Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, last week to meet President Umaru Yar’Adua on matters relating to the military coup in Guinea. As expected, reporters engaged him in an interview, but the brief chat produced a strange viewpoint. The minister left nobody in doubt that he was irritated by the way Nigerians reacted to the outcome of the recently-held presidential election in Ghana. No sooner had the last word on that question been mentioned than the minister responded by saying: “Let it be on record that while I congratulate the people of Ghana for the success of the elections, I take umbrage at our self-deprecating tendency here in Nigeria where we always think we must learn lessons from everywhere else, but not from our country. “People have said we should learn from Obama; we should learn from Ghana and I think somebody also talked about learning from Kenya. The grass is greener everywhere, but Nigeria; it seems to be the home of the devil himself. Nothing is right about this country; either with the politicians, the media and religious leaders. Nobody is doing anything right; we must keep learning from everywhere. I am sick and tired of that. This is a beautiful country of wonderful people; of great possibilities and great traditions. All we have to do is for all us to feel that we have a stake here and organise ourselves as stakeholders and hold the people we have elected accountable.” Many people believe that Maduekwe is supposed to be a critical minister in this administration. He is supposed to be one of the most visible ministers in view of the fact that he has to represent the president at most of the international functions. His comments on foreign matters carry heavy weight. Perhaps, this is why analysts said h is reaction to the Ghanaian elections should be seriously considered. Given this, therefore, the minister’s comments, being the reflection of the present government, is seen by many as showing how the administration views things differently citizens of this country. Having got the government’s position, it is clear from comments of Nigerians on Ghana’s election that the government and the people are not operating on the same frequency. Analysts have contended that many enlightened Nigerians who have commented on the election in Ghana have admitted that not only Nigeria, but also other countries of Africa, has a lot to learn from the smooth conduct of the election. For example, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2007 elections, Professor Pat Utomi, while congratulating Ghana and its electoral institution, suggested that Nigeria might need technical assistance from the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) in subsequent elections in Nigeria. “I would like to congratulate the Ghanaian people for doing Africa proud by holding credible and fair elections that would help in removing the shame that has characterised elections in Africa recently. We also hope that whoever is considering the Electoral Reform Committee's report should pay attention to what has happened in Ghana to see what can be learnt from it,” he said. President of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, also shared Utomi’s position. She also congratulated Ghanaians on the “testy election that stretched the democratic fibre of their country to its limit. By far, the greatest hero of this successful project is President John Kufuor who did not behave like most incumbents in Africa. He had the chance to turn Ghana to another headache in Africa; he could have asked the EC boss to falsify the figures for his party, but he declared that elections in Ghana were not ‘do-or-die’ affair.” Pundits believe that there is hardly any rational explanation for Maduekwe’s anger with the way Nigerians assessed the conduct of the Ghanaian election. They argued that this was not the first time that the government would be maintaining a contrary opinion to the people. The minister’s position, they said, was akin to the seeming disconnection between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the citizenry which became pronounced when the party recently said it would rule for 60 years, whereas, the people appeared to have been fed up with its government. Utomi said people like him did not bother to react to the statement credited to the PDP chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, because it smacked of lack of understanding of the working of democracy. “When Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, the PDP chairman, said the party would be in power for 60 years, I did not bother to join the list of those criticising him because though it was a natural thing to say, it was a comment showing of lack of sophistication and an understanding that democracy of its own tries to change prolonged absolute power,” he said. However, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja and National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop John Onaiyekan, was blunt as he berated the Yar’Adua-led government for not being open to all and sundry, noting that expectation was that the government should, by now, be ruling beyond party lines. The CAN president said it was undemocratic for the ruling political party “to continue to insult the nation that it would rule for 60 years in the face of the myriad of problems that had been left unattended to.” Onaiyekan advised the opposition parties in the country to remain steadfast and let the people have choices in the next elections, while decrying the action of politicians who changed political parties because they lost elections. According to observers, the PDP mentality, as represented by the utterances of Maduekwe and Ogbulafor, represents a grave political danger for the nation. The ruling party, having succeeded in frustrating the people, denying them the freedom of association in politics, is going further to restrict people from also enjoying freedom of speech. To Chief Maduekwe, Nigerians who saw Ghana’s election as worth emulating must not express such views. In a country like Nigeria, where everybody depends on government for daily economic activities, it is not difficult to take advantage of the people. Those who took exception to Maduekwe’s utterances said once the people lose the capacity to express independent or personal opinion, then, the polity would be iin danger. The Federal Government was reported to have sent a delegation to Ghana. The delegation, led by National Security Adviser, General Abdullahi Mukhtar, was to intervene in what the Nigerian government thought would be a political debacle in that country. The message from President Yar'Adua to his Ghanaian counterpart, Mr. Kufuor, was that Nigeria was deeply interested in the political development in the country. But by the way Ghanaians conducted the elections themselves, it is clear that they are ahead of Nigeria and do not need help. Watchers of political development in both countries have held that Ghana had proved that a politician has electoral worth whether he is in the ruling party or in the opposition. Ogbulafor, they maintain, does not believe in that, otherwise, he would not have left the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) for the PDP. Zamfara State governor, Alhaji Mahmud Shinkafi, would not have also defected from the ANPP to the PDP. On the scale, both Nigeria and Ghana have transited from military to civil rule. But this is where the similarity ends. Ghana has gone ahead of Nigeria in conducting free elections. It has also transited from ruling party to opposition twice. The most convincing proof that Ghana’s democracy is more stable than that of Nigeria is the long tortuous process it went through and came out successful. Unfortunately, the way the PDP goes about this issue appears to be giving many people the fear that there may not be hope that the future is bright. If with all these, Chief Maduekwe does not believe that Nigeria has something to learn from Ghana, then, Nigeria’s democracy is in deep trouble. Source: Nigeria Tribune