Notes on general (s)elections
By
IN a matter of days, many Nigerians will stand in winding queues to cast votes for candidates in a plethora of elective offices. If this ritual were attended by real significance, then one should expect the national mood to be buoyant. It would mean, for one, that Nigerians have a real opportunity to recruit a fresh class of leaders, and rusticate those incumbents whose performance has been ghastly. Besides, the election would be seen, by Nigerians as well as outside observers, as signaling a new burst of hope for Africa's most populous nation, and its most outstanding failure as well.
Sadly, the only point on which Nigerians can have unanimity and certainty is that the forthcoming election is bound to be a hollow exercise, another in the series of abracadabra characterising the national experience. It hardly requires the skills of clairvoyance to make that assertion. A few months ago, after Kenyan voters resoundingly rejected Daniel Arap Moi's handpicked successor, a Kenyan colleague of mine wrote to wish Nigeria the same luck, transformation and bold statement in this month's elections. Though grateful for her solicitude, I ruefully informed her that Nigerian politicians were far more sanguinary than their Kenyan counterparts. I couldn't imagine a sizeable number of Nigerian politicians who would trust the electorate with the last say on their political career. To leave political choice up to voters would amount, in the view of most Nigerian politicians, to committing suicide. Rather than follow that route, the Nigerian politician has imbibed the ethic that power is to be grabbed, seized or bought. At any rate, few Nigerian men or women who really want power ever consider the prospect of seeking it with equanimity, much less restraint. To do so is, for them, to act with inexcusable naivety and unforgivable foolishness. I remember vividly what a Nigerian politician said to me more than fifteen years ago: "To run for any elections, you must mobilise millions (of naira) and gather your own armed thugs. You must do this, or you're not serious!" That sentiment, unfortunately, has been more deeply embedded in the present Nigerian political culture.
It's not surprising, then, that Nigerian politicians are on the whole reluctant to repose even minimal trust in the electoral process. Nor should anyone wonder why Nigerians hardly invest faith in the integrity of elections. The conjunction of cynical hanky panky by politicians and tacit public acquiescence has created a saddening political phenomenon. That phenomenon, though hardly unique to Nigeria, has perhaps found its most odious manifestation among Nigerians. It consists in the zestful subversion of the principles of freeness and fairness that ought to underwrite elections. Instead of elections, Nigerians have embraced what can only be called general selections.
What does this political disposition mean? Simply that Nigerian politicians have re-made elections into a coercive, violent and manipulable process. Quite baldly stated, Nigerian elections are little more than coups d'etat orchestrated as democratic exercises. In this wild context, the winner is hardly the candidate with the largest verifiable electoral support, but the bloody-minded knave able to marshall fiercer thugs, to offer a handsomer bribe to electoral officials, or to deploy other gruesome tactics that deform the public will in some decisive, depraved manner.
It is instructive that the most acclaimedly free and fair election in the country's history was that of June 12, 1993. The reason for that remarkable exception is complex. But perhaps the major factor was the fact that Nigerians had finally arrived at a moment of unshakable intolerance of Ibrahim Babangida's brand of military politics. They wished nothing more than to conduct an election that would leave the Fox of Minna no new tricks with which to prolong his disastrous reign. Besides, Mr. Moshood Abiola's presence on the ballot acted as a chastening force. A man whose goodwill spanned the length and breadth of Nigeria, he was also wealthy enough and knew Babangida well enough to neutralise any of the general's Maradonic feints and fakes.
Had the June 12 election been upheld, Nigeria might have entered a healthy phase of electoral politics-the kind that Kenya recently embraced and Ghana before it. Alas, with the annulment of that exemplary election, Babangida not only acted with political perfidy, he also set Nigeria on an accursed path to electoral fraud. Nigeria is mired in such unprecedented malaise that, properly, the forthcoming elections should be marked by grave contemplation and solemnity. The agbada men of Abuja may not acknowledge it, but Nigeria is a dying, if not dead, nation. With more than 10,000 people killed in communal or religious conflicts since May 1999, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the polity is susceptible to disintegration. In fact, the continuing run of armed fighting in the Niger Delta must be called what it is: a war. Nigerian citizens are deeply dispirited. The country's roads, universities, power grid, health care system and water supply are a shambles. Apart from some foolish politicians who persist in intoning the fictional catechism of "our great nation," most Nigerians know that their country is increasingly a shell, a carcass, a pathetic pretender to nationhood.
This forthcoming election, then, should have provided an opportunity for something akin to a national referendum. Nigerians ought to decide what idea of a nation they wish to adopt and seek to realise. Owing to the direness of the country's political morass, Nigeria stands in need of enlightened men and women of moral strength and lofty conviction to commence the task of national recuperation. There are a few of such men and women in the electoral fray, sadly scattered among several unviable political parties. Mr. Gani Fawehinmi is a proven patriot, sound intellectual and morally astute. There's no question somebody like him would make an excellent leader. Unfortunately, Fawehinmi and other visionary voices are drowned out by the empty prattle of the Obasanjos, Atikus, Buharis and Okadigbos. It reflects poorly on Nigeria that an Obasanjo would be regarded as a more serious candidate than a Fawehinmi. The so-called serious contenders and the parties they represent provide no intelligent vision, no meaningful programme for national re-birth. But nobody can doubt their determination to win, especially by unfair and unfree means.
Nigeria is poised on the precipice. It stands in critical need of morally steely leaders to steer it away from a calamitous end so legibly writ in the national ledger. But what do we see? The same coterie of confused, conceited men vying desperately-with the tools of money, violence and dead rhetoric-to be selected for the job of leaders. These men, I fear, can only nudge Nigeria onto the jagged chasm.
April 2003