From the electoral observatory
Last week, Nigerians went to the polls in some key electoral segments of the nation. The outcome was an emphatic victory for the ruling party, particularly in the Federal Capital
- Looking back in order to look forward
Last week, Nigerians went to the polls in some key electoral segments of the nation. The outcome was an emphatic victory for the ruling party, particularly in the Federal Capital Territory with its Abuja Municipal Area council (AMAC). Up till that moment and because of some demographic quirks, Abuja municipality had been adjudged an opposition stronghold. The ADC, the new coalition of prominent opposition elements put together to stop the hegemonic rampage of the ruling party, suffered a catastrophic rout. It even trailed the justly jinxed PDP that many have given up for dead.
So dismal was the electoral mugging and the optics for the ADC as a viable party that some political cynics have begun speculating that the chaotic amalgam might have been put together by the presiding political prodigy of the APC to prevent a credible challenge to the electoral dominion of of the ruling party. Nothing must be put beyond the master of illusionist fantasia himself. And as if succumbing to a sinister spell, agents of the ADC were nowhere to be found in more than a third of the polling booths. Surely, elections are not won by a resort to some strange arithmetic of non-existent acceptability and they are certainly not won on the social media as the president noted in an acerbic swipe at the opposition.
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As it is to be expected, APC party stalwarts have already commenced the victory party, insisting that next year's elections have already been won and lost and noting that the recently concluded elections were a referendum on the performance of the ruling party .There was no credible pathway to the Nigerian presidency for the dilatory and the desultory. Judging from the triumphant smirk on their face, there now seems to be nothing standing between the ascendant epoch of APC in modern Nigerian politics.
Despite the widespread disenchantment about the economic circumstances of the country and the ominous development in security management, the ruling party seems to have leveraged its capacity for massive deployment of resources, its supremacy in the grim gymnastics of vote retailing and unrivalled mastery of the logistics of structured dominance to overwhelm the prevalent logic of despondency. This is the triumph of machine politics and electoral machinery over mere machinations. Such was the electoral walloping and the disorienting effects that it took the ADC almost a week to offer a tepid response to both the Abuja elections and the Electoral Amendment Act. It was a disastrous outing. If it foregrounds elite disharmony, it also highlights the difficulties faced by a weak and disunited opposition in offering a challenge to the APC leviathan.
Read Also: Electoral Act: Opposition protests driven by loss of privilege, not patriotism — APC scribe
Yet despite the claptrap and the back-slapping , it is impossible to wish away old electoral demons . They trotted out while the APC celebratory party was still in full swing. Allegations of vote-buying, vote-switching, ballot-snatching and voter intimidation filled the air. Although these allegations were superbly rebuffed by INEC, what the electoral umpire could not rebuff or convincingly explain away was the dismally low turnout. Democracy suffers a crisis of credibility, authority and legitimacy when an overwhelming majority of the people stay away on election day either out of apathy or growing frustration with democracy itself. Those who say this does not matter often discover that it does when a national crisis requiring the massive will of the populace to resolve erupts without notice.
It is always better to cast a backward glance than to take a foolish leap forward. What you are about to read was written in 2010 and published a year later in 2011 as the foreword to a handbook to democratic transition in Nigeria. Democracy is a journey and not a destination. A nation may be stuck for a long time confronting seemingly irremovable obstacles until it manages to sidestep these or until something gives. As we have enumerated above, sixteen years after Nigeria is still hostage to some of the fundamental ailments of democratic rule. That the nation has not toppled over despite growing multi-dimensional security threats, profound economic difficulties, rising ethnic tensions and the phenomenon of re-militarization in the subcontinent, is a tribute to its resilience and indomitability.
