E-Day is near

With tensions still so much in the air and many people in several Northern states, including Abuja, contriving all manner of excuses to bolt away in expectation of post-election violence, everyone is expectant and afraid. Many long for a return to ‘normalcy’ – even if that normalcy for the majority still means a life of […]

With tensions still so much in the air and many people in several Northern states, including Abuja, contriving all manner of excuses to bolt away in expectation of post-election violence, everyone is expectant and afraid. Many long for a return to ‘normalcy’ – even if that normalcy for the majority still means a life of tension-filled drudgery in several other ways.
Who will win?  Will there be post-election violence?  Will there be military coup? Will the election be cancelled or postponed again at the last minute? Will the election lead to the unravelling of the country? These are some of the questions that agitate the minds of Nigerians as they think of the 28 March elections. I will briefly reflect on these questions:
Who will win?
It is now axiomatic that this will be the most closely fought election in the country since this wave of liberal democracy started in 1999. Despite the rhetoric and grandstanding, a key driver of the elections will be identity politics – the North vs. South and Muslim vs. Christian divide. Ironically both the APC and the PDP like to underplay the salience of these sentiments. For instance, for many people in the North, if you are from the south and not professed supporter of Buhari, then you are accused of being an ethnic chauvinist (never mind that the person levelling the allegation most likely arrived at his or her own political preference through such regional and religious sentiments).  And if you are from the South (especially from the Southeast or South-South) and you are not seen to be overtly supporting Jonathan, then you are either a traitor or a sell-out.
In the North,  Jonathan’s non-acceptance there is largely due to a combination of two factors – Buhari’s cultic followership in the region and  the antipathy towards him  arising from a certain perception that his insistence in contesting the 2011 elections cheated the North of its ‘turn’ of producing a president of the country for eight years. Though regional and religious affiliation will play big roles, they will be insufficient to determine the outcome of the elections. Identity politics will interact with other factors to determine the outcome of election. For instance will certain powerful elites in the North who are believed to deeply distrust Buhari be willing to work to help him win or will they sabotage his efforts? My personal opinion is that Buhari will do better in both the North and South than he has ever done before because for the first time he is being provided with a ‘national’ political platform, which is bolstered by his   successful rebranding. Jonathan conversely is likely to do worse in both the North and South than he did in 2011. This however is not likely to automatically translate to victory for Buhari – contrary to what many Buhari supporters will believe.  The decisive issues here will be the size of Buhari’s over-performance in the North and South relative to Jonathan’s underperformance in the two zones, the power of incumbency and how it is deployed, the fear factor, the role of money and the cohesiveness of the critical elites in both the North and South. We can hypothesize that in areas where the voters are sufficiently animated by a cause (such as among Buhari’s Muslim supporters in the north), the power of incumbency and the role of money will not have any effect on the outcome. However the role money, the power of incumbency and the fear factor will all be crucial in areas where the election is likely to be highly competitive (such as south-west) or where the fear factor can be played up (such as South-south, the Southeast and the Southwest).
Will there be election violence?
Everyone’s prayer is that there shouldn’t be. However, judging by how high the stakes are for the two main parties and our political history, we can only hope for the best. How President Jonathan and Buhari handle the outcome of the election, including any dissatisfaction with any of the processes, will go a long way in determining whether there will be post- election violence or not. For instance it is generally believed that the manner in which Buhari structured his acceptance of the shift in the polls till 28 March helped a lot in preventing his supporters from taking the laws into their hands. So we will have to watch out for the utterances of both Buhari and President Jonathan once the elections are concluded and the results start to filter in. Similarly we will also keep an eye on how INEC handles the election. Jega’s INEC was accused by Buhari in 2011 of colluding with the PDP to rig him out. This time around, Jega is distrusted by PDP apparatchiks and some Southerners of trying to favour the North. If there are logistic challenges, especially with the controversial card readers, it may feed into the conspiracy theory that Jega is surreptitiously working for APC. During the Anambra Governorship election in 2013, the APC used the logistic challenges that marred the election to conclude that INEC colluded with APGA to rig its candidate out. Jega should understand the inherent distrust of technology by Nigerians, so if the card readers disappoint the current conspiracy theory around him will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Essentially therefore a perception of the neutrality and competence of INEC will have a big impact on the way the outcome of the election will be received.
Will there be military coup?
For the first time since the current civilian dispensation, people are openly talking about the prospect of a military coup, with some highly placed individuals apparently baiting the military to intervene.  My personal opinion is that military intervention will be a very big retrogression for the country, especially when it is realized that the seeds of most of the current challenges in the country were sown during the prolonged period of military rule. With the revolution in information technology and the confidence gained from the likes of NADECO fighting the brutal Abacha regime to a standstill, any military regime is not going to have it easy with civil society activists and Diaspora Nigerians. The hope therefore is that potential military adventurists will be deterred by the prospects of getting into Abacha-like dogfights with civil society groups, internet warriors and Diaspora Nigerians.
Will the election be cancelled or postponed again at the last minute?
Nigerians continue to hold their breath that with several lawsuits by both the APC and the PDP trying to disqualify Jonathan and Buhari respectively, it is not impossible to wake up one day and read that either of the two candidates has been disqualified. There remains also some angst that a cowboy judge may grant an injunction suspending the election on one spurious ground or the other. Certainly there are no shortages of Arthur Nzeribe-like Association of Better Nigeria, which was used to scupper the 1993 elections won by MKO Abiola. The prayer of most Nigerians is that the election shall hold on 28 March.
Though in many instances court cases seeking to disqualify candidates in elections tend to be for psychological traction – to throw despondency and uncertainty in the camp of the candidate which the court is asked to disqualify and engender optimism in the camp of the party sponsoring the court case, it is hoped that our judges will be mindful of the capacity of their judgments to trigger violence before pronouncing such judgments.
Will the election lead to the unravelling of the country?
In the year 2000, the American journalist Karl Maier, published a funnily titled book: This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria. Essentially the book painted a very pessimistic picture of the country and its chances of remaining together. Nearly 15 years later, Nigerians still debate whether the country will unravel or not at any major political challenge. Remarkably Nigeria has shown some resilience in wobbling through such political upheavals – from the civil war (1967-1970), the Sharia controversy at the Constituent Assembly (1977), the long succession of military coups, the annulment of the 1993 elections won by MKO Abiola and its aftermath and the ‘cabalization’ of  our politics following the illness and subsequent death of President Yaradua. Based on historical antecedents therefore, we can surmise that the elections will come and go and Nigeria will continue to wobble along, with most of its political challenges unresolved. It can in fact be argued that hanging on a cliff is Nigeria’s comfort zone.