Last week, I embarked on an ambitious political prognosis, to wit, a prediction of the outcome of the 2019 elections in Plateau State. Ambitious because as I alluded, political science, in spite of its claim, remains an inexact science, yet like meteorology, recent improvements in methodology and measurement standards, has seen to significant narrowing of the margins of error in their forecast.
In the earlier analyses, I limited myself to available data, principally drawn from American elections history, regarding incumbency factor on re-elections. We used the probability of an incumbent candidate winning re-election on the basis of statistical data and approval rating index prior to the conduct of the election. In both approaches, the odds favour the return of Governor Simon Bako Lalong to Government House, Jos, in 2019.
This method is often called linear regression by statisticians; but using the regressive discontinuity design (RDD) one has to calculate the causal effects of interventions before and after elections to determine the threshold of incumbency. This calls for more elaborate calculations and analytical prognosis.
For our purpose here we can break this to plain language and look at factors which work as advantages or disadvantages of incumbency.
The first advantage an incumbent government/party has is its absolute control and access to the public treasury. Thus, it has monopoly in the distribution of public goods and services in its area of governance. It is therefore in truth, the real Baba Mai Tuwo; communities and individuals pander to it for favours in terms of the provision of infrastructure, amenities, employment or appointments.
But there is a flipside to this; resources are limited. In other words, no government no matter how benevolent can satisfy its teeming population 100 per cent. They will always be a community feeling neglected, or to use the popular Nigerian parlance, “marginalised.” Even during the glorious days of Benue Plateau State, the Tivs from the former Tiv Province accused Governor Joseph Gomwalk of “marginalization.” During the time of Chief Solomon Lar, he was accused for neglecting the present-day Nasarawa State in the expenditure of the celebrated Midland Bank loan. More recently, Governor Jonah Jang was vilified for concentrating his infrastructural projects, especially roads, only in his Plateau North senatorial zone.
Governor Lalong cannot fare differently. His case is even made worse by the fact that the national economy went into recession during his tenure. The public’s loss of purchasing power due to spiraling inflation and dwindling income is the ultimate nightmare of any politician in power. In fact, a worsening economy is the number one destroyer of incumbency power. How will this affect Governor Lalong’s chances come 2019?
It is hard to tell but Gov. Lalong seems to stand shoulders high among his colleagues in one area of critical electoral value; the payment of civil servants’ salary and pension for pensioners in the state. Not only that, his government readily accepted to pay the minimum wage that the Federal Government is negotiating with the labour union. While others are wondering where he would get the money to pay he has given the Civil Service Commission the go-ahead to employ new hands into government establishments. The aggregate effects of these will tell in the electoral outcome. Those who question whether payment of salaries could be considered an achievement ought to have recognized how this plays out in a bleak economic atmosphere as we have in the country. I don’t know whether the PDP in the state ever carried out a postmortem after its defeat in 2015 but I can bet that the lack of salary payment seven months, or more, to the end of Jang’s Administration contributed to the party’s defeat.
Another set of public goods of critical importance is the security of lives and property. The security threats posed by Boko Haram and relentlessly by Fulani herdsmen killers have been of great concern in the state. Governor Lalong inherited the situation but he, perhaps, more than any Governor in recent times, became factored in the imbroglio. This is in itself is an irony because more than any governor in recent time too, he was the only that devised an institutional approach to the challenges of peace and security; the creation of a peace-building agency. Unfortunately, he went about it in a very wrong way. First, he hastily keyed into the wrong-headed “Cattle-reserves” solution of the Federal Government before actually selling it to his own people. This was at once resisted. Secondly, his disposition and rhetoric on the “killings” were comparatively less combustive and militant. I attribute his shortcoming in this area more to public relations breakdown than policy failure. But how will he be rated at the polls?
Again, I can’t predict. But in truth, Governor Lalong has succeeded in introducing two critical measures which will go a long way in addressing insecurity in the terrorist-prone swathe of territory: closing the ungoverned spaces in the Gashish region which had long been exploited as a Fulani terrorist “safe haven” through the stationing of a Mobile Police Force and the reclamation and resettlement of displaced persons back on their ancestral lands.
There are many other factors we cannot possibly examine in details here such as incumbency’s benefits from signaling and information control, fund-raising, electoral rules and political culture, the party’s organisational weakness (e.g. the inability of APC to organise all-levels congresses to elect “fresh, competent” party leaders has left it with 2015 “emergency” party officials of dubious local acceptability), and the so-called “pessimistic politics trap.”
All said and done, the weakness of our analyses is that the wholesome adoption of the American model of incumbency may be misleading on account of the fact no two countries share same political culture. In political cultures where the electorates are deeply suspicious of politicians, instability characterises the voting behavior. This is what is called the pessimistic politics trap, where enthusiasm is demonstrated in voting incumbents out of office on mere perception of wrongdoing, mostly motivated by primordial and base sentiments than facts. This hasn’t been the pattern with Plateau State but pessimists do abound. The tragic effect such pessimism would be that well-intention long-term developmental initiatives are short-circuited as voters throw out incumbents and the bath water! In the long run, the culture discourages honest patriots from entering politics giving way to “short-termist” opportunists.
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