Dasuki: Enemy Or Friend?

NSA, Military Chiefs Under Fire

Hence, Ibrahim Zikirullahi, Chairman of the Transitional Monitoring Group, a group of CSOs involved in the monitoring of Nigeria electoral process was unequivocal that the military which is supposed to be nationalistic and patriotic in outlook, has allowed itself to be led by those they serve for expressly narrow interests.“To say the least, the military has failed the Nigerian people. It is a betrayal of trust for the military in connivance with the National Security Adviser to have allowed itself to be used to suspend Nigeria’s electoral process,” said Zikirullahi. “The claim that they will not be able to protect INEC personnel and materials for the polls that were to hold on 14 and 28 February 2015, is a national disgrace and embarrassment,” the TMG Chairman added while also describing the claims of the military that it needed to concentrate on the fight against Boko Haram as untenable.

Zikirullahi wondered the kind of magic the Chief of Defence Staff and the NSA wanted to perform to end the terrorist activities of Boko Haram in six weeks that it could not do in six years. “The Civil Society Coalition hereby calls for their immediate resignation, for abdicating a national responsibility, and attempting to drown the voices of the Nigerian people. The current military high command, if they still have any iota of honour and good conscience, should immediately vacate their positions,” he insisted.

PDP Rattled by Looming Defeat?

Sources told this magazine last week that Sambo, described as a rabid supporter of President Jonathan was used by the Presidency to get the election postponed following indications of imminent defeat for President Jonathan in the first leg of the plans to prevent his defeat at the polls. This magazine gathered that the Presidency is worried by results of various polls including the ones commissioned by it which indicated a close race between President Jonathan and his APC challenger or predicted outright victory for Buhari.

Afrobarometer, an independent agency said the result of its national poll conducted two months to the February 14 elections across Nigeria revealed a close contest between President Jonathan and Buhari. According to the organisation, the survey involved 2,400 prospective Nigerian voters with equal representation across the country, and a margin of error + or – 2 percent.

Nengak Daniel, a senior member of the Afrobarometer team that conducted the study, said the survey was scientific and a true reflection of the prevailing situation on the ground. “In terms of the two leading political parties we have a tie- 42 per cent said they will vote for the ruling party and as much as 42 per cent again said they will vote for the opposition party,” Daniel said respondents were also asked to predict the winner of the election in the study: “It turned out that both leading political parties are running neck and neck. Because 39 percent predict that the ruling party will win and 38 percent predict that the opposition would win. The difference between them is small,so from our survey, the election is too close to call.”

While revealing that the poll also revealed a high voter turnout that may be as high as 78 per cent, Daniel added that Afrobarometer study encountered security challenges in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states where radical Islamist militant group, Boko Haram has often carried out attacks against unarmed civilians.

DaMina, described as an emerging markets advisory firm, has predicted a close contest in which the opposition candidate will however come tops with a 51% win while Eurasia, another consultancy has projected that Jonathan may win the election by 55 per cent. “What’s not in doubt is that the elections will be close,” Tolu Ogunlesi, said in an online article while citing a study by Zainab Usman and Oliver Owen, academics at the University of Oxford who also asserted that “if voting patterns are similar to 2011, a run-off election situation would be likely.”

But the APC believed that it will win the election with a landslide. Bolaji Abdullahi, a former minister and Deputy Director of the Policy, Research and Strategy Directorate of the APC Presidential Campaign argued that the fundamental realities as the country heads towards the polls make the conclusion of closest election on record especially as predicted by Afrobarometer “at odds with the emerging trends in the political landscape since the survey was conducted.”

According to him, there has been a “seismic shift in the political landscape in the country; pointing strongly to a monumental victory for the opposition — APC. A number of daily tracking polls corroborate this reality. Were the Afrobarometer’s tracking of the political trends more dynamic and continuous, there is no doubt that its updated findings would have revealed a clear leading margin for the opposition.”

Who Gains From The Shift Of The Polls?

But PDP had countered this prediction asserting that it was not only ready for the elections, but was poised for victory if not for INEC’s failure to faithfully carry out its own responsibilities. The APC believed that the postponement of the polls was done to take the sail out of the momentum it has gathered in the past few months. Indeed, this magazine gathered that loyalists of the President had suggested that postponing the polls would allow the President to sell himself and his achievements more to Nigerians while also disparaging the candidates of the opposition in a no expense spared publicity blitz. Fani Kayode told journalists after the poll shift for instance that the PDP presidential campaign will use the six weeks extension to publicise the achievements and further ‘expose Buhari.’ The massive mudslinging efforts at the APC presidential candidate since last week will bear testimony to this assertion. They have also argued that the APC presidential campaign may run out of steam if the election is shifted for some weeks.

Niyi Akintola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria said last week that with the postponement of the elections a lot of permutations are bound to change: “The prevailing development has upset the calculations of many political pundits. The shifting of the polls may upset the apple cat in spite of the political arithmetic that favours or disfavours the major candidates. Things can certainly not be the same again.” President Jonathan said he has no plan to sack Jega last week, but was quick to add that if he had to, he had the constitutional powers to do so.

There were also speculations of different plots involving the use of the military to rig the polls in favour of the PDP when the elections are eventually held against the background of a secretly recorded audio tape which allegedly detailed how the Ekiti gubernatorial elections was rigged last year. In the same vein, the PDP is also campaigning against the use of card readers believed by many to be a potential game changer against the rigging of the polls.