By Jide Ajani

You can liken the year to the oneon crutches. In the first quarter of 2015,  it all appeared as if the year was moving slowly. This was in spite of the historic general elections coming up. Like a never ending wait,  the year created so much anxiety,  tensions and a lot of ballyhoo.
2015 is ending like no other year.

In fact,  the year was almost killed even before it came. What with the academic prediction which suggested that the year would spell doom for Nigeria.

The politicians, ever so delinquent, did not help matters. They appeared to be working in concert with the negative forces bent on immolating Nigeria.  This forced a committee raised to compel the then President Goodluck Jonathan and President Muhammad Buhari, frontrunners in the impending presidential election, to sign a peace deal to abide by the result of the election – they signed the peace deal twice.

But from May 29, the year moved at break-neck speed.  Enter Buhari as President and Commander-in-Chief.

Now, if one was to urge the incumbent President to concentrate on the advice of a philosopher, this week, as he turns 73, the most apposite reference would be to recommend Alexis de Tocquiville’s “Dangerous Moment”. In that treatise, Tocqueville argued that embarking on a reform process could prove a dangerous moment for a government that is not rated high in governance just yet. On Tuesday, December 29, the government of Buhari will be seven months in office. But more than half of the year already spent in a four-year tenure, the thrust of his government, although not clearly articulated in policy green papers, may be summarized as being on a two-pronged focus of financial transparency based on anti-corruption and economic diversification from a mono-product economy. Meanwhile, in order to instigate economic policy, there must be an enabling political ambiance. On the political front, Buhari may not have helped himself in anyway, as he has continued to squander the goodwill he got on a platter of gold by fomenting unnecessary tensions and creating needless institutional and hegemonic enemies.

Tensions

In the public sphere, his descent into tensions began during his visit to the United States of America for the United Nation’s General Assembly meeting, where he implied that he would reflect his political appointments in the pattern of votes he got during the elections. Many, who thought he would follow the Mandela example by bridging national differences, were further shocked to see repeated appointments of his inner caucus working team and other appointments outside the Presidency deeply skewed and in a matter that reflected ethno-regional bias. Compounding the suspicion of a regional bias in his choice of close aides and federal appointments is the perception that he went solo, having secured power, in making these choices. He was seen in some quarters to be distancing himself from his former party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) merger partners and demonizing some such as the ‘newPDP’ members who sought key positions in the legislature.

To  reduce the tensions arising from the latter events, the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, proclaimed that the party will become involved in further appointments by the President, but his assurances were torn to shreds as Buhari kept not only his party but the whole nation waiting endlessly to form a federal cabinet. As the tensions from the issue amplified, the President deepened suspicions on a visit to France where he gave an interview in which he implied that ministers were  redundant or surplus to the requirements of governance under him, calling them “noise-makers”. As these events played out, the opposition mocked the ruling party implying that the APC was disoriented and inexperienced in governance hence it could not form government.

Inconclusive INEC Board/Commissioners Appointments

Further tensions led to accusations of eroding the independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and notices to the effect that the Commission was planning to conduct elections illegally, being deficient in the number of Commissioners required by the law to form the Board of INEC. Responding to these issues, particularly Sunday Vanguard’s reference to a subsisting judgment that a minimum of five members of a full Board of 13 members was required for INEC to take a valid decision regarding the conduct of any election under Section 159 of the 1999 Constitutions, as amended, government embarked on an “inconclusive appointment voyage” by appointing only a few National Commissioners to make the INEC Board members seven instead of the 13 required by the Constitution before you can make a determination of minimum five members for quorum. As it is, INEC Board is still not constituted as provided for by the Constitution because 1/3 of seven cannot be  five except a full membership of 13, as provided for by the Constitution, which the government has not done.

Surprisingly, a shocking explanation that seems to have led to the  suspension of Paragraph 14 (1) of the 1999 Constitution was that the composition of INEC Board Commissioners  should now be staggard so that their tenure would not end at the same time. Again, the refusal to abide by the extant provision of the Constitution, without first seeking amendment  by the National Assembly through an Executive Bill, is wrong. Some lawyers described this as self-help and a suspension of a part of the Constitution by the President up till this moment.

Regrettably and to the surprise of some Nigerians, the National Assembly has kept a loud oversight legislative silence over the suspension of the provision of the Constitution as it screened and confirmed the partial list of Commissioners and has neglected or failed to ask the President to comply fully to the Constitution and not to act partly in breach of it. Furthermore, not less that 15 states, which  had no Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) as at 30 June when Prof. Jega, the then Chairman, left office because  their  tenures had elasped, have increased to 20 states in the last six months and the government has been unable to appoint Commissioners. This has crumbled completely the argument for staggard appointment so that all commissioners tenure would not end at the same time because government has been unable to appoint Commissioners whose tenure ended six months ago in addition to the recent ones and no action has been taken so far.  All these states  are running INEC without Resident Commissioners.

Inconclusive Kogi and Bayelsa elections

The inconclusive Board of INEC is what has become of an enviable election management body that Prof. Jega and his team built. The electoral body has conducted two elections that were grossly deficient in integrity, controversial and ended  “inconclusively”. Worse still, even the usual updates and briefing during challenging moments, which were the hallmarks of Jega and his team, have all gone as no key official of INEC, either the Chairman or any of his colleagues, addressed  Nigerians on events. Even meetings of INEC over the Bayelsa impasse were reported inconclusive, until Thursday, 96 hours later, when a press statement was issued that the election for just one LGA would be concluded on January 9, 2016.

Spiralling economic tensions

Delays in appointments to the federal cabinet, with government not naming interim economic advisers with commanding control over policies, left the economy in free fall for months. But even as government named its cabinet, its early steps to get a foothold on the economy  have been grievously harmed by several local and international factors; locally, a malignant and unremitting fuel scarcity emerged, followed by a drop in public electricity supply, a falling currency, failure of policies to allow Nigerian states and local governments to mine minerals  in their jurisdictions, as well as public demand for government to actualize its economic and social welfare promises as life became more difficult for the people to bear. On the international level, falling oil prices, possible scenarios of increasing oil glut with Iran and the United States of America set to join the global supply of crude oil in 2016, the falling value of international commodities in addition to falling global demands in China and other countries, portend a bleak future for Nigeria’s single-product economy.

Opening up new socio-cultural battle fronts

Despite the numerous political and economic challenges facing the President, one would expect that his government will attempt to conserve resources by diminishing internal socio-cultural strife, but instead, government is compounding its woes in the socio-cultural hotbeds that are already existing in the North East by opening up new fronts in the North West, Middle Belt, South West, South East and South South. In the North, government has unwittingly created an impression that some leaders in the geo-political zone are bound for jail, no matter what. The situation in the North West has further deteriorated with recent clashes between security agents and some Shiite Muslims.

In the Middle Belt, a previously calm post-election situation may soon boil over with the potentially unstable re-run election to the Senate in Benue and possible gubernatorial election in Taraba slated for 2016 with Wukari elements spoiling for a fight. In the South West, the fall-out from the Kogi gubernatorial election has opened up previously veiled schisms in the APC, which has left prominent party figures from the region open to ridicule and scorn for their fruitless support for the APC. In the South East, government has created a monster by deifying Nnamdi Kanu from a rabble rousing expatriate to the rallying point of unemployed youths in the eastern states, whereas previous governments preferred to refer to more professional and mature bodies such as Aka Ikenga and Ohaneze Ndi Igbo, as the prominent spokes persons in the socio-cultural issues of the zone. The administration, by the actions of its overzealous security agents, has elevated a small group to national prominence. More dangerous, however, is the growing restiveness in the South South, where government seems determined to ride a tiger.

After the 2015 general elections, many people, within and outside Nigeria, had commended the country for peaceful transitional polls. Former President Goodluck Jonathan had accepted the outcome of the March 28 presidential election in good faith and retired to his country home in Bayelsa, but the new administration, unsatisfied with election victory, appears poised to humiliate the former President.

Apart from scurrilous statements from government and the ruling party members, the aides of the former President have continued to face harassments.  Whereas it is expected that the rule of law should be the order of the day, court orders and judgments have been flagrantly disobeyed –  such as the recent humiliation of a former Director General of NIMASA by security agents as they bundled him into a bus after he secured a court bail.

Additionally, the APC seems not satisfied with the many states it won in the 2015 general elections and continues to covet political territory in the South South, creating seismic tensions in the region that boiled into a gunfight in Ijaw South Local Government in the recent inconclusive election in Bayelsa State. Going by the determination of the ruling party and the resolve of the opposition PDP, as the people watch the actions of the ruling party as it further uses power to dominate all spheres, the Ijaw South election conflict may be a dress rehearsal for the battle front that may follow recent cancellations of several elections in Rivers State. These evolving instabilities, after relatively successful general elections, lead many observers to ask, why is the President embarking on needless battles on many fronts? How does he hope to sustain these instabilities in the face of dwindling revenues? Will the government concentrate on economic revival and diversification in 2016 to meet its welfare promises or dig deeper into crises and conflicts? Only the future will tell!

Read the review here