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Daily Independent (Lagos)

Nigeria: When Will Change Come to Nigeria?

11 November 2008

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opinion

As America's President-elect, Barack Obama, wife, Michelle and daughters, Malia and Sasha, stood on the stage at Chicago's Grant Park last Tuesday night to thank the good people of America for electing him the 44th President of the United States, the entire country and indeed the whole world stood still.

Everybody waited, breathlessly, to hear what the man of the moment would say. His opponent in the historic election, Senator John McCain, had congratulated him, saying that Americans had spoken loud and clear.

Obama did not disappoint. With what they had done with the election, he told fellow citizens, "change has come to America." It was so simple a speech, yet so powerful that it brought tears streaming the faces of many. Among the over 200,000 people at the Park were Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the civil rights icons, who stood with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968 moments before he (King) was assasinated by those who could not contemplate the change that he had the audacity to dream about, a change that became a reality that night.

Jackson, together with Oprah Winfrey, a woman who saw and believed in the incarnation of King's dream - Obama - long before Americans woke up from their slumber, wept uncontrollably. Representative John Lewis, one of the bravest leaders of the civil rights crusade, a man whose body still bears the scars of the merciless beating he received on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 40 years ago for daring to dream of the change that has finally come to America, was misty eyed.

In the streets in Watts, the Los Angeles neighbourhood, that was gutted by riots 40 years ago after King's assasination, Americans - white, black, Latino, Asian - celebrated the dawn of a new era. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where, also, 40 years ago, King delivered his soaring "dream" speech before thousands of Americans, the entire country celebrated.

The tears that flowed freely were tears of joy. The outpouring of emotion was a celebration of America's renewal. Though Obama was the winner of the historic election, victory was that of all Americans who made the change possible.

No-matter the difficulties the country is facing right now (and there are daunting challenges which the hapless presidency of George W. Bush created), the election is the renewal of faith in the American dream. And the country will be better for it.

As I stood at the gates of the White House on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that night, watching whites and blacks hug one another, drummers keeping up a steady beat, and drivers turning their horns, I couldn't help but wonder when change will also come to my country, Nigeria.

Standing there, imbued with the same optimism that has once again lifted America, aware that Obama's only weapon was the audacity of his belief in the maxim that everything is possible for those who dare to hope, I was beginning to believe, also, in the realisation of the Nigerian dream.

But that was before Nigerian politicians started reacting to the outcome of the election. Particularly telling was the reaction of the Senate President, David Mark, who admonished "losers" in Nigerian elections against suing "winners" like himslef. I couldn't help but conclude that hypocrisy is a Nigerian politician. Mark would want Nigerians to emulate the spirit of sportmanship exhibited by McCain, who even before all the results were called, congratulated Obama.

But he knows that McCain's action was borne out of his realisation that the election had been won and lost in a very free and fair manner. Obama's victory was a landslide. If he (McCain) had gone to court, what would he be challenging?

Mark, I am sure, monitored the entire election process which spanned almost two years. He watched as McCain whose campaign was almost shipwrecked before the primaries, made a dramatic comeback, an unprecedented political resurrection, despite the fact that there was no love lost between him and his party aparatchik. Mark saw how Bush, a sitting but unpopular president, was sidelined during the process. Since the entire American democracy is about the people and their inalienable right to choose their leaders, McCain and the Republican Party knew he was a liability, a man to be avoided. And they avoided him like the political leper that he has become.

Republicans picked their presidential candidate in a free and fair primary election. There was no imposition.

It was the same situation in the Democratic Party. Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois, who is yet to serve out his first term, a black man with a Kenyan ancestry, a most unlikely candidate with neither a "political godfather" nor overt support of the Democratic establishment worsted the Clinton political family in the primaries. Mark saw as both candidates went through months of gruelling political campaigns, criss-crossing America, selling their vision to the people.

Americans bought into Obama's vision and cast their political lot with him. He beat McCain by 52% to 46%, leading Democrats to sweeping victory in almost all the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, and Indiana and Virginia that have not voted for a democratic presidential candidate since 1964. So who did Mark expect McCain to sue? Should McCain have sued the nation that erupted in unprecedented celebration immediately the Cable News Network (CNN) announced that Obama had carried the day?

But Mark is also aware that after the debacle in Florida in 2000, a stalemate which plunged America into two months of turmoil, the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, who won the popular vote went to court to challenge the declaration of the Republican candidate, Bush, who won majority of the electoral college votes, as the winner of the election. Gore, only conceded when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bush.

Or is Mark saying he is unaware of the fact that both parties, anticipating a repeat of the Florida fiasco, had assembled an array of lawyers to deal with the issues as they arose? Is Mark unaware that as I write, some of the results of the Senatorial elections conducted on the same day with the presidential election are yet to be announced? Some are being recounted because no clear winner emerged?

The fact remains that McCain did not go to court simply because Obama won the election fair and square (apologies to Mallam Adamu Ciroma). The presidential election, in its entirety, acutely captured the intent of the American electorate. Obama was neither imposed on the party nor the country by an all-powerful outgoing president or a self-serving vicious cabal. He is the choice of the people and in a democracy, the people matter because they have the final say.

David Mark's "victory" was challenged because the process through which he came to power was off beam. The entire Nigerian democratic edifice is built on a foundation of fraud and deceit by men and women who neither believe in the country nor dream lofty dreams for the future of their children.

Unlike Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate leader, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and now Obama, men and women who have been tested and found worthy by fellow citizens, leaders who always put their country's interest first, Mark and his ilk occupy their lofty positions not because Nigerians are enamoured with their antecedents and therefore decided to reward their service to the nation with high state offices, but because they have "conquered" the country and, therefore, can afford to be contempteous to the will of the people. To them democracy has become a faÁade, a convenient smokescreen. And when Mark is bellyaching over those suing him to court over questionable victory at the polls, he is being smart by half; he is simply mocking Nigerians, taunting us to take a dive in the Lagoon for all he cares.

Will change come to Nigeria as it has to America? I doubt. Not with the likes of Mark in power. And that explains why Nigeria is not making progress.

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