By Salisu Suleiman
Laurent Gbagbo, Cote d’Ivoire’s president for the past 10 years, should know better. He is a professor of history. When his predecessor in office Robert Guei rigged elections and attempted to prolong his stay in office, he ended up dead – shot, like a dog, on the streets of Abidjan.
Propelled by inordinate ambition, Gbagbo has chosen to forget that lesson. But it is not what happens to him that matters. The tragedy is that he has allowed his ambition to destroy the fragile peace that was beginning to emerge in Cote d’Ivoire.
The crisis in Cote d’Ivoire and possible return to armed conflict has useful lessons for Nigeria. The two countries have some similarities; both are multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Muslims, who make up about 38 percent of Cote d’Ivoire, are mostly from the north while Christians, who make up about 32 percent of the population, are mostly found in the south. Eleven percent of the population practice African religions while about 9 percent are free-thinkers.
Until the death of the country’s founding President, Félix Houphouët Boigny, Cote d’Ivoire was one of the most stable and prosperous African states and had one of the largest expatriate populations of any African country. This was to change when Boigny died. The then Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara could not become president, so the then Parliamentary Speaker Henri Konan Bedie succeeded Boigny. Bedie then masterminded constitutional amendments, which excluded large sections of the population from participating in the electoral process. Many were denied citizenship.
The political instability that followed led to the first ever military coup in Cote d’Ivoire, and eventually a brief civil war. A peace accord was eventually signed, paving the way for a new constitution and a more inclusive political and electoral process.
Laurent Gbagbo, who swore himself in as president last week despite losing the election, had postponed elections several times and managed to hang on to power for 10 years, using a mixture of guile and delay tactics. Having waited since 1994 to actualise his ambition, Mr. Alassane Ouattara, the acknowledged winner of the elections, also swore himself in as president. So we are confronted with a country with two presidents. The situation is very volatile, especially as the former rebels from the north still have control of their arms and virtually control half of the country.
So what are the lessons for Nigeria and the rest of Africa?
The most important message must be that there are no perfect democracies anywhere in the world. Even Western democracy, particularly the American presidential model, which is very often our reference point, has significant drawbacks. A critical factor in the democratic experience is the inclusion of as many citizens as possible in the electoral process. If, in the process, certain compromises like zoning or rotation of offices have to come in, it may be worth paying that price in the interest of peace and stability.
I am not an advocate of zoning, but If Ivoiriens had zoned the presidency to one region, the sharp ethnic and religious connotations in the aftermath of the elections would be less obvious. The contest between Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae in 1999 is a case study. The same thing happened in 2007 when late president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua contested against Buhari and Atiku.
In the run up to next year’s presidential elections in Nigeria, the debate has assumed the discordant tunes of north/ south with a dangerous religious overcast. Every debate has been reduced to what the mother tongue of the president should be. At the moment, the undeclared battle between President Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku’s camps is degenerating to new lows. No prisoners are being taken. Every voice of reason is branded as being either ‘for us or against us’.
Today, every newspaper article or opinion piece is viewed as having been paid for by one camp or another. Responses by readers of articles published in various media are rabidly sectional. All voices of reason have been drowned by the north/ south divide. Few people have bothered to enquire about what the candidates have to offer. The overriding concern is: if he is from my zone, he should president (regardless of antecedents) and if he is from another zone, he cannot be president (regardless of merit).
Of course the concept of zoning only came about because of the ineptitude of successive governments and leaderships in Nigeria. But the lesson from Cote d’Ivoire must be clear: the personal ambitions of politicians should not accentuate ethnic and regional divisions in Nigeria’s political square.
