Ethnic baiting and Nigeria’s politics of exclusion in 2023

The 2023 general elections promised to deliver so much in democratic renewal and national reconciliation and progress but ended up giving the opposite and took Nigeria many years backwards.

Some major fissures of hate and exclusion in our national life were widened as a result of the keen contest between the APC candidate and incumbent President, Bola Tinubu, and the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi. In Lagos, which is Nigeria’s former capital and Centre of Excellence, the ethnic card was negatively deployed in an attempt to discourage the national coalition for change.

In the negative political mobilisation, the worst of us were promoted. Many were killed, shops burnt and hundreds of property destroyed.

A major blow to the Nigerian electoral process was the wholesale denial of the innovations brought into Section 60 of the Electoral Act. The manner INEC denied the mandatory nature of these provisions to favour one candidate shocked international partners and observers like the EU and ECOWAS as captured in their reports. As the LP vice presidential candidate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, asserted that the opponents decided to “switch off the IREV when they saw us winning.” The implication of this is the renewed calls for an amendment of the Electoral Act to further reinforce the provision for direct transmission of election results.

It is believed that upon assumption to power, the incumbent government has continued exclusionary appointments in boards, agencies and parastatals in favour of his (Tinubu) ethnic group, which seems to punish the Igbo for the audacity of one of their own to seek the country’s exalted office after many years of exclusion.

When he was asked about the huge division in the country during a recent engagement with Nigerians, Mr Obi said there was division in every country, but noted that the high level of poverty and scarce resources in Nigeria widened the gulf of the division.

The fierce contest for control of the nation’s scarce resources usually creates new villains and scapegoats that must not be allowed access. This is why the government must ensure greater expansion of the economy to create opportunities for all.