ColumnsNigeria ElectionsOpinionOPINION: What 2023 General Election Might Mean for Nigeria’s Democracy

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There are increasing signs that 2023 might just be another lost opportunity for Nigerians unless they approach it differently

In about a year’s time, Nigerians will have a chance to put their democracy to the test. How, or indeed, what happens thereafter will be a direct consequence of what Nigerians did or failed to do when duty called. Already, the process that will be crowned by the General Election has commenced. Many people have bought expression of interest and nomination forms of diverse political parties and over the next month, different political parties will decide who their candidates for the various elective positions will be. From all that has been seen so far, are Nigerians ready to take the necessary responsibility to bring about the kind of government they feel they deserve? Primarily, democracy does not envisage that once it is domiciled in a place, it fixes the government all by itself. Instead, it is the people that decide how their democracy becomes profitable to them, through how they engage it to reflect their true aspirations. In essence, nothing will take the place of what Nigerians must do to fix their democracy except the work they must put into it.

There are increasing signs that 2023 might just be another lost opportunity for Nigerians unless they approach it differently. Usually, election in Nigeria is about money. How much money one has to stake in an election project; willingness to ditch out the money to individuals and groups who position during election seasons for the sole purpose of financial benefits through donations from aspirants or through extortionist web carefully crafted to hoodwink aspirants. This is the reality that obtains within the Nigerian political sphere. Consequently, both politics and governance have been expediently conceived of as transactional; a give and take that leaves the society plundered as it suffocates from excessive corruption. The bulk of the money stolen or misappropriated or diverted by public office holders later goes into electioneering campaigns. So in the end, the implications of our transactional polity are far more reaching than can be imagined. The money that would have been used to provide good roads is stored up and instead used to buy and obtain political favour for election victory. That is how it works, all the time! Ahead of the 2023 General Election in Nigeria, people are assessing aspirants on the basis of the depths of their pockets.

Leaving critical questions of governance ability and competence unmentioned. This defeats the chance of public office holders’ allegiance to the law and the people, instead, their allegiance is to their proximity to public money and their ability to help themselves with the same. Politics is expensive, but in Nigeria, it is expensive and transactional. Getting a party ticket involves huge sums and winning General Election can simply mean everyone in the election chain getting paid. Little surprise why our politics is strictly about profits which leave the country worse than it was at the end of every election cycle.

The notion that only certain parties can win elections in Nigeria is in fact disingenuous. When the people want a leader and they see the potential of a great leader in someone in a smaller political party if most voters believe such a leader is the best option for the vote for that leader, what will make him lose? But because our politics and governance have been about personal profits; people who really have what it takes to govern usually have no such money to throw around and buy people over. Many of such people remain in smaller parties because they do not have the financial muscle to bulldoze their way through those mainstream parties. In actual sense, when Nigerians say that competent and capable people cannot win an election in a smaller party, then, they are saying that those people cannot afford our politics; they can’t play like most Nigerians are used to. That’s essentially how Nigerians have remained disempowered in their democracy; wanting what they are not willing to work for.

It is indeed predictable that if our politics remain transactional and fixated on the old order because of their capacity to oil these transactions, then, the outcome of the 2023 General Elections will also be the worst so far.

Ebuka Onyekwelu (Staff Writer)
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