SPEECHES

Nsukka Address on Election Day

Speech By

U.S. Consul General Brian L. Browne

Monday, March 26, 2007

It is a pleasure and honor to be with you today on the storied campus of Nsukka.  This University has a tradition of academic excellence and of contribution to the overall progress of this Nation. 

 It makes me feel good to be with you, you who are the keepers of this fine academic tradition.  I thank you for the warmth of your welcome and for also finding the time to listen to me today.

I would however, be remiss if I were to allow the happiness that I feel at being with you somehow deflect me in any way from what I came here to do.

You see, I came here to speak to you about the great issue of the day---the upcoming elections and Nigeria’s democracy.  Everyday and every event in our lives, they have their importance.

Yet some moments and some occurrences are laden with greater import than others.  Around some events and times will pivot the life of the individual, a community, a nation. 

All who are in Nigeria, all who are Nigerian, all of us who care about Nigeria, we now approach such a moment and event.

Thus let me speak to you with a seriousness that befits the moment and the deed Nigeria must soon mount the platform to encounter its destiny.

Now before I go any further and before I begin this address in earnest, permit me to establish some ground rules.  Ground rule number one.

I am not here to commend or condemn any particular person, party or organization.  What I am here to do is to talk about democracy and governance.  As long as the topic is democracy and governance, I will travel far and wide.  I will go almost anywhere.  I will accept almost any invitation, at any time. 

I will go far and wide, above, below and beyond because I believe democracy and good governance are that important. 

In its best sense, democracy is the application of our collective wisdom to minimize our worst vices and cultivate our best virtues. 

As such, it is a fragile yet strong thing.  Fragile in the sense that if you misuse or fail to treasure it, it will fade and depart.  It is strong in the sense that if you nurture it, it will nurture you. 

Strong in the sense that once you truly taste of its freedoms and attendant benefits, it will pull you to it as if it were an irresistible force of nature like gravity.  And thus with gravity will I speak today.

Consequently, look not at my presence here as meaning anything but my support for democracy.  Here let me make a confession.  Before I said I support no one and no party.  That was not completely true.  There actually are some people I do support. 

However, if you want to find out who they are, don’t run to any candidate’s or elected officials’ office.  You will neither find me nor a trace of me there, not a calling card nor even my fingerprints upon a coffee cup.  Don’t go to any party headquarters.  My footprints will neither be there. 

I am singularly disinterested in who beats whom in the political game.  What has my abiding interest is that Nigeria continues to improve its ability to look after the well being of those of its citizens who do not have the capacity to fully look after themselves.

If you want to know whom I support what you must do is leave the comfort of this hall and go out to embrace the real Nigeria. 

For if you want to see whom I support, go to the schools and see children struggling to learn to read and write in hopes that what they might learn might just open the door to a more hopeful future.

Go to the marketplace.  See the somber-eyed mother with too many needs to meet but too little money with which to meet them. 

Go to the farms.  See people working and tilling the soil from sun up to sun down in order to scratch out a living, to feed their family and feed this nation. 

Go to the bus stops.  See the men and women who wake up tired in the morning and come home weary from work late at night.  These are the people I support.  For these people are the backbone of this country and its democracy.

The second ground rule that I must establish is that I am not here to talk in the usual diplomatic parlance of smooth-edged phrases and words of gentle and often ambivalent definition.

The day is too short and the issues are too compelling for such finery.  What I say will be as plain and direct as I can make it so that there can be no mistake about what I have said and what it has meant.

There will be no double or hidden meaning so subtract nothing from what I say.  Neither add to it.  What is said shall be no more yet no less than what you hear. 
Here, I shall make some uncomfortable statements but I ask you to hold to the belief that I say them not because I derive some perverse satisfaction in making you uncomfortable. 

But I say them with the knowledge that if you genuinely care about this nation you should already be uncomfortable with some of the trends in the political arena.

Instead of me standing at this podium, imagine that I was a friend whom you had invited to your home for dinner. 

Now, imagine this friend sits down at the table and notices the ceiling above the table needs repair and is, in fact on the verge of collapse. 

Instead of warning you, this friend hurriedly gobbles his meal then quickly departs your home before calamity strikes and the roof caves in.  I say to you that person is a bad friend and a great fraud.

A true friend would draw your attention to the trouble and try to help you fix it.  At the very least he would alert you and help move you and your meal out of potential harm’s way. 

Only then will he sit back down with you to eat in safety and in the warmth and security of a friendship that had just been weighed in the balance and had showed itself to be more than sufficient.

As a representative of the U.S. Government, I stand before you as this type of friend.  The type of friend who wants Nigeria to understand and soberly accept its profound responsibilities to itself and its neighbors.

A friend who wants Nigeria to establish itself as a citadel of prosperity, justice, peace and hope for its citizens and the rest of Africa.

A friend who hopes for Nigeria to take its rightful place in the community of nations as a major voice and an exemplar of the goodness and greatness that can come from and be established on the African continent.

Should Nigeria do what is right and become what it should be, Nigeria has the opportunity to not only advance but also to become a model from which other nations and future generations will take inspiration and guidance. 

Yet should Nigeria fail in this democratic enterprise, succeeding generations will look back and be perplexed. 

They will be baffled at how, given the corps of talented people and the store of resources Providence has given Nigeria, we let this nation run aground. 

To be found waiting at this moment would be akin to allowing your destiny to pass through your fingers as if it were the wind you are attempting to hold, but it is not the wind.

It is our very selves.  So hold fast.  We must act wisely and well to justify why we have been placed here in this special hour; nothing less than the future depends on it.

Now, when conducted in the best sense of the democratic spirit, elections should be contests where the candidates primarily focus on trying to convince the electorate that they are the best person for the job and not spend the majority of their time trying to paint their opponent as someone whose membership in the human race is suspect and in need of close scrutiny.

Yet, during this election season we have had too many bullets fired, knives drawn, cars burned and homes invaded for this to be considered the way the politics should be conducted.

In a country with so much talent and resources, politics should be a vocation of innovation, of cumulative advance as Nigeria stacks progress upon earlier progress. 

Instead however, the terms “the politics of disorder and the disorder of politics” can be used interchangeably to describe too much of what is now taking place in too many areas across the land. 

In the best sense of the word, politics is supposed to order society.  The political system is supposed to be a venue where problems get solved equitably so that society and all of its component parts can progress in some degree of harmony and reason.

However, it seems that politics here have been mutated into its opposite.  Instead of a way of solving problems, politics has often become a problem itself.  Instead of improving people’s lives, it is claiming lives.

Now that the election season is upon us, we all have a choice to make.  Will our politics be small and selfish or will it be visionary and will it be beneficial to those whom we purport to serve?

Thus, may we answer them with all the wisdom that we humanly and humanely can summon.

Success in elections implies a certain level of cunning and competitiveness.  These attributes are not bad but they are also not sufficient once the election is over and the real hard work begins.

You see good governance requires both more and less than elections.  You see good governance requires wisdom and self restraint.  
Once in office, one must bear in mind that it is not all the things which you are able to do that you should do.  Unfortunately, you will also learn that not all the things that you should do, you can do.

This is a complex balance and therefore you must seek office holders, who not only realize there is a balance to be struck but who also faithfully pursue that balance.

Look at how we view the Nigerian elections.  All of us are guilty of focusing on the top candidates and parties.  But is the election solely about these famous personalities?  If so, we have all already lost the election regardless of our partisan or nonpartisan stripes.

No, for Nigeria to move forward the election cannot be about the well-known, the famous, and even the infamous.  It is more about the welfare and aspirations of the anonymous farmer, cabdriver, seamstress and school teacher.  The election is about not forgetting the forgotten.

It is about whether the mass of the population can wake up and work more productively for their families.  It is about whether parents can look at their sons and daughters in the evening and tell them that tomorrow will be better and mean what they stated as the truth and not just something one says just so their children can go to bed without tears.

Consequently, as we look at the political leaders and their quest for elective office, let’s not lose sight of the real object of the elections which is not to obtain office but to bring good governance and a better life to those anonymous people we will never know.

While we do not know them, the election should be about providing them the basic social services of health, education and well being, about building the physical infrastructure of roads, ports, power and water that will improve their daily lives while also establish the platform for the country’s growth and the expansion of employment opportunities.

With regard to the elections, I have heard many people say that Nigeria is at a crossroads.  If only it were that easy.  If at a crossroads, a traveler only has to decide which split in the road to take, then resume his journey.

Yet, the questions facing Nigeria are much more existential.  Nigeria is battling to define itself.  Nigeria is fighting itself for its very soul. 

Will Nigeria continue to emerge from the mire and fog of military rule and its attendant ills which benefited a small few, but which also failed to redeem the many promises made to the rest of the populace?

Will Nigeria emerge a better, healthier nation of expanding political and economic freedom for all, regardless of ethnicity, religion, and region, or will its progress be throttled so that it slides back into the costly ways of an unproductive past?  This is nothing short of a contest for the collective spirit of the nation.

One should turn to face reality squarely when it has tapped you on the shoulder. So let’s face it.  There are some people who have benefited from the way things were.  They are not eager to see Nigeria as it should be.  Having taken full advantage of the imbalances of the past, they seek to resurrect that past.

Fortunately, there seems to be a growing chorus of people, including members of the press, who realize that a system which provides the opportunity of freedom, prosperity and fulfillment for all is the best insurance for securing these things for themselves. 

While the numbers of people moving to this side are swelling, none should rejoice just yet.

For, although the numbers grow, their collective voice is still feint and uncertain.  If we are not careful, they could still be drowned out or muted by the heralds of yesterday who do not want to see Nigeria develop into a more economically and politically just society.

Let me talk to the youth who are interested in politics.  You represent a new day so do not let yourself get tangled in the web of the past. 

Some political operatives will come to you and seek to use your energy to canvas your neighborhood and get out the word about their campaign.  Such activity is the fair province of politics and should you decide to join in such an enterprise, no one can fault you.

However, other politicians will beckon you into the shadows or come to you in the still of the night to entice you into a conspiracy to undermine democracy by ostensibly engaging in it.

These are the people who will ask you not to persuade people but to intimidate them.  They will ask you to fight, claw, hector and literally chase their opponents out of the race if not out of town.  For your services rendered, they will give you a fist full of Naira and a bottle of drink.

Yet, what manner of payment is this?  By engaging in this you mortgage your future, for you put democracy on the brink and nothing that stands on a brink can prosper.  Also remember that those who ask you to use force and violence for them today may use it against you if ever you disagree or part ways with them tomorrow.

Whosoever seeks to engage you in this electoral violence has not your or the public’s best interest in mind. 

This person who uses dirty tricks to get into office will find it difficult to end his reliance on these connivances once in office.  He will also believe that his opponents will use all manner of tricks to oust him. 

Such a person, although the alleged victor, remains insecure and frightened.  His bed may be high and soft, but he sleeps with one eye open and one foot on the floor.  I tell you good policies aimed at creating a better future, aimed at improving employment, education, and infrastructure can never be born in such an atmosphere.

As youth, you cannot allow yourself to be tools of the cynical.  As youth, you are supposed to be the voice of ideas, the voice of tomorrow.  So lend your voice and ideas to politics but never lend your fists to it. 

Here I want to state something very clearly.  We have less than three weeks to go before the elections.  The tendency will be for candidates and their partisans to become tense, anxious and on edge.  Everything will be done with more energy and seriousness.

Because so much is at stake and so much time, energy, effort and money have already been invested, the temptation will be there to use violence to help secure your victory.  The temptation will exist to strike first under the assumption that your opponent is likewise planning to strike you.

Yet, if you are truly a leader of people you must first learn how to handle yourself.  One should not succumb to every temptation.

Violence has no role in elections and democracy.  It destroys people, property and the democratic process.  Wherever you see electoral violence, you will also witness the retreat of democracy. 

Instead of a celebration of democracy, elections that are marred by too much violence can mean the defeat of democracy.  Who so ever expresses the use of violence as an electoral tool, is someone you should think hard about supporting. 

Putting a wolf in charge of a flock of sheep does not turn the wolf into a shepherd.  It only makes for an unfortunate flock of sheep.

I would also be remiss if I did not say anything about the role of women in politics.  More women need to get involved.  I realize the social-cultural as well as the financial barriers that lie before you.  But you are half of the population. 

Your greater inclusion will significantly increase the talent pool of candidates.

More importantly, women should enter politics not to act as carbon copies of their male counterparts but to re-shape the political discourse.  Generally, women have to deal with the tough family issues more intimately than men.

Thus, your inclusion in politics should also increase the pool of good ideas about governance of this region, its states and local communities.  Not only should your greater participation in the political arena help advance the battle against sex discrimination, it also should bring issues like education, health care and other social services squarely into the political foreground. 

If you do this, you would have served two most noble purposes – the strengthening of good governance and the progress of a nation. 

During the pre-election period where we are excited, voluble and agitated, we must remember elections are supposed to be a debate about ideas much as it is a contest between individuals. 

In this vein, remember that your political opponents are human beings with brains and reason.  They cannot be wrong on all issues all the time no more than you can be right all the time. 

Your opponents are entitled to respect and dignity.  Listen to them, give them adequate political and economic space.  Do not try to humiliate them.

Always remember you are not perfect.  Even the good decisions you make are not perfect and have their flaws.  Often the solutions of today’s problems are the parent’s of tomorrow’s challenges.  No one has a monopoly on truth and knowledge. 

Accept in good faith the constructive criticism of your political opponents.  To be a good democrat, you must have an open mind, a soft heart and a tough hide that can take the scratch of criticism.

If fact, in the days before the election and at all times after the election, you should create a venue where responsible members of the opposition can visit and raise their concerns with you.

Those who win the election must understand that once elected, they not only serve those who supported you but those who did not.  They must understand that although elections are driven by competition, good governance requires conciliation.  They must extend a hand to their former competitor. 

Remember that you may be on top today but nothing built of man is permanent.  The situation will change.  Better that you treat a man well when you could have injured him. 

When that man rises to power, your previous treatment of him will put you in good stead on that day.  Treating others justly when you have the power to do otherwise is your best insurance for fair treatment should power ever be taken from you.

Now let’s look at the other side of the electoral equation, the person who gets fewer votes.  It is equally important how that person acts.  Of course, if you have a legitimate gripe about the vote tabulation, pursue that grievance through legal channels.  That is your right and duty.

However, if and when it has been genuinely established that you lost, you must accept defeat gracefully.  You have lost the election but have not been banished from the human race.  All is not forsaken. 

You still have an important role to play.  The more you play it wisely is the better you position yourself for the subsequent election.  The thing to do is not to try to undermine everything your opponent does.

For now, he has a constitutional mandate that must be respected.  To actively and on all accounts undermine him, is to disrespect that mandate.

It is to disrespect the constitution which, while the election was pending, you had promised to serve with all your heart down to the last drop of your blood.  Before the election, sweet words flowed from your tongue.  Now that you lost, what you say is al fire and acid?  Which one of these people are you?  The correct answer is that you should be neither.

You should be clear-headed about your chances before the election.  You should be calm and composed no matter the outcome.  As the leader of the opposition, you have a solemn duty. 

You should criticize the office holder when wrong but, in all fairness, you should not try to tear him down, for that office holder now represents the entire people. 

If you tear him down, you tear down a little of yourself.  Criticize, yes, destroy, no.  Every now and then, begrudgingly acknowledge and admit when he does something right.  This is good politics.  It is even better governance.  Such a sign of maturity will win more points for you than any negative words you could say.

Both winners and losers, you must realize that although you might not be best friends you ought not be the bitterest foes.  If both of you sought office to help the community and not just to help yourselves, there should be some common ground upon which you can meet and establish a decent relationship.

In conclusion, the sands of the hourglass are dwindling.  This means Nigeria’s encounter with destiny approaches.  The day is ending and the shadows cast are long and some are disturbing.  You can try to run and hide but these shadows will follow.

Some of the shadows are those of ghosts of an unregenerate past that must be exorcised.  They are apparitions of what was done that should not have been done.  Greed, abuse, inequality lurk among them.

These are the ghosts of the hoarding of opportunity and of privilege for so long for so few people that both justice and opportunity were turned into something they are not.  These ghosts must be excised from Nigeria’s pathway.

Yet some of these shadows are not cast by the past or its ghosts.  Some are cast by our very selves and our conduct in the present.

These shadows are the things we do to ourselves that should not be done – violence, corruption, religious, ethnic and regional prejudice darken what should be an otherwise hopeful political landscape.

Indifference, inequality and poverty and too many closed doors do not let the sun shine into the hopes and aspirations of too many of your countrymen.

These challenges are not ghosts to exorcise but are extant traits that must be cured.  What you do in the next few weeks will determine if you are moving toward a cure or toward greater complication.  Much hangs in the balance.  Hold strong to the better part of yourselves.  Don’t let the shadows frighten you into becoming one of them.

Thank you.