The Northeast elections conundrum

THE iconic William Shakespeare in the Hamlet, one of his political plays, vividly confronted one of life’s greatest dilemmas, which is “to be or not to be, that is the question.” 

  This is also the puzzling question to answer with reference to the uncertainty of conducting the February scheduled elections, against the background of the prolonged Boko Haram brigandage in the Northeast frontier of Nigeria.

  Evidently, the absence of peace and the obligation of conducting elections in the entire Northeast landscape have lately become the bone of contention among the political class in the count down to the forthcoming general elections. 

  Increasingly, political actors and gladiators are polarised over the realism, competence and readiness of INEC, Nigeria’s electoral empire, to superintend violence-free and credible polls that are staggered between February 14 and 28, 2015.

  Penultimate week, Bala James Ngilari, who, by an act of providence and constitutional leverage, is now the Adamawa State governor, fired the first salvo when he publicly expressed his pessimism over the conduct of the national elections in the Northeast, where the Boko Haram insurgency has continued to inflict terror and mayhem among the hopeless populace in the five states of Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Gombe and Bauchi to some extent. 

  Matter of fact, the increasing human tragedy that has characterised the entire Northeast corridor cannot even inspire patriotism and the right of universal suffrage among the already traumatised populace, presently displaced from their villages and who are IDPs in Yola, Kano, Jos, Abuja and Lagos refugee camps.

  Stating his “personal views,” Ngilari had expressed deep concerns over the atmosphere of insecurity prevalent in seven of the 21 local government areas of his state and therefore, doubted the possibility of conducting violence-free elections in the entire region, particularly where the Boko Haram pseudo-jihadists have since declared their Caliphate in some parts of Borno and Yobe states. 

  Wrongly or rightly, he was shouted down at the stakeholders’ forum organised by INEC in respect of the conduct of violence-free general elections in the Northeast.

  Notwithstanding that the Adamawa State helmsman was roundly jeered and lampooned, the recent escalation of Boko Haram orgy of massacre of residents of Baga, Monguno, Biu and Potiskum, Damaturu and lately in Gombe have increasingly lent credence to Ngilari’s pessimism, unfortunately.

  Furthermore, the uncertainty over the conduct of the elections is further compounded by the European Union Observer Team, which had declared the Northeast zone a no-go area of sorts. 

  One can understand their apprehensions, but that should not dissuade the INEC from going on with the polls in these flashpoints. After all, credible elections were successfully conducted in more troubled areas of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia over the years.

  Apparently, one should wonder why the Federal Government has woefully failed to protect its citizens for about four years since the Boko Haram notoriety held sway in the entire North. 

  The futile efforts of government all the while to effectively arrest the spate of terrorism in the five states of the Northeast really make the elections doubtful in the sub-region.   

  It equally undermines the seriousness and sensitivity of the government to the sanctity of life and property of its hapless citizenry.

  Having expected the Federal Government to free the entire Northeast from the brutal grips of the Boko Haram terror group but to no avail, the victims are wont to believe that either the government is incompetent to protect them or it is remotely behind the insurgency that has disoriented their ways of lives forever. 

  The victims have repeatedly asked why the Nigerian military, whose exemplary exploits and heroic antecedents since the World War II through the Nigerian Civil War and at UN Peacekeeping Missions around the world, cannot defend the territorial integrity of the Nigerian state? 

  The people seek answers to why the weaponry of the Nigerian military is inadequate and less superior to the firepower of a ragtag militia? Why is the morale of the Nigerian military at its lowest ebb ever, against the rising confidence level of these rampaging insurgents?

  Justifiably, the people really feel insulted why it has taken the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria more than a year to visit these flashpoints, at least to empathise with them or even to inspire and assuage the fears and despair of victims of these ceaseless terror attacks? 

  Why, for heaven’s sake, should the over 200 Chibok girls be still missing for close to one full year, while their whereabouts are not even known to the same government, which is desperately desirous of being re-elected by the grief-stricken parents, their kith and kin, as well as the concerned citizens of Nigeria, whose votes are critical to the victory at the polls? 

  There are, indeed, more questions than answers to this conundrum confronting the vanquished and alienated victims of a typical failed state.

  And fundamentally, what is the essence of government when the security and defence of its citizenry and the territorial integrity of the state become both compromised and breached? 

POLITICAL sociologists have historically underscored the principle of Social Contract to underpin the essence of government, as espoused by renowned philosophers such as Pluto, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. 

  The social contract concept posits that, “individuals either explicitly or tacitly consent to surrender some freedoms and summit to the authority of the state in exchange for protection of their natural and legal rights.” 

  By all means of governance, therefore, sovereignty belongs to the people because by moral or political obligations, the subjects have voluntarily chosen to entrust their freedom and authority to the state in the great expectation that their security of life and property are sacrosanct and therefore, should not be breached or sacrificed on the altar of incompetence, poor leadership or lack of political will power, as it were.

  The long and short of the social contract doctrine avails security to citizen in return for subjecting themselves to an organised system of rule or authority. Thus, government primarily exists to secure the lives of its citizenry and therefore, should guaranty peace, law and order within its territorial space. 

  Arguably, the Nigerian state has so far performed dismally by breaching the spirit and letters of this implicit social contract principle. That is why the general insecurity pervading the Northeast frontiers has terribly overwhelmed both the Nigerian state and citizenry.

  Presently, due to the widespread frustrations, terrible hardships and hopelessness that have become the general fate of the victims of the Boko Haram brigandage, wicked rumours and insinuations have persistently gained currency among the people. 

  One of such is the conspiracy theory that the Federal Government has deliberately refused to defeat the militants as a grand design to disenfranchise the people in the Northeast and therefore, significantly reduce the potential votes of the opposition, whose increasing popularity is allegedly overwhelming in the sub-region.   

  Others believe that the military intelligence is either deliberately flouted, or not used at all or even shared with the militants. 

  All these probably explain why the international forces, led by the U.S. military experts allegedly backed out of the coalition that would have since routed these misguided extremists.

  While these insinuations are puerile and rife, the situation should not have been allowed to fester, like cancer, in the public domain for too long. 

  Thank God, indeed, President Goodluck Jonathan, during his re-election campaign visit to Adamawa State, had debunked, rather belatedly, such seemingly wicked and irrational rumours.

  Certainly, our traumatised kith and kin, whose lives have been terribly fractured by the increasing disillusionment occasioned by the ceaseless attacks, have every reason to blame government for their abject woes and plights. They feel alienated and abandoned to their fate and nature. 

  As victims of the orgies of rape and abduction (ala the missing Chibok girls) and the brutal massacres that have daily characterised their lives in the last one year, no one should really blame them for such seeming blasphemies in the face of the cruelty, death and endless miseries inflicted on our defenseless people. 

  The harrowing Hobbesian scenario, where the state of nature makes the “human life solitary, poor and nasty, brutish and short” because of the absence of good political order, has embolden and given the militants the freedom to plunder, rape, murder and unleash general lawlessness in the entire Northeast.

  Nevertheless, the elections should hold while the people should be educated on their civic responsibilities of casting their votes to change their circumstances, for better or worse. 

  To the extent that a change of guard is desirable, failure to exercise our franchise or even make wrong choices at the polls would only perpetuate our precarious social condition, which is in the realm of the Hobbesian state of lawlessness in our shattered towns and villages.

  Consequently, as the people are urged to vote, their votes must really count, while their lives must also be secured in the process and beyond.   

  Our government must deploy effective security infrastructure, seriousness, strong political will-power that should ensure violence-free and credible elections that were achieved in similar war-torn climes such as the former Balkans, the beleaguered Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq, et cetera.

  Therefore, to stop the debilitating season of anomie prevalent in the Northeast, the political stakeholders must resolve and clamour for the Federal Government and the INEC to ensure that people are, by no means, disenfranchised to enable them vote for either “change” or the “continuity” of the prevailing militancy that has turned their lives upside down and wreaked havoc on our collective sensibilities.

  Honestly, we are all obligated to pray and choose to step back from this dangerous precipice or risk plunging into the cataclysmic of what Thomas Hobbes, once again, graphically described as bellium omnium contra omnes, meaning, “war of all, against all.”

  Presently, such scenario is playing out in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. God forbid that should not be our portion but all the same, this nonsense must stop, indeed!

  Invariably, whoever wins the February (March and April) polls, the brutalised people of the Northeast earnestly deserve a Marshal Plan of some sorts, specially packaged not only to ameliorate their sufferings, but essentially to comprehensively rehabilitate and integrate them into the national political economy and, of course, the core development agenda of the Nigerian state. 

  Only such initiatives can ensure social justice for the alienated populace of the beleaguered Northeast.

 • Mr. Pembi, former Press Secretary in The Presidency, Abuja, wrote in from the recaptured town of Michika, Adamawa State.