June 12 script and 21st Century Nigeria

Aliyu Musa

It began as a rumour, to which not much attention was paid. It soon gained momentum, circulating the social media within hours even as sceptics waived it off. But Deji Adeyanju’s Twit, warning of a military coup or war if opposition candidate, General Mahammadu Buhari were to win, was not unnoticed for too long, although his principal Doyin Okupe, President Goodluck Jonathan’s senior special assistant on public affairs (whatever it means?) did not find it dignifying to refute the blunder; so, to the ruling PDP, it was not a blunder, it was a deliberately coded message.

In far away England, after sipping English coffee (to quote a soldier who spoke to the BBC rejecting his allegation of cowardice) Sambo Dasuki, the previously mute National Security Adviser, suddenly found a use for his mouth, running it without a care. He wanted the elections postponed, for some months to enable him ‘strategize’ and ‘defeat’ the notorious Boko Haram. And to give INEC ‘more time to distribute PVCs’.

Dasuki’s sudden discovery of his ability to sing relentlessly did not end there. In a BBC Hausa interview he fiercely defended his position and vehemently argued that four states – Borno, Yobe, Adamawa and Gombe – were in such a bad state that holding elections there was not feasible, at least for now. But when asked if he was optimistic the insurgency would soon be defeated, all he could say was given the way it has escalated it was a sign the end of the insurgency had come. So, it was not because he had a new plan to defeat it. He went on to, to the hearing of the world, dismiss our soldiers as cowards.

That was Sambo Dasuki’s verdict on Nigerian soldiers, in a bid to help a sinking regime remain afloat. But that was only a part of the script, which started with Deji Adeyanju’s satanic Twit, which the president and his men pretend never happened.

The full import of the Twit and Dasuki’s call for postponement of the election only began to come to fruition when rumours, again, were circulated of a plan to stop it at all cost and crowds were rented to take part in protests supporting a shift. In one of those some participants claimed they were promised between 2000 and 5000 naira. And shortly after, unable to restrain itself, the PDP openly began to support or champion this disgraceful plot, using its sidekick – the military and police – to actualise it.

In a previous analysis I compared the ruling party and its candidate, Goodluck Jonathan, to a distracted student who spends the entire term ‘jamboree-ing’ only for the student to appear at the eleventh hour asking for more time to prepare for exams. But in the PDP and its candidate’s case they badly want more time to fine-tune their perverse plan to either impose themselves on Nigerians irrespective of what the electorate want, or collapse the entire democracy if they can’t have their way.

Otherwise, why the manic desperation to stop the election even after the head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega had emphasised again and again that they were ready? Why shamelessly drag the military into politics, which became even more manifest when Brigadier-General Olajide Laleye, the director of army public relations called a press conference to rubbish General Buhari’s claim that his certificate was with them? Why blackmail Professor Jega via a treasonable missive that they were unable to provide security if he went on with the election as scheduled? Is it no their constitutional duty, abdication of which should have resulted in some penalty?

I ask these questions for obvious reasons. Our armed forces are definitely not neutral. And the police have joined forces with them to take this irritating non-neutrality to a despicable height. By calling our soldiers cowards Sambo Dasuki, a retired army colonel, has subjected our military to international ridicule, which the Nigerien defence minister recently took advantage of, using the same media. But more worrying is the possibility of any of our neighbours, in view of our obviously self-inflicted incapacitation, overrunning us as the Chadians did in the early 1980s.

All this is happening because some characters have congregated around the president, are holding him hostage and feel they can do as they wish and come out unscathed, citing the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election as a reference. But they are mistaken. The scenarios are very different. Nigeria now is very different from Nigeria then. If they hope to trample on the wish of the people, people desperate for change they’ll be in for a very big shocker.

This is a battle for the soul of Nigeria. Patriotic Nigerians are determined to win. And a repeat of the June 12 recklessness by a cabal is an intolerable burden that shall be roundly rejected.