What Happened in the South-West – The Myth of Massive Repudiation & Enthusiastic Acceptance

By

Mobolaji E. Aluko, Ph.D.

alukome@aol.com

Burtonsville, MD, USA

Sunday, May 25, 2003

INTRODUCTION

On April 12, April 19, and May 3, 2003, electoral earthquakes occurred in the South-West part of Nigeria, a.k.a Yorubaland, that re-arranged  its political deck.  From Badagry (in Lagos State) through Ode-Ekiti (in Ekiti State) to Okunland (in Kogi State), from Mahin (in Ondo State) through Atakumosa (in Osun State) to Okuta (in Kwara State), the gale force wind of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with “General” Olabode George at the fore, and the numbers-machine of  “Sief” SM Afolabi in the rear,  swept the Alliance for Democracy (AD aka Afenifere) off its feet, leaving (as it sometimes happens in real life) only Lagos  (under “Field Marsall” Tinubu) to wonder how only his brigade survived the onslaught.

The South-West was “captured”, as Bode George and SM Afolabi had promised.  The South-West was “delivered” to “Generallisimo Aare” Obasanjo, as “Oga Olopa” Balogun Tafa clearing the path.   Edo Minorities Tony Anenih and Abel Guobadia’s  (“mercenary”?) help was invaluable, one might surmise.

The results have generated a cottage industry of pundits, most gloating about the demise, real and imagined, of AD and Afenifere.  In the early days, before the discovery of the Rape of the South-East “beautiful bride”  – still bleeding with legs wide open –  it was some South-Eastern media pundits who were in the fore of that anti-Afenifere/AD punditry.  Since then, they have left the stage to denounce their own rape, while many objective and “progressive” Yoruba commentators have now taken over.

NUMBERS, THE NUMBERS

The turnout analysis of the 2003 election results so far are shown in Tables 1 below.  In the South-West, the 2003 just by themselves make little sense unless when compared with what they were in 1999, so I also have shown in Table 2 more detailed results comparing the elections of the two years in order to appreciate the difference. 

In both Tables, the traditional South-West includes Ekiti, Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Oyo Sates.  However, I have also included in Table 2, Kwara (90% Yoruba) and Kogi (40% Yoruba) for completeness.

We assume, for the sake of argument, that these figures are reliable.

Then on the whole, Table 1 shows that there was little enthusiasm for the elections IN GENERAL in the South-West, with rates less than 50% except for the presidential elections.   Low participation therefore explains low interest in the outcome of the results, one way or the other.  In that same table, Ogun State presidential turnout percentage (almost 87%) relative to other states in the South-West (with an average of 54%), and in relation to the gubernatorial turnout (a difference of 618,017)  – continues to stick out like a sore thumb, indicating some electoral malfeasance that is yet to be explained.

From Table 2, in the SouthWest, Obasanjo won 1,092,196 votes in 1999 and 5,042,678  votes in 2003. That remarkable turn around mirrors from 143,564 votes in Ogun State in 1999 to 1,360,170 votes in 2003.  Maybe it was because there was no  “Yoruba” candidate in 2003?  Maybe because he is from Ogun State? Without this turn around, and with the remarkable 618,017 difference observed above, the 675,685 more votes which Obasanjo won in 2003 when compared with Falae in 1999 would have been wiped out significantly.  Significantly in Kogi and Kwara, Obasanjo won almost 60,000 votes in 2003 than in 1999.

CONCLUSIONS, CONCLUSIONS

My conclusion from these numbers are as follows:

(1)     if there was no rigging, they do not show massive swing of support AS SUCH, even in the absence of credible presidential opposition in the Southwest.

(2)     if there was rigging, it was so well-crafted and calibrated as not to attract too much attention, except of those carefully-watching eyes like mine!

So if there was rigging, why is there no outrage in the Southwest?  Blame it on the South West governors, who refused to “listen to their elders” Afenifere about care about Obasanjo, and hence got routed in the process.   Tinubu’s survival is part-area-boy, part-Atiku-friendship.  He would have been swept too otherwise. 

It is what the Yoruba would call “afowofa” – self-inflicted pain, aided and abetted by Obasanjo’s war-plan-like deception (see Appendix for Soboyede’s great piece on deception), and resulting in “insider-abuse” by an “ara ile” (a homeboy) made good thrice.  If according to Governor X, Obasanjo was good to be president and he should be voted for, and then Obasanjo comes to your backyard to raise up the hand of your opponent claiming him to be “good to be the next governor,” then  “o da fun e” (it is good for you) if that opponent wins, rigging or no rigging.  “O da fun won!” – the Yoruba would chorus.  “ Oode! Suegbe!” – the Yoruba would chorus.

And the specter of Buhari put a full-stop to all pretences to pre- and post-election objectivity.

A SIDE ISSUE – PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

There is another issue that these numbers bring up:  a need to include proportional representation along with our first-past-the-post (majority winner takes all) clause.  For example, a situation where in Lagos State AD wins 20 seats and PDP wins 2 seats in the House of Representatives, yet AD won 564,601 votes while PDP wins 372,932 votes is palpably unfair.   Similarly, in Ekiti, a situation exists where PDP won 5 seats to AD’s 1 seat, yet the vote split was 179,743 to 146,171.   In our ethnically diverse situation, one-half  of the seats minus one  should be by first-past-the-post, while the rest should be divided according to the proportion of the total votes won.  In the Lagos case, AD would have won 10 + (564,601/(564,601+372,932))*12 seats or 17 seats to PDP’s 5 seats. In the Ekiti case, PDP would have won 4 seats to AD’s 2 seats. 

Note that in practice, it means that the number of first-past-the-posts seats would be contested on a candidates’ basis, while the proportional representation seats would be on a party basis, with each party presenting a slate of candidates from which the final winning candidates would be chosen.  The situation improves with a greater number of seats.

Proportional representation should be part of our electoral reform.

TABLE 1:  Turn-Out Analysis of Nigeria’s 2003 Elections

TABLE 2:  April 12 and April 19 Election Results in The South-West

THISDAY 5/24
Obasanjo's Finest Hour
By Akeem Soboyede
________________________________________________________________________

For most of his 66 years on earth, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has lived a charmed life. No other Nigerian has ruled the country both as an absolute military dictator and an elected President, although many would argue that in both circumstances, Nigeria's ultimate Comeback Kid was "selected" to serve. But serve Obasanjo has. From all indications, the General-turned-democrat has not found the job of "serving" Nigerians too tiresome. If the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is to be believed, Obasanjo earned another four-year mandate from Nigerians last April 19. By 2007, he would have bested Yakubu Gowon's record as Nigeria's longest-serving Head of State. This achievement, surely, will be nothing short of stellar.

So is this Obasanjo's finest hour? It appears to be the case, mainly because he seems to have jettisoned the jinx of a civilian-to-civilian transition in Nigeria by winning a new mandate in an election that has come invested with its own share of controversy. Even Obasanjo's die-hard admirers must concede that the exercise was anything but free and fair in its entirety. This was due in part to the "sea-slide" tactics of governors of backwater states like Peter Odili in Rivers, among others. The fraud in this particular state, according to those who should know, was anything but anonymous or surreptitious. It was brazen and totally in-your-face. (We've got to hand it to these politicians who score close to a 100 percent in elections, or record voter turnouts approaching that figure. They obviously learnt a trick or two from Saddam Hussein).

But then, in the aftermath of Election 2003, Obasanjo managed a feat that can hardly be considered scandalous: he overcame his pariah status among his fellow Yoruba. And he did it in grand style.

When the history of the 2003 presidential election is eventually written, the issue that will draw the most ink will undoubtedly be the electoral blitzkrieg Obasanjo launched on the Southwest, which also happens to be his home area in Nigeria. Four years ago, this was the same geo-political part of the country that had soundly rejected Obasanjo in the 1999 presidential polls. With the death of Chief Moshood Abiola still fresh in many minds then, Obasanjo's pan-Nigerian outlook hardly recommended itself to most members of his ethnic Yoruba enclave in the Nigerian territorial space. It also did not help matters that the people perceived as the shadowy hands behind Obasanjo's ambitions were also those who aborted Abiola's presidential aspirations and engineered his untimely death.

Obasanjo's resounding defeat in the Southwest during the presidential elections that ushered in Nigeria's Fourth Republic actually cast a pall of doubt on his victory in that poll. Which African politician, it was asked, would win a national election while losing votes in his home area by such a wide margin? Many saw the development as highly abnormal and attributed Obasanjo's eventual election as President to the machinations of his military sponsors who were hell-bent on installing their puppet in power.

Four years later, just how did Obasanjo manage his comeback? The answer, in three words: deception, deception, deception.

Sure there was wide-spread rigging at all levels in the polls that just concluded in Nigeria; sure, all the parties rigged, and Obasanjo's ruling party only happened to have the most successful rigging juggernaut (no thanks, once again, to the Odilis of this world). But that is not the deception we have in mind here.

Anyone who followed events in the Obasanjo Presidency since its inception in 1999 should have noticed that the President started his campaign for the 2003 elections right after the day he was sworn in on May 29, 1999. Like a good soldier, Obasanjo knew that you start preparing for the next war immediately after the present one is concluded. For a soldier, there can be no respite, even when no war is being fought. So, while those politicians who "disgraced" Obasanjo in the Southwest in 1999 (the Afeniferes and ADs of this world) settled down to enjoy the spoils of office, just like any normal civilian, the soldier in Obasanjo did nothing of the sort. Instead, the General drew up a battle plan and proceeded to implement it. Ruthlessly.

As in all war plans, deception was the key. First, Obasanjo undermined his future opponents with kindness. Of course, the Governors in the Alliance for Democracy states were the primary targets. While they enjoyed the fruits of victory in their first year in office, Obasanjo announced a hike in workers' salaries. This was a good decision on the face of it, especially as it came at a time when the profligacies and thievery of the Abacha years were being exposed on a daily basis. But there was also an underlying sub-plot to the "Father Christmas" policy. If any state government would be forced by its workers to pay an increment that only the Federal government and a handful of states could afford, then that state government would be hard-put to implement the social programmes like free education, health and so on by which it rode to power. No points for guessing that in the AD states, only Lagos would be able to survive this onslaught without any noticeable systemic shock. As it turned out, this eventually came about even in Lagos only after a titanic struggle. Of course, his actions on salary increment made the President popular among workers and future voters; but what did it do to his political opponents in the Southwest?

What followed next was the strategy of exploiting the naivete of those who had considered themselves the gatekeepers of Chief Obafemi Awolowo's legacy in the Yoruba heartland. Obasanjo deftly came up with so-called "anti-North" programmes and policies that proved popular with the electorate in the Southwest; the son of the much-despised Abacha, his Army Chief and Head of Security were all corralled into jail, to popular acclaim largely in the Southwest. Military officers who were seen as tainted by their participation in political activities in the past were retired, and most of them happened to be Northerners. Appointments into public offices at the federal level were filled with people from the South, especially the Southwest, and the Obasanjo government made sure these were well-publicised, or that such officials had high public visibility. What all these, and more, did was to plant the idea in the minds of the electorate in the Southwest that Obasanjo, the man they had shunned in the elections of 1999, was not really a pawn to be used against them by his Northern sponsors.

But it should also be pointed out that, like any good soldier, Obasanjo carefully chose his battles with the North. For instance, while Alhaji Abubakar Rimi greeted him with abuses everyday, Obasanjo elected to retain Sule Lamido, one of Rimi's proteges, as his Minister of Foreign Affairs, the person who serves as the face and voice of Nigeria to the world. And, what happened to the promises of getting to the bottom of the Pius Okigbo Report, and the issue of the first Gulf War Oil Windfall? We can go on and on.

Anyway, Obasanjo did not have to go too far to undermine his quarries. As it turned out, the AD governors actually wanted to be undermined. Or, how could one explain the decision of the AD not to field a candidate in the presidential elections of April 19? Maybe the "hug-them-all" strategy can explain that. Some months to the election, for instance, Obasanjo visited his home state of Ogun. He was received in a very warm manner by the state governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba. The praises heaped on the occasion were even more lavish. Obasanjo described Osoba as a great governor who deserved a second term in office. The latter praised his townsman as a good leader who ought to continue as President. The praises were understandable, since a visitor and a guest owe each other some cordiality. But, why was Osoba surprised that just a few months later, and some hours to the last governorship polls, Obasanjo called on him and his fellow AD governors to start packing their belongings from their respective state houses?

Admittedly, Obasanjo was a war general, and a successful one at that. But Osoba was also a great war reporter. He should have known that deception is a legitimate tool in any war. When Obasanjo came a-visiting, the latter knew his visit would do more good for his own party's flagbearer in the state, and that he would use the warmth of his reception as a yardstick to measure how well the PDP governorship candidate would do in any election conducted in Ogun state. Obasanjo's praise on that occasion was just a "bear-hug" meant to lull Osoba and his fellow AD members into a false sense of comfort and complacency. It worked.

The advantage of hindsight is almost always prescient and convenient; however, one honestly wonders why Obasanjo's opponents in the Southwest did not see their recent electoral rout coming. A close acquaintance here who was on the ground in Abeokuta on the day the governorship and presidential elections were held swears that as far as he is concerned, Obasanjo and the PDP won fair and square in Ogun and, in fact, the entire Southwest. He says the AD governors became complacent and believed the "Awolowo factor" would see them through to re-election. And, of course, everyone knows of the injustices Chief Awolowo suffered at the hands of General Obasanjo when the former was alive.

Soboyede writes from the United States