By Bisi Lawrence
And so it has all come to this at last. We are one step from breasting the tape. The elections have come at last, though not entirely gone actually. For one thing, we shall now have to endure the prolonged cases involving the rejection of the results by the losers, on the grounds of illegality or procedural malfeasance. That has now become more or less traditional in our system. They occur and recur at almost all the various levels of the polls and tend to be irksome, to say the least.

But they have proved to be very necessary because of the impact of their outcome when the results have overturned earlier decisions. This has no doubt enriched the quality of our electoral and judicial systems and, with time, will solidify the basis of our democracy.

No one is deluded about the magic of a new start, of course. We rode, and are still riding over a bumpy course. The elements that had wished for a different result to the elections will, even away from the law courts, attempt to cling to the weak strands of their wishes in reviving the frustrated hopes of their endeavours. You will read their comments dyed in the purple hue of undeniable disappointment, while they try to wrench some accomplishment from the clenched jaws of failure. They have seen, for instance, the man they called a traitor, crowned by the people as a governor. Now they even wish their darling had cheated, as they maintain wistfully he very well could. But a casual examination shows he very well might have, yet there are situations of reality that even the lowest class of cheating cannot supplant.

PRESIDENT JONATHAN INAUGURATES ARMED FORCES RADIO STATION IN ABUJA

The elections first had to stumble visibly over the suggestion that they should be postponed. That almost caused a panic. It was in January, barely a few weeks from the proposed commencement date of February 14, coinciding with the day observed as their own day by lovers all over the world. Concurrently, the Yoruba supporters of the All Progressives Congress, APC, had also sentimentally embraced the month of the date by converting it to a sentimental slogan, Fe-Buari-”love Buari”. But the suggestion of deferment was made concrete into a ruling postponing the election by six weeks.

The political party, the APC, which was reckoned to be ahead by the pollsters raised an alarm. The United States president sent his international trouble-shooter, John Kerry, to protest. The British Government was no less emphatic. They all wanted the St. Valentine’s Day date to stay. The electoral authority, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INECJ also protested, but to no avail. But, as it turned out, INEC had not been fully prepared after all, and the elections would have almost turned into a fiasco if they had not been postponed.

An abiding item of the agenda long on the ground before the elections were held was the fate of the Chibok girls. The government had promised to recover the schoolgirls kidnapped a year earlier before the elections were held. The Boko Haram terrorists who had captured them were indeed worsted in many encounters which gave out some hope that the girls might indeed be rescued. However, the situation did not change, and neither did the stridency of the campaign for their freedom. That had never fallen on the restful ears of the military, especially the spokesman Brigadier-General Chris Olukolade. His reaction to the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign had customarily fallen short of understanding. It might not have been asking too much for sympathy or compassion from the high military officer, but even common understanding seemed too much…..

His evaluation of any dissatisfaction with the Boko Haram situation appeared to be wrongfully approximated to a downright condemnation of the efforts of the military in the campaign against the insurgents, to the extent that his reactions virtually threaten reprisals against any criticism. But the recent comments of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, particularly about the hiring of South African mercenaries, show there has indeed been room for complaints. And surely, no one can sensibly accuse the former General and new President-elect, of trying to undermine confidence in the military.

A catallogue of abiding items abounds in the transition which we now approach. This has incited a bewildering variety of advice as to which the incoming administration should hold as its priorities. All along, the long list of advice seemed to have been generally accepted in no particular order of importance, but the remarks about the insurgency campaigns elicited a clear order of priority with insecurity in the North-eastern part of the country included among the first to be mentioned.

“My administration will concentrate on three major areas on assumption of office,” the in­coming president has promised; “that is insecurity, the economy/unemployment and corruption.” He was far from the campaign trail when he said this in Kaduna as he hosted the National Executive Council of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF. But even as far back as the month of April when he was on the hustings, Buhari had pledged to probe the missing 2 billion naira raised by the former Governor of the Central Bank, now Emir of Kano. He had also identified Boko Haram as pure terrorists and vowed to give priority to security, the economy and corruption.

The declaration was therefore on all fours with the tide of the suggestions that has been pouring in since the APC won the elections. Even right there at the reception held for the ACF, the chairman of the organization, former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Coomassie, declared that Nigerians had been waiting for Buhari to free them from the bondage of poverty, the decay of moral values, crime and some other social problems which are the abiding problems that will not follow the outgoing administration out from the seat of power.

Neither will the confrontation between elements of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP. The confrontation will congeal into the official traditional roles of opposition and administration, both parties having now changed roles. But probably until midnight last night, the bickering about the opposition behaving like a “parallel government” would have deepened, and become more indefinable, by midnight in a week’s time.

An abiding issue could have been the earlier refusal of the National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Adamu Muazu, to relinquish his office following his disastrous leadership of the party in the elections. But wiser counsel appears to have prevailed with him. It is the tradition all over the world….except in Nigeria. You lose, you quit. The tradition must start now, at least after Stephen Keshi. It goes that far. What will stay around for a while will be the internecine conflict for the succession to the position and that, unfortunately, will do little to repair the damage already done to the structure and the spirit of the party. He has been followed out by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenhi, whose resilience as a member of the top hierarchy, is truly remarkable. ‘Some of the provocative issues of their party’s tenure in government, like the issue of the Constitution amendment which President Johnson refused to sign towards the end may not really become an abiding issue. But then it may. The masterminds who could have conceived such claptrap and would yet insist on actualising it, are capable of getting stuck with it. Fortuitously, not many of them will be capable of being in a position to pursue it for any distance in the new dispensation which affects government structures across the board generally.

What will abide permanently, on a personal note of course is the sense of failure which President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will have to bear for all time. To be confronted by failure is a traumatic phenomenon which nothing, not even the towering capability of accommodation, can assuage, There goes a man. Good luck to him.

Time out.