Sunday, December 11, 2016

Will A Buhari Ever Concede Defeat in an Election?

by Eze Eluchie,

Ghana’s John Mahama lost the presidential elections and immediately called the winner to concede defeat and express a willingness to work towards the progress of Ghana;

When his predecessor in office, Goodluck Jonathan, had called Buhari to congratulate him on victory at elections that were yet being collated, Buhari, though he welcomed the novel show of sportsmanship, expressed surprise and palpable shock with the former President's conduct;

Can one envisage Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari, if he loses the presidential elections in Nigeria, to call the winner to concede defeat and express a willingness to work towards the progress of Nigeria? Or merely threaten that the "blood of monkeys and baboons will flow" as he did with past elections where he lost?  

When one appreciates the desperation and utter shamlessness with which thousands of armed soldiers, policemen and other security personnel were deployed by Nigeria’s ruling junta to intimidate the electorate in local elections which have thus far been organized under its watch, particularly the gubernatorial elections in Edo and serially rescheduled Legislative elections in Rivers States (held on 10th December 2016) and the deliberate mismanagement of the electoral processes by an entity that was supposed to be an impartial organizer, the INEC, to attain pre-desired objectives which were contrary to the aspirations and wishes of the electorate in those localities, it can rightly be presumed that any thoughts or hopes of having any semblance of a free and fair electioneering process come 2019, when the tenure of the current junta expires, can be dispensed with.

From all indications, Nigeria’s current ruler will not voluntarily concede when he is defeated in an election - the wishes of the people must however prevail and nothing, absolutely nothing, should be allowed to stand in the way of fulfilling the wish of the electorate.

It is increasingly becoming clear that means other than the present jaundiced pretense at democratic elections orchestrated by his crony, Mahmood Yakubu who presides over the ‘Independent’ National Elections Commission (INEC), will have to be deployed to extract the Nigerian polity from the vice grip of the head of Nigeria’s current ruling junta, a junta that has thus far in its astonishingly short period of less than 2 years in office at the helms of Nigeria’s affairs, managed to destroy and or damage virtually all facets of national life and endeavor: from the economy, to sports, to social and ethnic cohesion, to even the basic thoughts of continued sustainability and existence of Nigeria.

Let the Nigerian contraption be restructured and Renegotiated whilst there is yet time.





Picture: Nigeria’s ruler, Muhammadu Buhari and his appointee as INEC Chairperson, Mahmood Yakubu.


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