Nigeria: Ethnic Profiling And 2023 Campaigns

 By Emeka Alex Duru  

Weeks to the official flag-off of the 2023 presidential campaigns, signs of what to come are becoming clearer. And disturbing! Nigerians may be in for a rough deal, perhaps, worse than they are having, if the morning, as they say, determines the day. Mudslinging and ethnic recriminations may dominate public engagements, in place of issue-based campaigns. 

Presidential campaigns are carnivals of sorts. They are occasions for glamour, demonstration of eloquence and style. But besides the side shows, they are moments of stock-taking, reflections and defining the future of the country. That is why presidential debates and manifesto nights are usually taken seriously in advanced democracies.

 

They are avenues for the candidates to advertise themselves and market their parties to the people and tell them what to expect from them if voted to power. Whatever declarations made by the standard-bearers on such events, are taken as yardsticks upon which they would be assessed while in office. For the incumbent, they provide opportunities to brandish their achievements, while the opposition, cash in on the window to expose the lapses of the party in power and project itself as the alternative.

 

An incidence in the 1980 American presidential election offers a good illustration on this. In the final week of campaign between the candidate of ruling Democratic Party, President Jimmy Carter and Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan, the two were put on debate. In course of the exercise, Reagan posed what has become one of the most important campaign questions of all time: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Carter’s answer was a resounding “NO”. That response was what the voters needed to deny him re-election but America as country won in the long run. That is the beauty of presidential campaign.

 

As the Independent National Electoral Commission gets set to lift the seal on the campaigns, you would expect the presidential candidates of the leading political parties in the country and their foot soldiers to be addressing their minds to such important questions. The presidency is the hardest job in the world, says American essayist, John Dickerson, in his piece on the White House. He prescribes that when the national fabric rends, the president will administer needle and thread, or at least reach for the sewing box of unity. This is a big lesson for those aspiring for the office.

But that is not what we are getting here, so far. It is rather campaigns of calumny and regurgitation of primordial sentiments. Resort to ethnicity is more dominant. In place of interrogating and analysisng the contents of pronouncements by the presidential candidates, their persons and pedigrees, issues of regions of birth are being played up, obviously to divide the people.

 

In Lagos for instance, the campaigns are drifting from the challenges facing the country to such fleeting topic as the ownership of the city. In the process, drinking joint banters or off-hand jibes by loose minds, are being cited as reasons to profile others and accuse them of attempting to take over the state. Since the emergence of the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and the momentum he has been generating especially among the youths and down trodden Nigerians, there have been waves of insinuations on the Igbo for “plotting to covet Lagos state”. Suddenly, the allegation of the Igbo purporting that “Lagos is no man’s land” has been on the rise and penetrating. Supporters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu, are firing relentlessly on this.

 

But that is a ruse. There is no space that can be described as “no man’s land”. Every entity has an indigenous population with certain claims of ownership or autochthony. Lagos cannot be an exception. Regardless the length of residence of an Igbo or any other non-indigene in Lagos, he/she remains a visitor.

 

Next to this is the lazy recollection of subjective narratives of the First Republic politics featuring the hackneyed mistrust between Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, for which some Igbo and Yoruba seem sworn not to accept one another. The idea behind raking up these baseless topics is to further drive the wedge between the people from the two regions. The agenda may appear simple on the surface. But most genocides and ethnic cleansings in history, had started by casual profiling of the victims. That is the reason why these reckless expressions of sordid sentiments, should not be taken lightly 

 

Importantly, they are not issues that should bother Nigerians, presently. The candidates need to tell us how they intend to tackle the challenges facing the country. These are matters of failed governance, infrastructure collapse, insecurity, youth unemployment, depreciating value of the national currency, endemic strikes in the institutions of higher learning and restiveness in the component units of the country.

 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), just released a data the other day, which puts Nigeria as having about 20 million out-of-school children. The rate before was between 10.5 and 13.5 million. But with insecurity and kidnapping of school children, some parents are scared of sending their wards to school in some parts of the country. The present estimate is worrisome.

 

Elsewhere, though there seems a disagreement on an earlier report by a global terrorism research/analysis group, Jihad Analytics (JA), which placed Nigeria as the second most terrorised/attacked country, and that of fact-check which quotes the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) as saying that the country is sixth in the league, the fact is that the climate of insecurity remains high, here. Farmers can no longer access their farms, resulting to food insecurity in the land. In other indices of development, we are not faring better. Nigeria remains the Poverty capital of the world since 2018.

 

Nigeria tops the list of fragile, failing states and now the most stressful country to live in, according to the stress level index. For seven months running, students in public universities have been out of school due to the face-off between their teachers under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Federal government over unfulfilled agreements.

 

Some Nigerians abducted in the Abuja-Kaduna-bound train on March 28, are still held by their captors, while the government looks the other way.

These are the issues that should matter in the 2023 debate. The task ahead is enormous and not the trivial issues of the Igbo or any group trying to take over Lagos or indeed any state in the country for that matter. Nigerians do not have the time for such idle talk.

*Duru is a commentator on public issues                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Nigeria: Blood On President Buhari’s Hands

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Buoyed by the high approval rating he received from the misguided Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, President Muhammadu Buhari has readied himself for more foreign validation ahead of the 2019 election.

But the next rendezvous for validation does not remain in the United Kingdom. 

*President Buhari 

It is in the White House of President Donald Trump in the United States. Beyond the communiqué on the pledge of bilateral fidelity, Trump would have rendered inestimable service to the world and particularly Nigeria when he takes note of the tragedies in the country that have heralded this meeting. Trump must note that he cannot engage in meaningless banters with Buhari while the latter’s country is choking under the carapace of Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism. 

Thus, the meeting should provide Trump an opportunity to bring this wayward African leader to the path of probity. Of course, before Trump, Buhari might attempt to disparage Nigerian citizens as criminals and lazy. He would justify the incarceration of Nigerian citizens in U.S. prisons and laud Trump’s immigration laws that are meant to send foreigners home. He would massage Trump’s ego for agreeing to sell 20 Tucano warplanes to Nigeria whereas his predecessor Barack Obama refused to do that. Buhari might regale Trump with tales of the gains of his anti-corruption campaign. But all this should not make Trump to miss the opportunity to tell Buhari that blood is on his hands. After all, Buhari would never listen to the counsel of his Nigerian people. But he would listen to Trump because he considers him as the chief representative of a version of life that is beyond the reach of Africans. Or how do we explain the excitement that Trump is magnanimous enough to open the doors of the White House to Buhari? 

Ugwuanyi And The Potency Of Diplomatic Governance

By Nwobodo Chidiebere

“Constructive diplomacy doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s right. It means engaging with one’s counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address shared concerns and achieve shared objectives.”

           --Hassan Rouhani

In a democratic system of governance like ours, strategic diplomacy has been adjudged, tested and trusted as the best approach to finding lasting remedies to burning issues of governance. Great and age-long results have been made possible through constructive engagement and dialogue with relevant stakeholders than by the use of dictatorial methodology.

Gov Ugwuanyi

The developed democracies of the world like America and Great Britain have elevated potency of diplomacy cum diplomatic skills in managing public affairs issues to its rightful place. The advancement of democracy and its culminating effects on the development of these countries cannot be detached from the values they placed on diplomacy—which is the sturdy foundation of democratic governance setting benchmark to our contemporary world.

In fact, America for instance, rate and evaluate its presidential hopefuls on their diplomatic capacities more than other qualities, because American President will not run White House alone, but from time to time dialogue with congressmen and women, business tycoons in Wall Street, ICT magnates in Silicon Valley and other relevant stakeholders before major economic or socio-political policies are introduced and allowed to scale through the congress.

Since the advent of democracy in 1999, Enugu State has never witnessed a thorough democratic system of governance—where an incumbent governor will long to consult and interface with genuine stakeholders and iron-out grey edges before arriving at a consensus, in implementation of polices of his administration. There is no doubt that His Excellency Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has not only redefined standard of stakeholders and community engagements in the Coal City via dialogue and diplomacy, but rewritten political template of Eastern hub; used previously by his predecessors in the art of governance. 

Before now, Enugu State had executive governors who operated like demi-gods, called the shots and determined who-gets-what without consultations with critical stakeholders and opinion moulders. They never bothered or alluded to overriding interests of Enugu people, provided they were in absolute control of the state government apparatus. Erstwhile governors of the state were feared more than respected. They propagated and enforced political ideology of absoluteness of power—which was averse to fundamentals of 21^st century democracy.