As Political Campaigns Begin
Nigeria will be a very noisy and very excited place from today, November 18, due to an item in the Independent National Electoral Commission’s [INEC] 2019 election timetable, i.e. Commencement of campaign by political parties. It is a two-stage process; campaigns by candidates for presidential and National Assembly elections begin today while campaigns by candidates for governorship and state assembly elections begin in two weeks’ time, on December 1. This is because Section 99 [1] of Electoral Act 2010 stipulates that campaigns begin 90 days before an election. Presidential and National Assembly elections are scheduled to hold on February 16 while elections for governorship and state assembly positions will hold on March 1, next year.
There is noise and excitement but there is also anxiety and fear as these campaigns begin. Even before their official start, we had a taste of things to come during the party primaries. The dust from those primaries, especially in the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] is yet to settle in several states. In the two major parties, APC and PDP, primary elections in many states were characterized by maneuvering by party leaders to install favoured aspirants, chaos at some polling stations especially those that held direct primaries, violence unleashed by thugs that disrupted the process in several places, as well as many reported incidents of vote buying. This was especially prevalent during indirect primaries where congress and convention delegates were alleged to engage in selling their votes. Then also, there are serious allegations that some party leaders rigged the process in favour of some aspirants because they were bribed.
If this was what our politicians will do within their own parties, we should expect them to be even less scrupulous when they come up against rival political party candidates in the general elections. The first problem we will face is the tone of the campaign. Instead of trying to woo voters with thoughtful programs that address critical problems, what we are likely to see are endless and most often baseless or unproven allegations against opponents. This tone must change. We expect parties and candidates to put forward their plans for education, health, power supply, job creation, economic growth, poverty reduction and anti-corruption and to convince voters that they will implement such programs, not disown them soon after the election. Voters must learn to favour parties and candidates that campaign on the issues, not those that engage in whipping up sentiments or making nasty unproven allegations.
The security agencies, especially the police, should also rise to the challenge and suppress the use of political thugs. They should do so in an impartial manner and bring to book anyone who uses thugs and violence in the upcoming campaign. Political rallies, processions and meetings must be orderly and they must be prevented from engaging in provocative actions and utterances.
Newspapers, radio and TV stations together with NGOs and civil society organisations, including labour unions also have an important role to play by forcing candidates at various levels to address issues and present their programs, instead of just prancing around and shouting themselves hoarse. Live debates must feature for presidential and governorship candidates. Finally, a way must be found to reign in the social media, the main avenue nowadays for unedited campaign material of the foulest kind.