TESTIMONY OF WOLE SOYINKA
PROFESSOR EMERITUS, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERISTY
BEFORE THE UNITED STATES
HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA AND GLOBAL HEALTH
"NIGERIA AT A CROSSROADS: ELECTIONS, LEGITIMACY and A WAY FORWARD"
JUNE 7, 2007
I assume that it is universally agreed that what passed for elections in Nigeria in May 2007 was an abuse of the word 'democracy'. Assessment of the scale of abuse may differ - for instance, the Jimmy Carter Centre monitoring group reported that there were just two states - Kano and Lagos - that could be credited with having held free and fair elections, while I would perhaps be a little more generous and concede five - Abia, Bauchi and Zamfara - as having also reflected, fairly accurately, the electoral will of the people. Five out of thirty-six, that is, one out of seven is generally considered an abysmal failure. In an examination, this would qualify for a Repeat, or expulsion from an institution. A government that is the product of such woeful democratic collapse belongs in a special category of its own, one that defies definition.
An Unfinished Process
Let it be noted however, that the elections are not over. The Tribunals have begun their intimidating task. Nearly every position is contested, including the presidency. As the American people have themselves learnt from harsh experience, the courts will have the last say in such disputes. Until then, the position of much of the Coalition of Political Parties, Ethnic Nationalities and Civil Society is that the products of INEC, the so-called Independent Electoral Commission, should be regarded as protem or interim officials of a caretaker government, the president included. It is asking too much of the Nigerian people, who have undergone years of brutal and arbitrary rule to accept, without reservation, this latest assault on their sovereignty under a democratic guise. The INEC presidential product,Alhaji Shehu Yar'Adua, is possibly as much a victim as the rest of over a hundred million Nigerians. The question that remains is: is he also a prisoner?
An Unthinkable Precedent?
I must raise a probably hallucinatory speculation: is there a point at which an individual makes history by declaring: I am a beneficiary of stolen goods. I know I cannot, morally, retain custody of this criminalized acquisition indefinitely, in good conscience. So let us come together and discuss how how best, and how rapidly, restitution can be made to all victims of a blatant robbery. Is this prospect truly inconceivable? In this context, I wish to refer to the statement signed by a Nobel Laureates Commission, offering a possible solution to the current national crisis.
A Simmering Discontent
Much as one would wish to de-emphasize the position of the protem President in this context, the reality is that his shoulders bear the major burden of rectification during the life of his caretaker government. Now why do I regret this necessity? Simply because the acknowledged prestige of that position threatens to obscure the plight of hundreds of others who were also victims of a violent robbery. The greatest danger to the cohesion of any polity comes from those levels where governance touches the governed most directly. When a grave injustice has been perpetrated - in this case, when unelected governors, senators, assemblymen, local councilors - some of them known gangsters, extortionists and killers on police record - when such elements are imposed on a people, the points of explosion are multiplied, and uncoordinated. I am speaking here of a wildfire effect, each fire feeding off the other from distances, and fuelled by differing sources of combustion, then merging into a major conflagration.
This is the heart of the matter. That is why several democratic organizations within the country have demanded that these elections be completely cancelled, the electoral commission dissolved and a truly independent body set up to organize credible elections within a negotiated period.
An Interim Proceeding
It is taken for granted that there must be governance in the intervening period. Nigerians are political realists and are willing to put to the test the sincerity and political integrity of the individual who happens to occupy the apex of the nation's governing structure. The greatest problem that confronts such a product is his lack of legitimacy. He is not without maneuvering options however, and may be assisted if, to begin with, his very conduct demonstrates the critical recognition that he occupies his present position on sufferance, as a holding arrangement, solely in the interest of national survival.
Priorities for National Survival
From the moment that it becomes clear that the Tribunals have completed the major part of their task, the consequent task of the Protem President would be to activate a Judicial Commission sitting in public, ideally made up of former judges and recognized leaders of society, both secular and religious, business and professional, to investigate the conduct of the recent election. The Commission must have powers to arrest and send for prosecution those whom they find guilty of having abused the trust of the nation, corrupted the political process and thus eroded the very conditions of nation being. The 'terms of reference' of the Commission must include the relationship of the electoral debacle with the notorious failed attempt of 2006 to subvert the constitution in order to accord a third term of office to the former president.
The International Community
The international community must play its role by treating all those implicated in this treasonable conduct - the highest treason being the subversion of a people's sovereignty - as international pariahs, no matter how high the regard in which they were once held on the international circuit. Of all the forms of corruption that afflict a community, political corruption is the most lethal, since those who violate the sacred mandate of political choice lose regard for human lives and hold the people in contempt. Such vectors of political corruption must be taught that there is a price to pay for the abuse of power and the subversion of political system. Nearly a hundred lives were lost over the Nigerian electoral exercise, needlessly and avoidably. Responsibility for that crime must be assigned, and punishment becomes a responsibility that belongs to all who value democracy and advocate the dignity of peoples as manifested both in the right to choose their leaders painlessly and in peaceful conditions.
The Niger Delta Region
The crisis in the Niger Delta will be resolved when governance accepts both the principle and operations of true federalism. What has obtained in the Nigerian nation since the so-called return to democratic rule and the adoption of a federal constitution has been a sham of both democracy and federalism. The so-called constitution of the Nigerian nation is itself is a bequest of the military and its centralist mentality that derives from the corrupt nature of absolutist power. Decades of injustice felt by the people of the Delta region have been further compounded by the injustice of the continued detention of their acknowledged leaders, such as Asari Dokubo. This citizen should be released forthwith, and unconditionally. So must the rest of the ethnic leaders and political activists being held in custody. A genuine dialogue must be opened with such acknowledged community leaders.
A Constitutional Review
All necessary reforms and strategies for the resolution of sectarian confrontations can only take place however under a genuine people's constitution. This recognition led, two years ago, to a people's constitutional exercise that resulted in a Draft document for the nation under the guidance of PRONACO - the acronym for a movement known as the Pro-National Conference'. Its product, the result of over a year's series of conferences, has been widely disseminated and debated. A critical undertaking of Nigeria's Interim president would be to summon an assembly to debate, adapt and adopt that document, one that is the product of a criss-cross of ethnic nationalities and civil society meeting, for the first time in their history, in full freedom, neither overseen nor intimidated by the colonial powers, nor by the latter internal colonialists, the military. The present Nigerian constitution, a centralist document that was observed more in the breach than in the observance in the past eight years, has contributed in no small measure to the discontent, unrest, and armed insurgence that continue to retard development and quality of life within the Nigerian nation space, most especially in the Delta region.
The nation ia at her first breaking point since the Biafran Civil War, poised between making a clean break with the past or breaking up in all but name. That latter, undesired scenario can only be prevented by giving voice to the much abused humanity that ekes out a meager existence within that nation space.
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