*Photo: Professor Kehinde Yusuf*
Probably more than any other social phenomenon and entity, politics and politicians have had an unimaginable level of bad press. For example, in a Borepanda.com set of political jokes, one says: “Politics is the most accurate word in the English language. Poly = many. Ticks = blood sucking parasites.”
Another one claims: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”
Moreover, a sarcastic jocular conversation between a father and his child goes thus:
“Kid: Dad, I want to be in politics when I grow up.
Dad [replied]: Are you insane? Have you completely lost your mind? Are you a moron?
Kid [responds]: Forget it. There seems to be too many requirements.”
In addition, an insulting political riddle is:
Question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a snail?”
Answer: “One is slimy, a pest, and leaves a trail everywhere and the other is a snail.”
But the ultimate political insult, from Laughfactory.com, is: “Politicians and diapers have one thing in common: they should both be changed regularly … and for the same reason.”
This kind of negative stereotypes or prejudices seem to be the reason why many people who have moral scruples steer clear of politics. However, they are rightly admonished as follows in this Plato quote: “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” In fact, as Charles de Gaulle said, “Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
This is profound, because politics affects virtually every aspect of our lives. This made the European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to exhort Europeans as follows in relation to the Parliament’s elections from 6-9 June, 2024: “Go to vote. Otherwise, others will decide for you.”
This is important, because as Otto von Bismarck put it, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.” It may therefore be difficult to predict the creative extent to which politicians can go in achieving victory or exercising the electoral mandate with which they have been conferred.
This is not to say that politics doesn’t come with bruises even for politicians. In a 20 February, 2018 news item in The Cable titled “Remi Tinubu: I was hurt by how my husband was trashed after 2015 elections,” the future First Lady, Senator Remi Tinubu, was reported to have said: “I was hurt [by] what they did to my husband after the campaign. He didn’t say a thing. We were running three campaigns in my house, and for him to be trashed like that…” She was further reported to have noted regarding Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reaction to his shabby treatment by his erstwhile beneficiaries: “I said ‘you are still helping out? Why are you helping out? He said, ‘this country matters to me more.’”
Politicians everywhere are unbridled optimists. For example, Nelson Mandela said: “I am fundamentally an optimist. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”
This kind of unbridled optimism was manifested in the electoral destiny of then-presidential-aspirant Muhammadu Buhari. As narrated by Asiwaju in his famous Emilokan speech, Buhari had lost presidential elections three times and had decided that he would not contest again. In the never-say-die spirit of dyed-in-the wool politicians, Asiwaju said he told Buhari: “You will run again. We will back you, and you will win.”
Providentially, Buhari won the 2015 presidential election and served for two terms. This development is consistent with the following assertions of Daniel Kahneman: “Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders – not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks.”
It’s about one and a half years now since the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, was sworn into office. But the losers in that election or those who did not want him to contest or want him to win are agonising still. The result of the election that presaged the swearing-in belied pundit projections.
Media pundits who previewed the 2023 elections predicted that, because he was a Muslim from Southwest Nigeria, he had no chance of winning the primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) or the presidential election.
Religious pundits predicted that the Muslim-Muslim ticket would fail, because 2023 was not 1983.
Ethnic pundits, especially the vocal elements in the Pa Ayo Adebanjo faction of Afenifere, predicted that, true to type, the Northern elite would betray Tinubu and make him lose the elections.
Political pundits identified some powerful individuals as the ones who determined who would become President, and that since he didn’t have their support, he would lose the election. In spite of all these pundit predictions, Asiwaju won the election, signaling the possibilities in Nigerian politics.
Such possibilities have also been manifested in the camp of his opponents. In spite of the continuing claim that Mr. Peter Obi won the election, his new outreach efforts, going beyond his ethnic and religious comfort zones, indicate that in his heart of hearts, he knows what his true performance in that election was. If he really believed that he won, but was rigged out, his preoccupation should have been with preventing the ‘riggers’ from being able to rig him out again in the next presidential elections.
However, he has embarked on courting blocks he ignored or actively denigrated in the run-up to the 2023 elections. The apostle of the 2023 elections as “religious war”, the exponent of “Yes, daddy”, and the patent holder for “Church, take back your country” is now visiting mosques, taking part in joint iftar – fast-breaking sessions with Muslims – and building boreholes in parts of Northern Nigeria, among other activities. It’s thus possible, after all, to teach old dogs new tricks in Nigerian politics.
Another opposition-related demonstration of possibilities in Nigerian politics is in Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s letter to the Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review, in which he proposed as follows regarding the ongoing constitution review process: “The office of the President shall rotate among the six geopolitical zones of the Federation on a single term of six years flowing between the North and South on the single term of six years respectively.”
This proposal is ironical, because one of the reasons for the weakening of his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), ahead of the 2023 elections was his refusal to concede the candidacy of the party to a southerner, after President Muhammadu Buhari, who is a northerner, had spent eight straight years in office. Moreover, underscoring the possibilities for self-realisation in Nigerian politics, Atiku Abubakar noted, in his 64th Independence Anniversary message on 1 October, 2024: “opposition parties languish in weakness.”
The 21 September, 2024 Edo State governorship elections have come and gone, but they have thrown up all sorts of issues which have serious implications for political consciousness and political behaviour. First is the issue of candidate selection, especially in the PDP. Internal democracy seemed to have been undermined through the imposition of a candidate largely alienated from the masses and who could not address the electorate directly in their language without the assistance of an interpreter.
Second is the issue of political harmony. In this regard, possibly due to the arrogance of power, the incumbent Governor Godwin Obaseki had fought his benefactors such as former Governor Adams Oshiomhole of the APC and prominent members of the PDP who accommodated him in the party when he had problems within his former party, APC; he had virtually ‘decapitated’ some legislators politically by making it impossible for them to effectively represent their constituencies; he had set out to politically annihilate his Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu; and he engaged the Benin traditional leadership in a running battle. The aggregate hostility of the aggrieved forces made possible the defeat of Obaseki’s preferred candidate in the governorship election, Mr. Asue Ighodalo.
Third, the Edo election showed how far political hard-work and sustainable legacies could go in endearing a politician to their constituents. This was most remarkably demonstrated in the case of a septuagenarian, female voter who made the notable sacrifice of going to vote at that election in spite of her ill-health. The Nation report on the woman goes thus: “A septuagenarian, Fatima Jimoh, has said that she left her sick bed to vote in the Edo governorship election because of her love for former Governor Adams Oshiomhole. Jimoh, who was aided by her daughter, said she wanted to make Oshiomhole happy by ensuring his party won the polls. After voting at Unit three, Ward 10, Iyamho Primary School, Jimoh said, “I am not feeling well. I like Oshiomhole. I come out of illness to vote.” This is significant when it is noted that elderly persons like her, among millions of other citizens, were making sacrifices to validate democracy, at a time when some prominent Nigerians had been trying to undermine liberal democracy.
Those who, like the Edo septuagenarian, are so committed to and can make so much sacrifice to sustain democracy should be given optimum opportunities to take part in key aspects of the electoral process. One of such aspects concerns the question of deciding who represents the different constituencies. It is in this light that the issue of the direct primaries mode of candidate selection should be revisited. In November, 2021, the National Assembly passed a bill requiring that the candidates for the different elections should be selected through direct primaries. This decision was widely applauded. However, it required the assent of the President at the time, who would not sign the bill into law until the options of selecting candidates by indirect primaries or consensus were included in the bill. Due to the exigencies of the time, the National Assembly complied with the dictates of the President.
When the members of a constituency take part in the selection of a candidate, through direct primaries as happened in 1983, the chances of making the politician more committed and more responsive to the constituents are higher. The prospects of bringing to book more effectively erring politicians who get to office through the votes of such constituents are also higher, given the fact that constituents know their leaders more closely.
All in all, as participation in the Edo governorship election underscores, very many Nigerians believe in the country, appreciate good governance and hope for good times.
