Nigeria after the vote

We are now in another political season when we deploy propaganda and material inducements to get citizens drunk. Suddenly, we forget that we have problems in the economy and in security. Trash that. We forget that parents find it hard to feed their families, pay school fees and provide other necessities. We forget that our children who managed to graduate do not have jobs. We forget, even when regular cooking gas refill costs N10,000-plus, fuel sells for N250 per litre (when you find it), and cost of food has shot up through the roof. Life is now a big challenge for most families. Outside the home, we temporally forget that murderers, ritualists, kidnappers, armed robbers and fraudsters are still awake and at work, dispossessing honest workers of their hard-earned income.

We forget all of this because we have entered another electioneering season when we temporarily lose our balance to the powerful pull of propaganda. Our politicians are back to the villages from their three-year city sojourn, ready and willing to throw the bones from their fatted loot to the hungry dogs. Suddenly, it looks like all is well with Nigeria. Beneath the frenzy, however, Nigeria continues to live on borrowed funds, spending about 90 per cent of what it earns to service the loans. For us in Nigeria, electioneering has become tranquilizers that politicians inject citizens with to take their minds away from the sorrows of the moment.

This is not what it should be. We expect politicians to focus on citizen challenges, proposing solutions that educate us so that we judge the right persons to vote for. They should raise voter challenges as campaign issues and tell the citizens how they will resolve them. Through their disputations and their records, we shall select only the candidates with capacity to solve these problems. Of course, we expect that politicians directly or indirectly associated with a poorly performing government will avoid discussing voter challenges. Others will duck and deflect the issues when confronted with them. But this is the reason that we have opposition who will talk about them.

Are we focused on discussing citizen challenges and elevating them to the issues of the 2023 election cycle? Once again, Nigeria has arrived at the crossroads and it is time to talk about the challenges and their impact on individuals, families, and the nation. If we were serious about surmounting our challenges, the conversation should be about electing the most capable managers to oversee the businesses of state at federal and subnational levels. The Igbo say that a man whose house is on fire does not go hunting for rodents escaping from the inferno. But is this not what we are doing? Our conversations on the coming elections are anything but relevant to voter issues. Examples abound.

For instance, the ethnic origin of our next President is once again a key factor in deciding who will get our votes. This was also one of the deciding factors in the 2015 election cycle that brought President Buhari into power. It remains a significant factor in the election years before and after 2015. In the 2023 presidential conversations, the ethnicity argument turned comical and absurd. Here is what we hear: Your people are making that man look like an ethnic champion with all your noise and abuse of opponents; anyway, I want you to know that I shall not leave my own (ethnic) brother to vote for him!

Again, our conversations have elevated structure as a success factor in Nigerian elections. We say that a candidate has all it takes to be a capable manager but is “going nowhere” since he does not have a “structure.” How is this a handicap? Any political party with a popular presidential candidate that cannot install and manage a winning political structure within seven months is not worth the tag.

We also elevate old age as a subject of discussion about who should or should not rule. We say that a candidate should not rule because he is old. Have management capacity and wisdom become exclusive preserves of the young? At any rate, we continue this discussion as if we are unaware that all three frontrunners have passed the mandatory retirement age of 60 years!

Then there is the elephant in the room, which is religious affiliation of the candidates. People argue that a Muslim-Muslim ticket is bad for peaceful coexistence in Nigeria. How so? Since when? When did someone’s religion become a handicap to good governance? Was there an uproar when Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba Christian, serially chose Igbo Christians to be his running mates in two elections during the Second Republic? Did Nigerians take to the streets when MKO Abiola, a Yoruba Muslim, similarly chose a Kanuri Muslim as his sidekick? What has someone’s religion got to do with their ability to govern effectively?

The only argument closely resembling a focus on significant issues is that of corruption. But even here, the focus is askew, the logic flawed. We claim, with little or no evidence, that a candidate is corrupt and will steal Nigeria blind if elected President. We make this claim without regard to the reality that all three frontrunners are billionaires who are not running for office to maintain their posh lifestyle. And we argue this vociferously without remembering that, in 2015, we chose a “poor” “clean” and “frugal” general whose management ability got us to where we are today. Except for MKO, who we denied his mandate, we have had only poor generals and politicians as rulers before now. And we enthusiastically elected MKO, without regard to what Fela warned us in song about him.

Why do we latch on to diversionary matters and elevate them to issues to determine who our next President should be? Amid the diatribe and illogicalities that we promote, our existential challenges remain. These challenges, common to all, do not discriminate against our religious and ethnic affiliations. There is no scientific basis, and nothing from our previous experience, to suggest that ethnic affiliation or religious zealotry guarantee management capacity. What Nigeria needs is a leader with clear understanding and articulation of voter challenges, a workable plan to deal with them, and proven managerial capacity. Our conversation should have been about how the frontrunners rate along the continuum, not where they come from or where they worship God.

For those who insist on promoting these diversionary conversations, I say to you: our eyes will clear after the February 2023 vote. We are yet to get tired of voter remorse after each cycle. I liken us to the habitual drunk that wakes up each morning with a terrible hangover from doing something foolish the night before. We waste our votes each time we elect candidates who bring little, if anything, to the table. It is after this that we learn how easy it is to make decisions but how extremely hard to make it right.

Eventually, Nigerian citizens will realize that their voting decisions are supposed to be arrived at after careful consideration. In everyday life, we use facts and the reality we see around us to guide us into making good decisions. We do not depend on our emotions. At the end of the day, we must live with the consequences of the decisions and choices we make. And every choice we made on matters affecting the commonwealth will have its impact beyond our families. As parents, for instance, the decisions on how to train our children automatically affect the family name, for good or ill. Our training choices also affect teachers, neighbours, friends and the community at large. Parents who decide to train their children and empower them with skills are more likely to create value for society than those who abdicate this responsibility. Conversely, our decision to allow our children grow wild impacts society when the child eventually enrolls in a secret cult or joins a criminal gang.

In a democracy, voting is the biggest contribution that citizens make to promote individual, family and social wellbeing. Our vote is like a parental decision to adopt a responsible child and make her heir to the family fortune. Politicians are the children that we must encourage or discipline with our vote. Our duty is to judge the candidates like our children (that they all are) and decide which among them to entrust the key to the family business. If Nigeria is our personal business, which among the trio of Atiku Abubakar, Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi can we entrust its management? We watched all three grow up and mature in politics.

The 2023 presidential election is therefore not about who among them is our favorite. It is about what our vote will make of this nation, should our preferred candidate win. The diversionary conversations we are having cannot determine who will become the best manager for the job. They only make the election a horse race, which achieves nothing, because we know that this race favours neither the old nor the young. On one hand, the biblical prodigal son was of the same religion, a brother, and the youngest. On the other hand, young Solomon turned out to be the greatest and wisest manager from his lineage.

To conclude, no one says we should not pay attention to the religion, age and ethnicity of the candidates. They can indeed expose clues about whether these will affect their policies and programmes, including their political appointments. However, we are lucky that there are no irredentists among the frontrunners. Because these are not significant issues, any citizen that steps out to vote must remember that our nation’s problems continue to await Nigeria after the 2023 vote.