, 2011 edition of this column that x-rayed INEC’s handling of the voters’ registration exercise which had to be extended. I had gone on to conclude that ‘…the success of INEC is not just about Jega and whatever expectations people have from him. Jega needs to be assisted to function optimally for INEC to go beyond the middling effort of the last registration exercise.’

Perhaps it was in a bid to go beyond the below-average effort of the registration exercise that Jega decided to cancel the April 2 elections or, perhaps, the INEC chair simply realised that he needed to come clean with Nigerians about the inadequacy of INEC’s preparations. Whatever is the true reason for Jega’s decision, the steps he took came rather too late.

Having enjoyed the full confidence of millions of Nigerians and that of the Jonathan administration, Jega, apparently had no reason to fail. Not only because of his personal bonafides but also in terms of the financial support given the Commission by Abuja. Jonathan didn’t appear like someone who wanted any expenses spared.

Jega, it appeared, simply had to ask, even if Oliver Twist-style, for him to be given. And at the end of the day he asked for and got close to N90 billion even after he had had to raise his initial budget by several billions of Naira.

The only attempt to review Jega’s budget downward came from the National Assembly concerning the 30 per cent profit margin he approved for his contractors. It’s these same contractors, so-called vendors, that Jega now says are responsible for the delayed supply of voting materials that led to the cancellation of the elections.

How strange how we reward incompetence in this country. Imagine the irony that the same individuals Jega sought to satisfy are the very ones he now points accusing fingers at for their saboteur role in bungling the April 2 election. Nigerians, particularly the government, made too much of Jega’s credentials, took the success of the 2011 elections for granted as something solely dependent on his slim shoulders.

The government thought all that was needed was money forgetting that a tree does not make a forest, that for good or ill Jega would have to work in concert with others who would need to be well-motivated and properly assessed for their competence and goodwill without tampering with the INEC chair’s independence. Some of us warned of the danger of over-reliance on the imagined magic Jega was expected to perform.

Which is not the same thing as saying that the INEC chair is incompetent but rather that the Nigerian system has a way of making nonsense of the effort of the most hardnosed Nigerian- especially those with credible credentials.

We saw the danger coming-which is why we are now tempted to luku an’ laafu for our wilful lack of foresight. But as is becoming clear, Jega’s problem probably started the very moment he had to fix his electoral calendar within a time frame that many considered too short.

The air of sanctity that had been created around the May 29 handover date meant Jega couldn’t work outside it. Whatever inadequacies there were and might be, Jega felt could be covered with money. And the government apparently agreed with him. But as is often said, ‘money is not everything.’

As it is, nobody can predict beyond the possibility that the rescheduled elections might have been terribly compromised- nobody can be sure how the elections might go.

The resilience of Nigerians is being overstretched by the selfishness of politicians and their ilk whose sole purpose is to serve themselves first before, if they ever do, thinking of those who put them in office.

As far as these elections are concerned, we’ll only have to wait and continue to hope that what started in earnest preparation and seemingly profligate funding wouldn’t end on a farcical note that can only draw peals of laughter from those bystanders not permanently immune to the lessons of history, one of which is that no amount of money can make up for a failure of planning.