Jide Osuntokun: Enough of the madness on the social media:
Toyin Falola
Enough of the madness on the social media: my column Thursday 13/04/2023
The elections of 2023 have been largely concluded. Winners have been declared and some of the losers have gone to either the Elections tribunal or the courts. This has become the usual scenario in our country where losers always say they have been rigged out and their mandates have been stolen . A bevy of lawyers encourages them to feel this way and that the courts would eventually declare them winners. The lawyers do this out of enlightened self interest and for the huge Naira harvest they expect to reap. Most times the courts uphold the decision of the electorate. Some times the courts’ decisions favour those who lost at the polls. This year the acrimony surrounding the elections has been at the greatest decibel that I have ever heard since I have witnessed electoral contest in Nigeria. The anger has been laced with ethnic jingoism bordering sometimes on call to arms by the losing candidates and their ethnic cohorts. One would have thought that anybody contesting an election should have known that the probability of losing is a possibility.But it seems that nigerian politicians are the worst kind of people in the world because they go into elections with wrong motives and bank on the certainty of winning to the extent that some borrow money or sell properties just to contest elections and when they lose ,they will want to bring the entire state structure down on everybody’s heads including those of the electorate . I grew up in a political home and I can assert that this tendency is a new thing to me . Any casual reading of this election cannot but come to the conclusion that this must be judged the most competitive election we have had in this country in recent years . There are 36 states and Abuja where the presidential polls took place. The result was a dead heat with the president-elect ,Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC winning in 12 states , Atiku Abubakar of the PDP also won in 12 states while Peter Obi won in 11 states and Abuja. What separates them is that Tinubu ran a strong second wherever Atiku Abubakar won and in Lagos state his political redoubt where Obi won . Wherever he won he won solidly particularly in the Southwestern and North central part of the country. He also won in the North western part of the country and in Borno state from where Shetima Kashim his running mate comes . The PDP which had splintered into Labour, NNPP and What was left of the old PDP could have won the presidential election if it had remained United and ran under a single flag ! How is winning the election against this disunited rabble the fault of Tinubu ? Perhaps it can be argued that if there was no division in the party it would have been clearer to the electorate that the old wretched party was about to come back again and the perception of the people would have been sharper and Tinubu probably would have been able to politically slaughtered it . I personally think this election has been fair to all . How can the same election that senators and members of House of Representatives from all the parties have been celebrating in Abuja and feverishly struggling for legislative positions turn round to have been defective on account of the presidential poll using the same single sheet of ballot paper?
The whole brouhaha is just too ridiculous. What worries me is the attitude of Obi and his supporters openly calling for cancellation of the entire election or is it just the presidential election? Some are even calling for a military putsch or what they call “ interim government “Some are openly calling for the end of the country if Bola Ahmed Tinubu is sworn in on May 29th of 2023. I would have dismissed these vituperations but for the fact they are coming from very senior ethnic jingoists who have served at the higher echelons of the federal government just because their ethnic cohorts lost election which on all grounds of probability they could not have won . Politics is a game of numbers . It is also a matter of aggregating interests and coalitions to pursue such interests in a peaceful way . Sometimes in the heat of the competition less disciplined and knowledgeable people get carried away and misbehave but that is not sufficient grounds to throw away the baby with the bath water. Issuing threats of planned disruptions of constitutional process is not the way forward .
What this election and its aftermath has taught many of us is that we are probably not ready to abide with democratic practices and principles guiding electoral competition. The second lesson I think we should all learn is that ,we as a people ,are still the same as chief obafemi Awolowo described us in his 1947 book with the title of “ PATH TO NIGERIAN FREEDOM “ that there are no Nigerians as there are French or Germans and that Nigeria is “a geographical expression “ .The man who became the first and last prime minister of the federation of Nigeria in 1957 Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa also agreed with chief Awolowo that “Nigeria was a British intension “ When the politically ebullient Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe told the leader of the NORTHERN PEOPLES CONGRESS Sir Ahmadu BELLO on the eve of independence in 1960 that Southern and Northern Nigerians should forget their differences ,he was quietly told that “they should not forget their differences but they should rather understand them “ These comments were pregnant with meaning for the post independence Nigeria and even for now . The realisation that Nigeria was not yet a nation was the British decision ,responding to nigerian political aspirations of staying together in a loose political arrangement ,was the federal constitution suggested to nigerian leaders on the eve of independence. The constitution ensured regional territorial sovereignty and a federal government created by the regions and not the other way round in which the military ,by decrees of the federal government ,split the country into puny states at the whim and convenience of those who shot themselves into power. The states we have are just too weak and too many to defend the rights and resources of their people. In the past the regions conducted their local and regional elections ,sometimes with abuse, which could have been cleaned up as time went on ,unlike now where an omnibus federal organ whose members are chosen by the Poobah of a president conducts elections into all organizations of government except the Local governments whose finances are determined and centrally funded by an all powerful federal government. This is a system pregnant with problems .As I write the IPOB” indigenous people of Biafra” is militarily challenging the government of Nigeria for its own place in the sun . There are similar voices for some kind of secession or loosening of ties and if we ignore these demands we ignore them at our political peril . The fissiparous tendencies in this country have always been here. What we need to do is to find practical constitutional grundnorm to accommodate each other .
The Tinubu government early in its term must call for a constitutional conference to discuss the issues of federalism and particularly fiscal arrangements to guarantee resources ownership while ensuring that each state or group of states contribute to the running of a loose federation . Let us design a system where political activities and competition will be state located and domiciled and collective and cooperative governance will be at the centre while states enjoy large measure of economy and consequent development. In the first republic each region had its own constitution, independent judiciary and control over the affairs of the lives of its people. We must bring that kind of system in which people will have confidence that their government will have their backs , protect their culture including their language,religion and their future group rights .This is not theory because if we do not embrace some loosening of ties we will go the way of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union , Pakistan , the Sudan , Ethiopia ( which had Eritrea as part of it ) . Even established unitary state like Great Britain has now accepted devolution of power to the peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.We should look at thriving federations like Canada, Switzerland ,the United States and Begium which even though have not completely solved the issue of political division diversity and occasional threats of separation have at least successfully stayed together.
I am a beneficiary of the size of Nigeria. I will always favour preserving the federation as a going proposition but not at all cost and at the expense of the people’s happiness.My best friends are not yoruba people and I have people I cared very much for outside yorubaland. I have had to endure being subjected to ethnic recrimination if not outright hatred because somebody from my ethnic cohort won an election in plural country . I want this country to succeed but it is not through insults and bullying that the country can be United .I would like us to give every ethnic group or nation because we are actually a multinational country,equal right to hold the highest position in the country without weaponising region and ethnicity to accomplish it. I also would like to keep all my non yoruba friends without fear that there is an undeclared mistrust between us because of being born in two different ethnic groups ,a situation that we could not control. This is why we have to come up with a grundnorm that will preserve individual territorial interest within an overarching federal structure and sovereignty. I would like our leaders to eliminate the possibility of my children and other Nigerians holding each other in contempt or disrespect because of the birth places of their parents. I do not want any group to be subject to group ethnic abuse and hatred and anything that can be done to prevent this should be done . This will include education right from kindergarten to university of civility and respect for individual and group territorial rights as well as constitutional device to loosen up the country instead of unity at the point of the gun that has been pointed to our heads since 1966. To start with our government must do whatever it can to control the social media to prevent them from plunging the country into ethnic war on the scale of what happened in Burundi and Rwanda. Unfortunately the mainstream media are beginning to source their information fr the social media. Unfortunately this feeds Foreign media which is then given back to us as revealed wisdom! Control of the social media is therefore imperative. Presidents and other important persons have in the past been removed from social media if their use of it has been detrimental to the maintenance of national or international peace and concord . If the use of social media by presidents and other socially and politically important persons can be controlled, there is no reason why the entire social media cannot be controlled.I suggest this should be extended to all individuals and group and ethnic organizations whose statements can bring untold hardship and conflicts to other peoples and themselves. We should not wait until genocidal conflicts ensue before taking actions to prevent them . There are just too many irresponsible people around who cannot control their emotions whose use of social media without control cannot be justified on the grounds of their fundamental human rights and democratic rights to express themselves . There can be no absolute rights in an explosive situation where lives and society itself are threatened. There must be a state Of people living in peace before they can enjoy democracy!
Sent from my iPad
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Okey Iheduru
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Toyin Falola
Okey:
A small question: If you are a Yoruba man who voted for Obi in Lagos or a Christian in Nasarawa who voted for Obi, how do you want them to interpret your message
If only Peter Obi and Ndi-Igbo would just go away!
And the Osuntokuns are Obi’s supporters, Akin Osuntokun is the Director of Publicity!!
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Gbolahan Gbadamosi
I tend to miss these things! Please enlighten me, I plead.
Is your point that every Nigerian, especially one not Igbo, must support Peter Obi to be free of accusations? That once they do not, they are guilty of all those things you listed (orchestrated tribal disinformation, intellectual obfuscation, and diversionary sophistry)? Are we trying to shut down any alternative viewpoints? In this writer's case, I could not spot them as supporting Tinubu, but I could see them "preaching" peace by ensuring a breakdown in law and order is not inadvertently promoted.
Four things came out to me:
1. Nigerians are not ready for democratic practices because they cannot take a loss.
2. There should be a stop to the threat to shut down Nigeria in the aftermath of the election
3. The Tinubu administration, when it comes on board, should seek to confront the national question head-on – federalism and power-sharing
4. We cannot leave social media uncontrolled.
I hold up my hands to admit I support the four arguments and have advocated these in my previous public engagements.
Gbolahan Gbadamosi
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Okey Iheduru
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Okey Iheduru
Toyin Falola
Identities and politics are Siamese twins, everywhere.
A nation gets it right when it creates powerful institutions that everyone can benefit from.
These institutions minimize the deficits.
What we have not succeeded in doing is to link institutions with citizenship.
However, your tribal Yoruba and Igbo politicians are far more united than you think.
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Gbolahan Gbadamosi
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Toyin Falola
Since Akin Osuntokun is on this list, I think you owe him an apology.
He is a right hand man of Peter Obi.
TF
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Okey Iheduru
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