Playing Russian roulette with Nigeria’s democracy

7 years ago

Playing Russian roulette with Nigeria’s democracy

At the close of voting in the 2003 gubernatorial election when it was obvious that the ruling Alliance for Democracy (AD) had lost power through the ballots, incumbent governor Adebayo Adefarati, visited the Akure office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to warn the umpire of the “dire consequences” of subverting the democratic aspiration of Ondo people.

The visibly angry governor, who was accompanied on the visit by some politicians who were direct participants in the events that led to the 1983 mayhem in the old Ondo State, was apparently recalling one of the events that led to the truncation of the Second Republic twenty years earlier.

Regarded as a black chapter in the history of the state, the carnage was instigated by the attempt of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) to rig the election for Akin Omoboriowo, an unpopular candidate against incumbent Adekunle Ajasin. Many prominent citizens were killed and millions of naira worth of properties destroyed.

The abandoned relics of the residence of Chief Olaiya Fagbamigbe, a renowned publisher and one of the victims of the mayhem on Gbogi Street, Akure, stands till today as one of the sad reminders of that moment of uncontrolled fury when the Devil took over the minds of supposedly ordinary folks to engage in inhuman acts to make statements.

In a replay of the dreaded “operation wet e” of the Wild Wild West era of the First Republic, many of the victims were drenched in petrol and set ablaze along with their property. In one blood-cuddling instance, the head of another prominent inigene was severed and put on a spike for a mock dance on the streets of the state capital.

Seven days to the 2003 election, the then monarch of Akure, the state capital which lost more prominent sons to the 1983 mayhem than any other town, offered sacrifices to the ancestors and appealed to the people not to involve themselves in politicians’ war.

Of course the ancestors accepted the sacrifices and Adafarati was successfully voted out of office without any incident just like his counterparts in Ekiti, Oyo, Osun and Ogun leaving Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu as the last man standing in Lagos.

This resort to violence in the old Ondo that was characteristic of the politics of the Southwest region was part of the immediate causes of the demise of earlier attempts at democratic governance in Nigeria.

Ignoring the lessons of history, some players in Ondo political field seem to be charting another destructive course for Nigeria’s democracy raising fears that these major beneficiaries of the citizens’ tortuous journey to participatory governance, during which many compatriots lost lives and limbs and many fled into exile, have not learnt anything.

For a country which experiments with democratic governance had been truncated several times mainly because of undemocratic actions of politicians, it is expected that one or two lessons should have been learnt in the protection of democracy.

When billionaire businessman and politician, Jimoh Ibrahim’s name was announced as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by INEC which acted in line with a controversial court order three weeks ago, bonfires of disused tires were set on some streets of Akure early the second day by members of the Commercial Drivers’ Union.
If the action of the union members, from which pool desperate politicians recruit their army of hoodlums and which leadership may likely be changed in the effect of a change in government of the state is understandable because they are protecting their tenure, many observers of event condemned the follow-up demonstrations by some individuals apparently at the prompting of aggrieved politicians.