Political power in Nigeria – Part 10

This instalment analyses the outcome of the February 25, 2023, presidential and national assembly elections. The elections were held and a winner emerged. The vote tally showed a keenly contested exercise. Bola Tinubu of the APC was declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election by the Inependent National Electoral Commission INEC. The APC’s candidate had a total of 8,794,726 votes, representing about 35 percent of the whole. The PDP’s Atiku Abubakar secured 6,984,520 votes, representing 29 percent; and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who received 6,101,533 votes, that is, 25 percent. As is well-known, the results are subject to controversy and are under judiciary review.

The crux of the matter is that the elections were dogged by voter suppression, ballot box snatching, killings, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) malfunction, lateness to polling units, and above all, the failure of INEC to employ the Result Viewing Portal (IReV), the electoral integrity proof. Arguably, it is to be noted that no election in Nigeria since 1959 has been free and fair. The irregularities of the February elections are not new and not the worst in the country’s electoral heist. I address here only the IReV matter. The neglect to apply it, INEC ascribed it to “technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, state elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections”. Although INEC was diplomatic, Retired Lt. Alani Akinrinade, the former army chief, armed with reliable Intel, provided an inkling into what happened. He noted in an interview with Olaolu Oladipo of The Telegraph that, “The election has been very credible and I will tell you why. This idea of hacking into the mainframe of INEC’s server was taken with levity by those who tried. That didn’t start today and I am very happy with INEC’s chairman for doing all he could to ensure that he protected the integrity of the process. He knew what was being done and he decided to act accordingly” (https://www.newtelegraphng.com/obasanjo-lobbied-babangida-to-head-ing-gen-akinrinade/).

Now is the pertinent question: has the electoral outcome validated the election determinants that I have argued in this serial? Are there other factors that missed my analytical prism? I examine these questions in what follows.

In the fifth part of this serial, I outlined some factors that may affect the ‘rule of the thumb’ defined as the sovereignty of the electorate. These include the electorate, party structure, alliance, identity, media, and money. All these factors shaped the outcome of the elections. Some of them proved dominant in the balloting, namely, identity, and alliance.

The identity factor with its component elements such as ethnicity and religion played a dominant role in the elections. Peter Obi’s supporters, even though cross-cutting, wore the complexion of an Igbo project, and of the body of Christ. This alienated those who would have voted for him. Professor Farooq Kperogi has aptly captured this effect in ways that combined both ethnicity and religion. As he puts it, “…since the election was about identity and, historically, candidates who rile up a narrow primordial base of the electorate without tact never win a national election…Some of us his early supporters who saw merit in electing someone from the Southeast in the interest of national integration found that we had no place in his exclusionary political universe where he is the hero that must be worshiped and the messiah that must be “obeyed,” where uncouth, vituperative, intolerant, mouth-breathing automatons reign.

He ran the Christocentric version of Buhari’s Islamocentric pre-2015 campaigns.” The hype in ethnicity robbed Obi of a section of the Yoruba, the most liberal of the electorate, who had initially rooted for him to support their own in a triumph of awalokan (it is our turn). The Christians took Obi as their project and consequently became a contradictory prophetic enterprise. The Muslims took it as counterproductive to their belief, and the pro-Obi sentiments that existed in the Muslim Umar then turned a Jihad.

Dr. Abdullmudalib Muhammad Auwal, a Nigerian Islamic preacher, put it “We told the participants that a Muslim, wherever he is, is better than a Kafiri [unbeliever] or non-Muslim, and if you bring 2 Muslims together [on the ticket], they will give you the victory that one Muslim will not be able to give…This is the reason why we are enlightening people to understand that the main objective is that Muslim-Muslim ticket is a jihad to us” (https://www.pillarcatholic.com/nigerian-christians-brace-for-election-as-islamic-clerics-call-all-muslim-ticket-a-jihad/). Nevertheless, the religious factor put much of the votes in the Middle Belt in Obi’s kitten.

The alliance factor worked, especially in favour of Bola Tinubu. The operational universe of Tinubu, which my friend, Onoja Adagbo has called ‘Tinubu imaginaire’, is vast. Beyond the G5 factor which he bought into, he took into consideration non-state actors in the bracket of new militarism, that today constitute, if you like, micro-elements of the constitution of power. Tinubu visited Government Eweizide Ekpemupolo (General Tompolo) in the Greeks of Niger-Delta to solicit support. Also, he had the support of Asari Dokunbo, another militant, whose acquaintance he had consolidated into friendship. However, the G5 writ large, made of governors who are emperors in their respective states, could not have been underrated. Tinubu won in the states controlled by these governors whose support for Tinubu was anchored on the principle of power shift.

As Nyesom Wike, Rivers State Governor and leader of the alliance, has put it, “I have told people that those who fight for change, who fight for revolution may not be direct beneficiaries of that fight but today, history has it that all of us now are aware that when power finishes from the south, it will go to the north; when it finishes from the north, it will come to the south…So, it does not need to be written in the constitution at all before it is implemented. And I thank Nigerians for standing firm to see that this issue materialise” (https://www.channelstv.com/2023/03/03/wike-thanks-nigerians-for-backing-power-shift-to-south-says-rotational-presidency-settled/).

An important factor that I have not prioritised in this serial, but foregrounded by the outcome of the elections, is the class question, which can, for heuristic reasons, be discussed under the material condition of the Nigerian people. The dividends of democracy have been quite elusive for the Nigerian population.

The last multidimensional poverty index of the National Bureau of Statistics underlined the level of the impoverishment of Nigerians by successive administrations. The Buhari administration is the climax of the pauperisation of the people evident in the rate of unemployment, lack of basic facilities such as electricity, and petroleum products to power the largely informal economy, and the consequent emigration of Nigerian youth overseas in what is now famous as ‘Jappa syndrome’. This state of poverty, an ‘objective factor’ in the revolutionary lexicon, spawned a redemptive ‘subjective factor’ that found expression in the obedient vessel. It should be noted that it existed irrespective of Obi’s emergence which has become a convenient outlet for its expression transitorily.

To sum up, the emergence of Tinubu as president-elect is, by and large, the triumph of the pact between the South-west and northern power blocs made in 2013. However, it should be noted that the elections underline possibilities in the Nigerian power arena. In free and fair elections, electoral upsets would occur. As Professor Jibrin Ibrahim has noted, “This election tells the essential truth about Nigerian elections – the history of Nigeria’s electoral geography is clear; no hegemonic party can emerge in a credible election. This was the situation in all of Nigeria’s foundation republican elections in 1959, 1979 and 1999. Following these elections, the ruling parties abused their powers of incumbency to make themselves hegemonic in subsequent elections through rigging” (See Jibrin Ibrahim, Five truths about the Nigerian presidential election. Premium Times, March 3, 2023). And now the February election has produced a variegated parliament that should play a robust opposition to the rebound of Nigeria’s democracy.

Note: I had indicated that I would end this serial today. A postscript may be necessary after the March 11, State elections.
Akhaine, Ph.D. (London), former general secretary of the Campaign for Democracy in Nigeria.