It is Friday, February 22, 2019 and I am writing my column for the week. By the time that it appears two days from now on Sunday, February 24, 2019, the first round of the 2019 general elections would have taken place. That is then; I am writing this piece in the time of now. And I am wondering how it will be then. Specifically, I am thinking about – peace. Concretely, I am thinking, asking: will the elections, on the whole, be peaceful? Iwalesin secularist that I am, nonetheless, I am “praying” silently but fervently for the elections to be peaceful. I am hoping, with a desperation that surprises even me, that by the time that this piece is published, the news outlet will not be awash with gruesome stories of homicidal violence and mayhem in many parts of our country. In this thought, I see and acknowledge my oneness, my solidarity with virtually all my countrymen and women: with nary an exception, we are all yearning for peaceful elections; we are all hoping that by this time next week, we would not be inundated with tales and pictures of deaths and destruction in many parts of the land – as usually happens at the end of many of our elections in this country and on our country. This is why the title of this essay contains the four words, free, fair, credible and peaceful.
Human beings are defined, are constituted by both the reality of their lives and the dreams that arise in response to the reality. Quite simply, very few things are free, fair, credible and peaceful in the reality of the collective, associated lives of most Nigerians. Nowhere is this truer than in the time of elections. That is precisely why we dream of free, fair, credible and peaceful elections. In general, from the simplest to the most complicated aspects of our lives, human beings everywhere hope that their dreams do not repeat or reenact the worst aspects of the reality of their lives. I do not know about you, compatriots, but I know that in the last four to six months, I have not seen or heard of any other grouping of words in the print, broadcast and social media to the same degree that I have encountered those four words – free, fair, credible and peaceful. At home and abroad in the wider world, you encounter the same words when you come across reporting or commentary on our 2019 elections. Indeed, it was the regularity, the constancy with which I encountered those words in recent months that finally drew my attention to their dream or otherworldly vintage, that is in relation to the lived realities of collective existence in our country.
Of the four words in the exemplary or symbolic concatenation that I am discussing in this piece, the one that seems not to be immediately apparent as a dream motif inversely related to social reality in Nigeria is “free”. By this, I mean that while it should be immediately apparent that the words “fair”, “credible” and “peaceful” do not remotely seem to have anything to do with public, collective life in Nigeria – the Nigeria of the PDP and the APC – the word “free” seems to be far less distant from our ideas and feelings about life in our country. Precisely, I am suggesting that for the most part, Nigerians do not feel that they are unfree, that they live under a dictatorship or even a repressive political order. Of course, sometimes, Buhari has been rather lax in his dealings with the rule of law; he has been very flexible in deciding which orders of the law courts to obey and which to ignore. But so far at least, he has generally kept his innate anti-democratic and autocratic instincts in check. At any rate, being unfree is not something most Nigerians complain about, no be so?
But how many tens of millions of Nigerians have the freedom not to starve, the freedom not to be the recipients of some of the most inferior and worst services, products and treatment from both public utilities and private enterprises? The freedom not to die useless, senseless deaths on badly constructed and maintained roads and highways and ill-equipped hospitals and clinics? The freedom to live dignified, anxiety-free lives with neighbours in communities across the length and the breadth of the country that are not plagued by bandits, kidnappers, cultists and official and unofficial extortionists, do we have this freedom in Nigeria? With all these freedoms drastically curtailed or outrightly denied, what true and real freedoms remain? The ill-usage that Nigerians routinely receive at home from their government is second only to the same contemptuous treatment that Nigerians receive in many other parts of the world – without the intervention of their government. As this is not the subject of this essay, I will not deal exhaustively with it. But my point, my intent in bringing it up for notice should be fairly evident to the reader by now: being free in an expansive, enriching and humanistic conception of the word, is not a notable part of being a Nigerian in our age – the age of the PDP and the APC. And that is why I include the word with the other three words – fair, credible and peaceful.
For every dream, there is its reality: this is the other part of the title of this piece. Free, fair, credible and peaceful elections are desired by every nation on the planet. I do not forget that fact. But there is another fact of historic, global significance that I also do not forget: in many parts of the world, free, fair, credible and peaceful elections are no longer mere aspirations or dreams; they are achieved and regularly repeated experiences. Significantly, a few of such nations are on the African continent. I think we can all agree that our country, Nigeria, is not one of such African nations. From this, I think, I hope that we can all agree that elections are not (yet) free, fair, credible and peaceful in Nigeria because so many other things that affect the quality of life in our country are also not free, fair, credible and peaceful. In other words, the dream of fair and credible elections in Nigeria goes far beyond elections themselves to just about every other aspect of our lives, including, incidentally, the lives of our social and political elites. This is what that phrase, “for every dream, there is its reality”, implies in this piece.
If a dream is not a nightmare, if it is euphoric and comforting, we embrace it. This is common to all human beings, as individuals and as entire communities. This is what dream interpreters and social psychologists mean when they say that dreaming is a very important aspect of human lives, in particular the psychic and imaginative aspects of our lives. From this, I wish to say, simply, that we must never give up on the dream of free, fair, credible and peaceful elections – whatever happens or does not happen in the ongoing 2019 general elections in our country. Throughout the sixteen years of the reign of the PDP, the dream of elections that are free, fair, credible remained just that, a dream, a fantasy as illusory as the dream of a deluge of rain and water in an unforgivingly dry and parched desert. [Especially under the duo of Maurice Iwu, the amoral and cynical INEC Chairman in the period and President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria experienced its worst and most violent election malpractices to date] The 2019 elections are the very first to be organized and conducted under the reign of the APC. Whatever happens in the elections, whoever wins or loses, this is one question we must all face: what are elections going to be like under the reign of the APC?
There are many dimensions of this question to keep in mind. One: if the APC loses, the question becomes automatically redundant. However, remember, compatriots, that APC and PDP are two sides of the same coin since, quite literally, a large chunk of the PDP leadership have been APC chieftains, just as many in the leadership of the APC were once doyens and kingpins of the PDP. Thus, like a customer seated in a barber’s swivel chair while having his head shaved, Nigeria may be caught between a rock and a hard place in the gap between the dream of free, fair and credible elections and the overwhelming reality of the unfreedom, incredibility and unfairness of life for most Nigerians.
Another dimension of the question to keep in mind is how long the reign of the APC itself will be, that is, if the party wins in these 2019 elections. Everything on the horizon of the present indicates that APC will remain unevolved and non-evolving. Like the PDP, indeed like all the ruling class political parties, its main driving force is the combination of dedication to the idea of a rotational presidency and deep ethno-regional primordialism, thinly overlaid by confused progressivist and populist ideological pretensions. And there are no thinkers, no visionary intelligentsia among the party’s leadership. If there are, they are yet to emerge as a clearly distinct and influential formation within the party. Above all else, the APC, leadership and rank-and-file membership, is as dedicated to the primitive accumulation project of diversion of our national wealth and public assets to private ownership and control as is the PDP and, indeed, all the ruling class parties. I beg, may I talk this one in true wazobian Nigerian Pidgin: looters and would-be looters borku inside APC as dem borku inside PDP and all the other big men and women parties and na so ‘e go be until…
I will not end this piece on a negative, despairing note. We must keep our dreams of free, fair, credible and peaceful elections in Nigeria alive, knowing fully well that it is a dream appertaining to all aspects of the quality of life for all in our country. Let us look out for and take note of every aspect of the dream that stands out clearly during and after the elections. Euphoric, comforting and inspiring dreams often come to us, not as entire wholes but as fragments, as bits and pieces of broken porcelain being laboriously glued together again. Thus, I would ask, compatriots, that we keep in mind any of the following things that might strike us as unusual during and after the elections.
The army and how obtrusive or decisive or, conversely, unobtrusive and minimal its participation was/is in the elections. In all the countries of the world where elections are routinely free, fair, credible and peaceful, there are never any army tanks and trunks and any soldiers, in uniform or mufti, in sight. Shoot at sight, Buhari more or less said to the police and the other security forces, if you see any ballot box snatchers. This clearly implied that the president expected the use of force to disrupt the smooth and peaceful conduct of the elections and is more than ready to meet force with force. Pay attention, compatriots, to the scope of the militarization that we see in the course of the elections.
Look also, compatriots, to what I would describe as the NECO yardstick of pass and failure in the conduct of the elections. At one time in this country, NECO passes used to be as low as 10%. In one particular year, 2003, the success rate was 1.8%. Yes, 1.8%, leaving a failure rate of 98.2%. In more recent years, an improvement of sorts has happened and passing percentiles of 45% to 55% have been recorded. If you can detect a NECO pattern in the election results, know, compatriot, that it is not yet Uhuru in free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.
Finally, dear reader, look to how confirmed or, conversely, confounded are expectations of voting allegiances along primordial and ethno-regional lines in the results of the elections. In all the nations of the world, demographic trends are often very marked in how people vote. For instance, in the United States, the two huge coastal areas, the Atlantic and the Pacific, together with the large urban centers, have electoral allegiances quite distinct from those of communities in the hinterland and the rural areas of the country. But not demographics but primordialism dominates our elections. Will this pattern repeat itself in this electoral cycle? The APC and the PDP are betting on this while some of the newer, “upstart” parties like African Action Congress (AAC) and the Young Progressive Party (YPP) are hoping to buck that pattern. For every dream, there is its reality? No, or not entirely so. Rather, for every reality, the dream is there to reshape and transform it when conditions become auspicious.
- Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
