I am writing this piece on Friday, February 15, 2019, two days before the start of the Nigerian 2019 Elections. I am a secular rationalist, not a soothsayer, not a prophet. But strangely, I feel in a prophetic mood, the kind of mood that descends on our well-known men and women of prophecy deliverance every New Year’s Eve – the Adeboyes, the Oritsejafos, the T.B. Joshuas, the Oyakhilomes. Yes, I know that no one will take my “prophecy” or “prophecies” in what follows in this piece seriously. But beside their own worshipful flocks, how many people really take the annual prophecies of our professional, “holy” soothsayers seriously?
And there is also this fact: in this piece, I will not vouch for an absolute certainty that my prophecies about things that will happen after the elections will happen. Of course, I am sure that most of them will come to pass, but that will not be my focus in this prophetic message to all my countrymen and women. Rather, what I will bet my reputation on, what I will vigorously defend from now and for months and maybe even years after the elections, will be my prophecies, my auguries about things that will not happen. And precisely because these will be prophecies about things that will not happen, I am collectively calling them prophecy by negative dialectics. First, then, let us go to my prophecies on things that will happen. [If, dear compatriot, you find most of them too trite, too banal, just skip them and go straight to my prophecies about the things that will not happen!]
About the things that will happen, I will first address a very special category that I am calling either the prophetic future perfect or future conditional. This is of course based on that specific aspect of grammar known as tense – things that deal with time and its passage, both in the past and in the future. The English language has one of the largest number of tenses among the languages of the world and for this reason, let us make the best use that we can of this numerical largess in the present context. Thus, I predict, with great confidence, that by May 30, 2019, the by then newly elected president would have been sworn in a day before. This is because he will be sworn in, by constitutional provision, on May 29, 2019. Should it be Muhammadu Buhari – we are continuing with our future conditional tense – I predict that he will be 76 years old. That’s because he is already 76 now and won’t be 77 until December 17, 2019. If it is Atiku Abubakar, he will be 72 years and that’s because he too, is already 72 and won’t be 73 until November 25, 2019.
Let us now move to things that will happen that are of more importance since they pertain to things that are more notable than birthdates which, after all, are fixed and cannot be changed. Thus, I predict that the next National Assembly will be the 9th, not the 10th or the 11th. That’s because the one that just ended and will be replaced by the 9th National Assembly was the 8th. Take my word, my prediction for it, compatriots: the next National Assembly will be the 9th. Take my word for it also that in sartorial colorfulness and variety of local styles of ceremonial attires, that 9th National Assembly will be as brilliant and as elegant as all the previous National Assemblies before it were. To foreign correspondents and commentators reporting on this sartorial richness of our lawmakers, many of the dresses will seem like stage costumes in a theatrical period piece. We will of course take offense that what we regard as the best of our dress culture will be called “costumes” by these foreign correspondents, but in this we will be a tad hypocritical on our part. Why so? Well, don’t we all secretly also regard many of the dress codes and styles from parts or regions of the country different from our own quaint costumes? And don’t many in our country, especially among the social and political elite, believe that not character, not patriotism but colorful and sumptuously elaborated clothes maketh the man or the woman? And after all, our legislators are the highest paid, not only in the world but in the history of modern parliaments. In that case, what is wrong in our parliamentarians also aspiring to be the best and most colorfully costumed legislators in the world?
It will also happen, dear compatriots, that after the elections, the post-election judicial tribunals of 2019 will explode into a scale hitherto unknown or unseen in this country. This prediction is based on absolutely irrefutable grounds. First, before the elections, the scale of judicial review of candidates selected or unselected by the competing political parties reached levels we had never seen in any previous electoral cycle since the return to civilian rule in 1999. Indeed, this close to the elections, in some states like Rivers and Zamfara, the entire electoral slate of the ruling party remains under review and possible disqualification. Secondly, the APC, the incumbent party in power, has shown clearly to Nigerians and the whole world that it expects that its victories will be challenged, especially at the presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial polls. As a matter of relevant fact, that’s what the suspension of CJN Onnoghen was all about. And thirdly, if there was and is so much judicial contestation by candidates within their own political parties, isn’t it a solidly grounded prediction that the coming judicial tribunals between candidates from opposing parties will break new records in number and costs? Thus, it is with great confidence that I predict, compatriots: billions of naira and millions of dollars will change hands in the “industry” that will emerge in the post-election tribunals of 2019.
The earth, our planetary home, rotates on an axis that is tilted, not straight like an arrow. That axis, together with its tilt, is invisible. But we know it is there and has been there since the creation of our planet. The seasons come and go; and night comes after day as day itself comes after night. These are therefore all verities of nature, of existence. The things that happen after elections, indeed the things that happen in politics, are not like the verities of nature – like the invisible axis on which the earth rotates. But most political orders and politicians, especially the most predatory and decadent ones, like to project the things that happen under their dispensation, under their rule, like things that happen naturally and inevitably, like the verities of time and of existence itself.
Following this logic, I predict, with absolute confidence, that after the forthcoming 2019 elections, our lawmakers will continue to be the highest paid legislators in the history of the modern parliament. This will not be because the present political order in our country will subsist, will last like the verities of nature; rather, it is because, so far at least, our rulers have convinced Nigerians that, just as we can do little or nothing about night coming after day, so can we do little or nothing at all to put an end to the monstrous injustice and absurdity of our lawgivers’ pay packets. This observation leads me to my prophecies concerning the things that will not happen after the elections. Please remember: I am collectively calling this prophecy by negative dialectics.
The great scourge of poverty afflicting six to seven out of every 10 Nigerians will not end. If Buhari and the APC win, their so-called “social protection” projects for the poor, like “Tradermoni” and free and nutritious school meals for hundreds of thousands, not millions, of schoolkids across the country will not make the slightest dent on the scale of despair and immiseration in our country. If Atiku and the PDP win, their first order of business will be to deepen and widen the gap between the rich and the poor, no questions asked. Few countries in the world is as awash with wealth as our country while remaining simultaneously on the list of the countries with the lowest poverty reduction rates in the world. This will not change, compatriots, whether it is the APC or the PDP that wins the elections and forms the next administration at any level, federal, state or local. This is because it is not miniscule and paternalistic “social protection” schemes but an entirely new and egalitarian social contract between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the marginalized of all parts of the country that is needed to seriously and massively address the scourge of widespread poverty in our country. The Nigerian ruling class and some of their political parties used to be aware of and be driven by this necessity for a social contract in our society. But this was before the inception of civilian rule in 1999. Since then, the sixteen-year reign of the PDP, followed by four years of the APC, have wiped out all traces of the recognition of the need for a social contract in the collective consciousness and political will of all our ruling class political parties and politicians.
One of the most obscene and unjustifiable indications of this lack of awareness and political will to forge a social contract for our democracy is the golden pension parachutes with which many former governors in this country are flying high in the skies of opulence, decadence and self-engorgement as the great majority of their fellow countrymen and women remain mired in poverty and desperation. These golden pensions include salaries for life that are among the highest salaries paid on our planet; medical, vacation and personal expenses allowances of a scale normally associated with kings and emperors of the feudal past; palatial mansions at state capitals and at the national capital in Abuja built and maintained at the expense of the respective state; and PAs, drivers, housekeepers and security personnel all maintained at public expense. I predict that it will not happen, the end of this extremely decadent golden pension scheme for some former governors and I name some of its beneficiaries: Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Raji Fashola, Rotimi Amaechi, Bukola Saraki and Goodswill Akpabio. Seeing the mixed nature of this list between progressives and conservatives, I am tempted to predict that one or some of them will voluntarily give up their “entitlement” to this golden pension. But my instincts direct me in the opposite direction and thus, I confidently predict that it will not happen – not a single one of them will voluntarily give up the “ilabe”.
It is a depressingly long list, the number of things that ought to happen but will not after the elections. Nigerians throughout the country are yearning to live together in peace, mutual respect and celebration of our diversity in our multiethnic and multicultural country. But this will not happen, especially if Muhammadu Buhari wins. Unless of course a miraculous change comes over him to transform him overnight from being the most parochial, clannish and divisive Head of State we have ever had in this country. But that will not happen, alas.
It will also not happen, the challenges that we face in meeting the great shortfalls and inadequacies in our physical and institutional infrastructures with knowledge, wisdom and mastery of sophisticated technologies and techniques. As I write these words, with all my neighbors, I have just experienced four days of total blackout from an unending power outage at Oke-Bola in Ibadan and I am still in a daze from the experience. And believe me, compatriots, although I know that most Nigerians experience this particular problem on a much vaster scale than me and my neighbors at Oke-Bola, that knowledge offers me no solace, no relief from the feeling that I am the citizen of a country that time and modernity have left stranded in a confounding netherworld.
Nearly above everything else with the exception of the mass poverty of most Nigerians, it bothers me that this will not happen after the elections: reform of our judiciary to make it serve the rule of law and the fair, just and equitable administration of justice to all. The government and the judiciary – they are the worst enemies of the rule of law and equality of all before the law. This will not change after the elections.
We must look beyond elections for restitution and justice in this country, compatriots. They will come, eventually. This is my ultimate prediction
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu