By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Delivering the 2022 TheNiche Lecture titled “2023 Elections And The Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy” on September 8, the guest speaker, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos State and Minister of Works and Housing, disagreed with those who hold the view that next year’s elections will be momentous.
Though Fashola admitted that “no two elections are the same; and the intensity always varies anyway as indeed the number of voters and sometimes the number of parties; and the novelty of some candidates,” he nonetheless orated that rhetoric like “this will be a most defining election; this will be an election like no other; and so on and so forth… is common in every democracy and at the onset of a new election cycle,” and no one should be surprised hearing them.
In my welcome address, I stated that: “Nigerians will go to the polls next year to elect new leaders in what promises to be consequential elections,” and reminded the electorate that elections have consequences. Nigeria, no doubt, is at a crossroads politically, socially and economically.
And my take is that the decisions the millions of registered voters will take on February 25, 2023 will determine where the country goes from here. While I agree with Fashola that no two elections are the same, I strongly believe that the 2023 elections will present peculiar challenges particularly because of what the former governor called “the novelty of some candidates.”
Granted, the 2023 elections will be the fifth since the return of democracy in 1999 and will be the longest unbroken cycle since Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960 – in-between a president had died in office necessitating the invocation of a doctrine of necessity to enthrone the vice president as the substantive president, a sitting president and the ruling political party lost power to the opposition – yet, there is something about next year’s polls that makes it uncharted waters.
This is the first time a presidential candidate is declaring that it is his turn to be president – emilokan – and is treating any dissent as an affront and a challenge that must be put down by all means. What is making the 2023 elections particularly challenging is the fact of a candidate, who even before contesting the election, is behaving like the 18th century French monarch, Louis XIV, who at the height of his glory proclaimed: L’état, c’est moi, meaning: “I myself am the nation.”
While Louis the Great, whose reign of over 72 years (May 14, 1643 – September 1, 1715), is the longest of any sovereign in history whose date is verifiable, could be excused the hubris of proclaiming himself ‘the state’ in an absolute monarchy, such conceit is an anathema in a democracy.
Yet, here we are, on the eve of an election where the political party in power has posted perhaps the most awful records in the country’s 63 years post-independence, with the candidate of the same political party refusing to play by the rules of the game. In this election cycle, we have a candidate who is insisting that the game must be played as he wished.
He is refusing to answer questions about his past, yet he wants the over 200 million Nigerians to entrust their future to him. His handlers would rather hurl insults and harangue anyone who dares to ask why one man has three birthdays, where and when the man who wants to be the president of Nigeria attended primary and secondary schools, and who his classmates are or were. They fret whenever the issue of how he came about his stupendous wealth is raised.
If you insist, they tell you most contemptuously to go and hang or that the matters have been settled a long time ago by the courts. What did the courts settle? How? Mum is the word! They are daring Nigerians to do their worst if they can. But how can that be? They ridicule, cajole and blackmail anyone who dares to raise the issue of health status of the presidential candidates.
Don’t Nigerians have the right to know if their would-be president has the good health that will carry him through the rigours of the presidential office? Truth be told, any politician that refuses to be held accountable while still running for elections is a Louis XIV in the making. That is a red flag because such a person will become an emperor, accountable to none if he is eventually enthroned by hook or by crook.
It happened in 2015 when a presidential candidate refused to produce his credentials as required by law. His acolytes said it didn’t matter, insisting that even “NEPA Bill” will suffice for them in the place of authentic school certificates. Almost eight years after, the joke is on Nigerians and their country while the emperor they empowered is living it up, junketing round the world. This is what happens when someone who sees presidency as an entitlement becomes president. There is no empathy. He does not care because he sees himself as someone who is doing fellow citizens a favour.
Take for instance, deadly floods triggered by heavy downpours, pounded Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo overnight on Monday where 38,787 households were flooded, 280 houses destroyed by landslides in various neighbourhoods and municipalities of the city and at least 141 people were killed, among whom were nine members of the same family, including young children, whose house collapsed in Kinshasa’s Ngaliema commune.
On Wednesday, President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, who was already in Washington DC, for Tuesday’s US-Africa summit, not only held a meeting with some government ministers and declared three days of national mourning, but also shortened his stay in the U.S., and returned to Kinshasa on Thursday, after his meeting with President Joe Biden.
That is despite the fact that the Prime Minister, Sama Lukonde, had already led a government team to assess the damage and condole with the victims and the Provincial Governor, Gentiny Ngobila, pledging that the government will assume responsibility for the funerals.
When Nigeria was recently ravaged by deadly floods, which killed at least 603 people, leaving 2,407 injured with 1.3 million others displaced from their communities, 82,053 houses totally destroyed, 121,318 others significantly damaged, 332,327 hectares of land completely washed away, 108,392 hectares severely affected and well over 2.5 million persons adversely impacted, the president jetted out to South Korea to attend the so-called World Bio Summit, an event organised by the Korean government and the World Health Organisation. He neither visited nor condoled with the people.
That is what happens when an “emilokan” becomes president. Nigerians cannot afford to have someone who sees himself as being above the law and owes the electorate no explanation whatsoever on his antecedents if empowered to become president. He simply becomes an emperor who sees himself as the state writ large.
*Amaechi, the publisher of TheNiche, is a commentator on public issues
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