Nigerian voters caught between a rock and hard place
Nigeria will hold its sixth presidential election since 1999 on February 16, with 84million prospective voters set to take part in Africa’s largest democratic exercise.
The 2015 polls were historic in achieving the first democratic change of government in the country’s history. However, in the past four years President, Muhammadu Buhari has spent a total of five months in a British hospital (leading to rumours that he is now using a Sudanese body double, Jubril, to campaign for him) and accusations continue that he has pursued corruption selectively.
Buhari’s economic recovery and growth plan envisages tackling Nigeria’s large infrastructural deficit through building roads and railways and promoting industrialisation, with the aim of creating 15million jobs and achieving a 7% growth rate by 2020. The government has, however, come no way near achieving these goals. Unemployment stands at 23.1%, with more than 10-million youths ( 60% of the youth population) out of work. A $5bn hydropower project has proved illusory, with erratic electricity supply continuing.
Insecurity between herdsmen and farmers has increased local conflicts, even as Boko Haram and its breakaway Islamic State’s West Africa Province have wrought death and destruction in the northeast. In the past few months they killed more than 100 government soldiers and seized several towns, rendering hollow Buhari’s earlier claim that the militants had been “technically defeated”. Attacks by Niger Delta militants had earlier shut down a third of Nigeria’s oil production.
Buhari’s main presidential challenger businessman Atiku Abubakar was vicepresident between 1999 and 2007. He has been trailed by accusations of corruption, though never convicted. Atiku has promised to create 3million jobs; lift 50-million Nigerians out of poverty; nationalise the staggeringly corrupt Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation; promote jobs and development in the volatile northeast; and set up an infrastructure debt fund.
But many have asked why he should be believed now, when he failed so spectacularly to deliver socioeconomic development during his eight years as vice-president. Atiku is particularly close to Jacob Zuma, with whom he chaired the Nigeria-SA binational commission while both served as deputy presidents.
Buhari’s campaign has been carefully scripted, avoiding direct debate with his main rivals and instead engaging in question and answer sessions, with cabinet members seated next to him to help answering difficult questions. Neither major party in Nigeria the All Progressives Congress or the People’s Democratic Party seems to have a coherent vision for the country’s problems, even as 87-million Nigerians live below the poverty line, the largest number in the world.
At the provincial level, several profligate governors have been accused of massive corruption. The system is also highly chauvinistic, with no female governors out of 36 executives, and only 29 out of 469 legislators (a paltry 6.2%). Oby Ezekwesili, the only female presidential candidate —a former cabinet member with energy, and international technocratic experience dropped out of the race.
Buhari is expected to win a close election, but questions linger over how fair the polls will be. Past elections have often been violent: 800 deaths were recorded in 2011; and 100 in 2015. The recent suspension by Buhari a former military general of the chief justice, Walter Onnoghen, who would have adjudicated electoral disputes, was a deeply troubling action that already throws the legitimacy of the polls into question. Military instincts are still evident in the system.
Both sides have recently had their most powerful sticks to beat their opponents taken away. Buhari, portrayed as lacking the energy to be out on the hustings, has campaigned actively across the country. Atiku, said to have been barred from entering the US on corruption charges, has recently visited the US. Both sides also appear desperate for victory in this “do-or-die” battle.
Most cynical voters, however, continue to yawn at the sight of two establishment candidates resembling Tweedledee and Tweedledum, in an “Alice-in-Wonderland” election that is almost totally detached from the lived realities of most Nigerians. Voters cannot be blamed for declaring a plague on both houses.
Adebajo is director of the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
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