Black Looks

Nigeria went to the polls on Saturday for the first leg of the elections – the second leg voting for the President and national assembly is next Saturday. Today the Supreme Court ruled null and void the INEC’s (Electorial Commission) disqualification of Vice President Atiku Abubakar and at least 6 other governors. Nigeriaworld’s choice of headlines “Democracy Rules” is way off mark as violence, rigging and general thuggery seemed to have ruled the day.

Ike Okonta as always does an outstanding job in placing Nigeria’s elections in an historical and political context and asks a number of questions:

Will the elections hold? Will clear winners emerge? Will alleged losers accept their defeat with good grace, actuated by the larger national interest?

Based on today’s ruling it is difficult to tell what will happen as the whole process has been blown wide open. Okonta warns of a number of danger signs that we should be on the look out for but he missed the Supreme Court ruling against the INEC!.

Nigeria’s current political regime is a very young electoral system struggling to achieve democratic consolidation. Thirty years of military rule foisted a culture of impunity, authoritarianism, and disempowered citizenship on the people……

The powerful coalition of Babangida, Danjuma, and Vice President Atiku Abubakar – all northerners – united with pro-democracy elements in the press and civil society and promptly slapped down Obasanjo in May 2006….That episode, more than anything else, demonstrated where real power in Nigeria lay. It also pointed to Obasanjo’s fragile position in the country’s nascent democratic game. He would, ideally, like to retire as a king-maker now that he can no longer extend his stay in office….

Then there is a third danger sign, as ominous as the first two. This is the international politics of oil and the extent to which the major oil-consuming nations in Western Europe and North America seeking to secure their strategic interests will attempt to shape the political outcome in Nigeria to their advantage. At the heart of this realpolitik is the growing armed insurrection in the Niger Delta, fed and sustained by five decades of economic exploitation and political marginalisation that the local communities have suffered at such terrible cost.

Judging from today’s ruling and some of the Nigerian bloggers it all seems very predictable in a Nigerian sense anyway.

Chippla’s posts a piece by Christy Aikhorin on her voting experience in the Lagos State gubernatorial and provincial legislative elections

I located the candidate whom I wanted to become the next governor of Lagos state—by the way his photo didn’t even feature on the voting slip I was given, and he wasn’t the only one whose photo didn’t appear! I knew both his name and political party but thought of illiterate Lagosians, who could only ever get to identify their candidates via pictures.

The World According to Adure gives an hour by hour account of the the election results – at least she provides some excitement as you work your way through the two posts

10:45AM

Looks like the results for Lagos state are in Babatunde Fashola’s favor. He is the candidate from the incumbent party in the state the ACtiuon Congress. PDP’s Obanikoro apparently stormed out of the I-NEC office visibly upset and is about to all a press conference. The PDP is also protesting the delay in the release of the results. The party said it has lost confidence in I-NEC and that any result announced afterwards will not be acceptable to them. The PDP attributed this to manipulation by AC. The AC is expressing confidence in INEC.

AIT, a major television station is now operating out of their Out Broadcast van because their headquarters in Alagbado was set on fire.

Grandiose Parlor asks if the elections were satisfactory – is that a rhetorical question? Yes, clearly so much so it is hardly worth having a conversation about.

If the reports of the Saturday elections are to be reckoned with – it was a gross display of violence, fraud and total disregard for law and order.Just as political thugs and Niger-Delta militias were hijacking the process, some party chieftains and their goons were seizing ballot boxes, shooting and killing members of rival parties. Even INEC, the electoral agency in charge, omitted pictures of candidates in some states. As several mainstream media sites have reported, polling started very late in several polling stations nationwide.

SHAM, FARCE are the words that come to mind.