With each passing day, it looks as if the outcome of the General Election scheduled for February 2019 will be shaped more by external influences than by Nigeria’s internal dynamics.
By this, I do not mean that it will be a throwback to 2015 when the combined forces of former U. S. President Barak Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, former French president Francois Hollande and others former president Goodluck Jonathan did not name in his unprepossessing memoir, ensured that he did not return to power, regardless of his record of performance and how Nigerians judged it.
Nor do I have in mind the intelligence services of those countries, most notoriously the US Central Intelligence Agency, with their record of skullduggery in the internal affairs of countries they believe have strayed beyond their assigned places in the international order.
The external influences I am referring to do not possess that kind of power. They cannot stir things up even if they were minded to do so. They lack the capacity to translate their preferences into action except perhaps in the most indirect of ways.
To come right out with it, I am thinking of the International Monetary Fund, the Bookings Institution, The Economist magazine, Transparency International and similar establishments in the West that from time to time pronounce magniloquently on the condition of things in the poorer countries and, as if they were “God’s spies,” to quote The Bard, spell out what fate has in store for them.
And I am thinking of the foreign audiences which, more often than not accept and internalise as Holy Writ, whatever images these establishments in the metropole put forth, however mutilated. They invoke them uncritically, enthusiastically and approvingly.
This was the context in which Nigerians woke up one morning only to learn that their country, having been declared winner of the global poverty sweepstakes, had been transformed into the world’s poverty capital, a dubious distinction that previously belonged to India.
By whose authority?
The Brookings Institution.
The Opposition was ecstatic. The report, it said, confirmed what discerning and long-suffering Nigerians had known all along, namely, that the ruling APC, which had promised to bring prosperity to Nigerians, had brought only mass pauperisation. The remedy was to throw it out at the next election.
I do not mean to make light of the phenomenon of poverty, a blight on a world that privileges superfluity for the one percent over sufficiency for the rest. But the aggregate numbers of persons living in poverty in a given country, however that term is defined, is only one indicator of the state of poverty in a given country, and not even the most critical. Rarely, in any case, are those numbers captured in National Accounts.
Nor do the compilers take into reckoning the unofficial safety net provided by remittances and handouts from family members, friends and relations, and from solicitous others. Such reliefs are largely unknown in the West.
Besides, any scheme that characterises India, a nuclear and space power and cyber power, home to the world’s largest pool of English-speaking engineers and scientists and computer programmers as a citadel of poverty does not deserve to be taken seriously.
Nigeria is not in the same league, despite its oil wealth. Still, any foreigner hoping to see hordes dying on the streets from starvation, malnutrition or disease, is sure to be disappointed.
During its time in power, the PDP and corruption were inseparable. The Opposition looked forward every year to the bulletin of Transparency International, hoping that the PDP would at least maintain its ranking on the Corruption Index, if not slip several notches. Now it is the other way round, with the PDP in jubilation, ecstatic that corruption in Nigeria has spiked under the APC’s watch, going by the latest bulletin of the corruption monitors.
Several months ago, the Economist, the newsmagazine that prefers to be regarded as a newspaper, wrote in a forecast that the coming elections in Nigeria would be closely fought but that the APC stood to be ousted on account of widespread dissatisfaction with its performance in the three years it had been in power and that the PDP’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, would be Nigeria’s next president.
The forecast set off exuberant rejoicing in the PDP camp. It accorded with the perspicacity and the analytical insightfulness that had earned the journal global renown, and confirmed the PDP’s rigorous assessment of the state of play, a gloating party spokesperson said.
The way the PDP carried on, you would think that the election had actually taken place and that the party had been swept back to power.
Meanwhile, the APC camp squirmed but kept up appearances. It took consolation from being an incumbent that had spent only three years in the saddle, not long enough to earn the kind of public disapproval that undergirded the PDP’s ouster in 2015.
Two weeks ago, The Economist followed with another forecast that was the opposite of the previous one. Yes, the race would be tight, but the APC would not only prevail, the PDP might disintegrate before the event!
All hell broke loose in the PDP camp. They cried “betrayal” and worse. In its rank and file, The Economist now came across as a journal utterly lacking in principle and ethical conduct, a practitioner par excellence of chequebook journalism. The journal, they said, had fallen on hazard times and had decided to sell its editorial pages to the highest bidder, leaving the attentive audience readers to wonder whether the PDP had paid hard cash for the paper’s earlier forecast that had the PDP winning the presidential election.
In the APC camp, the reaction was: “We told you so. The PDP is going nowhere.”
And all this hubbub because of a foreign newspaper’s forecast that lays no claim to scientific rigour.
Finally, Atiku’s bid for an entry visa to the United States. How that became an issue in Nigeria’s presidential election is puzzling. Indeed, given the frenzy the matter has generated, you would think that it is the single most important issue in the race.
First, some context.
About a decade ago, an associate of Atiku’s was questioned in the United States the investigation of some financial transactions. Allegations swirled that Atiku was implicated in the investigation, and stood to be arrested anytime he stepped on American soil – assuming he could secure an entry visa, the previous one having been lifted on account of the investigation. Whether on account of that incident or for unrelated reasons, Atiku has since then given the United States a wide berth.
The Opposition took note. Since Atiku clinched the PDP ticket for the presidential election, the APC has been taunting him. He wants to be Nigeria’s president? Let him visit the United States first, as proof of his fitness for the office. If he survives it, then we can begin to entertain him as a candidate in good standing.
Tired of the taunts and the jeers and the goading, Atiku decided to embark on a trip to the United States and touch base with his old taunts. Demonstrations erupted in some cities, urging the U.S. Consulate to deny him a visa, and all manner of persons from all manner of motives joined in the petition. The U. S. Consulate would not confirm nor deny that Atiku had been given a visa.
But an online source reported that Atiku had indeed secured a visa and was already in London, en route the United States. The APC exploded in righteous indignation, saying that, by its action, the United States was setting morality in public life at nought.
As for Atiku, instead of hopping across the Atlantic from the UK, he flew across the Sahara back to Lagos to witness the official launch of the PDP’s campaign for the General Election. He had merely interrupted his trip for that purpose and would resume it at the earliest opportunity.
Baloney, his opponents snickered.
The wily, world-wise PDP presidential candidate, they said, knew a trap when he saw one. Even if he arrived on US soil armed with a State Department-issued visa in the highest classification, nothing prevented the Department of Justice from plucking him off his jet and marching him to the nearest interrogation centre, for a start.
That was exactly what the APC and those Atiku defeated in the race for the PDP ticket wanted, they said.
Amidst all the speculation and the scheming, it is as if the Nigerian electorate is irrelevant. It is as if the outcome of the General Election will be determined by the Brookings Institution, The Economist, and the Visa Section of the U. S. Consulate.
