Following the outcome of the March 28 presidential elections, it has become fashionable for commentators to posit that the Igbo were not far sighted enough to align with the so-called wind of change that threw up General Muhammadu Buhari, as president-elect. As a matter of fact, it is Igbo elements themselves that have become fond of saying that the Igbo should have known that their support for outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan was not going to lead them anywhere.
This is most unfortunate. The self-pity by a section of Igbo politicians is absolutely uncalled for. Rather than allow to be talked down, the Igbo should carry their shoulders high for, perhaps, the first time, standing up to a cause to the end. The Igbo believed in something and they stood for it. That the outcome of the election did not altogether meet their expectations is no reason they should put on sackclothes and mourn.
As far as I am concerned, the Igbo made no mistake in giving majority of their votes to Jonathan for the simple reason that with what they were presented, Jonathan offered a better alternative to them. Differently put, my view is that General Buhari, who won the election, was not well presented to the Igbo. A few days to the presidential election, I was in attendance at a group discussion in Enugu during which the general posturing among the discussants was that the Igbo should do something quickly to align with Buhari, who was looking quite good for winning the election that was a few days ahead. I did not participate at the general discussions but I later had the opportunity to tell some of those who participated privately that it was too late for the Igbo to jump into the so-called Buhari moving train.
I opined that it was better for the Igbo to remain with President Jonathan to the end. I was also of the view that if as was being speculated, Buhari’s election was already a fait accompli, then that his people in the All Progressives Congress (APC) would be reluctant to admit the Igbo, who would be seen as joining the winning camp out of fear. Underlying my position was the fact that the position the generality of Igbo took on Buhari and his party was based on their perception of the candidate and the party, which was in turn as a result of what was brought before them. As far as I am concerned, those who packaged General Buhari did not do enough to change the Igbo perception of him.
In principle, two reasons can be adduced for this, which is that either they believed that he was going to make it with or without Igbo support or that they outrightly chose to go without the Igbo. I buy neither of the two. It was not possible for any politician to deliberately believe that he could become president of Nigeria without Igbo support.
The failure to convince the generality of the Igbo that Buhari was a better man was out of carelessness by his handlers. For example, not much was done to dissuade the Igbo that the gentle man called Buhari was not going to be the horse whip-holding dictator he was as military head of state. Not much was also done to address the perception over his religious proclivities and indeed, his alleged sympathy for the masterminds of the sectarian crisis currently ravaging some parts of the country.
Then came the certificate saga. Again, I believe that General Buhari must have been ill advised to adopt the type of posturing he put up over the matter. As it finally turned out, it is not true that the then presidential candidate (now president-elect) does not possess the requisite academic credentials for the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As I noted in my first article after the election (Muhammadu Buhari: What next, where next), it was a collective shame that we allowed that controversy to linger, to say nothing of the perfidy of those who sought to make a mountain of that mould.
Unfortunately, General Buhari’s attitude, which, as I noted above must have been from wrong advice, was apparently of the “I don’t give a damn” type. For example, when he was initially queried, he referred Nigerians to the military authorities instead of making efforts to personally present his credentials himself, as required by law. That certainly did not go down well with the generality of Nigerians, especially among Igbo youths. I recall over hearing several Igbo young men and women expressing the view that a fellow who has no secondary school education cannot be allowed to rule Nigeria in the 21st Century. But that was a misconception because it is not true that General Buhari has no secondary education. Unfortunately, that misconception lingered till the election. The same attitude greeted the issue of presidential debate to which the then APC presidential candidate refused to appear, again most probably due to wrong advise.
Many Nigerians, especially the youth, did not take that lightly. I am also aware that a lot of young men and women, majority of who are highly educated, felt that a fellow who cannot submit himself to the rigour of an open debate should have no business seeking to preside over the affairs of their country. Again, it was not true that General Buhari lacks the intellectual capacity to engage in a debate. The fact was that his handlers felt that the proposed debates were structured to put his main opponent, President Jonathan, at an advantage. Needless to say, it was not the fault of those young Nigerians who felt slighted over the posturing of the General that things were left that way.
Then, the real (political) reason the generality of the Igbo felt that President Jonathan should be re-elected. Let’s call spade a spade. The Igbo felt quite at home with the Jonathan administration, regardless that it might not have met all their expectations. Jonathan, though not an Igbo, was, for the latter, an approximation of the desire of the Igbo to be allowed access to presidential power. As far as I am concerned, nobody can hang the Igbo for believing that after several years during which “power” resided in the North and South West, their ‘kinsmen’ should be allowed to do just another four years.
Although the nuances of the issues involved are not as simple as that, the Igbo generally felt that it was ‘injustice’ to denied Jonathan from seeking a re-election he was statutory entitled to. As a matter of fact, when President Olesegun Obasanjo came into the ring boxing Jonathan, left, right and centre, not a few Igbo felt that Obasanjo’s attitude to the President was informed by his alleged disdain for the people of the former Eastern Region, especially the Igbo.
Yours sincerely was among those who supported President Jonathan’s re-election. As a matter of fact, I ran into trouble with the management of the Daily Newswatch newspaper in which I wrote a column beginning from sometime in January 2013 up to late October the same year. I was given the back page column on Mondays and I recall that I did quite a good number of articles in disagreement with the tactics of some of the leaders of the APC, which was just then coming up.
One Monday morning, I could not find the column in its usual place but as I was flipping through the newspaper, I saw the column tucked inside. When I call the editorial page editor who was in-charge of the columns, he explained that the managing director wanted to start writing a column; so he took the Monday back page. Of course, that was the end of that column because I refused to move from back to inside. Interestingly, the managing director never started any column.
The information I later got was that some powerful leaders of APC had been complaining bitterly about the column and at a point, the management of the newspaper decided to reduce the prominence it enjoyed at the back page. Apparently too, they must have guessed rightly that I wouldn’t take an inside page; an indirect way of seeing that I stopped writing.
Shortly after, I published my book titled, “2015: Ndi Igbo and President Jonathan,” in which I canvassed the support of Igbo for the president’s re-election. At the Enugu event, a prominent Igbo intellectual asked me whether I still believed in the position I took in the book and I said yes. A day after the result of the presidential election was announced, he called again and asked whether I still stood my ground and again I said yes. As a matter of fact, I have just ordered for a re-print. It might look funny or foolish but I now want other Nigerians – not just the Igbo – to read what I wrote.
•A fellow who got to know of this asked whether I was not afraid that the president-elect may get angry on seeing the book and I told him that there is not a single mention of Buhari in the book because at the time it was published, General Buhari’s candidature was yet a matter of speculation. Indeed, he was given little chances on account of the misconceptions about him, as I stated earlier in this article. Regardless of the book, I will join millions of other Nigerians to work for General Buhari’s success as president of Nigeria.
We can go and on, but all that is now history. Where we are now is that General Muhammadu Buhari is about to mount the saddle and that the perception of him in sundry quarters and on several issues are not altogether correct. Happily, the president-elect’s posturing since his election shows that he is not the monster his political opponents were painting him. If anything, that image seems to have given way, over night, to that of a fellow who has completely repudiated the exuberance of his military youth and in place put on the garb of presidential wisdom.
More important, his utterances so far show that General Buhari may not be conscious of the fact that the Igbo gave a bulk of their votes to Jonathan. He does not need to be. But since we cannot be 100 per cent correct on that until after the sycophants and political jobbers have taken up their positions, the point needs to be made that no matter how he chooses to go, the Igbo should not be told that they made a mistake on the 2015 presidential election. Only history can give that verdict in the fullness of time.
Dr. Okere wrote in from Owerri.
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