Tuesday Column By VICTORIA NGOZI IKEANO
vikeano@yahoo.co.uk 08033077519
As the date for official start of campaigns for the 2023 general elections draws near, we already have snippets of emerging political strategies, arising partly from outcome of the Osun governorship election and from the changing electoral demography. Changing times demand new tactics to fit in with new trends. When this democracy was birthed in 1999, most Nigerians were apolitical, uninterested. And so, the state Houses of Assemblies and National Assembly were filled with illiterates more or less, like vulcanisers and the like as well as people with shady characters. Political parties assumed the role of alpha and omega as they determined their candidates in any election by simply handpicking them without any primaries; and they could change them according to their whims and caprices even at the eleventh hour of the election; the electoral umpire then was like a lame duck with no voice of its own. Contrast this with current happening of APC’s inability to substitute names of two senatorial ‘candidates’ with those of two presidential aspirants and INEC’s threat that the presidential aspirants could be jailed for purchasing nomination forms for two separate elections. Needless to add that votes did not count in the beginnings. You could have a state with one million registered voters recording votes of two million for one party on election day. Where on earth do you record a voter turnout of 100 per cent in the first place? But these bloated figures were accepted by the electoral body, a winner declared and sworn in without any fuss then.
Then, there were virtually no civil society organisation concerned with specifically election matters. The nearest to this was the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) which was fighting for restoration of full civilian administration following annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections. Today, we have a plethora of non-governmental organisations, that is, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) dealing with election and related issues, monitoring conduct of elections with a Situation Room that give real time report of events. The two major political parties now also have their own Situation Rooms on Election Days. Our electoral laws have been tinkered with and continue to be tinkered with for better; such that the electoral commission has moved from manual accreditation of voters to use of card readers and now Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). This machine can identify genuine voters through their fingerprint or face. It automatically records the number of accredited voters and also transmits results electronically to INEC server which is accessible by election monitors/observers and political parties in their Situation Rooms. Result of these innovations is that incidences of ballot box snatching, manual changing of results on result sheets, etc., etc., are greatly minimised. ‘’Inconclusive’’ election has disappeared from our electoral dictionary and can no longer rear its ugly head now.
As our politicians can no longer rig as such now, they are finding another means of tilting votes to their favour, namely ‘vote trading’. That, is a growing new electoral menace. Vote buying to sway voting is not fool proof as there are reports of people collecting the money but voting the other way, according to their heart’s bidding. Whatever, Nigerian politicians will always find subtle ways of currying votes through financial inducement. The voter’s card itself has metamorphosed from the cardboard form to the embossed form that now serves as a veritable identity card for life. Our electoral reforms are still evolving and some are already dreaming of the day when we shall be able to vote from comfort of our homes and Nigerians overseas permitted to vote at elections. These are quite possible but would take a long, long while to materialise because of our ingrained primordial sentiments and general mistrust of one another.
Nevertheless, the bottomline is that votes cast at elections are beginning to be seen to count and many more people are now interested in voting at elections. Reports indicate that there is a surge in new registrants. These new voters are mainly youths. Statistics from the Osun state election confirm that there was both an increase in voter turnout and also new voters that were casting a ballot for the first time. And majority of these new voters that are youths voted for the PDP. The reason is not farfetched, the popular musician, Davido was very involved in his uncle’s campaign (PDP’s candidate) and so connected with the youths; he literally bought them over because they are his fans. Imagine a political party putting out a message by way of advert in the print copy of a newspaper. That advert would be read /seen by less than 500,000 persons because no newspaper in Nigeria has a circulation figure of up to 500,000. That same message put out by a popular musician or celebrity in any of his social media handles will be seen/read by millions of his/her followers. That is why perhaps some political parties are now choosing celebrities as their running mates. This would have been frowned at in times past. The influence of stars in the entertainment industry on especially youths who now constitute a good chunk of the voting population should be recognised by pollical parties and they should be incorporated in their campaign strategies. The APC did use a musical star in the person of Portable but Davido was more sophisticated, educated than him whilst still connecting with the youths in a language they understand. I believe APC has learnt some lessons from their Osun experience. The bottom line here is that the APC if it wants to retain power in 2023 should not only engage the youths but also devise creative strategies of doing so. It should evolve similar ways of engaging with other segments of the voting populace such as women, etc.
The old method of ridiculing your opponents and using uncouth language on them on the soap box no longer works as voters are now more discerning. In particular, the APC presidential candidate should take note. His description of other parties as ‘mushroom parties’ and also saying they will ‘’labour to death’’ contributed partly to his party’s loss in Osun as it alienated some voters from it; just as a similar condescending speech by him to Edo people in run up to the 2020 gubernatorial poll contributed to the PDP’s victory in that state. Candidates should stick to issues, concentrating on what their parties have in stock for the electorate. There is also emerging trend of ‘protest’ votes wherein people vote against their preferred candidate because of some misgiving(s) about the candidate or the party. Overall, it shall be interesting to see what innovations the various political parties shall be coming up with in their campaigns in view of emerging trends.
