Nigeria — The ballot is warfare

By Prince Charles Dickson

But copying a coalition is not the same as building a movement. Tinubu’s experience does not confer invincibility, and incumbency does not entitle anyone to victory. Nor should his government mistake opposition disarray for public satisfaction. The president must answer for the choices and consequences of his administration, including the distance between policy claims and household reality. In September, annual food inflation was still 19.59 percent. A falling headline figure cannot by itself settle the argument at the market stall.

Olawale Brymo sang it in Down, released in 2013, and thirteen years later the song sounds less like entertainment than a witness statement. The chief, the thief, their entangled households, the priest offering prayers while the powerful exchange favours: everyone knows something, everyone is implicated, and nobody is particularly anxious to put the house in order. The poor watch the drama on empty stomachs. Nigeria is not short of scandals. It is short of consequences. Our politics has become a marketplace where yesterday’s outrage is tomorrow’s coalition agreement.

Then consider the cartoon making the rounds: a man on crutches kisses another man’s wife; the husband is blind; the witness is deaf and cannot speak. How does the witness tell the husband? The riddle invites laughter, but it also exposes our assumptions. A deaf person is not without language; a blind person is not beyond communication. They can communicate through touch, interpretation or an agreed signal. The real question is whether anyone will make the effort to tell the truth, and whether the person receiving it will act.

That is Nigeria’s electoral predicament. We have witnesses everywhere, but testimony travels badly. Citizens see the bargains, hear the insults, recognise the recycled faces and still struggle to discover what the politicians intend to do with power. Parties communicate grievances more fluently than solutions. The electorate is expected to choose between people who insist they are enemies while sharing astonishingly similar political habits.

At the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation Democracy Dialogue in Bauchi in August, former President Olusegun Obasanjo supplied a troubling diagnosis. Discussing the Western idea of a loyal opposition, he argued that in many African languages opposition is understood as an enemy. His devastating question was: “Then do you have a loyal enemy?” His answer was that political rivals are treated as people to be crushed and destroyed.

Obasanjo has identified a disease, although his linguistic generalisation should not be mistaken for a rule governing all African languages or political cultures. Africa has traditions of argument, consensus, accountability and dissent. And our imported institutions cannot carry all the blame. Political elites have spent decades altering the democratic garment to fit their appetites. A badly tailored suit is one problem; politicians who keep stealing the fabric are another. Obasanjo himself was no spectator to the political order he now interrogates.

With the presidential and National Assembly elections fixed for 16 January 2027, an uncomfortable question demands an answer: is Nigeria preparing for an election or mobilising for another war? Not war fought with declared armies, but one conducted through defection, humiliation, propaganda, litigation, manufactured outrage and the demonisation of rivals. Political disagreement is necessary. Political extermination is not. An opponent is supposed to offer an alternative, not become a criminal merely for wanting the office you occupy.

And what, precisely, is the opposition offering? Six parties have explored cooperation, a shared reform programme, a transition charter and perhaps a common candidate. Those are serious possibilities, not nothing. But the public cannot eat a coalition communiqué. Who will explain how jobs will be created, farmers protected, schools rescued, communities made safer and public spending audited? How will proposed reforms be financed? What will be measured after one hundred days, one year, four years? A credible opposition is not simply an association of people who dislike the president.

This is where Bola Ahmed Tinubu complicates the story. He is not a stranger who stumbled into the presidency. He helped assemble the opposition coalition that became the APC and displaced the PDP in 2015. He understands alliances, political arithmetic, patience, organisation and the cost of divided rivals. Today, his challengers appear tempted to borrow the map from the man they want to defeat. They are studying the blueprint while its architect occupies the building.

But copying a coalition is not the same as building a movement. Tinubu’s experience does not confer invincibility, and incumbency does not entitle anyone to victory. Nor should his government mistake opposition disarray for public satisfaction. The president must answer for the choices and consequences of his administration, including the distance between policy claims and household reality. In September, annual food inflation was still 19.59 percent. A falling headline figure cannot by itself settle the argument at the market stall.

For the opposition, however, hardship is not a manifesto. Saying Nigerians are hungry is a diagnosis; explaining how to restore purchasing power without new fiscal chaos is a programme. Condemning insecurity is not the same as proposing accountable policing, workable intelligence, justice for victims and an agricultural economy people can safely inhabit. Promising change without specifying its costs is simply selling tomorrow’s disappointment in today’s colourful wrapper.

The deeper scandal is how quickly politicians change moral vocabulary when they cross the aisle. Yesterday’s tyrant becomes today’s statesman; yesterday’s patriot becomes today’s saboteur. A party card functions like a detergent: enter one office stained, emerge from another apparently spotless. We call it realignment. The ordinary Nigerian recognises it as a transfer of appetite. Meanwhile, supporters are instructed to inherit hatreds their leaders may abandon over breakfast.

Brymo’s world of chiefs, thieves, priests and spectators is frightening precisely because wrongdoing has become a social routine. Faith is invoked, ethnicity mobilised, poverty managed as campaign scenery. Citizens are urged to pray, endure, defend their region and attack the other camp. Yet no prayer excuses theft, no tribe repairs a broken hospital, and no electoral victory supplies a moral licence to silence dissent. The state belongs equally to the voter who backed the winner and the voter who did not.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question when we ask whether Tinubu will sail away with the ballots. The better questions are whether the votes will be freely cast, honestly counted and respected; whether institutions will act independently; whether the opposition can earn trust beyond its anger; and whether the government can defend its record without turning criticism into disloyalty. An election must determine who governs, not who is permitted to belong.

Back to the cartoon. The witness can communicate. The husband can understand. The difficulty is not disability; it is our willingness to make truth accessible. In Nigeria, the tragedy would be to watch the witness struggle, the husband remain uninformed, and the kissing continue while the woman is reduced to an object of rivalry and the crowd argues about everything except what matters. That is what happens when political drama replaces the public interest.

January is approaching. Let nobody sell us enemy warfare as democracy. Let the governing party present its record, the opposition present a credible alternative, and citizens demand receipts from both. Otherwise, when the music stops, the politicians will have exchanged partners, the priest will have blessed the ceremony, and the people will still be standing downtown, wondering who stole the future while everyone was watching. May Nigeria win.

Prince Charles Dickson PHD is a Public Policy Analyst.