Some months ago, one of my favourite writers in the Nigerian column writing circuit predicted that by this election season, electoral permutation based on mere geopolitical calculations would be obsolete and would have given way to the quest for competent leadership. The writer, now observing the current political terrain, must have noticed that he spoke too soon while the wheel was still in spin. This election has been less about Nigeria and her destiny but mostly about who wins the keys to Aso Rock Villa for the endgame of paving the way for another tribe. For a country where poverty and its insalubrious accomplices of high death rates, illiteracy, and insecurity are high, it is a shame that a crucial election to elect the superintendents of our national destiny has failed to centre the issues that pertain to our social flourishing.
At this precise moment, no one can confidently call the election in anyone’s favour. A little under 60 hours before the polls open, what we have are, mostly, spits in the wind (the usual fatuous ‘surveys’ and ‘polls’ that surface from non-existent polling agencies and the so-called social media “influencers”) and, in some rare cases, permutations via fixed odds. Adding to these conundrums are international journals such as The Economist and Bloomberg twisting the knife in the stabs they dealt the projected electoral failure of their unanointed. Several Nigerian writers too have proffered a cautious analysis of both the APC and the PDP candidates, Muhammadu Buhari, and Atiku Abubakar, respectively. While some proposed a direct endorsement of the candidates, others hedged and were somewhat slippery when it came to making a conclusive statement on their choice. I understand why people are being wary in endorsing candidates; nobody wants to bear the brunt of having promoted a “lifeless” or “clueless” President if such choice turns out to be a disaster. Those who unrestrainedly endorsed Buhari in 2015 have either spent the past four years apologising or defending their (lack of) foresight into the misadventure he would become.
Let’s face it, a lot of Nigerians are disenchanted by the available options and would rather have more excellent choices than be bracketed between the duo of the APC and the PDP. Yet, it is a testimony to how low the APC has fallen if, merely four years after it did the near unthinkable and defeated the incumbent PDP, people are snubbing its empty and cloying rhetoric of anti-corruption and tending towards the PDP camp. The party’s gross mismanagement of its electoral success gave way to the rise of Atiku as a formidable opponent. I imagine the APC did not expect that Atiku’s reputation would ever stand up to Buhari’s putative integrity. Atiku’s candidature that some dismissed as an abiku venture has now become their nightmare.
At this point, let us look beyond the personalities of the candidates, the “who” we might be voting for and looking at the “what,” that is, the political statement we would be making by choosing this or that candidate. What will it say about us as a nation if we double down on electing political leaders whose reigns have brought Nigerians pain and misery since their ascendance to power? We have been through a debilitating recession, and our country has fallen low on every poverty index since 2015. The APC, it turns out, was not cut out for big responsibilities. The party was comprised of local stars who shone brightly only because they were restricted to their South-West enclave. Abuja demystified not just Buhari who was touted as the Nigerian messiah but the entire apparatus of the APC governance machine as well. On Friday, in Abuja, Buhari made the laughable promise they would create 1.5 million jobs by 2025. In 2015, they promised 12 million jobs. By 2019, up to 20 million Nigerians had lost their jobs. Do the maths and ask why they should be entrusted with power all over again.
The unwieldiness of managing a complex nation like Nigeria showed that they were gods of small things and the Presidency is way beyond their level of competence. They have subsisted in the past four years by offering one excuse after the other; they are full of reasons, barely ever results! So, what comment about our level of intelligence and political sagacity will be made if we go to the polls to once again choose those same candidates to rule over us for another four years? They treated Nigerians with an incredible level of disregard and for the second time in the history of Nigeria, we found ourselves saddled with a President who virtually relocated the seat of power to his sick bed in a foreign hospital. What does it say about our collective intelligence as a nation if such a man is re-elected? We should not vote for them anymore; we should be voting against them, their politics, and their conduct in the past four years as an affirmation that we the people will not be taken for granted by these bamboozling rulers.
I know that since the options are just the APC and the PDP, not voting for the APC’s Buhari is an indirect suggestion that people should vote for the PDP’s Atiku. I have hesitated to pitch Atiku as an antithesis to Buhari mostly because given that almost all Nigerian politicians are cut from the same ethical clothes and the same set of processes configure them, making them barely distinguishable from the other. However, the PDP is not the one in power, it fell four years ago and the rude shock of that loss ruptured its solar plexus. They may be on the mend, but this election is coming too early for the memories of their magnificent cock-ups during their reign to have receded from our minds. Their language has barely improved; their strategy is more cynical and, their presidential candidate has had a junket around almost all the political parties since 1993. Despite all those, they remain the most viable option to end the tragedy of the Buhari Presidency. A vote for them should not be construed as a vote for what they represent but a vote against. It should be seen as vote cast for the sheer practical value of power changing hands so that ineptitude, nepotism, and administrative weakness are not seen as compensated especially when they are dressed in the desperate garb of a tribal power grab.
Why is voting against the incumbent an urgent political project that should supersede geopolitical calculations? Well, because the implications of victory are manifold – One, Saturday’s election will reverberate and affect subsequent polls in the coming weeks. Two, – and this is very important- it might be considered a small step, but we would have moved a little forward to becoming that ideal polity where electoral victories are not a given for the incumbent. Popular pent-up resentment that is built up to be weaponised at the polls is a positive development. I know some people made a similar argument for why Dr. Goodluck Jonathan should be retained in 2015 – Buhari will not be better, they said, and we should stick to the devil we know. True, but keeping an incompetent incumbent to ward off another prospective inept one is not as much democratic progress as exchanging one for the other. If we keep up the habit of removing a non-functioning candidate every election cycle, we will inch to the point where political parties will be forced to feature candidates that we will no longer have to hold our noses to vote for as a vote against their opponent. This will mean political parties will be forced to strive to do better by the people and work harder to produce candidates who are worthwhile in personality and ideas.
Credit: Abimbola Adelakun, Punch