I WILL extract a quote from my last week’s outing – At Last, The Real Deal – to set the tone for today’s effort.

“In fact, if you ask me, I will want Buhari to win so that the reactions can be defined by President Jonathan. If the President handles it the way he has always promised, a fresh template that will move this democracy beyond the parochialism of the APC will have been created. That is, to tell the rest of the world that democracy is better served in Nigeria when all parties remain within democratic decorum”

Nothing can be more prophetic and I may do thanksgiving in any church to acknowledge the favour of The Almighty on me. He has miraculously placed me among the prophets of this age! There are other aspects of the write up that underscore this position, but I will stay with just that little extract from the lot because it serves the entire purpose.

Now, the narrative has remained largely sweet because somebody has chosen to eschew bitterness. The descriptions have been superlative. They say the presidential election just concluded is the fairest and most transparent in the history of elections in Nigeria. There is unlimited joy in the land and it may sound like treason or something close to it, to say anything contrary, no matter how truthful. Such will foul the joyous mood and nobody is prepared for that.

And so, we agree that everything about the exercise was perfect. The pre-election distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) was perfect. The accreditation processes on election day, which caused a state like Abia to accredit less than one third of its 1.7 million registered voters were perfect too. An electoral demography that strengthens so much one zone against others is perfect. The revelation that the folks in Katsina State and other parts of the North do not make silly mistakes during voting to cause void votes is also good. It has exposed this fallacy of the South being better educated than the North. While voters largely did the right thing up North, poorly educated folks in the South double thumped to void their own votes in a very crucial election.

Today, no serious issue about the conduct of the election is being raised because Jonathan has behaved strangely in the context of leadership in Africa. He conceded, almost prematurely, to create the new template that I talked about last week. Going forward, there is now a shining model for every loser of an election to follow. Instead of threatening to soak all animals and human beings in their own blood on account of the unfavourable outcome of an election, the loser can now save so much by simply placing a call to the winner and ask when both can meet to plan a smooth transition. That, to me, is the number one change.

There is something else that has remained hidden in the overflowing euphoria. This idea that votes have begun to count in Nigeria with the outcome of the March 28 presidential election is most fallacious. What has counted is President Goodluck Jonathan and to some extent, Prof. Attahiru Jega. Nigerians can come out in whatever numbers as they did in 1993, 1999, 2003 and 2007 to vote, but the power to make their votes meaningful lies in the hands of one man – the sitting president and commander-in-chief, period! This is irrespective of the capacity and readiness of the so-called electoral umpire, INEC in the current circumstances, to deliver good elections.

Votes did not count in 1993 because the then military president, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida did not want them to count and we had the June 12 1993 debacle instead of ‘President’ Moshood Abiola, winner of that election. Votes, perhaps, counted in 1999, because General Abdulsalami Abubakar wanted to deliver a transition to civil rule, anyhow. In the years of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, votes did not count. This was so much so, in 2007, that the winner of the presidential election, the late Umaru Shehu Yar’Adua, almost declined the big prize on account of the irregularities that attended his election as president. It was progressively hopeless under the former president such that the 2011 general elections took the anomalies several notches above what they were in 2003.

The turnaround effectively started with Jonathan, in 2011, and that should be boldly recorded too. And as being widely proclaimed, the March 28 and April 11 general elections are ending as a big improvement on the 2011 outing in all departments. The point I am making here is that the people are the constant input in the electoral calculus. They will always come out to vote. What varies is the character of politicians. And in science, including political science, it is the variable inputs that usually determine the final product in all cross formations.

And so, to ascribe so much to peoples’ power at this stage in the democratic journey will be projecting too much optimism. In Nigeria, after God comes the president in awesomeness. The constitution and structure of the Nigerian State gives the president all the instruments to meet his purpose if he so desires. The President, almost like God, can do and undo, so to say. If President Jonathan had wanted to meet his purpose even on March 28, he would have done so, anyhow. What follows is entirely a different matter because any leader that subordinates the wellbeing of the polity to his ambition lacks the morality or even courage to capitulate today in order to capture bigger tomorrow.

We have successfully crossed the dangerous bridge and a lot of posturing is expected in the postmortem analysis. People that were so farfetched in the calculations are emerging to make outlandish claims on how and why it all happened. People may choose to run commentaries in anticipation of some role in the new arrangement at the centre. That is not important. What is important is that there is victory for the APC and there is also victory for Nigeria, exclusively delivered by President Jonathan.

The other important point is that the APC victory has imposed a new power calculation on Nigeria. The Southwest and the North can, after all, work together peacefully for a common purpose. It had never happened before in Nigeria’s political history. Instead of being in perpetual opposition, the Southwest has made a historic leap to the centre. That is the second change that is not being properly branded by the crowd of post-election analysts.

How the current victory is managed by the two major stakeholders — the North and the Southwest — will tell if the hard earned change shall be short-lived or enduring. The rest of us can only pray that the aspirations from both ends should be measured so that disappointments do not set in too early in the day to make the change merely physical and reversible. For now, we can credit that feat to the APC national leader and former governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

I have mentioned two changes so far. Let me recap for effect. The first is an incumbent president, about the first in Africa, conceding victory in a keenly contested election to bring about a smooth transition to a new regime without the usual hullabaloo. This has been achieved solely by President Goodluck Jonathan. The second is the historic political marriage between Oduduwa and Arewa and it is scored by Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu.
The third, which will complete the cycle of change and make it most wholesome is still outstanding. It is a president that will vote for restructuring of the polity to crash for good, the artificiality of the Nigerian State. In the campaigns, the APC did not canvass this; the PDP did. And it is unlikely the APC will belatedly add this to the list of its electoral promises, which include fighting corruption, containing insurgency, feeding school children nationwide and social security for the elderly.

Achieving all of these and more, like bringing the dollar at par with the naira, still leaves us at the same spot and without real change. What the APC promises to tackle to create a change are only symptomatic of the original problem – a federation that operates almost exclusively from the centre. Restructuring remains the only authentic path to change and any other taken by the APC in the journey to the Promised Land shall return us to Egypt. The argument continues next week.