In an atmosphere of rage and controversy

Jega

Sometime around 2003, the United States National Intelligence Committee and a think tank, Fund for Peace, projected that Nigeria could unravel before or by 2015, citing social (ethnic and religious), economic and political crises as predisposing factors. On the basis of the projection that Nigeria was ranked as number 15 in the failed states index, where Somalia is number one, the US military began simulated war games to prepare for a war in Nigeria by 2013, but not later than 2015. Predictably, the Nigerian government, and particularly the National Assembly, poured scorn on the projections and declared that in spite of the problems Nigeria was encountering, the chances of failure were as remote as we can wish. Since the projections were made, a few of the countries listed in the research publication as likely to fail have begun to unravel, many of them listed as even healthier than Nigeria.

Whether Nigeria’s ruling elite wish it away or not, the inexorable processes leading to state failure have continued their relentless march since the Fund for Peace reminded everyone two or three years ago of the apocalyptic projections. If the elite are not too preoccupied with their own ambition for power, the turbulent 2011 polls should serve as a poignant reminder of the precariousness of the Fourth Republic and the delicateness of the foundations of the country as a whole. But whether these reminders will serve any purpose remains to be seen, as the last of the scheduled polls for the 2011 general elections are about to be held. Much more than the two previous polls of the National Assembly (April 9) and presidential (April 16), the governorship and Houses of Assembly polls scheduled for tomorrow are projected to be the most tempestuous. If the recently concluded presidential poll could lead to the unimaginable conflagration of the past one week, it is feared that the more local and intensively competitive polls to fill Government Houses and states legislature could unleash a fiery storm of indescribable scale.
Two main factors predispose Tuesday’s polls to this apocalyptic prediction. One is the fact that going by the results of the National Assembly election, the main underachiever, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), stands little chance of winning many states as its ambition demands. It lost heavily because, in assessing the CPC and PDP and indeed other parties, the voters did not have a sharp sense of the political and ethnic dichotomies that have bifurcated national elections for decades. The candidates were local people all voters could relate with, especially in states that had long been in the Peoples Democratic Party fold. If the voters needed to send representatives to the national legislature, it didn’t matter so much which parties they belonged. What mattered the most to voters was their perception of the representatives’ competence and suitability for the post. In turn, this perception was predicated on the relationship that had existed between the representative seeking votes and the voter. This relationship was not circumscribed by the CPC, a party that, until the presidential poll, did not loom very large in the consciousness of the northern voter.
A second factor is the militarisation of the polity after the CPC presidential candidate, Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd), suffered a crushing defeat in the hands of the PDP candidate, Dr Goodluck Jonathan. Voters in the North are now likely to be torn between the relationship they have nurtured with their local representatives over the years and past elections and the fact that CPC candidates may now be pushing the agenda of equating a vote for CPC as a loyal vote for the North, and that to do otherwise is to betray the North and its dominant ethos. An atmosphere of intolerance and violence may have thus been smuggled viciously into Tuesday’s contest. Naturally, the other candidates will not give up, and a wounded CPC will latch on to every imaginable tactics to secure as many State Houses as possible to underscore its conclusion that it was cheated in the April 16 poll.
The polls have been deferred in Bauchi and Kaduna States in deep apprehension of uncontrollable violence accompanying the April 26 elections. Though these two states seem poised to explode into violence, needfully or needlessly, it is uncertain what magical balm the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hoped to apply if the other states that exploded after the April 16 poll again go up in flames. Some ad hoc and youth corps members serving as electoral officers have fled their stations, and those who will remain will certainly be disinclined to stand up to party agents mobilised for violence and mayhem. Yet to cancel the poll in more states than has been done already is to endanger the entire polls and render them inconclusive. Tomorrow will determine how this impasse would be broken.
What is clearly obvious is that the atmosphere is so heavily polluted that it is difficult to see how the polls will be accomplished with anything near free or fair, let alone credible, as the country had managed to achieve so far. Considering the rather ham-fisted response to poll violence throughout this polling season, and the reactive rather than proactive approach adopted by the security agencies, more states may explode in violence thereby severely stretching poorly equipped and outnumbered law enforcement agencies. We may not have the sharp divisions of the April 16 poll, and the sexed-up votes of the South-South and the underage voters of the North may counterbalance each other, yet, it is more likely that Tuesday’s polls will probably be even less credible than the previous two polls, and probably more controversial.

It is in this atmosphere of rancorous balloting and collation that some 24 states will be going to the polls to elect their chief executives and legislators. Among them, the Southwest will be attempting to steer the region completely into progressivism, the Southeast will be preparing grounds for a future attempt at the presidency, and the various zones of the North will see whether they can arrest the drift to anomy represented by poor and dispossessed youths called almajirai, to whom it now seems the North’s political, traditional and even religious elites have become hostage. If we successfully navigate the treacherous waters of the April 26 polls, we will still come smack into the middle of the seething disputation over whether the current structure of the country, with its leprous and inchoate federalism, can sustain the country beyond the projected doomsday of 2015.

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