As the presidential poll closes in, hawkish politics is on the rise, contends

IFEANYICHUKWU AFUBA

Too little zeal will kill a job; either leave it undone or bungled. But too much zeal can as surely create a mess; derail a task, or rush over it. With emotion dominating, the overzealous man tends to keep scratching at the surface. Intolerance, a dismissive attitude, are regular traits of the overzealous. Little wonder, the overzealous has predilection for seeking shortcuts to the intended destination. This tribe of hardliners, we should observe with worry, are seriously at work in the build – up to the January 2027 presidential election. Their stormy hands are already rocking both the system and process.

As with football and religion, politics is plagued with fanaticism. How do you get a typical football addict to accept that there are other great sports aside the round leather field game? And how do you get English soccer fans, for instance, to appreciate that the English Premier League is not necessarily the best; may not be superior to other federation tournaments? It’s a similar tacky situation when we witness vocal calls for implementation of Sharia in a plural religious, multi cultural society such as ours.

But with the presidential poll getting closer by the day, hawkish politics is on the advance. Nothing better dramatises the threat than the continued attempt to shut the opposition out of the election. Last week, at the beginning of third week of June, this desperate, political plot took on wings of legalism. Essentially however, the action dressed up as legal invalidation of some opposition parties, is political. It is crude, brash politics with the singular aim of predetermining the presidential election. The target of the assault is the ADC with the clear intention of avoiding its formidable challenge. The script drips with the ink of overzealous loyalists, fanatics and extremists in the ranks of the establishment. Moderates in the ruling circle must be embarrassed by this anti – democracy agenda that seeks to rubbish the choice principle of electoral franchise.

The insensitivity in which this reckless agenda is woven is hard to grapple with. Regime succession is an integral part of the Nigerian crisis. Accordingly, it should be considered irresponsible of anyone embarking on a plot capable of destabilising the polity. The path to national pacification is political. It is a road that emphasises inclusiveness, equity and fairness. But so intoxicating can extremism prove, that actors who ought to be conscious of the lessons of history lose its sight. A sense of where we’re coming from, gives an indication of where we are.

There is a linkage between the present dispensation and the still – born Third Republic. The June 12, 1993 crisis was about power exclusion. And the eventual amend was political, not legal. For the general Abdulsalami Abubakar junta, the solution was to give a measure of accommodation to the part of the country wronged. Retired General Olusegun Obasanjo was thought to fit the bill and summarily released from prison. But before Obasanjo’s ultimate coronation, a significant development occurred. Alliance for Democracy, the southwest platform of June 12 movement, failed to meet the prescribed spread for registration as political party in the transition programme. The Abubakar junta did not insist on legal disqualification of the AD. It approved the registration of AD as a political party. And the rest of the country, for the sake of peace and progress, acquiesced to the indulgence. The AD later became ACN. And a fusion of ACN and CPC resulted in the present APC. How ironic then that the foremost beneficiary of deliberate, national elasticity is the very same constituency working to block our electoral Strait of Hormuz! Sad. Alas, that’s the irrationality to harvest when fundamentalists reign.

Nor is the malaise restricted to the ruling party. If they had their way, the_Obidients would criminalise dissent from their hero’s presidential ambition, all over the southeast. For daring to stand by his party, the APC, Mr Joe Igbokwe was recently booed and taunted at Ladipo market, Lagos. From making social media punching bags of Works Minister, Dave Umahi and Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, the group has graduated to knocking Datti Ahmed, Mr Peter Obi’s running mate in 2023. And for an unbelievable moment, the cross – generations vanguard directed its abusive capacity at Seriake Dickson, the same man in whose hands, the fate of Obi’s party candidacy depended! Before the reconciliation of differences, Dickson had let it known that no presidential candidate was more qualified than himself, a stinging remark which import was probably lost on the_Obidients._

For their part, the intellectual wing of the movement has been busy with revisionism. In frantic deflection of the unfair charge of “tribalist support”, the wild claim of regional support for Obasanjo and other non Igbo candidates in the past is flaunted. In truth, this is half sophistry and half denial of the APGA’s mandates stolen by the PDP. In 1999, there were two presidential candidates, both of them Yoruba. By the singular fact of their common ethnicity, it is intellectually dishonest to project a vote for either candidate as instance of ethnic – blank politics by the southeast. The only condition for establishing ethnic insulated voting would be the existence of a candidate of Igbo stock in the same election and who received fewer votes to those cast for a non Igbo candidate in the region! This was not the case in 1999. In 2003 and 2007 general elections, the APGA won majority of the votes from the southeast including in the presidential contest. It is only now convenient for some to forget that other sets of results were later produced to award victories to the PDP. In a Press Release in July 2003, the Justice, Development and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in Anambra State described the official PDP victories as inconsistent with its monitored outcome of the poll. Significantly too, Abakaliki based Catholic priest, Rev Fr John Odey, captioned his book on the exercise: _This Madness Called 2003 Election_. In Enugu State, the APGA’s Ugochukwu Agballa was on the way to recovering his governorship mandate when the courageous tribunal handling the petition was suddenly disbanded. And the first task of the new tribunal was to reject the damning documents admitted by the first tribunal! It was a similar case of falsification of results in the southeast in 2007, with the Supreme Court split 4:3 on legitimacy of the presidential election.

Party loyalty still dominates the voting pattern across the country. Even in advanced democracies, the concept of party “stronghold” adverts to voter tendency of political brand rather than candidate preference in elections. Given the background of APGA’s vibrance in the southeast, it follows that the region voted for the APGA presidential candidate, Emeka Ojukwu, in the authentic results. There is no reason to be apologetic about this. Ethnic identity is part of heritage, about our roots. It’s timeless educational theory that in exploring and understanding the world, you move from known to unknown. In any case, if Mohammadu Buhari could be President, why wouldn’t Ojukwu? And, has it occurred to the_Obidients that their propaganda of detribalised support for PDP calls into doubt Obi’s governorship mandate in Anambra State? Facts do not stop being facts because of change of season. And cool headedness should not yield to fanaticism.

Afuba is of Governance and Development Forge, Awka