NIGERIA IN REVIEW

2007 NIGERIAN GENERAL ELECTIONS: THE EU OBERVER REPORT IS NOT GOSPEL

By: Ibrahim Danlami, College Park, USA ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

This piece is intended as a sequel to the many essays on Professor Maurice Iwu’s conduct of Nigeria’s 2007 general election and the condemnations that trailed the wake of the damning assessment turned in by the EU Observer Mission. There are now new twists and turns following Maurice Iwu’s formal presentation of the official Election Report to the Nigerian Diaspora in London and Washington. And silence is no longer golden because Nigeria is hurting from an unrelenting barrage of vigorous attacks from all manners of people nearly nine months after the elections. So, as a native Nigerian, I will be damned if I should just continue to remain silent about what happens to my native country, her institutions and public officials, and the drag it imposes on Nigeria’s quest for a befitting diplomatic stature, good order and foreign investments

While Maurice Iwu was making his presentations at the Press Club and the Chancery, my mind wandered off to the greater irregularities present in Nigeria’s ongoing local government elections (being conducted locally, and not by Maurice Iwu and INEC). And I am not alone in this line of thought because following release of the Report, the vast majority of Nigerian Diaspora has now rallied to the defense of Maurice Iwu and INEC. This can be seen from the many essays/reports written by those who were present at the two separate events in Washington DC where Professor Iwu made his presentations, if not the endorsements coming from some Diaspora professional groups. I was at both events but I deliberately preferred to keep quiet and remain as low-key as possible so I can better concentrate on the important task of either confirming or recanting what I already gleaned from prior research. I wanted my take to be swayed by hard facts and realism, and not by idealisms or other passions that have no place in what the 2007 elections meant for my native country. The Nigerian Diaspora position on this matter is important because it represents a critical gateway to a better measuring of what Nigerians everywhere think of the conduct of the election. In other words, if Nigerians themselves accept the election outcome, warts and all, that alone may be grounds for the international community to look less to the grim report turned in by the EU Observer Mission, bearing in mind two twin sets of facts: One - Nigeria’s teething pains with her elections are less of the making of Maurice Iwu or one man alone but more of an institutional immaturity on the part of Nigeria as a young, and an inexperienced democracy. Two - The cultural tendency to never-say-die on the part of Nigerians in contest for any office (political or civic, home-based or Diasporan) which often drives the loser to exaggerate any irregularities occurring in the ordinary course of subjecting elections to human discretion.

Now consider Maurice Iwu’s allegations that the EU observers turned monitors or worse by demanding a free pass to attend INEC meetings (as if Nigeria is already a failed state); and even had the alacrity to demand for their keeps the entire body of sensitive data containing the biometrics of Nigeria’s registered voters including, as Maurice Iwu put it, “the fingerprints of the President of my country”, apparently because they offered 40 million Euros as grants-in-aid to INEC. Now, I don’t know about my fellow Nigerian Diaspora in the West but one thing I know for certain is that in America where I have lived for years, a whole army of irate citizens will go to any length to reject any plan by the government (not to talk of a quasi-government unit like election observers) to compile and archive their biometrics without a compelling public interest such as part of a narrowly-tailored national security strategy to overcome a portent threat like terrorism. Even so, we in America are witnesses (and participants) to the robust challenge by citizens against somewhat similarly intrusive portions of the US Patriotic Act – an idea that was blamed on Attorney-General Ashcroft and which might have contributed to his fall. This instinctive citizen resistance to such intrusions stems from the recent dramatic rise in identity thefts, if not the suspicion that the government or other custodian thereof will someday misuse the data to the detriment of innocent citizens. But to me, the more troubling question is whether Americans or Europeans will turn over the biometrics of their citizens (including President Bush’s fingerprints) to a bunch of snoopy Nigerians or Africans running around US and Europe in the name of being observers at elections that don’t impact them directly. So, are Nigerians being told by the EU (or observers who claimed to be fronting for EU) to turn over their biometrics because Nigeria is Third-World or is it because the 40 million Euros in grants-in-aid constitute sufficient inducement and consideration for a nation possessing nearly 50 billion dollars (and counting) in reserves? Or has Nigeria suddenly lost her sovereign rights to a national security interest in guarding the private and sensitive information of her citizens, including the nation’s leaders? So, Maurice Iwu was right to have feared that the 40 million Euros was not mere freebies but carried the prospects of strings and diplomatic disrespect that a modern, strong and prosperous Nigeria does not need any longer. And he had good cause to worry that more unconscionable demands could have come had he not drawn the line. Therefore, it goes without saying that it was for this reason alone that a hostile environment existed throughout the election period between the EU Observers and Maurice Iwu/INEC. Recall that the EU called Iwu arrogant first before some Nigerians began to do the same.

And then enter the damning EU Observer Report, and to my utter surprise, I discovered that their 2007 report is almost a verbatim repetition of their 2003 report and I wondered why. I also noticed that the EU report is replete with dodgy disclaimers – meaning that the Observers are sort of eating their own words and generally appeared wishy-washy on an assessment they intended the whole world to believe as gospel. Well, if the Observers who wrote the report appear to be evasive or reluctant to own up to it, why should anybody, including Nigerians ground their assessment of the 2007 elections on the tenors of a report that is so notoriously self-disclaiming? I wager that it is plausible that since Maurice Iwu pissed them off, they were more likely to get back at him by turning in a report that is less of an objective assessment but more of a fall-out of a bitter personal disagreement they had with him. Additionally, the EU observers were too few in number to traverse the huge land mass of Nigeria and tens of thousands of polling precincts and wards, most of where the conduct of the election was widely acknowledged by Nigerians to have been free and fair. Had the observers covered all the polling centres, they would have confirmed that most political parties and their candidates lost primarily because they lacked in any of the factors or elements necessary for succeeding in national elections, and prevailed in their traditional strongholds.

For most of the West, especially the European Union, there is this rampant tendency to rush to conclusions that elections held in countries that the West fears, loathes or does not understand are never free and fair. The West does not loathe or fear Nigeria but it is well-known that it does not yet fully understand Nigeria and the unique cultural burdens that continue to stalk her fledgling Western-style democracy. The high standard set by the West for elections to be credible is fine and laudable, but pressuring young democracies and a people who have endured decades of autocracy to embrace them overnight is unrealistic and unfair to boot. It gets to a point that creates the appearance of pandering to opposition elements and a disregard for the nation’s sovereignty. This brings me to the recent elections held in Russia which saw Putin’s party winning with super majorities. But guess what? The same EU observers also saw red and irregularities in that election. But I suspect that the real truth lies somewhere in between the West’s traditional distrust of a nuclear-powered Russia led by a non-aligned Putin and a persisting misunderstanding of a post-Soviet Russia that is still learning the ropes of representative democracy, if not some petulance over the failed Western capitalist quest to be the major player in exploiting Russia’s huge deposits of natural gas and other hydro-carbons, which has been blamed on Putin. As for Nigeria, if you don’t know by now that the West considers candidate Abubakar Atiku pro-West and President Yar’Adua a closet anti-West or too Islamist (and frugal, meaning - a radical socialist that may prefer China), then you have not been reading everything out there. And more to the point, Yar’Adua’s fiscal conservatism in Katsina when he was Governor was mis-characterized as neo-socialist by a West that looked forward to an Atiku they believed through his PR spin in the US to be anti-socialist and thus more representative of any capitalist desire for a President likely to draw down Nigeria’s hard currency reserves to finance high technology acquisitions from the West. This is plain fact that must detract from the overall credibility of the EU Observer Report of an election in which a not-well-liked ‘radical/socialist’ Yar’Adua emerged victorious. Buhari is not really in the West’s serious reckoning because of his poor human rights record when he was military ruler, and Orji Kalu was seen to be too sophisticated and pan-Nigerian to be trusted to deliver on a strictly pro-Western capitalist agenda. And so it came to pass that in giving primacy to these calculations, the EU sadly ignored how dicey and arduous it was for Maurice Iwu and INEC to transit Nigeria from one civilian regime to another for the first time in the history of the country amidst all the duplicity and grand intrigues that were in plain view.

Finally, I disagree with those opposed to Maurice Iwu’s release of the INEC Report and his aggressive engagement of his tormentors. By making the report public, Nigerians and the world are now better informed about the nation’s electoral difficulties than ever before. That makes for better reforms and less tendency to lay blames at the wrong places. And while the issue is still hot, it will be nice to see some fireworks from the Presidency. In Washington, Professor Iwu declared, and I quote “You cannot keep the baby and throw away his mother” (translation: ‘The President cannot expect his presidency to still remain legitimate by not defending the process that brought it into being’ or ‘President Yar’Adua will call his mandate into question once he succumbs to calls for Maurice Iwu’s ouster’). I agree.

Therefore, President Yar’Adua should go heads-up now and show some verve in deflecting some of the darts being hauled at Maurice Iwu, INEC and Nigeria – coming mostly from fringe angles and interests that either don’t wish Nigeria well or don’t know any better. For the President to suggest that he will go back to his native Katsina if he loses at the election tribunal hardly helps; and if it is some sort of political rope-a-dope, it is not working at all, as it gives the appearance of disinterest or timidity and stokes the notion of a temporary presidency and possible anarchy. It also emboldens those challenging his election and complicates every diplomatic effort to bring matters to some closure. Others who can step up to the plate are the hundreds of National/State Assembly members and all the Governors who are enjoying mandates made possible by a complex transition eked out primarily on the resilience of majority of Nigerian masses that have proved more willing to accept the election outcome, if not a gutsy Maurice Iwu who accomplished what the Nigerian army - with all their coercive force and autocratic control of federal power could not do in 1993 when they failed to deliver a transition Nigerians so much desired at that time.

Ibrahim Danlami, College Park USA. ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com.