This is more like it
The campaigns for the general elections are stirring into life and assuming the full character of Nigerian politics. Passions are running close to boiling point. Antics and gambits have that smell of desperation and panic. War chests are being distributed with abandon, including the novel practice of VVIPs handing over cash inducements in open markets. […]
The campaigns for the general elections are stirring into life and assuming the full character of Nigerian politics. Passions are running close to boiling point. Antics and gambits have that smell of desperation and panic. War chests are being distributed with abandon, including the novel practice of VVIPs handing over cash inducements in open markets. Fence sitters are dismounting. Major players smell victory and defeat, so they fight both as underdogs and confident winners. Supporters, followers and cheerleaders are being primed to drown all resistance to an assured victory. The nation is on the edge. In the forthcoming landmark elections, everything is possible. The way the game is shaping up, very little of the possibles are positive.
Phew! Atiku entered and exited the US. The way this low-level blitz was being celebrated by his party, you would think that Washington is the new Makkah or the Presidential Villa. To be fair, his opposition (including his former nemesis, now ally, President Obasanjo) made the issue of putting his feet on US soil such a political matter with all the hints of eternal banishment or total salvation, you cannot blame him and his enterprising guide, Senate President Saraki from popping the champagne. Never mind that US government officials tried to be invisible, the point was made that Atiku was not a fugitive from corruption charges in the US. Somehow, a fairly routine trial and conviction of an associate of Atiku had been turned into an albatross around his and the nation’s neck, to the point that access to US was the only evidence needed to show whether he was corrupt or not. APC walked away to lick its wounds and look for new sources of ammunition. It may have learnt valuable lessons on putting eggs in baskets.
If Atiku’s celebrated, though symbolic visit to the US robbed the administration of a valued propaganda weapon, its week was made worse by the performance of President Buhari at a media event where he and the Vice President answered some tough questions from a tough journalist. President Buhari appeared confused, incoherent, unintelligent and altogether lost for most of the time. His Vice President consequently shone like a million stars, making more Nigerians to ask again why Osinbanjo does not run the country, while Buhari takes the credit. The theme of a challenged President was milked in social media with additional videos of a tripping President at a political rally, and another showing him announcing someone else in his place as his party’s presidential flag bearer at another political rally.
If President Buhari had appeared at a presidential candidates’ debate, this image of an incoherent and bumbling President may have been either modified or made more believable. We will never know now, because the president did not appear for the debate. His people said he is tired from many political dimensions and has made himself available in other fora where he would have said what he would say at the debate. PDP’s Atiku acted out the second of two obvious scenarios: Buhari turns up, and Atiku slugs it out with him; or Buhari does not turn up and Atiku turns his nose up at debating with second division candidates and walks away. As it turns out, both lost some shine for their actions, although they would willingly do that than be badly exposed by the younger and more articulate candidates who had turned up.
Social media and hate speech remained active elements, magnifying long, boring press releases from campaign offices into incendiary material that give the lie to expectations that these elections will be tame, credible affairs. Kaduna’s el-Rufai raised the level of his provocations of his hostile Christian opposition by claiming that they will not vote for him if he chose the Pope as running mate. The play at sharpening and benefitting from a dangerous Muslim-Christian divide in his state was visible here, but it was soon drowned by President Obasanjo’s trademark rollercoaster against Buhari. It is difficult not to see Obasanjo’ comprehensive onslaught as anything but a sophisticated, senior citizen’s hate speech. Everything is in it, from parallels with Abacha’s dark days, to funding Boko Haram, to a swipe at the faith of a bribe-giving VP pastor. Obasanjo will not accept that Buhari has no plans to rig the elections. He does not trust INEC not to write results for Buhari.
Buhari’s APC polished off new language in its own hate speech repertoire to hit back at Obasanjo. It said Obasanjo’s obsession with maligning all administrations now needs medical attention. He is coming to the end of his career in envy and nuisance-making, and will be buried by a more decisive Buhari victory in an election it insists will be credible, unlike those conducted under Obasanjo’s watch. If you thought hate speeches are the province of the fringes and the barely-literate, the exchanges between the two major camps will change your mind. Strong language intended to shock and induce fear is now staple diet. Prime targets of these speeches are the global community and civil society on one end of the spectrum, and on the other, the gullible and impressionable multitudes whose contributions are to turn up at political rallies to make up numbers even if many cannot or will not vote. General Abdussalami’s Peace Committee may as well retire.
Those who thought a Muslim-Muslim contest will remove a potentially-damaging religious divide and make for less frightful campaigns and acceptable outcomes should now begin to worry. Obasanjo’s detailed chronicle of current and planned subversion of a credible election and the PDP’s wholesale endorsement of them as valid and authoritative could seriously delegitimize the elections long before they are conducted. They raise the possibilities of disputed outcomes from probabilities to near-certainties. When voters have no faith in their votes counting, and the public is primed to react by hate and inflammatory statements, the possibility that outcomes will be violently challenged becomes real. Do PDP’s thinkers, if it has any, ask what will happen in the event that it wins an election which it insists can only be rigged?
A huge burden is being placed on the shoulders of the international community to influence the conduct of credible elections. There are two problems here. The first has to do with the very low threshold which the international community uses to judge elections and the democratic process in Africa. Simply put, most advanced democracies will live with poorly-conducted elections that do not tear countries apart. They will not support, in most instances, massive instability over disputed election results. Second, many governments in advanced democracies are dealing with highly absorbing problems of their own. Nigerians should therefore prepare for a less involved posture from the US, UK and EU. We are on our own.
INEC appears to hold all the trumps. It will never rid itself entirely of suspicion that it is being influenced to rig in favour of the APC, but it can and must conduct an election that allows the nation to strengthen its democratic traditions and move beyond the fears which the campaigns are generating. Call us gullible, but there are some of us who are holding on to a tenuous faith that INEC will respond appropriately to incredibly high stakes.