AS the 2023 election cycle is set to begin with the presidential ballot on Saturday, reassurances by the Independent National Electoral Commission, the government and the security agencies have not fully doused the prevailing apprehension across the land. Yet, the elections are crucial to Nigeria’s future as a viable state. Currently, the country is in a downward spiral of turmoil and uncertainty, headlined by general insecurity, division, economic adversity, poverty, and mass hunger. Rather than throw up their hands in helplessness, Nigerians should troop out in massive numbers to elect candidates of their choice on Election Day.
Complacency at this time could be fatal. Indeed, low turnouts and indifference by a majority of eligible voters since 1999 have left the country in the hands of predatory, incompetent, and corrupt politicians, and sundry rent takers, thereby giving democracy a bad name. Additionally, an NOI Polls survey suggesting that up to 26 percent of registered voters would be ready to sell their votes is doubly distressing, reinforcing a United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs report showing widespread vote-buying during the 2019 elections. The result has been disastrous, as the country is tumbling into anarchy; poverty reigns, human misery is incalculable, unemployment and inflation are at record levels, and state failure looks increasingly imminent.
The hopes ignited at the inauguration of the Fourth Republic of peace, productivity, harmonious co-existence, nationhood, and prosperity have vanished. Democracy thrives on inclusion and is sustained by the expressed will of the people, but Nigerians are alienated from the political space. Elections, the ultimate expression of the popular will, have been tortuous, rowdy, hardly free and fair, and marred repeatedly by violence, manipulation, and judicial interference. Low turnout completes the debacle, delivering minority leadership that is invariably unaccountable to the people.
Yet, among the ‘four key elements’ of democracy identified by the renown American scholar, Larry Diamond–regular free and fair elections, active citizen participation in politics and civic life, protection of human rights, and the rule of law–regular elections are recognised as the decisive expression of popular sovereignty.
Democracy is distinguished from tyranny, declares the philosopher, Karl Popper, primarily through elections that provide “opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to do so without recourse to a revolution.”
But having abdicated their sovereign responsibility to exert influence on public policy and governance by either not bothering to register to vote, collecting their permanent voter cards, or turning up at the polling booth, many Nigerians have left democracy, and consequently, their present and their future, in the hands of unaccountable politicians. This would be bad enough anywhere as unchecked power always corrupts; but here, in the hands of a particularly avaricious political class, it has been calamitous.
Of the 84 million registered voters then, only 34.7 percent (about 28.6 million) turned out to vote in the 2019 presidential election. Turnout in Lagos, the state with the highest population, was a mere 17.25 percent, Rivers 19.97 percent, and Abia 18 percent. The Northern states had relatively higher rates with Jigawa, Katsina, and Sokoto recording 55.67 percent, 48.45 percent, and 46 percent respectively.
Over the last two election cycles, said Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of INEC, voter turnout hovered between 30 and 35 percent and some by-elections recorded as low as 8.3 percent. Turnout declined steadily from 57.4 percent in 2007 to 53.7 percent in 2011, 43.6 percent in 2015, and 34.75 percent in 2019. The South-South and the South-East regions recorded the least turnout with 27.66 percent combined.
Other African countries are doing better: the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in 2019 reported a turnout of 98.2 percent in Rwanda’s presidential election (2017), the highest; with Kenya (79.5 percent), Liberia (75.2 percent), Sierra Leone (84.2 percent), and Seychelles (90.1 percent) also making it to the top 10 in the continent. Voter turnout in Ghana’s presidential elections between 2000 and 2016 ranged between 61.74 percent and 85.12 percent.
Benefitting from low turnouts and their ability to manipulate or buy votes, and mobilise their own supporters, Nigeria’s politicians treat the people with contempt and ignore their concerns. They have virtually run the country aground, appropriating resources and amassing personal fortunes at the people’s expense for 24 years.
While the national poverty rate was just 52 percent in 1999, Nigeria seized the title of World Poverty Capital from India in 2018 and only relinquished it in 2022, according to the UN World Poverty Clock. The number of ‘extremely poor’ reached 87 million poor in 2018, and 95.1 million in 2021. A National Bureau of Statistics report in 2022 identifying 133 million Nigerians as “multi-dimensionally poor” prompted an alarm by the International Human Rights Commission that the country’s economic situation “is a recipe for crisis.”
Other human development indices are equally appalling: it ranked 163rd out of 180 countries in the UN HDI 2022. With 20 million, it has the largest out-of-school children population after India; the World Bank said approximately 70 million persons lack access to basic drinking water, and 114 million were without basic sanitation facilities in 2021; 92 million Nigerians lack access to grid electricity, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. While 74.5 percent of the country’s rural population lack access to functional roads, 87 percent of rural roads remain in deplorable condition. Infrastructure is shambolic across the country.
Since 1999, successive governments have failed to revive or sell the four moribund state-owned refineries or build new ones, relying instead on importation of refined petroleum products that drains about $28 billion annually, according to Blackgold Energy Authorities.
Similarly, despite billions of dollars appropriated for electricity over the years, the country is barely able to wheel 5,000 megawatts through the value chain. After a corruption-driven asset sale in 2013, a former sector regulator estimates that the government has spent N2 trillion on the power sector with no tangible result.
The economy is in a shambles; the governments, federal and states, have driven it into a new debt trap with total debt stock standing at N44.7 trillion by September 2022, but put at N67.5 trillion when the N22.8 trillion taken through the Central Bank of Nigeria’s ‘Ways and Means’ is added. Officially, inflation stands at 21.82 percent and unemployment at 33.3 percent, but others cite 53.4 percent youth unemployment, while Hanke’s Inflation Dashboard estimates inflation at 52 percent.
The naira is becoming less valuable by the day and between them, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, have plunged the country into a crisis with a dreadfully implemented currency redesign exercise.
If for nothing else, the insecurity in the country and the level of corruption should motivate every eligible adult to turn out to vote for the national and state-level elections. Due to incompetence, carelessness and corruption, the government has lost control over parts of the country to terrorists, bandits, criminals of different stripes and killer herders.
Nigerians are dying in droves; according to TheCable Index, and the CFR-National Security Tracker, 4,545 persons were killed by non-state actors in 2022 and 4,611 others kidnapped. The Tony Blair Institute estimates 55,430 persons killed by diverse violent groups in the seven years to 2022. Nigeria was the third most terrorised country for years, only sliding to sixth place in the 2022 Global Terrorism Index.
Corruption and impunity reign. Officials embezzle public funds with reckless abandon. Nigeria accounts for 20 percent of the $88.6 billion of the annual illicit financial flows from Africa as tabulated by UNCTAD. PwC forecasts that the cost of corruption will rise to 37 percent of GDP by 2030.
Nigerians must therefore take their destiny in their own hands. Serially betrayed by the executive branch at all levels, and by the national and sub-national legislators, who are content to remain lackeys of the President and the state governors respectively, and disappointed in a judicial branch that has lost respect and is also fast losing its authority, the people must act decisively by turning out in large numbers to vote.
Note: low turnout favours the entrenched interests that have been driving the country to ruin and gorging insatiably on its resources. Dismayingly, statistics show that the most active and informed segments of the polity namely, youths, the middle class, including technocrats, professionals and the intelligentsia, and the geo-political zones with the highest literacy levels are the ones that persistently fail to collect their PVCs or to vote. By the first week of January, INEC data showed that 6.7 million voters across 17 states and the FCT had still not collected their PVCs.
While every segment of the society is deserving of respect, and has an equal and legitimate stake, the enlightened should stop leaving the destiny of the country and future generations to be determined solely by the less informed, aided by the miscreants, thugs, violent transport union members and vote-sellers retained by unscrupulous politicians. “The worst of us,” as a notable cleric, Tunde Bakare, advised, should not continue to rule “the best of us.” Social media posts do not count when the votes are tallied!
Nigeria is at a critical juncture: sitting on the fence is not an option; a citizen becomes complicit in sustaining the rot either by voting for the known predators, or by abstaining from voting. Voters should critically examine the parties and candidates, their character, track records and plausible campaign promises. Corrupt, dishonest candidates at all levels should be rejected.
Voters should favour candidates that espouse and commit themselves to the restructuring of the country. Without restructuring, the system is bound to implode seismically soon. Other critical assets to look out for are ability to tame insecurity and commit to state policing, sincerely fight corruption, and to run an inclusive administration. The outgoing regime has badly divided the country and accentuated all its centrifugal fault lines. The country needs bridge builders after the Buhari debacle.
It is a costly mistake to abstain from voting on the fear that one’s favoured candidate might not win. In a democracy, every validly cast vote counts and winners are bound to take the views of the minority into consideration in running public offices. Voters should rebuff vote buyers and choose right.
INEC should get it right this time. Repeatedly, logistics overwhelm the umpire. It should prepare well. It should steer clear of the transport union factions that have sworn allegiance to politicians in transporting sensitive materials. The security agencies should be professional and non-partisan, as Nigeria’s fate hangs in the balance.
If real, qualitative change eludes the country once again, its future as a going concern is questionable. Only voters can make that change happen.
To the 93.46 million voters; the survival of the world’s most populous Black country is in your hands; therefore, be bold, be responsible, troop out with your PVCs, and vote wisely!
