By Prof. Jibril M. Umar — International Conflict Resolution Expert
Mr. Bola Tinubu is a corrupt politician who was corruptly selected, not elected. Should the APC courts underhandedly rubber-stamp him as president, his presidency will be illegitimate and irremediably damaged.
When the ruling party uses and abuses its monopoly powers over its agent, the “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC), to disenfranchise the votes of millions of citizens, the ensuing government is illegitimate.
Nationwide, the youth, professionals and millions of long-suffering ordinary citizens of all ethnicities and religions and regions have been at the forefront of the “Change Nigeria” project to change the direction of the country and improve lives. They envisioned a future soon when their suffering will abate and their humanity restored from the inhumanity of the Buhari administration and the APC party corruption.
Obviously, they are deeply disappointed and disillusioned with the outcome of the presidential election. Moreso because they believe it was stolen from them. Their hopes and aspirations seem dashed — temporarily.
The Change Nigeria vision they shared now seems blurred, distant and out of reach.
They are left to imagine what could have been if their candidate, Peter Obi, won as exit polls and initial tabulations seem to indicate. Now they may have to wait another 4 years or more, which seems an eternity for them and long-suffering Nigerians.
Many I’ve spoken to are deeply angry with what they perceive as a rigged election and fraudulent result, and they have abundance of hard evidence to back up their claims (read those later). To them, Mr. Tinubu is an illegitimate president-elect. They want to hold INEC and Tinubu accountable for this miscarriage of electoral justice.
They remind Nigerians that Tinubu, according to INEC, won only 37% (8.8 million out of 24 million) of the votes. There are 63% (15 million) Nigerians who did not vote for him, who found him unfit to be their next president.
I call these Nigerians the 63 Percenters — the core of the nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience movement I envision will emerge in the next few days and months across the nation. This is similar to the nonviolent civil disobedience and resistance approach by Gandhi, 80 years ago in India, and of Martin Luther King, 60 years ago in the U.S.
The nonviolent resistance movement led by the 63 Percenters should aim to persuade fellow Nigerians complicit in the election injustice to change their minds and support the requisite cancellation of the election and compel INEC to conduct a free, fair and transparent rerun.
Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance are peaceful, yet transformative, political tool to give voice to the silenced majority whose voices were smothered and votes erased by INEC and the APC thugs in Lagos, Rivers, Benue, and across many other states. This egregious injustice demands immediate correction by any means necessary, but peacefully.
Moral Nigerians who conscientiously objected to the observed election fraud are duty bound to join the civil disobedience and resistance movement to resist Tinubu’s illegitimate government, if installed by the courts.
We need a broad, multi-pronged civil disobedience and resistance movement against the Tinubu administration. This grassroots movement will be comprised of all Nigerians of all ethnicities and religions and from all the regions. Peaceful resistance will serve as a powerful tool to check the use and abuse of power by Tinubu’s illegitimate government should he be installed.
If a rerun does not occur in a timely manner, then the aim will be to limit the damage the Tinubu administration will attempt to inflict on the nation. If he can’t be stopped, he must be politically hobbled in a peaceful way.
But if Tinubu gets away with making mincemeat of our elections and democracy and our constitutional rights to free, fair and transparent election, patriotic Nigerians who oppose him — the 63 Percenters — will need to have a serious conversation about using other peaceful means to declare him the citizen’s equivalent of a persona non grata in Abuja and around the world.
He’s already a pariah and diminished in the eyes of the international community who see his election as corrupt and illegitimate.
In addition, coopting religious leaders, Churches and Mosques and key members of the National Assembly to raise conscientious objection to Tinubu’s illegitimate presidency will contribute to further isolate him and weaken his misbegotten administration.
Compelling Case
From reports of eyewitnesses who were embedded in polling and counting units, there is extensive evidence of voter intimidation, vote suppression, vote buying, ballot system sabotage, vote count falsification, and significant discrepancies between votes counted, recorded and photographed in polling locations, which were not immediately uploaded to BVAS as mandated, and the results reported by the INEC.
By all accounts, this was not a free, fair and transparent election. The evidence suggest that mass irregularities and vote altering schemes corrupted the results announced by the INEC, in violation of the electoral act of 2022 as amended.
I join Nigerians and the international community to appeal to the INEC to follow the Power of Review granted it under the law and cancel the election and call for a rerun. This is not yet a matter for the courts to adjudicate. INEC has the legal mandate to review reported election malpractices and if merited, cancel elections when there is evidence of extensive irregularities and vote tampering that disenfranchised voters.
Unfortunately, given INEC’s intransigent so far, I don’t see a path for remedy through INEC or through the court system. Seeking legal remedy in the politically and legally corrupt Nigerian courts, captured and controlled, as it were, by the ruling APC justices, is practically and predictably another confirmatory rubber-stamping scheme just like the INEC.
The Nigerian Supreme Court, notoriously corrupt, will likely say something like this: “We find the appeal against INEC to be without merit and the conduct of the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections to be within the authority granted by the constitution and its bylaws. And the evidence of election rigging is not extensive enough to warrant this court to rule in favor of the appellants. Accordingly, Mr. Tinubu remains the winner”.
Therefore, the court pathway is a nonstarter. But it’s worth trying if for no other reason than to check the box that an attempt was made to explore all reasonable options for remedy.
With this as context, there are other effective and time-honored strategies and approaches to remedy the obvious election injustice experienced in Nigeria.
I presently believe the best way to stop Tinubu is by some combination of grassroots, all-hands-on mobilization of Nigerians, disciplined nonviolent resistance, popular civic disobedience and institutional pressure, including electoral and judicial reforms.
Despite the growing anger across the nation, quite sensibly, the only way to stop Tinubu’s illegitimate presidency is by no less relentless, nonviolent resistance to him and his allies.
When smartly executed, these strategies in combination can help right the wrong of this stolen election, unite the nation and safeguard our democracy from Tinubu, Buhari, INEC and the APC.
I must emphasize that even nonviolent resistance in Nigeria comes with some hidden costs the leaders of the resistance movement need to recognize.
Like all illegitimate and weakened presidents, Tinubu is highly likely to overreact and unleash the wicked forces at his disposal to arrest, detain, jail, or cause innocent citizens to be murder to terminate the peaceful civil disobedience.
Also, nascent resistance movements are always unavoidably messy and somewhat disorganized in the beginning. They will be trolls and turncoats. Don’t let them hijack the movement, become violent and derail the process. The movement will get more efficient and effective as it gathers momentum. The key is to stay focused on the endgame.
Let me conclude by say that during this election cycle, Nigerians in mosques and churches and homes prayed hard and long for a moral, competent and compassionate leader to alleviate the horrendous suffering of millions of citizens. Tinubu is not the outcome we expected. Nor a legitimate outcome.
But God answered our prayers in ways that will bring lasting solution to the Nigerian problem of bad leadership and mass suffering. We now have the best opportunity and motive to change the country for the better. We must now do what is needed to preserve of democracy. Say NO to Tinubu and his cronies. And please do so peacefully.
