Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, until mid-2022, Minister of Transport and a powerful player in the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of the Muhammadu Buhari government, has just been served a classical APC election menu. Somehow, interestingly, the minister did not enjoy the experience one bit. That should be instructive.
Amaechi, for the record, was the director-general (DG) of the Buhari presidential campaign, in the 2015 and the 2019 presidential elections. In that capacity, the former governor of Rivers State was the point man that “delivered” Buhari in the two presidential elections, to use the loaded jargon in Nigerian politics, particularly elections. Indeed, Amaechi delivered his principal on both instances.
In the latter case in 2019, Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) obviously felt exactly the way Amaechi is feeling today about the 2023 elections. It is remarkable that the former minister was not on the ballot in the recent polls. He was merely advancing the cause of a protegee in the governorship election in Rivers State.
The overall texture of the 2023 general election left many either livid or perplexed. Amaechi counts among the livid. What he witnessed at the governorship election of March 18, 2023, was an experience he was at pains to recount. For Amaechi, as with millions of Nigerians, judging from the uproar that has trailed the 2023 elections, the promises that the election management body made about its robust election management system as well as the guidelines the agency released for the elections were met in the breach. Weeks after the experiences of the elections, presidential and state, many among the contenders and promoters of the contenders are yet to get over the trauma of the brazen manipulations.
Clearly, Amaechi was stunned at how the elections went. His summary of the exercise was distinct. As he put it, what transpired in the 2023 elections manifested “total failure of governance”. That’s quite pithy. No other reviewer of the elections has captured it as succinctly.
Expectedly, Amaechi’s overview of the 2023 elections has been weighted by many, not mainly by the substance of his submission but by who he is. This was an APC kingpin talking. Many of those who noticed the hurt in Amaechi’s experience and verdict on the 2023 elections snidely retorted, “See who is talking”. That is an understandable reaction, even if the point he made remains valid.
The 2023 elections bear the unmistakable imprimatur of the APC. So did the 2019 election. And the 2015 election as well. The DG of the Buhari presidential campaign cannot claim that he does not know how APC rolls.
The question then becomes, could it truly be that the former minister just realized that there has been total failure of governance in the country? If Amaechi had cared a little bit more a few months back, he would so easily have found out that both the government he was part of and the candidate that he delivered on two eventful elections personify total failure of governance. Abdullahi Ganduje, a fellow APC chieftain and governor of Kano State, said so of Amaechi’s principal.
The 2023 elections are, without doubt, a legacy of the APC, as much as they reflect the weaknesses of various entities that constitute the government of Nigeria in the last eight years. Amaechi cannot exculpate himself so easily. He was (?) a major factor in APC. The damage could not have been done only lately.
When the messenger is put aside, however, the substance of his message cannot be contested. What transpired at the 2023 elections spoke loudly of total failure of governance. That reality manifested in varied dimensions. Take security, for one. Election security has become a critical strand in the sensitive composite management structure that has evolved in the conduct of elections in the country.
The princely budgets for election security in every election testify to the importance attached to this end of the process. For all this chunky budget, however, the high point of what Nigerians get as evidence of security during elections has become the road show staged by the police a day or two before elections, popularly known as ‘show of force’. After the impressive show of force, which often consists of parade of long convoys of police operational vehicles across major roads in the major cities, voters are left virtually on their own on election day. It is a poor joke. On election day, when actual show of force was needed to ward off daring criminals engaged by unconscionable politicians to thwart the will of the people, the officers who mounted show of force the previous day have been found to show no force.
Reports of policemen on duty showing a strange lack of interest in defending democracy and endangered voters at very critical moments on election days were rife in the 2023 elections.
Then there is the case of commissioners of police in various states totally submitting themselves and their authority to the discretion of state governors with their well-documented tyrannical tendencies. The response to this situation, if it persists, will be self-help. And to imagine that these are federal police, not state police.
It bears emphasizing that what Amaechi identified, correctly, as failure of governance during the 2023 elections did not start with the violence by hired thugs and shenanigans of state governors and some others on election day. The blatant prevention of opposition parties and candidates by many state governors, from campaigning in various states was nothing but a manifestation of failure of governance. How and why the attorney-general of the federation and the Inspector-General of Police did not see such infringement on the fundamental rights of citizens for what they were remains baffling.
It was only natural that those who got away with earlier acts of trampling on the fundamental right of others would proceed to further impunities. The horrible incidents during the elections, where governors and sundry politicians crudely and cynically overran election officials and the official regulation for the elections can, therefore, be properly expressed as higher manifestation of lawlessness that had been nurtured over time.
What Amaechi was bemoaning in Rivers during the 2023 elections has been with Nigerians for the last eight years. He may not have noticed it earlier, for obvious reasons. He surely was busy serving his principal. He could not have heard what Atiku as a “Wailer” was wailing about in 2019, when an election many thought he won was called for another, the man Amaechi had a duty to deliver.
Today, some other persons are shouting and kicking for justice in the 2023 elections. Who knows what would have happened if an Amaechi heard and understood the pain of the victims of injustice back then. But he obviously didn’t hear or see anything wrong then. Now, see what somebody else has done back home in Port Harcourt in 2023.
Until laws and processes of governance in Nigeria are elevated beyond the whims and caprices of anyone in power, or with resources, failure of governance in the affairs of Nigeria will persist.
One way to stem the looming tide of anarchy attendant to Amaechi’s total failure of governance theory, is to hold people accountable for their actions. Another is for the state to strive to grow a soul that will be defended at all cost; a system where no individual or group will be allowed to thrive or glory in illegality. Welcome back to earth, brother Chibuike Amaechi.