2019 Polls: Nigerian politicians, marching as to war

Hardly can any other phrase capture the build-up to the forthcoming general polls better than the caption of this piece. As is public knowledge, the trending features of the build-up in what is officially Nigeria’s election season, manifest in varying activities and sequences. In one vein is the series of soap box appearances by various […]

Hardly can any other phrase capture the build-up to the forthcoming general polls better than the caption of this piece. As is public knowledge, the trending features of the build-up in what is officially Nigeria’s election season, manifest in varying activities and sequences. In one vein is the series of soap box appearances by various candidates, who put up their best faces for the media to capture for projection and promise unfulfillable promises of heaven on earth to the electorate.  This is even as behind the glare of the public, they have at their beck and call, heavily armed private armies equipped with sophisticated weapons. Taking a cue from their politician sponsors, the foot soldiers also consider the season as the days of the long knives when scores will be settled by any means fair or foul, with real and imagined foes. To these foot soldiers or better still, ‘macho jobmen’, the period is seen largely as one of showdowns, featuring the dismantling of empires hostile to their sponsors, (call it ”falling the foes”), and raising of ‘friendly’ new thrones. Seen in context, even a wide cross section of the current crop pf political leaders in the country came to power exactly through the instrumentality of political violence, some having directly killed some person(s), personally, to be in office. Hence to such, the ongoing syndrome of warring to secure political offices remains normal.

Virtually every state of the federation is steeped in acts of pre-election violence, leading to untimely deaths, loss of limbs and property as well as fear in less endowed aspirants to political offices, who now tread with caution or even abandon their political ambitions out rightly. In fact, the level of acrimony and associated mobilization of resources for pre-election violence across the country is so massive that even a fraction of such would have put the troublesome Boko Haram insurgents in the North East, on the run.

The spate of pre-election violence is not confined to street corners or highways, but has expectedly claimed the theatres of formal political rallies such as the event places and sports stadia, where supporters of rival aspirants in the same party slug it out. Typical of such developments, witnesses are left to wonder if political parties now have a new definition beyond the classical one of platforms on which persons of similar political persuasions gather to pursue goals of common interest. A typical case pre-election violence was the recent rally of the Lagos chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) where the loyalists (thugs?) of two rival camps clashed with knives and other dangerous weapons with casualties including a prominent actor in enforcing political loyalties for the undisputed godfather of Lagos State politics – Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

While the increasing wave of bitterness and associated violence in the build up to the forthcoming polls, remain traditional in the country’s political history and culture, having been perennially acknowledged as a systemic progression in error for the country, it is disappointing that we have to travel this route again this time. Can the country never grow beyond making every pre-election season one of marching as to war?

After the 2015 polls whose fortunes were largely enriched by the pacifist disposition of then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, expectations were high that subsequent polls starting from 2019, would build on the gains from that one.  From the trending events and developments such expectations are now clearly the stuff of pipe dreams. Rather than abate, the syndrome of pre-election acrimony and associated violence is waxing stronger by the day.

Unmistakably, there are grave consequences beyond the gains of transient political supremacy which the feuding goons earn for their sponsors, as well as the price which the former pay in loss of limbs and lives. Ultimately, the victim however remains the entire country Nigeria, in more ways than one. Firstly, the syndrome distorts the political conversation with not a few political actors, especially the refined ones, remaining restrained from engaging in elaborate exploration of the political options for moving the country to the next level. As far as many of them are concerned, any elaborate deliberations with respect to the political options for driving the country forward in the present circumstances, constitutes a parley with the deaf and unfeeling. That is even when they have an opportunity to ventilate their views.

Secondly, the syndrome has vitiated the sanctity of, as well as punctured the bubble built around the principles of freeness and fairness in the coming polls, in spite of the copious assurances by the authorities that voters’ security and safety would be guaranteed. Yet and thirdly, the ambience of violence creates an unwelcome distraction for the security establishment whose operational assets become stretched often too thinly to be adequately effective in accommodating election-related contingencies, across the country.

Meanwhile, as odious as the situation is, hardly is it considered that these electoral contingencies are essentially avoidable if only the political conversation was rendered healthier even if it is through a little shade of self-restraint by the political elite who enjoy exclusive preserve over the conversation.  Is it therefore   wrong to contend that the political elite remains solely culpable for the high tendency of violence in Nigerian politics?

Incidentally, the proclivity for impunity and violence in Nigerian politics also offers unpalatable rewards for the sponsoring elite, with the Rivers State as a typical example. At the last count the playout of the impunity game features the state chapter of the APC paying the price of unwitting self-denial. By its own fault, the party is presently under the hammer of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which has delisted from the forth coming polls, all candidates of the party from contesting for seats of Governor, Senators, and Members of the House of Representatives as well as of the Rivers State House of Assembly.

In reaction to the INEC ban on all of its candidates from contesting in the polls, sundry acrimonious statements which condemn the INEC and contain veiled threats to resist the Commission’s action have been flying around. Apparently goaded by a sense of invincibility given that the APC controls the federal government, some of its members find it difficult to accept the reality that mischief by even a favoured prince, could often attract dire consequences.

For the wise among the APC faithful, this is the time to jump ship and find accommodation with any of the up-coming parties among which in the River State today, the Accord Party of Nigeria with its governorship candidate as Barrister Dumo Lulu-Briggs, remains the most viable option.