A few weeks ago, I started conducting a little social experiment on my Twitter account. By virtue of the amount of engagement I am involved in on that platform, I interact with thousands of people from various political formations on a daily basis. Over time, I had noticed what I thought was a curious pattern, and I wanted to properly hypothesise this thought.
My hypothesis went as follows – Nigerians who are unemployed or belong to low-income brackets relative to other Nigerians on social media, are more likely to support candidates that offer no clear or realistic economic blueprint toward their own betterment. Such people, the hypothesis goes, are more likely to favour candidates who offer only empty rhetoric and ethnic populism. It was time to test out this hypothesis, and here is what I found.
“The lowest white man” in electioneering
In the US civil rights campaign era of the 1960s, former US President Lyndon B. Johnson famously once made the following comment while on the campaign trail in Tennessee: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best-coloured man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
What Johnson was describing here was the politics of ethnoracial resentment and tribal animus. According to this theory, a politician in power or desirous of power does not actually have to do anything solid to better the lives of their base, or at least lay out a solid plan for doing so. All they need to do is appeal to the basest of ethnoracial sentiment among said base, and become adopted as the politician who is “one of their own.”
The so-called Southern Strategy in 1969s America utilised this to the fullest extent possible, realigning an entire generation of southern white voters with the Republican Party, which had previously been the party of big corporate interests and mega-wealthy individuals.
While the poor white voters would in fact have their interests better served by a party focused on workers’ rights, healthcare and social investment to get them out of poverty, the Republican Party was able to weapons their hatred of black people and thus make them vote against their own interests. As I discovered in the course of my amateur social research, something similar is happening in modern Nigeria.
“The lowest Yoruba man”
Few things have epitomised the depth of ethnic division in Nigeria than the emergence of Peter Obi as the early frontrunner ahead of next year’s election and the aggressively disapproving reaction to it in certain quarters. In the course of my little experiment, I repeatedly observed 2 things that recurred too much to be mere coincidences. Once is nothing. Twice is a coincidence. Thrice is interesting. But 20 times? 50 times?
The first thing that I observed was that whenever I would see a comment making a pejorative reference to Peter Obi’s ethnicity instead of engaging with a serious issue of conversation, the comment almost always seemed to come from a man (always male, never female) whose name was from the Yoruba ethnicity.
Twitter being Twitter, this does not of course mean that every such comment purporting to be from a Yoruba person actually was. The problem is that even if they were not, this would still mean that someone or some people out there believe that artificially setting “Yoruba” voters against Peter Obi on social media, using “The Lowest Yoruba Man” politics, is a viable 2023 strategy.
The second thing and more instructive thing I observed was that in almost all such cases, a little scrolling through the account’s earlier posts would uncover a tweet responding to a giveaway post with bank account details, a general fundraiser tweet also with bank account details, a tweet about sure betting odds, or a tweet about iTunes gift cards or some other paraphernalia of low-level internet fraud. Essentially, this was the turkeys vocally expressing their displeasure against the anti-Christmas candidate because he is a rooster and the pro-Christmas candidate is a turkey like them.
The problem of course is that the turkey candidate in this instance is never the one who will end up on the plate. That fate is reserved for the Tajudeens and Remilekuns who think that the ax is a tree like them just because its handle is made of wood. As Lyndon Johnson discovered 5 and a half decades ago, some things transcend common sense.
God be with us all.
