Nigeria may need its own Jerry Rawlings to cut through the clutter

On Saturday, Ghana’s Electoral Commission announced the results of the country's drawn-out presidential election. John Atta-Mills, the country's opposition leader and a former vice president, defeated the incumbent president's candidate very narrowly in a classic photo-finish race. By this feat, Ghana has declared again that it is way ahead of Nigeria in governance, democracy and the rule of law, and its leaders have proved to be far more civilised than their opposite numbers in Nigeria. But it should also be our collective shame as Nigerians. Aren't we supposed to be superior to Ghana? Maybe, it is time for Ghanaians to also coin a disparaging phrase, "Nigeria must go".

The final election that decided the winner was a run-off. In Nigeria, we have never had a run-off. With the PDP in power at the centre, it is permanently a landslide victory even though, most of the time, its candidates are unpopular. The "winner" wins even if the people don't vote. Dead people also vote in Nigeria.

In the 2003 presidential election, even though both Marshal Harry and Bola Ige, both ciritical opposition leaders, had been deliberately murdered for the purpose of the election, the detailed results showed that both deceased politicians voted for President Olusegun Obasanjo on election day. Apart from that fact, there were other evidences of many polling booths recording 100% turnout of voters, signifying that no one travelled, no one fell ill and no one died between the voter registration period and voting day. Yet, the courts, both the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court, did not view these as sufficiently fraudulent to annul the election.

Were he a Nigerian, Atta-Mills would have had no chance in hell of winning. The president's handpicked candidate, Nana Addo-Akufo (like Umaru Yar'Adua was Obasanjo's handpicked candidate) would have won by a landslide even if no one voted. Addo-Akufo would have been declared winner willy-nilly with the inspector-general of police promising fire and brimstone for whoever tried to "disrupt" the process. And if this were in Nigeria, Addo-Akufo, who would have been preparing to be sworn in as president on Wednesday, would have obtained billions of naira stolen from government coffers to bribe both the Appeal and Supreme Court judges. And you know what, the judges would take the money and declare that Addo-Akufo was indeed the winner of the election. In fact, if the judges were adept bargainers, they might even get more than monetary benefits. Some Appeal Court judges might even get promoted to the Supreme Court and the lucky son of the country's chief justice might even get appointed commissioner in his state. But that would not be termed corruption or conflict of interest. It would be solely because the chief justice's son was eminently qualified for the job.

Ghanaian leaders have, in fact, shown class over their Nigerian counterparts. After exhausting his two terms, President John Kufuor did not even as much as suggest a tenure extension. He did not say the election was a do-or-die affair for him, and even when it was obvious by last weekend that his candidate was likely to lose, even though he had been favoured to win initially, he (the president) started appealing to him not to challenge the outcome in court in order not to create a constitutional crisis. They are obviously operating in another world. This is their fifth successful presidential election since the military handed over power to civilians in 1992.

Credible elections, as I have always declared on this page, is not nuclear science. It is simply about honesty and the love of nation over self. That is what Ghana has shown Nigeria. All the international observers said the elections were credible and devoid of fraud; they are the same election monitors who declared that Nigeria's 2007 elections were the most fraudulent they ever witnessed.

By the way, our own General Yakubu Gowon, who led the ECOWAS election observers, declared in his trademark humility that there was a lot Nigeria should learn from Ghana. But that is putting it charitably.

Ghana got this far because they had a Jerry Rawlings. Nigeria may need its own Jerry Rawlings to cut through the clutter, if rogue politicians insist on keeping us down.