ISSUES THAT WILL DETERMINE 2019 POLLS IN NIGERIA
ISSUES THAT WILL DETERMINE 2019 POLLS IN NIGERIA
As you may have noticed already, politicking is starting earlier this time around, and that’s principally due to the series of events that have hung around the neck of this administration particularly – the Fulani herders/Farmers clash and more notoriously,
Where did this administration get it wrong? Why is this present leadership fast losing the favor of those who entrusted it with all their sympathy? That is a talk for another day.
There are several factors that will play a huge role in determining the next president of Africa’s most populous country, and certainly Name, Region, and Religion are some of them; unfortunately so. We have made the same mistakes before – we have chosen leaders on the basis of who we thought they were, where they came from, as a matter of fact, the next president of Nigeria can only come from the north whether he is the most qualified or not. The rotation system of the political parties who will field them has made it so. And religion? The line between politics and religion in some parts of this country is very thin and negligible. If someone is to be a candidate from that region worthy of support by his people, he has to be of a particular religion.
One of the main factors that will determine the next president of Nigeria is how that individual is able to pally with the people of the south-east Nigeria. These are an aggrieved people who have justified reasons to be – they have been denied many privileges and treated as outcasts; a fallout of the civil war in the late 60s into early 70s, almost every successive administration has rubbed it in their face. But they are a strong people, hardly speaking with one voice but strong all the same. Their agitation lies beneath their breath, and with every opportunity, it oozes with their perspiration – the latest, of course, being the altercation with the Nigerian military that led to the designation of IPOB as a terrorist group and eventually to the proscription of the group. Some may argue that they do not matter in the next election any more than they did in the last. Some still allude to the insensitive “five percent” tag, but I doubt that. I think they can pull a string. If they can speak with one voice, they’ll do more than pull a string. Whoever successfully courts them will certainly enjoy the support of the third largest population in Nigeria. Interestingly, there is an unusual alignment that appears to be surging between the southwest and the southeast, this came to the limelight during the southwest summit that attracted the southeastern leaders; the depth of that alignment is not public knowledge yet maybe we will find out in 2018. You may want to wave this aside, but in politics, nothing just happens.
The beautiful bride of the next election is the south-west. It was in the last, it still maintains that status for the next. Jonathan discovered that too late and he paid dearly for it. But there is a silent shift taking place in the southwest that will impact the next polls. There are some persons without whose efforts the incumbent wouldn’t be in office and some of such persons appear to be unhappy at the moment. It seems they have been sidelined by some other people who are closer to the incumbent. That is a strong reason for alignment and realignment. We can see that happening already – visits to a particular street in Lagos will be unending until 2019. That, in conjunction with the traditional rulers who are more powerful than they appear, state leaders and so on, will determine to a great extent how much of the western votes will go to a candidate. The next president will be someone who can court this bride and lead her down the aisle.
The highest number of votes in any given election comes from the north whether fictitious or real; both of children and adults; the north knows just how to produce numbers in census and elections. Were it not for the mandatory 25% requirement by law of candidates’ votes spread, the north on her own with little or no support from another region could almost produce a president. The candidate that the north produces in a consensus is not likely to lose an election, and that’s not because everybody in the three regions would have voted for the candidate were they to choose, they really don’t get to. Politics is often clannish and religionized and that’s in addition to the north believing that it is her divine mandate to have political ruler-ship over the country… at all times. Wherever they got that from! You must give it to them; the north plays the game well, I mean very well. The north is well schooled in positioning themselves and their children for political leadership; the north holds a leader from another region to certain unwritten terms that ensure there never comes a time when they are in the dark politically; the north understands the use of sentiments and wild force to their advantage; the north marries their children off to political alignment such that power must continue to rotate among them; the north when in office attracts most direct foreign investment and aid to themselves; the north knows how to romance western powers in the world dancing to their drumbeats in order to help tilt power in their favour; the north… knows the game of politics in Nigeria, and they never fail to play it well. The strength of such a people at the polls can never be underestimated, any candidate that does that, does it to his peril. The next president will be someone whom the north queues behind, and uninterestingly, there is no one among the contestants who have indicated interest so far who enjoys the sympathy of the north like the incumbent. He has a cult following in some parts of the north, hopefully, that could change before the polls in 2019.
The strength of the social media in influencing votes became obvious at the 2015 polls. It is one place where people get to express themselves and where smart politicians get feedback on their performance or weigh their chances. At the last general polls, some politicians tagged the social media campaigners as “keyboard activists”, they were wrong. Youth participation in the last polls was probably higher than it has ever been. Needless to say, those politicians paid dearly for it. The social media has come to stay as a key element of every election in Nigeria, especially the general ones; politicians who get huge genuine support and following from here stand a chance of getting similar support at the polls.
Restructuring. Yes, it is still raising its head. It will be a deciding factor at the 2019 polls. The next president of the country will be someone who has the courage to contemplate restructuring as a more permanent solution to the agitations that keep coming back at intervals. Even if the candidate would eventually drop the idea in favor of more workable ones that may come up that will help him to manage the challenges, the clamor for that concept is so loud now that the candidate must first show that he is not averse to the idea at all.
Another issue that will also determine whether the polls will sway in the direction of the incumbent or another candidate come 2019, (this is based on the assumption that the incumbent is re-contesting), is how the issues that brought the incumbent to power is handled going forward. The cardinal issues that brought Jonathan’s government down are the same that brought this government to power. Top on the list are these: Insecurity and Malignant corruption. On the first, the terrorist group in the northeast has been largely decimated but, replaced by another – the herdsmen. The president has hidden nothing of his reluctance in dealing a deadly blow to the latter as he did to the former undoubtedly because the people involved are the president’s kinsmen. While a less deadly group is confronted by the full force of the military, the herders get away with killing innocent citizens on the own farmlands. Their offense? They are on their farms when the herders are passing through with their cattle. Even those who are at home are murdered and their houses torched. On the issue of corruption, so much money has been recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the President’s body language clearly shows that he is anticorruption… when he came into power. Two years into the government, looters who change to the president’s political party are suddenly clean, and even if the law catches up with them, their escape is predictable, but, looters who are in opposition better relocate and change citizenship because the force of the law is coming at them maximally. That, unfortunately, is the simplest part of the problem; corruption has changed address – it now resides in foreign exchange, political alignment, and other innovative locations. The ground battle for which the president was the field marshal is now a Nintendo war game where he has become the poster boy. No tangible arrest or prosecution even when these things happen right under his nostril. And is there more hunger and starvation on the streets now? You bet. This corruption fight ehn!... These issues swallowed Jonathan’s government, they will be deciding factors at the next polls.
The rest follows later.
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