Have they made Nigeria ungovernable?

Perhaps out of political passion some northern leaders few years ago made dire threats against the peace of the nation in the event President Goodluck Jonathan made a success of his election bid . Now two years down the line and the country in a practical state of war, the question as to whether the jingoists have had their way is an issue.


It was a year ago yesterday, that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari made the famous baboon and blood threat against election riggers. Receiving partisans of his Congress for Progressive Change, CPC from Niger State in his Kaduna residence on a courtesy call, Buhari had said:“God willing, by 2015, something will happen. They either conduct a free and fair election or they go a very disgraceful way.”

“If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”

Buhari who spoke in Hausa was supposedly giving dire threats against election riggers, but it was not difficult for his political enemies to take it up as one other indication of the violent streak on the part of the former head of state.

While Buhari’s assertions were essentially directed against election riggers, declarations by some other northern irredentists have, however, been more forceful. None perhaps as vindictive as Alhaji Lawal Kaita who said back in 2011 that Nigeria would be made ungovernable should President Goodluck Jonathan be elected into Aso Rock.

Two years down the line and the country practically in a state of war, many are now bringing back to memory the assertions made by Kaita in the heat of the political jostling that preceded the presidential nomination convention of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Mallam Adamu Ciroma who led the northern agitation for power shift gave a largely ominous sign of what would happen by his unusual reticence.
Unusual reticence

Since the failed move by the Ciroma led Northern Leaders Political Forum, NPLF to take the presidential ticket from Jonathan through political means failed, he has remained in the background and out of political contact with the mainstream in his party.

Kaita’s threat of lawlessness were recently echoed by Alhaji Asari Dokubo, the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteers Force in a press conference last week.

Speaking from the opposite perspective taken by Kaita, he warned that any attempt at stopping Dr. Jonathan from a second term would mean the end of Nigeria.

Before him, presidential adviser on amnesty Mr. Kingsley Kuku had in a recent presentation to the United States Congress implied albeit subtly, that the peace in the Niger Delta was mainly because Jonathan, a Niger Delta man is president.

It was an assertion that was perhaps meant to draw sympathy towards the Nigeria administration in the United States given the linkage of U.S. oil companies to the Niger Delta. Kuku, should off course know, given his own extensive activism and linkage with the Niger Delta militants.

But if any, the assertions by both Kuku and Dokubo, have helped to stoke up tension in the polity with varying allegations of cronyism levelled against the administration by its opponents who accuse the president of orchestrating a war of intimidation.

Remarkably, the House of Representatives and critical stakeholders have denounced the assertions by the unrepentant Dokubo who went further days later to dare the security agencies to arrest him.

So far, no arrest has been made against Dokubo, who interestingly had few months ago dismissed the Jonathan administration as non performing.

Annkio Brigs, a civil rights activist who like Dokubo, has in the past raised allegations of underperformance against the Jonathan administration especially in the Niger Delta, has recently entered the fray with a warning that Nigeria is at peace now only because Jonathan is president.

Not surprisingly, some are seeking to make political capital out of the claims and counter claims. It is in that effort that threats made by Buhari against election rigging have been used to drag him into the fray.

Though Buhari had distanced himself on the eligibility or otherwise of Jonathan contesting the PDP presidential ticket on the basis of zoning, he had, however, prior to the election issued dire warnings against rigging.

Buhari had warned his supporters at a campaign rally in Kaduna on March 2, 2011 to resist rigging. “You should never leave polling centres until votes are counted and the winner declared and you should lynch anybody that tries to tinker with the votes,” Buhari had said in an assertion that easily dovetailed into suggestions that he instigated the crisis that followed the presidential elections in the north in 2011.