2014: Living up to its billing already

 

Morning tells the day, as they say, and 2014 has been said to be the morning that will tell what the day, in this case 2015, will look like. Prophecies after prophecies that heralded the New Year said 2014, and not 2015, is the year to be apprehensive about. Already, events in the very first month of the year are confirming that. It is if (or after) we survive this year that we can begin to worry about the magical year 2015.

I have set out four parameters by which I shall judge the direction of our collective movement as a people this year – whether nearer the cliff or farther away from it. One is the security situation, especially as it concerns Boko Haram: Are we winning the battle or losing it? The second is the general attitude and comportment of the ruling class: Are they still behaving irresponsibly, heating up the polity or have they learned some useful lessons from the many high-profile letters that were exchanged amongst the kingmakers recently?

Third is the quality of governance – whether there is the likelihood that the country will be better governed this year than in previous years and whether the dividends of democracy will, at last, trickle down. Fourth, are the governorship elections coming up in June and August respectively in Ekiti and Osun states: Will the elections be substantially credible, like those of Edo and Ondo states or will they be shambolic like Anambra’s?

For supporters of the insurgency in the North-east of the country, Boko Haram is yet to disappoint this year as it has had a very impressive run so far. The efforts of government to rein in the terrorists have fallen flat on its face. Daring raids by Boko Haram right inside military formations prove the potency of the terrorists and the fact that government is far from being on top of the problem. The good news, however, is that government itself seems to be aware of this as it is in the process of, once more, reviewing its security architecture.

As we speak, the old set of security chiefs have given way to new security buffs being cleared by the Senate; a new Minister of Defence is also on the way. Feelers are to the effect that the changes are one stone meant for the killing of two birds: Contain the insurgency as well as help the 2015 second term (yet-to-be-publicly-declared) ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Containing Boko Haram is a task that must be accomplished before the 2015 elections. Can free and fair elections be achieved under the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity in the North-east?  The answer is a resounding no. Who will risk his life to venture to run elections – or even vote – under the watchful eyes of Boko Haram? Can we, in the alternative, “excise” the North-east from the rest of the country by not holding elections there in 2015? That will be politically suicidal. INEC itself had to beat hurriedly a retreat from such a suggestion not long ago as a result of the avalanche of criticisms that shot down the kite it flew. 2014 will tell us what 2015 will look like as far as this issue is concerned. The North-east appears an opposition (APC) bastion; therefore, for the APC as well as the ruling PDP, whether or not free and fair elections will – or can – hold in the North-east is a very important matter.

Political rascality, rife in past years, has not beaten any retreat this year; if anything, it appears to be on the ascendancy. The flash point remains Rivers state. Gov. Rotimi Amaechi has found the magical formula with which he baits the PDP at will. A certain Commissioner of Police, one Mbu Joseph Mbu, appears the man willing to lend his head for the cracking of the proverbial coconut. As a result of the latest effrontery of Mbu, a senator of the Federal Republic, Magnus Abe, is reportedly receiving treatment in a hospital overseas. The crisis could have been contrived or hyped but as the Yoruba will say, he who misses the golden opportunity to scoop the footmarks of a mad man will not be successful with a sane person’s. If the Rivers state crisis enters the National Assembly as the opposition APC vowed to do recently with its threat to shut down the Jonathan administration, then, we could be biting more than we can chew.

Political operators on both sides of the political divide continued in the new year to make inciting statements; the latest being Chief Edwin Clarke (pro-Jonathan) and el-Rufai (pro-Opposition); while the former  got away scot-free, the latter is being made to face the wrath of the law. The political temperature of the country however climbed down a little with
the exit of Bamanga Tukur as national chairman of the ruling PDP. The new PDP chair, Adamu Muazu, has begun shuttle diplomacy to repair the damage done by Tukur but if recent statements by former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, one of the aggrieved PDP leaders, is anything to go by, then, Muazu has an Aegean stable to clear.

For the PDP, the good news, however, is that the political damage of defection is not one-way as the APC has started having its own feel of the bitter pill. Rumblings in APC states are getting louder each passing day – in Kwara, Ogun, Kano, Sokoto to mention but a few. Attahiru Bafarawa, a former governor of Sokoto state, has defected from the APC to the PDP. More defectors are likely to follow and at the end of the day, we may have to prepare a balance sheet of defections to see who has gained or lost the most between the PDP and APC.

A life-line is thrown Jonathan’s way this year for him to cover a huge deficit in governance; vacancies in his Cabinet offer a huge opportunity for him to re-invent his administration and re-launch his often-hyped but little-performing Transformation Agenda. Tragically, the hope seems to have died ever before it was born (apologies, Ayi Kwei Armah). If the list of
Ministers-designate sent to the Senate for confirmation is anything to go by, Jonathan has chosen to constitute an election-year Cabinet made up of politicians whom he expects to help him win election in 2015.

Whether or not they are able to do remains to be seen; but expect that they will try and their trying will mean focusing less attention on governance and pandering more to politics. Many of the in-coming Ministers have been chosen because of their political clout; interpreted, this means how much noise they can make and how much muscles they can flex, like Nyesom Wike, especially in opposition-controlled areas. We should expect the polity to be further heated up this year.
However, I expect the real crunch to come this year with the Ekiti and Osun polls, especially if the elections in the two states are not free and fair. The INEC must by all means avoid a repeat of its shoddy outing in Anambra. I shudder to think what the outcome would be if it does not.