Feelers from Washington as reported by the “Voice of Nigeria” on 24 April 2007 were not different from the picture
painted in the EU report:
The US State Department, citing initial reports, says Nigeria’s weekend presidential election, which was
won by Katsina State Governor Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, was deeply flawed. Bush Administration
officials, analyzing reports from election observers stopped short of requesting a re-run and nullification
of results, but urged Nigerians to resolve their grievances peacefully according to Nigerian law.
Nigeria's own Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka on 7 June 2007 gave a pathetic testimony before the United States House
Foreign Affairs Committee:
I assume that it is universally agreed that what passed for elections in Nigeria in May 2007 was an abuse
of the word ‘democracy’. Assessment of the scale of abuse may differ – for instance, the Jimmy Carter
Centre monitoring group reported that there were just two states – Kano and Lagos - that could be
credited with having held free and fair elections, while I would perhaps be a little more generous and
concede five – Abia, Bauchi and Zamfara - as having also reflected, fairly accurately, the electoral will of
the people. Five out of thirty-six, that is, one out of seven is generally considered an abysmal failure. In
an examination, this would qualify for a Repeat, or expulsion from an institution. A government that is the
product of such woeful democratic collapse belongs in a special category of its own, one that defies
definition.
The nation is at her first breaking point since the Biafran Civil War, poised between making a clean break
with the past or breaking up in all but name. That latter, undesired scenario can only be prevented by
giving voice to the much abused humanity that ekes out a meager existence within that nation space.
Nevertheless, in an interview reported on 4 April 2005 by the “Chinua Achebe Foundation” Series 3, Chief Ernest
Shonekan appears to have hit the nail on the head on the root cause of electoral misadventure in Nigeria:
The problem with elections in Nigeria seems to be connected with the lack of a democratic culture, and
this is, itself, a product of the prolonged period of military rule. With a well-developed democratic
culture, it will become clear that winning and losing cannot be divorced from democracy. The current
approach is to win at all cost. And therefore the electoral process is compounded. I consider this as part of
the teething problems associated with democracy.
7 / 20
Convention