2023 Elections And Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

The 2023 elections will be consequential. Though six months away and campaigns yet to be officially flagged off, politicians are already crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country, shadowboxing their way through all manner of policy disputes. They are making a show of tackling the myriad problems the post-Buhari era will present, while avoiding any direct engagement with opponents.

The elections will be consequential because Nigeria is at a crossroads, haunted by demons many thought had been long exorcised. Seven years of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has brought out the worst in Nigerians. Ironically, while this self-inflicted leadership crisis and the uprising it has engendered is bringing out the beast in us, as the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, noted in his epic song, “Beast of No Nation”, it has also re-ignited the hitherto dimming Nigeria’s democracy candle light.

Having realised in a hard way that elections have consequences, many Nigerians, particularly the youths, who constitute over 70 per cent of the country’s population, and who have been made to hold the wrong end of the country’s democracy stick, have decided to take their destinies in their own hands by not only voting but also ensuring that their votes count.

They have become politically active and the social media has ensured that they control the narrative. Their voices are heard loud and clear and for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral politics, the people to whom power rightly belongs are doing everything to ensure they exercise that right.

So, the hitherto flickering democracy light is brightening up. For the first time since 1999 when the Fourth Republic was birthed, a credible third force has emerged and the 2023 presidential election is promising to be a three rather than two-horse race.

Again, because President Buhari is ineligible to run in 2023, being term-limited, many believe that he will be more disposed to allowing free, fair and credible elections. For a leader who has suffered severe credibility deficits even in areas like anti-corruption which many thought was his natural turf, credible 2023 elections will help him claw back some legacies as the unavoidable verdict of history beckons.

So, six months to the elections, the country is buzzing politically. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, next year’s elections will be held on February 25 and March 11, 2023. While the presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on February 25, twenty-eight governorship elections will hold alongside elections to 36 Houses of Assembly on March 11.

But the campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly elections will commence on Wednesday, September 28, 2022 and end midnight, February 23, 2023, while that of governorship and state Houses of Assembly will commence on October 12 and end midnight, March 9.

So, the die is cast. In realisation of this fact, TheNiche has scheduled its 2022 Annual Lecture to hold on Thursday, September 8, 2022, twenty days before the flag-off of the campaigns.

When the newspaper came on board in April 2014, the editorial policy captured its mission: “TheNiche will always anchor its position on the need for social justice, fairness and respect for human and communal rights … will be uncompromising against any form of discrimination and subjugation either by tribe, gender or religion.”

In pursuit of these lofty ideals, the organisation in 2018, set up a foundation – TheNiche Foundation for Development Journalism – a vehicle to drive TheNiche Annual Lectures, our very idea of an ideal Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR.

The maiden lecture with the theme, “Development reporting and hysteria journalism in Nigeria”, was delivered by Professor Kingsley Moghalu, journalist, diplomat, erudite scholar and author, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party, YPP, in the 2019 elections, while Remi Sonaiya, another prolific author, columnist for TheNiche, Professor of French Language and Applied Linguistics, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, and only female presidential candidate in the 2015 general election under the platform of the KOWA Party, was the chairperson.

The choice of the lecture theme which held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, on April 20, 2018, was informed by the hysteria that preceded the elections and the need to lower the rhetoric.

The focus shifted, and rightly so, after the election was won by the incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari, to the economy. TheNiche clinically analysed that the economy was heading for the rocks and there was an urgent need to make it the dominant issue of Buhari’s second term.

So, the October 15, 2019 lecture aptly themed, “Business and accountable governance: The obligations of leadership”, was delivered by Nigeria’s foremost interdisciplinary scholar, Prof. Anya O. Anya, a leading light of the intellectual community, multi-dimensional personality, statesman, scientist and boardroom guru, professor of Biology who is distinguished for his work in parasitology, Nigerian National Medal of Merit awardee and former Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Economic Summit Group Limited; under the chairmanship of Dr. Christopher Kolade, diplomat and academic, veteran broadcaster and former Director–General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Chief Executive and Chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc and former Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

What would have been the third and fourth lectures in 2020 and 2021 were stymied by the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic that made all forms of public gathering a taboo. Had the lecture held in 2020, the focus would have been on the youths as Dr. Kolade strongly suggested in 2019. And he was prescient considering the youths-lead EndSARS protests that convulsed the country. Hopefully, the issue of Nigerian youths and their future in a country that has treated them so callously will be the theme of the 2023 lecture. But, first things first, hence, on the eve of another pivotal election, TheNiche has, once again, shifted the focus to politics and the country’s leadership recruitment process.

This year’s lecture which holds exactly two weeks from today and aptly themed, “2023 elections and the future of Nigeria’s democracy”, will be delivered by Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, a learned silk, former Governor of Lagos State, and Minister of Works and Housing, while 96-year-old Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, veteran First Republic politician, human rights activist, former Liaison Officer to the late President Shehu Shagari and founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, will chair the event.

The choice of both the lecturer and chairman was a product of painstaking deliberations.

Since the announcement was made, some have asked the question: Why Fashola, who is not only a partisan politician and APC chieftain, but arguably one of the ruling party’s ideologues?

My answer is simple: On Thursday, September 8, 2022, ensure that you are seated inside the Agip Recital Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos. Fashola, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic poster boy, will provide the answer. He has, beforehand, promised that it will be a rich intellectual harvest.

*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche