Ademola Araoye

By Ademola Araoye

The controversy around the outcome of the February 25 elections was indeed predictable. The rational mind knew the elections were essentially a ruse. Its outcome was not expected to bear any relevance to the real challenges at hand. In the long term, it was bound to further complicate matters. The elections were to lead to a cul de sac and a dangerous impasse for that matter. Even as attempts to simplify our understandings and systematize the complexity of the Nigerian debacle remain a daunting enterprise, the least is to recognize the splay of the multi-dimensional systemic rot entailed in the massive failure of the electoral process. The epochal failure also references as well the comprehensive dilapidations, ideational and structural, at the feeble base of the processes of the mythical state, the pretend nation and the decadent society of Nigeria.

Accordingly, there inheres a difficult macro and system collapse to this well-earned national failure that must realistically be unearthed. A significant underlying element of the difficult macro context is the truncation of the much-dreaded discourse around the contested legitimacy of the extant order. In that context, the failure of the election, interpreted as a diversion from the grating realities of the system, ranging from upended societal values through structural imbalances to institutional deficits, has validated the more discerning but drowned eminent voices calling for circumspection, including advocacy of pacific break up in some cases. Both visions are said to be premised on blunt realism. That reaction has been an integral response as Nigeria traverses another potential cyclonic convulsion in the most uncertain circumstances for an umpteenth time. Consistent with the establishment’s trepidation in confronting the debilitating deficiencies of the status quo, in the immediacy of the painful, or even emotional responses, to the realization of the very comprehensible, but yet confounding, failure, the safe and narrow focus has been to sidestep the fundamentals while merely narrowly stressing deficits in the modalities in the conduct of the elections. It is the Nigerian flight from the horrors of its constructed reality in its permanent escape from the self. The national challenge is definitively not the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The glaring national disease is Nigeria itself and the human vectors it has given birth to. That is why those who can simply ‘japa’ out of this land of the brave.

Focusing on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its operational gaps in these early days is however natural. However, escapist, this may be. But that approachunrealistically isolates in an atomistic manner what essentially should problematize the very character of the Nigerian state, the values of its society, the equilibrium of its structure, the salience of its institutions, and, more critically, the very odious character of the distorted humanity spawned by the peculiarities of a process of Nigerian modernity. In decadent Nigeria, the process of modernity has gone awry. The features of Nigerian modernity have tended to debase than elevate its human contents. This land is the nearest equivalent of a Hobbesian state of nature where the mantra remains that he who dares wins. Its politics is governed by a do-or-die mantra. National institutions, dependent on a very deficient human agency, are wobbly. Accordingly, the current narrow focus on INEC and a few scapegoats obviates the critical imperative for an expanded scope of the interrogation of the whole system.

A dimension of the rueful situation of Nigerian humanity is the shrill cacophony of experts of all hues, from the professoriate intelligent, the pretentious publicity seeking quasi-analyst as well as the crass nonsensical quack all pronouncingonthe elections. That is inevitable that the diligent media have imposed on the bewildered listening public. Another very troubling facet of the disaster, also a reflection of the character of the Nigerian elite, is the nauseating sanctimonious and hypocritical pontifications of self-appointed latter-day guardians of the estate. These characters from ancient times are issued from that innermost caucus of adventurers in power in high places, who, it may be recalled, are squarely responsible for the unfolding national impasse. Yet they now intimidate the state and society with their bogus panaceas to advance partisan agendas. The impact of all these intense stimulations has been debilitating on a traumatized society.  This confused mélange of perspectives from the status quo stable are mostly obfuscating credible illuminations of the fundamental challenges of a state eminently codified to be in distress and the pretensions of a mythical nation that is now enmeshed in a crisis. Some, including the most charitable, aver that the crisis of the Nigerian state is near terminal.

Against this backdrop, the elections were a litmus test of the continued vitality of the Nigerian way. Or even a timely gauge of the pulse for flickering embers of hope. It flopped woefully. The poor conduct of the elections, the behavioural orientations of activist human agencies, at different levels of institutional engagements of state and party, the blustering infallibility of hubristic guardians of the future and the conniving unflappable partisan citizenry merely reaffirmed deep-seated structural and institutional chasms to be transcended if the tottering state is to be an assured long term reality. The cancerous crisis of the Nigerian state and nation is deep-seated and pervasively manifest across all realms of the contrived falsehoods that are the fundamental pillars of state and society; a castle built on shifting sand. The props of this gargantuan edifice to falsehood are the increasing hollowness of manufactured narratives that have veiled the permanent turbulence of the internal dynamics of this system with its parametric distortions from the universal norm. Official Nigeria was birthed in these aberrations and its operations have been designed to be consistent with the ultimately deleterious myths of its untenable axioms. National life has revolved around this surreal reality. The real story of 25 February 2023 is that a faction of the national political elite has suddenly woken up to the virtue of morality, decency and transparency, merit, etc in national life. Let it be told that this convenient awakening repudiates the consolidated Nigerian way of doing things. These contradictions were the guardrails by which they were all raised through the warped pipelines to their current social placements.

A complete lexicon of euphemisms had been created to hide the shameful pervasive derogation of the Nigerian phenomenon from the universal norm. The Nigerian public realm, in terms of ideas motivating action and in particular its human agencies, is suffused with the antipodal. The elections were to be one, in fact, the preeminent of the panoply, of the numerous contrivances to plough on with the unconventional way of doing things. The default Nigerian national attitude to circumvent rationality, all logic, all established protocols, and all good practices; the dominant culture of the Nigerian firmament. Why then should the Nigerian elections deviate from the Nigerian way? Truth, therefore, is that Nigeria happened to Nigerian elections. Notwithstanding the usual hollow hypocritical pronouncements of state apparatchiks, the elections were foreseen to be a sham process. And there are consequences every day after. It required neither the acute analytical ingenuity nor the prophetic crystal ball of a Pa Davina to divine the looming disaster that has befallen the country. And worse may be in the offing if we remain recalcitrant and too entrenched to see it coming. 25 February is a potent warning sign of an unflattering coming future.

In normal climes, elections make sense only within a certain set context and the fulfilment of certain environmental attributes that are contingent within that political universe. These are encapsulated in the principles and standards enunciated to guide the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections by various international bodies such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). In that connection, from a political perspective, elections may be said to be context specific. Elements integral to this environment may include prevailing attitudes to a slate of critical imperatives. Of critical salience to this, such is the widespread perception or otherwise of the legitimacy of the Constitutional Order and attitudinal orientations of citizens that may be distilled as essential to the national culture. Political context, with its many coefficients and indicators, may be the sum of attributes such as popular perception of the legitimacy of the political and social (Constitutional) Order. Due to overwhelming concern for the sovereign prerogatives of states, the political dimension is obscured in the discourse around the context of elections. Such sensibilities are more pronounced in often atrociously governed third-world entities whose sovereignties rest merely on continued international recognition of the state as such. This is especially so in the evolved digital age with the immense diminution of the conventional scope of sovereign powers and the power of making state policy is not fully controlled by any sovereign state.

The conversations around the context of elections by international bodies thus tend to sidestep the contentious politics. The focus is closely related to the human rights situation in the particular universe. Explicit human rights indices are demonstrable Respect for the Rule of Law, a free and thriving and unfettered civil society, and prevalence for Respect for Human Rights, including freedom of expression and association. The presence of these elements in the environment assures fairness, transparency and integrity of any electoral process. Yet still, an enabling political environment positively precludes the militarization of society to achieve partisan political objectives, including the oversight of political processes by the Police or military. Contextual defines the environment. Electoral contests are unimaginable in a dictatorship, however elastic the definition of the concept is stretched. Elections in an environment marked by the presence of violence across large swathes of the national territory, the displacement of the population both internally as well as in camps outside the national territory, widespread contention in major constituent units of the state around the legitimacy of the state as constructed, secessionist agitations in the East, West and the Middle Belt all at once would constitute a gulf too wide to bridge by-elections, especially the Nigerian brand of elections.

Elections in such circumstances would tantamount to elite collusion to perpetuate a profitable business of holding on to power at all costs by the determined political elite irrespective of the implication for the well-being of the larger population. These imperatives of the prevailing scenario would seem lost on the Nigerian organizers of the election, who come across as blind partisans to the depravity of the devaluated status quo. The good intentions of the international community is exploited to sanction this dangerous slide into this cul de sac. Free, fair and transparent elections refer to modalities of the conduct of elections that are practically impossible to meet in the current situation of Nigeria. As is to be expected the coercive instruments of the state are deployed to keep the restive society quiet. Elections are held in a militarized environment even as death and penury are dispensed at the same time.

It is graceful that the preliminary observation of the various observer missions from diverse geopolitical interests agreed on the massive deficits in the conduct of the elections. It is reassuring that notwithstanding the constraints posed by the imperatives of the sovereignty of the country, through the creative use of language, the message of the international observer teams has been as blunt as civility permits. However, it is still apt to note that international observation of elections is an expression of international goodwill and a critical element in the panoply of instruments to mitigate or manage conflict proactively. However, as earlier observed, elections don’t take place in a vacuum. Context defines the legitimacy of any elections often even more so than the polls themselves. But when the international community mobilizes to monitor elections without due cognizance of the complex political context of the elections, they run the risk of becoming catalysts to catastrophic consequences of their ignorance or insensitivity to the sordid realities of the environment in which the polls are taking place. This is exactly the situation in the current attempt by a national coalition of discredited political elites across Nigeria to railroad the people through, by the very character of Nigeria, already compromised polls just so to retain their stranglehold on a delegitimized system. Despite all the good intentions, international observation of the elections may unwittingly align poll observers with the very traducers of democracy. Engaging in predictably sham elections would place the international community on the wrong side of history.

In this, there is a recognition of the dilemma of a good heart of humanity. Do policy designers have to navigate when the international community should out rightly reject the invitation to participate in an election whose end is predictably to validate a process designed by a troubled state merely to distort the narratives around the delegitimized establishment? Elections are one option available to a dominant establishment composed of the nebulous political elite in a convenient alliance. The paradox is also that the electoral process reveals the deep-seated fissures within the dirty squabbling of political elites, who are delinked from the basic interest of the people. In this elite fight for who leads in the next phase of unending thievery, nothing is sacrosanct. The many episodes of embarrassing open displays of national rot by the political elite in the course of the ill-fated elections in the presence of the international community tell the real story of the holistic debasement that goes for national culture in Nigeria. The disaster of 25 February 2023 is perhaps a divinely ordained moment for a true rethinking of the very reality of Nigeria. The outcome of the elections, essentially a violent intra-elite contestation, are, in fact, immaterial to the permutations of the future. Meanwhile, the outcome of their elections has no relevance to the struggle of a people for true emancipation.

*Professor Ademola Araoye is former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership. He retired from the United Nations as Head of Office for the Consolidation of Democratic Governance of the United Nations Mission in Liberia. His publications include Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State.