What is ‘delivering polling unit’?

As results began to trickle in on Saturday evening into Sunday morning from weekend’s presidential and National Assembly elections, a certain phrase quickly came to dominate media reporting as well as social media discussion of the results. It is, “delivering his/her polling unit.” Everywhere you turned, the candidates, their top supporters, top officials and godfathers […]

As results began to trickle in on Saturday evening into Sunday morning from weekend’s presidential and National Assembly elections, a certain phrase quickly came to dominate media reporting as well as social media discussion of the results. It is, “delivering his/her polling unit.” Everywhere you turned, the candidates, their top supporters, top officials and godfathers were said to have either “delivered” or “failed to deliver” their polling units.

Among many reports I saw in the early hours, it was said that President Muhammadu Buhari delivered his polling unit in Daura to himself, even though “he failed to deliver” the same polling unit to APC’s senatorial candidate for Katsina North. Atiku Abubakar reportedly lost his polling unit in a Yola suburb to Buhari but in what was portrayed as a big counter punch, he won in Aso Rock polling units, which Buhari “failed to deliver” to himself even though he has been the top tenant in the area for nearly four years.

Among other top players, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was said to have lost his polling unit at Victoria Garden City in Lagos but both Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and outgoing Governor Akinwunmi Ambode ‘delivered’ their units to Buhari. In Kaduna State, Governor Nasiru El-Rufa’i was said to have delivered his unit but his deputy lost her unit in Sanga, which was no surprise really. Speaker Yakubu Dogara was initially said to have lost his unit but it turned out to be untrue. A similar early report said Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal lost his unit, but I saw another report saying he actually ‘delivered’ the unit in his hometown, Tambuwal, to Atiku.

There were equally conflicting reports about whether Senate President Bukola Saraki and Kwankwasiyya political cult boss Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso ‘delivered’ their polling units. Some reports said they did, others said they didn’t. Confusion was rife with respect to the men who were playing double-legged politics, i.e. Governors Rochas Okorocha and Ibikunle Amosun of Imo and Ogun States. Since each of the two men had his legs spread in two parties, it was not clear which party he was expected to ‘deliver’ to. Though both said they are supporting Buhari and both were APC senatorial candidates, each was in a life and death struggle against APC national chairman Adams Oshiomhole and the top political goal of each one was to elect his anointed candidate as governor under another party, not APC.

So, what is the political origin, psychological import and the basis in reality of this phrase that came to rule all discussion in Nigeria at the weekend? Delivering polling units as a mark of political effectiveness is an invention of local politicians, not elite ones. If one is a presidential or a governorship candidate, his strategy focuses on winning a majority in the overall constituency. It does not really matter where the votes come from as long as you win a majority of them, plus the spread necessary to satisfy the election law. Local politicians are however terrified that a candidate may neglect them and go make a deal with others, so they invented the concept of winning your polling unit as the top measure of electoral credibility.

It is used to terrify and terrorise the men and women who exercise much power in Abuja and in state capitals but who have little presence in their villages and hometowns. The psychological import of the phrase is, lavish goodies and patronage on us local political chieftains, or else. The fear of failing to deliver one’s unit makes ministers, senators, Reps, advisers, agency heads and commissioners to frequent their bases and shovel money into the pockets of local chieftains who control the grassroots in order not to suffer humiliation on the home front on election day.

How does a politician ensure that he delivers his polling unit? If the area is one of the old and traditional ones, then most of the people in the area are likely to be his relatives, neighbours and friends of his extended family members. It is easy to deliver this kind of neighbourhood because in Africa, one’s kinsmen take much pride in seeing their kinsman fulfil his ambition. Trouble is, many areas are no longer like that due to an influx of tenants, workers, aliens and visitors, many of them from far-flung places. Such people have no emotional attachment to anyone, so they must be “mobilized” to vote in a certain way. They are so unreliable that when they are given soap and money, they are also made to swear with a Holy Book that they will fulfil their part of the bargain. This is what INEC and security agencies call vote buying these days. Well, if you want to get rid of it, you must banish the phrase ‘delivering his polling unit,’ which causes it.

Imagine a man like Osinbajo, by all accounts a very capable Vice President. Now he is damaged by the report that he did not deliver Victoria Garden City. I do not know the people who live in VGC but I imagine that they are very rich folks, half of whom are on their way to Europe or Dubai on any given day. How on earth could anybody arrange to deliver a place like that, which is too rich to be amenable to salt, soap and sugar bribery? Then also, why is a politician discredited simply because VGC residents rejected his party, when I do not know their motives or their aspirations?

In recent decades, the demarcation between African cities and rural areas has widened to a level that we no longer have rulers such as Julius Nyerere. In 1981 when Africa Now magazine publisher Peter Enahoro went to interview him at Arusha, Tanzania, he told the story of Nyerere’s unbelievable simplicity and his enduring connections to the grassroots despite being President for 20 years. He said, for instance, that there was only one car in the driveway and only one policeman at the gate of the Tanzanian President’s house even though he was in. Some local women on their way to the market noticed the car and policeman, realized that Nyerere was in, and they ventured into the house to greet him.

No one stopped them, and they came in and sat on the chairs, where Enahoro was waiting. When Nyerere entered the room, Peter Pan said he not only knew all the women by name, but he also knew what they were selling, he knew the local market they were going to, and he had an idea of the prices of all the commodities in that market. One by one, Nyerere asked them whether the prices of various goods they were taking to the market had increased or decreased since the last market day. If only Nigeria still has politicians like that, they would not be intimidated by talk about delivering polling units.

It was not too long ago here in Nigeria that voters elected a man to be President even when he failed to deliver his polling unit, ward, local government or state. Chief Obasanjo did not deliver any of these to PDP in the local government elections of December 1998, the first in the series of elections leading to the birth of the Fourth Republic in May 1999. Curiously, this did not prevent his winning the PDP nomination and the main election with landslide votes. Indeed, Obasanjo’s near-universal rejection in Yorubaland at the time was what encouraged Northerners and Igbos, in particular, to go for him. They saw something in him that his immediate constituents didn’t.

Maybe they later regretted it, I don’t know. Why is it that the same Nigerians that did that magic 20 years ago are suddenly laying so much emphasis on local endorsement of a candidate in the name of delivering his polling unit as the top measure of political credibility?