2015: Issues that will drive the election

As you read the news and listen to news commentaries these, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know which ones are genuine news stories and features and which ones are planted by these partisans.All things being equal, the presidential election will be a two horse-race between the ruling PDP and the APC, which was formed […]

As you read the news and listen to news commentaries these, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know which ones are genuine news stories and features and which ones are planted by these partisans.
All things being equal, the presidential election will be a two horse-race between the ruling PDP and the APC, which was formed from a merger of three regionally based parties – the Action Congress  of Nigeria (A.C.N), the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and a faction of the All progressives’ Grand Alliance (APGA). I use the words ‘all things being equal’ deliberately because whether the election will be truly competitive or another walkover for the ruling PDP will depend on how APC handles any grievances from its primaries to select its presidential flag bearer. If the primaries end on a note of acrimony that leads either to the splintering of the APC or its emasculation, the ruling PDP will win with an even greater margin than it did in 2011. But APC has so far defied all doomsday predictions. Few gave it any chance of lasting this long as a cohesive entity so it may yet disappoint the undertakers who have been eagerly waiting to sing its nunc dimittis.
The strength of the APC is not that it is offering anything new – because it is not. There is no material difference between the two main parties – the difference between the two is in fact like the difference between 12 and one dozen. The uniqueness of the APC however is that it is the first time in our political history that major opposition parties merged to make a bold bid for power. We may differ on what constitutes the glue that has held the party together this far – an alliance to ‘return’ power to the north, the desire to save Nigerians from PDP’s ‘misrule’ or  a shared dislike for President Jonathan and/or the PDP?
To underline the similarity between the two parties and that no one ought to shed any sweat for either, I read recently that the APC approached a Federal High court in Abuja, asking for the seats of the six Ekiti lawmakers who recently defected to the PDP to be declared vacant. I thought to myself:  Hang on; was it not the same APC who vehemently opposed the moves by the PDP to declare the seats of 37 members of the House of Representatives who defected to the APC vacant and also opposed calls by the PDP on Speaker Tambuwal to resign for defecting to the APC?
Given the similarity between the two parties, it may be germane to speculate on the issues which are likely to drive the campaigns of both parties (expressly or subtly)?

North-South, Christian-Muslim divide
The fault lines of region, ethnicity and religion run deep in Nigeria. Virtually every part of the country has institutionalized memory of hurt or feelings of injustice, which they often feel will be best addressed if one of their own wields power at the centre, preferably as the president. Similarly, there is a pervasive fear that the president of the country will use the powers of his office to privilege his region, ethnicity or religion— if not to punish or deliberately disadvantage others.
To allay fears of domination, most of the political parties have written or unwritten zoning and power rotation arrangements. However as with virtually everything Nigerian, solutions thrown at problems quickly become bigger problems than the original problems they were meant to address. And so it has been with the PDP’s zoning and power rotation arrangements. Feelings that Jonathan’s candidacy in the April 2011 elections cheated the north of its turn of producing the president for eight years is a very powerful sentiment among some voters in the north which will play a crucial role in the elections.
There is a contrarian sentiment among Jonathan’s supporters. For them, in the 39 years between the time the country gained independence in 1960 and the inauguration of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the north ruled the country for about 36 of those years and should therefore be patient for that “historical injustice” to be redressed first. This is another way of saying that they should be patient for President Jonathan, who is from the south-south – the area of the south that produces the oil on which the country depends for its revenue – to complete two terms of eight years.
Another powerful sentiment that will play crucial role in the elections is that in Nigeria’s peculiar mode of allocating privileges, the south is believed to have economic advantages over the north.  In fact Nigeria is sometimes described as a country that runs on two unequal wheels. In 2013 for instance,  the Russian investment banking firm Renaissance Capital produced a report titled, ‘Nigeria Unveiled’, which painted the picture of Nigeria’s economy as moving on two wheels – a thriving South with rising income, lower unemployment and better educated citizens and a poorer and less educated north (Business Day, 13 May 2013).  Based on this economic imbalance, the north’s dominance of power before 1999 was justified as a lever to balance the south’s assumed economic advantage. For those who believe in such power balance, the fact that the south has held the presidency for 12 of the 15 years the country has been under civil rule since 1999 means that the north has lost its leverage in the north-south equation.

Jonathan’s performance in office
Jonathan’s performance in office will be a campaign issue. However, measuring a regime’s performance in a highly polarized country like Nigeria is often a very subjective undertaking. For Jonathan’s supporters, he is the best President the country has ever had who has not only managed to grow the country’s economy by an average of six percent per year – despite the Boko Haram challenge –  but has also led it into being the largest economy in Africa and the 26th largest in the world. Jonathan’s supporters will also mention the regime’s success in containing the Ebola epidemic which seems to have become the template for confronting that challenge across the world.  For his critics however, his “incompetence” is reflected in the high unemployment rate, generalized insecurity in the country and the deepening suspicion among the different ethnic groups in the country.

Boko Haram/Insecurity
For his critics, Boko Haram is evidence of Jonathan’s incompetence while for his supporters, it is evidence of the siege laid on his government by powerful politicians from the Muslim north for it to fail.  In the unlikely event that the Boko Haram challenge is contained before the election, it will remove one arrow in the amour of Jonathan’s critics while for his supporters, it will add to his perception of competence.

Money and power of incumbency
Money plays a very important role in Nigerian politics – in campaigning, media reach and vote buying.  Here  the PDP has clear advantage: not only has it federal resources to use as patronage, it also controls key institutions like the police,  the army and the anti-corruption agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which  could be used to harass political enemies. Money alone however will not be sufficient to determine the outcome of the election. Where the voters are sufficiently animated by a certain cause, the role of money in influencing the outcome of an election will be muted. However where the elections are close, the role of money, especially in vote buying and other material inducements such as distribution of bags of rice, will become quite important in influencing the outcome.

Who wins?
APC’s strategists will be banking on harvesting rich votes from the populous northwest (18 million votes), north-east (11 million votes) and southwest (13.5 million votes) for victory. For PDP, it will be counting on the fact that it has more Governors (21 compared to APC’s 14 states) and hold good majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It has also made remarkable progress in the battle ground south-west where it now controls two states to APC’s five and has also shown strengths in Osun and Oyo. The PDP will equally be banking on a good showing in Lagos with sizeable Igbo population who are thought to be among President’s Jonathan’s key supporters.
To win APC will have to find a way of ensuring that voting takes place in all of the populous north-east, that the PDP does not get up to 20 percent of the votes in the North-west and North-east or alternatively that the APC does far better than is currently being projected for it in the South-west, south-south and the south-east.
Three months is more than a life time in politics. APC’s chances will largely depend on whether it emerges from its presidential primaries stronger or weaker and the narratives it will articulate to sentimentally draw voters to itself.
Given the centrality of the state and the role of state power in accumulation and the distribution of privileges, we will not need a soothsayer to know that that the outcome of the election will be contentious and that whoever loses will blame his faith on rigging or INEC’s partiality or incompetence.