Nigeria: 2011 General Elections
Still Battling With Unprepared Leaders:
Nigeria has witnessed several elections since independence and the most successful of all these elections was the aborted or annulled, June 12, 1993 Presidential Election, allegedly won by Late Chief M.K.O. Abiola. The rest were dogged with controversies.
The 1979 election was with the memory of 2/3. The whole nation was left gaping on the arithmetic of finding the solution to two-third of nineteen states. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Alhaji Shehu Shagari and the Zik of Africa were entangled in the affair.
Weird! A country blessed with the likes of Chike Obi failed to calculate correctly 2/3 of nineteen. That was 1979 and following were accusations and counter accusations of who did what, when and why? Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, then General, conducted that election and hand power over to the North.
The South never forgave Obasanjo for handing over to Shehu Shagari, a Northerner. Another major headache of Nigeria politics, where ethnicity and religions reigns supreme. This was evident in 1999, when the Ota General lost in his own Ward on his way to Presidency, after a sojourn in Nigerian prison.
Elections in Nigeria have always been bedeviled by intrigue and intricacies. The biggest in recent years is that of unwilling leaders.
In 1999, Obasanjo was released from prison to march straight to Presidency unprepared. His unpreparedness came to the fore three years down his first tenure in office. As the Balogun of Owu realized that many of his aides were pursuing selfish agendas. His attempts to restrategise were watered by the ambition of his deputy, who followed his ambition with all every vigour.
Came 2007, time for Obasanjo’s exit and his best candidate out of all the willing ones was the unwilling Musa Yar’adua, now late. That remains an albatross in the image and intentions of Baba iyabo, while Late Yar’adua benefitted from that gesture fully, as many Nigerians readily excused any of his shortcoming because of his unwillingness.
Now is time to choose another leader, and it is not funny to realize that of all the possible candidates for next year’s general election in the most populated black nation of the world, the one whose ambition is generating controversies all over the country is that of the seemingly unwilling President Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent, who leads the country through a divine arrangement.
On the list of likely candidates are General Muhammdu Buhari: who forcefully led the termination of a democratic government in 1983; General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, self acclaimed evil genius: who took over from Buhari, through a coup de tat in 1995 and popular for the annulment of the freest and fairest elections in the history of the country; Alhaji Ibrahim Shekarau, present Governor of Kano State; Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, former Vice President to Olusegun Obasanjo; General Aliyu Gusau, security adviser to the President.
Of all of this only Jonathan has not openly declared his ambition. The question is will it be another unwilling President in 2011 and what does the nation stand to gain from this trend?