After the INEC-enabled Daylight Robbery of February 25 2023, the APC high command is now using divisive politics, intimidation and subterfuge to hush opposition voices and attempt to keep a stolen mandate.
Threatened by the loss of Lagos to the Labor Party in the presidential polls and the surging popularity of its governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivor, APC pulled the ethnic card without hesitation as the Governorship and state assembly elections of March 18 approached. They said “Igbos want to take over Lagos.”
It was a veiled reference to the fact that Mr Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivor has both a mother and a wife of Igbo extraction. The intent was to stoke an old political rivalry between Yorubas and Igbos. The goal was to break the ideological solidarity between liberal Yorubas and other ethnic groups who had coalesced behind Peter Obi and his Labor Party under what is now known as the Obidient Movement.
Then, on the night of Thursday, March 23rd, 2023, Festus Keyamo, Minister of State for Labor and Productivity, and an official spokesperson of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, appeared on Channels TV. He was a guest of Seun Okinbaloye, anchor of the popular interview program, Politics Today.
Keyamo’s mission on this occasion was twofold. First, it was to offer a rebuttal to some of the claims made by the LP Vice Presidential candidate, Dr. Yusuf-Datti Baba Ahmed, who appeared on the same platform the previous night. Keyamo took particular exception to Yusuf-Datti’s warning that if the Federal Government goes ahead to swear in the president-elect on May 29 (before a final Judicial pronouncement on pending election petitions), it would be installing an illegitimate government and kissing goodbye to democracy. And so, Keyamo came on TV to, as it were, shake the tables in the face of Mr. Baba Ahmed. It was a shameful and noisy display.
Mr. Keyamo’s second objective, by my deduction, was to explain to an incredulous Nigerian voting populace how the APC arrived at its claims of over 8 million votes and an overall majority, to win the last presidential election. This justification was well overdue in view of APC’s disastrous outing over the past 8 years in the areas of economy, security, education, healthcare, power generation, energy prices, currency value, poverty alleviation and just about everything else.
To make matters worse, the party chose perhaps the most controversial and least marketable candidate as its presidential flagbearer. That ticket visibly fumbled and wobbled throughout the electioneering period and never seemed to appeal to anyone outside a small group of highly animated bag-carriers for whom a Tinubu presidency represented the only hope for political salvation.
Yet Keyamo claimed that his party won 6 states in the North, 6 in the South and up to 25% of votes cast in 30 states, thus having the most balanced geographical scorecard of all the parties that contested. In the North, he said, the heat map shows that only Christian voters were swayed by the Peter Obi phenomenon – reason why the LP only did well in the North Central states. But among the vast Muslim populations of the North East and North West, Keyamo vouched, Obi’s message of “character, competence, capacity and compassion” met a brick wall. Just as his promise to take Nigeria “from Consumption to Production” fell flat.
To arrive at these conclusions, Keyamo must consider the peoples of the North to be either imbeciles or aliens totally disconnected from the nation’s sad realities. That is the only way to rationalize his claim that the region voted overwhelmingly for a failed party that fielded a limping horse.
The North is the biggest regional victim of the Buhari years. Not only are northerners in the direct line of fire from terrorists, bandits, killer herders and kidnappers for ransom; they have also watched helplessly as the president’s lofty promises of halting insecurity vaporized. This region is thus home to over 90% of the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps in the country. Although the region has been home to the majority of Nigeria’s poor since independence, under Buhari, things got even worse. Nigeria became the official poverty capital of the world with an estimated 133 million desperately poor people. Statistics for out of school children, infant and maternal mortality, and violent deaths rose sharply.- all with an epicenter in Northern Nigeria.
Yet in Keyamo’s obtuse logic, none of these mattered in shaping Northern voting decisions. It was purely and simply a matter of religion.
It quickly became clear that Keyamo was attempting to add a false religious spin to the narrative of what happened during the shameful elections of February 25; and to cleverly begin to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of judicial officers (and voters) who now have to consider the veracity of Obi’s claim that he clearly won the ballot in most parts of the country.
Keyamo conveniently ignored the fact that Obi ran the most brilliant, most energetic, most issue-based, most inclusive and most innovative electioneering campaign in Nigeria quite possibly since 1914. He did not explain why Obi’s powerful message of national rebirth and justice for all fell on deaf ears among Northern Muslim demographics; how Obi’s “failed message” automatically translated to Tinubu’s gain (not Atiku’s or Kwankwaso’s); or why the North preferred an older, fragile, and highly controversial Bola Tinubu from the Southwest to a younger, fitter, more intellectually astute and squeaky clean VP candidate in Yusuf-Datti Baba Ahmed – also a Northern Muslim.
It is an insult to the intelligence and sensibilities of any people to suggest that after eight years of great suffering in the hands of the APC, they would choose a candidate from the same party who promised to “continue where Buhari stopped” – over far more viable and vibrant candidates from other parties.
For so long, the peoples of Northern Nigeria, their religious beliefs and political dispositions have been manipulated, distorted and weaponized by politicians to achieve desperate individual goals. Keyamo took it to new heights. He fell just shy of saying that Northerners are enemies of progress and incapable of rational political judgement. Keyamo’s flawed logic is rather condescending of the northern elite and the gains made by the region in the area of human capital development since 1953. Such deliberate mischief must stop.
The truth is that APC was well aware of its overwhelming unpopularity going into the 2023 polls. It was equally unpopular in the North and South. It decided that its only chance lay in playing the religious, regional and ethnic cards. So, against extant conventions, the party chose a Muslim-Muslim ticket – something that even military governments in the past avoided – in the hope of stiring up old animosities to polarize the votes. But the dynamite failed to ignite as Nigerians from every corner of the country found hope in the strident message of a humble trader. For once, they did not care which region or religion the best candidate belonged to. And so, in one last desperate move to stay in power, the APC fiddled with election results.
Of this, there has been no denial to date. All we have are excuses. Who tampers with the results of an election he is sure to win? If the APC was so sure of its popularity, why intercept and reconfigure results? Why empower children and aliens to vote in some places while violently preventing eligible citizens from voting in others?
To try to justify an electoral heist which subverts the popular will is a mark of moral depravity and intellectual witchcraft. Yet, it is consistent with Keyamo’s persona.
He cuts the picture of a chronic and compulsive social climber who would do anything to get his next “promotion” or earn the next buck. If you rent him to abuse his own mother, he would gladly do so for the right price.
Here is a senior advocate who recently said on national TV that two US Federal indictments against his principal dating back to the 1990s were “against his bank accounts, NOT against him as a person.” Even kindergarten pupils know that bank accounts do not exist on their own; they are owned and operated by individuals who are liable for unlawful transactions therein.
Mr. Keyamo started out as a pupil lawyer at the chambers of the illustrious Gani Fawehinmi. It took young Festus all of six months to accomplish his mission at Fawehinmi’s. Wearing the toga of a “Gani boy,” he quickly moved on to set up his own chambers and never missed an opportunity to drop the Gani Fawehinmi name as he scrambled to gain attention. He began to court the media by granting “explosive” interviews, mostly against the authorities of the day. He identified with the civil rights community. People who know him well say his legal practice was at best average.
He made his way to becoming a Senior Advocate of Nigeria more by a false and oversized media image as a “human rights lawyer” than by the quality of his litigation portfolio. And once he captured that object of his desire, it was time to ditch human rights activism for the more lucrative life of defending the criminal enterprise of persons in power.
It was a detour that unveiled the real man. Keyamo went into politics and took up even the most menial jobs for his new paymasters, enough to earn nomination as Junior Minister of Labor & Productivity. In that capacity, along with his boss, Dr Chris Ngige, his greatest accomplishment has been to oversee an 8 month long industrial action by lecturers of Nigerian public universities. It was the longest and most crippling ever. And it ended in a bitter fiasco.
It is for his next promotion that Keyamo is currently throwing brickbats at those who want to clean up the mess he and his bosses made. No one can deny that he is working really hard.
It is said that an educated criminal is the greatest danger to society. Not only does he get away with his crimes for longer, he becomes a role model for those who don’t know better. Keyamo sounds clever. But his is a cleverness that is bereft of character, moral or ethical fibre. Here is a man who is willing to throw his country under the bus in defense of his party for a morsel of bread.
Does Keyamo pay any attention to the name and legacy he will be leaving behind? He is like a man hell-bent on eating everything in the pot and leaving nothing for the children. Is he aware that in the future, his descendants and relatives may consider changing their last name to avoid the disgust and opprobrium he is gleefully cultivating?
I find no better way to end this essay than in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German social psychologist best known for his Theory of Stupidity: “This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.”
Victor Anazonwu is a communication strategist and author based in Lagos
