Who Let The Dogs Out? By Chief Akintayo Akin-Deko

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By Chief Akintayo Akin-Deko

“Cry Havoc, And Let Slip The Dogs Of War” – William Shakespeare

The long-awaited 2023 presidential elections have come but, with a hotly contested result that was perpetrated by INEC (the electoral umpire) fudging its own Electoral Act Guidelines, they are far from over. One can almost touch the tension currently hovering over the nation due to the unusual outcome of having three contenders running almost neck-to-neck. They each won in 12 states, and many doubted that widespread appeals to avoid bloody protests and to instead go to court, would ever hold sway. But hold sway they did, and a very fragile peace is currently holding – albeit only just

Meanwhile the second and third runners-up, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, claim they will indeed go to court to ask the Supreme Court for a review of the election process including a recount. It is now everyone’s fervent prayer that, following its Friday ruling that reversed the Central Bank’s similarly bungled Naira swap exercise, the Supreme Court has once more regained its moral compass, and will fearlessly do justice to the case of the bungled elections.

Yet, in their aggravated desperation, some people somewhere have since played both the ethnic and the religious cards, and in so doing they are set to unleash upon Southern Nigeria especially Lagos and Ibadan, the twin dogs of war – violence and chaos.

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Perhaps they panicked at the Ibocentric voting pattern observed in the Southeast, or at Peter Obi’s epoch-making victory over Asiwaju Tinubu in Lagos. Or they might simply be frustrated at the looming loss of the pomp and privilege of holding public office in Nigeria. Whatever the reason, Southwest Nigeria is fast drifting towards the precipice – and the rest of the nation with it. How to stop the drift before we fall into the abyss is, today, the task that must be done. Or, going by the deafening silence of critical leaders, is it?

In a fractured nation like Nigeria, the 2023 presidential election meant many things to many people. For the Ibo it was yet another opportunity to try to make their son the democratically elected president of Nigeria for the first time, while for many Christians it was their chance to push back against growing Muslim domination. On their part Ibo settlers in Lagos, who are largely Christian, saw in the elections an opportunity to gain greater influence in Lagos Government House.

But above all else, the indigenous population of Lagos State, who are largely Muslim and Yoruba or Yoruba affiliates, saw in the elections, their chance to win back their home state from the unrelenting grip of non-indigenes, and they grabbed it.

Again, everything boiled down to the ethnic and the religious! And as the race shaped up, Peter Obi (supported in Lagos by little kmown Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour) stood in one corner representing one set of interests, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu stood in another corner with his own set of interests and Atiku Abubakar represented a third. Meanwhile IPOB in the East, Yoruba Nationalists in the West, and Islamists mostly in the North all waited in the wings ready to pounce if INEC dropped the ball, and the presidential elections failed to end peacefully or to produce a clear winner.

Frankly, many people, me included, did not expect Nigeria’s salvation to come out of these elections, which always threatened to be just another recycling of the same old wine in the same old bottles – not even in new ones. It was simply a repeat of mixing together of ‘a little to the left or a little to the right’, a balancing of Muslim and Christian interests, the usual inclusion of representatives of some of the key ethnic groups, plus a huge dose of foreign conditionalities for attracting inward investment.

Consequently, government after government in Nigeria have always been weighed down by far too many competing interests. They could thus never really define the national interest let alone serve it.

It is therefore more than mere coincidence that today, the three leading presidential candidates in these 2023 presidential elections come from the same three regions that made up Nigeria at Independence in 1960, namely the Western, Eastern and Northern. Today’s stalemate is also a reflection of the spatial setting of the 1979 electoral stalemate between Obafemi Awolowo (West), Nnamdi Azikiwe (East), and Shehu Shagari (North). That being the case, it is all testimony to the fact that the same condition of ethnoreligious distrust of the past still pervades the entire country today, 63 years on.

The intervening periods of military abracadabra simply papered over our differences but never really allowed us to understand them, nor to evolve a unifying Nigerian culture that could coexist with the cultures of the country’s component ethnic groups. Instead, we continued down the road of ethnic and religious intolerance. We thus now need to roll back the hands of time to 1963, call the different ethnic groups together, and start all over again to jointly design the Nigeria of our original combined vision and underpin it with a Constitution of our collective making.

There is thus simply no denying that Restructuring Nigeria is clearly the best way forward, and the current political impasse is a perfect opportunity to set the process in motion. With the three leading presidential candidates winning 12 states each and a hung parliament, none of them can on his own form a government that is strong enough to pull Nigeria out of the country’s currently terminal economic decline. They need to urgently bury the hatchet and sit down together to share offices, harmonize their manifestos, and form a genuine Interim Government of National Unity.

It is only such an Interim Government that can harness enough goodwill to immediately douse the current tension and implement the much-needed tough economic measures like removal of petroleum subsidy, strengthening INEC, overhauling the CBN, and hunting down corrupt Nigerians. Such a government could also try to go the extra mile to redefine state boundaries and convert the 36 component states of the nation into a fewer number of Zones or Regions that are more homogeneous, economically viable and self-sustaining.

As for this hullaballoo about young Rhodes-Vivour, we Yoruba-Nigerians must neither lose sight of our Omoluabi philosophy over it, nor allow it to disunite us. Publish his alleged links with terrorists yes but let us leave it to his father (not the outside world) to determine his paternity. Campaign against his likely policies but not his person, and then leave it to Lagosians to peacefully vote between him Governor Sanwo-Olu, Alhaji Azeez Adediran and the other candidates who will be the next Lagos State governor.

That is our Yoruba way; the lawful way. It is also the way that will best serve the interest of President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who is now the father of all and, as we all know, who believes in peace and the rule of law. It would then be for the leaders of non-indigenes living in Lagos to ensure that their peoples continue to respect the culture and special position of their hosts in Yoruba/SW or face the consequential hostility.

Meanwhile, let whosoever is getting set to unleash mayhem anywhere in the country stay their hand and call back the dogs of war. There is no better way to develop the nation for the benefit of all, other than to keep the peace and to Restructure Nigeria as soon as possible.