By Jide Ajani

Ignorance can be powerful, very powerful, especially when it is borne out of sincerity. Ignorance is a state of “not knowing” – not knowing that what you believed you knew so well is known in breach. The move to pursue this belief sometimes leads to fanaticism. Fanaticism itself is described as a “wild and often dangerous enthusiasm, especially in politics or religion”.

For the former, it is apt to capture the actions of Nigerian politicians under the umbrella of inordinate zealotry. Now, what can be more dangerous than a man convinced that the works of his hand are the best under any circumstance and in every material particular, no matter any more enlightened reasoning or information to the contrary? What can be more dangerous even, when the individual turns the act into a directive principle of his daily existence?

This is the best way to appreciate  the activities of all those who were involved in penultimate Saturday’s limited fiasco that passed for the gubernatorial election in Anambra State. These are interesting times in Nigeria. For the actors and their audience, it is all too familiar. The political actors delight the audience with all manner of shenanigans while the audience also tries to tolerate the antics of the politicians.

We can be categorical here that in Nigeria, elections are won by sheer force, let fools contend.

The force of the winner is encapsulated in the means and ways employed before, during and immediately after every election and these include and can never be limited to the following: the security agencies, collusion of the umpire with politicians, thugs, propaganda and local popularity.  When all these are employed either positively or negatively, they constitute brute force.

File Photo: Accreditation at Dunukofia Local Government area of Anambra State. Photo: Tony Edike

Now, each time the masses complain about rigged election, their complaints peter into insignificance after a few days save for the 1983 election in Ondo State and the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election.

The politicaisn are ignorant of the fact that stealing votes that do not belong to them to foist a leader on the people can create sabotage which itself creates underdevelopment of some sort, all fueled by mis-governance.  The masses, too, are ignorant of the simple verifiable fact that for as long as they allow hokum, for so long would they remain impoverished.

Almost always, the spirit of appeasement to avoid “unduly overheating” the polity imbues them and they go back to their sheds contented that at least there is peace.  Peace of the graveyard?

It was former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who explained the doctrine of appeasement as a product of sheer ignorance.  According to him, “an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last”.

To buttress his point, he used this simple statement: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor.  You chose dishonor and you will have war”.

In an educated analysis of Churchill’s position on the evils appeasement wrought, thinkers have insisted that an appeaser believes he is so weak that he cannot defeat the tyrant and, therefore, he makes concessions so as to avoid confrontation or war.  Unbeknownst to him, each round of concession he makes reduces his humanity and emboldens the tyrant – even making the latter stronger.

This fits into Che Guevara’s thoughts about the non-existence of liberators, that the people should liberate themselves.  The thought that some people are ordained as liberators only fuel the ignorance of the masses because what has been happening one after the other is one form of tyranny supplanting another form of tyranny.

On a different platform which relates to the sympathy and understanding of the wickedness of man, Martin Lurther King made this profound observation about the lot of mankind that is enslaved by a mentality that is beyond their comprehension and which pushes them to do that which is indecipherable to other more rational men, when he said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous that sincere ignorance” – this was in relation to white supremacist argument that black Americans were of a lesser humanity.

Relating this to the Anambra election, the ignorance displayed across board led to the bungling of the election – from INEC the electoral umpire, the ruling All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and All Progressive Congress, APC, it is a regime of ignorance that fueled the inconclusiveness of the election.

In Anambra State, there are just three senatorial districts, 326 registration areas and 4, 608 polling units.  Idemili North Local Government Area  is said to have an estimated voter number of 173,832 in 306 voting wards. The election of November 16 had 1, 763, 751 registered voters; with the recorded massive turn out, only 451, 826 were accredited because they were the only ones whose names were verifiably correct in the register.  The number of votes cast was 429, 549 while 16, 544 were rejected.

The result so far declared shows APGA with 174, 710; PDP, 94, 356; APC, 92, 300 and LP, 37, 446.

Section 179 of the Nigerian Constitution states clearly that the two conditions for any individual to be deemed to have won such an election would be to have “the highest number of votes cast in the election” and “have not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the local government areas in the state.

Anambra has 21 LGAs and two-thirds is 14 – APGA already qualifies in 18; PDP in 9; APC in 7; and LP in 1.

Addendum register

For the PDP candidate, Tony Nwoye, he needs to be told that good luck can be funny because it can only take you to a point.  When proper organisational skills, wisdom and hard work are required, even good luck would run for cover.

For APC’s Chris Ngige, the miracle it intended to wrought, especially after the deportation saga, was ill-conceived.

LP’s Ifeanyi Ubah needed to be reminded that politics is not the same thing as petroleum products importation and its attendant subsidy voodoo.

Now, for APGA’s Peter Obi and his protégé, Willie Obiano, it is early days yet in their relationship; and the ghost of godfather/godson acrimony is yet to be exorcised – mind you, the same Victor Umeh, APGA Chairman, engendered a no-love-lost situation with Obi for quite some time and even threatening to tear down the walls of the party. Therefore, the sincere ignorance before, during and, surely, after the facts, after all said and done, would unravel in due course.

At the University of London’s Lecture series, one Professor Mohammed Kuna, described as Special Adviser to INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, was at pains – great pains – to explain away the shambolic Anambra election. When asked by Dr. Funmi Olonisakin, the Director of the African Leadership Centre, Kings College, London, of the lessons the Anambra debacle present as challenges for the 2015 elections, Kuna heaped the blames on the political class – a now too familiar refrain of the electoral body whenever elections are bungled.

The issues to put in context are as follows: What is the percentage of those who voted, as against those who actually came out to vote but were denied voting?  There is a difference between low voter turnout and a complete disenfranchisement of voters  based on a register that is distorted.   What did INEC mean when it talked about one funny addendum register?

Miracle product

Jega should have built on the old INEC register instead of going for a completely new one as he did for the 2011 elections. Just hours to the election, INEC announced to the world that it had spotted anomalies in its own register that it had touted would be a miracle product.

Why is APC complaining?  It sowed the wind for today’s whirlwind by hailing Jega’s move to do away with the past register. We are not even talking about the funds wasted and more funds that would still be wasted for the exercise that has refused to produce a superb register.

Now, why is INEC obsessed with the employment of consultants as against INEC staff?  Using university professors as  returning officers for elections suggests that they are super human beings immune to Nigeria’s attitudinal challenges.  If so, why do we have exam malpractices in the universities.

Then there is Jega’s Messianic disposition.  The INEC chairman needs to be reminded that the business of organizing elections in Nigeria is a totally different ball game from ASUU activism.  He may indeed mean well no doubt. But giving assurances that are almost always stood on their heads has not burnished his image.

For all the players, this cycle of ignorance about the ends to be justified by their every action has never and would never do Nigeria any good because if, as one thinker said, the end justifies the means, we also ask: What justifies the end?

In Nigeria, what appears to justify the end has never been, in most cases, the delivery of democracy dividends, it has always been the aggrandizement of wealth in a very inordinate manner.

What makes this very unwholesome is that even as the world is leaving Nigeria behind, the actors believe sincerely (nay ignorantly) that they are doing the Nigerian people a favour.

This, in a nutshell, is the grave danger of sincere ignorance.

The story continues in the Sunday Vanguard…