It is another election season in the Nigerian nation, folks.
Excitement is high in the air.
Some of it, at least, is filled with positive expectation.
Get your Permanent Voters Card!
Your PVC is your right – get it!
Your PVC is your power – use it!
The cynic, or the realist, and sometimes in Nigeria those descriptions may be interchangeable, may be inclined to ask –
‘Is the vote not overrated?’
And indeed, how much optimism is justified by the history of the vote in Nigeria?
A lot has happened with the vote. Elections have been won and lost, more or less cleanly, as acknowledged by people who should know. There was the election of MKO, for instance, acclaimed to be the ‘freest, fairest’ election up till that moment. Hardly disputed by anyone, except a ‘military president’ who refused to hand over, and a newspaper magnate named Nduka who was ‘commissioned’ to go on CNN the following day to try to tear it to shreds. And in 2015, for the first time in the history of the nation, a sitting ‘federal’ government in Abuja was actually replaced through the vote.
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All of this is the good side of the story. The voter’s card does count.
Unfortunately, the other side of the ledger is also loaded with facts that might be better forgotten.
Voters in the recent polls in Ekiti being accosted by anonymous persons offering five thousand naira to vote for their candidate, with the catchy message
‘E dibo e se’be’ (‘Vote and fill your pot with stew’).
Not a few took the offer and collected the ‘free money’. Did it sway their vote? Perhaps. And perhaps not so much.
The real worry should be that there is no report that any of the PVC wielding electorate felt so incensed by the action of the faceless agents, that he, or she, grabbed one by shirt and called the police to arrest the offender for interfering with their civic obligation.
The transgressions, sadly, did not start yesterday, and are not limited to Ekiti. Over half a century ago, it is said that Fani Kayode pere – Deputy Premier of Western Nigeria, Cambridge educated, perfect in elocution, went on radio in Ibadan to tell the citizens, who were showing open defiance to his party – the NNDP (Nigerian National Democratic Party)
‘Be e se ti’a, bee se ti’a, Demo o wole’ (‘Whether you vote for us or not, we will win’).
It was an in-your-face declaration to the voting public – you can wield your voter’s card. We will win the vote – any which way.
He was as good as his word. ‘Demo’ won, in a vote that was massively rigged. It was the beginning of the end of the First Republic.
Conclusion?
In Nigeria, the PVC is powerful, but not supreme, given the flaws in the voter himself, the politician, the umpire and the agencies of law enforcement.
We may recast the challenge as ‘opportunity’, and say that all of the different stakeholders can, and should, raise their game, to get a better, more ‘democratic’ vote. There is hope.
But the actual voting is not necessarily the worst part of elections. That distinction is reserved for the electioneering process, which has taken the nation perilously close to the fire time and time again.
The drama of the past eight years is instructive. In 2011, ordinary people queued up in Lagos, and other parts of the country, in silent solidarity with the boy without shoes from Otuoke, to vote in Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as their President. Despite the averments of party hacks, most of the people who voted the underdog into power did not need much persuasion, and hardly any required inducement. It was a symbolic and significant democratization of the highest office in the land, a chance once and for all to let it be known that every Nigerian was entitled to a shot at all the land had to offer. Many faithfuls of other parties crossed party lines to give their individual vote to Jonathan.
The accession to the office of a man from the oil-producing minority ‘South-South’ area of the country to commence his own term in the Presidency gave a widespread feeling of optimism and a new belief in the Nigeria project.
Four years down the line, it was a different story. Despite a stellar cast, the underdog of yore had become a blubbering free-spending albatross on the necks of those who carried him on their shoulders. He had an army made up of local militias, and another army of overnight billionaires who had grown fat on government contracts and who were swaggering and swearing all over the nation, threatening anyone who uttered a dissentient word. Who can forget the vitriolic vituperations of ‘Pastor Reno’ directed at everybody in sight? Who can forget the ‘TAN Ambassadors’, or the loud brash voices of those who were going to ‘Take Over Lagos’?
You will always recollect a rally held by the ‘TAN (‘Transformation Agenda’) Ambassadors’ in the Ajah area. You were passing on the express nearby when the ‘rally’ was wrapping, and the audience were spilling onto the streets. They were clearly not a representative sample of the local population, but what did it matter? They were puffed up and ready for a fight. In their midst were armed policemen and armed ‘civilian’ thugs. The people of Ajah scampered to get out of their way, and anybody who had the emblem of another party on their person or their property quickly removed it.
On the other hand, nobody can forget the ‘monkey and baboon’ threat by Jonathan’s opponent of the day, either.
It is all tawdry History, that is best forgotten, but can only be forgotten if the right lessons have been learned.
Nigeria has come a long way. If the people do not demand anything of those seeking to govern them – the APC, the PDP, the refreshing new faces – Madam Oby, SFB, Sowore, Moghalu and all the others, they should at least demand a level of decency and decorum in their utterances, and in their interaction which has never been present in the Nigerian election culture, but which is a minimum the nation needs to move forward to take its rightful place in the world.
The other thing to note is that the real significance of the 2019 elections may not be which of the two behemoths wins the formal vote -one of them will, inevitably, but the management of the organic discontents that have bubbled to the surface, and the irreversible movement that has been started to improve the content of the people’s lives by such measures as restructuring of the polity and awakening the potential of the grassroots through education and universal health. If the new faces continue to champion these, beyond 2019, they would be the real winners, and the behemoths will not be able to continue to dissemble, and to hold the minds of the people in thrall through base sentiment, as has sadly been the case heretofore in the Nigeria project. By the time of the next elections – who knows? This will be the true value proposition of a ‘Third Force’, which is what they are.
And so – the nation waits, with bated breath to be acquainted with its destiny.
Femi Olugbile
