Alas, the whistle has been blown for the race for the 2019 General Elections to begin. November 18 is exactly 90 days to the commencement of the first rounds of the 2019 polls; it thus marks the lawful beginning of electioneering campaigns. In reality, campaigns had begun the very day the elected officials, incumbent leaders, were sworn into offices back in May 2015. Now, however, the politicians need no excuse to abandon all else, governance inclusive, to traverse the length and breadth of their constituencies, mounting the soapbox to reel out preposterous promises and, apologies to Chuba Okadigbo, shake hands with unwashed villagers, in the name of wooing votes.
This is indeed a humbling moment for the politician; no longer the immaculate suits and tie, or the sparkling white babanriga and shinny well-ironed starched Zana Bukar cap. You will no longer see the swash-buckling sauntering and arrogant posturing of the politician. This is that time you will meet them eating at your neighbourhood Mama-put joints, enjoying, or pretending to be enjoying, sugar cane by the roadside, helping an old market woman sell her wares in the market, or riding an Okada bike; in short, they will try to enact an image of the common man on the street to curry empathy.
But this is just the outer veneer, for deep inside them they will be concocting the most highly-potent poisoned chalice to feed their perceived political opponents; hate and dangerous speech.
Recently, I wrote on the subject of hate speech in our recent elections. The 2011 elections witnessed bloody riots in some northern states which have been attributed to hate speech in the build up to the polls. As for the 2015 polls, I wrote: “Although the 2015 polls have been described as one of the best organised so far in the country, it was perhaps one that saw the worse form of the use of inflammatory language during the leading campaigns. Fortunately, and entirely fortuitously, there was no outbreak of violence at the end as in 2011 even though the polls took place in a charged environment of ethnic and religious acrimony.”
The religious nuance of the 2015 was due to the fact that the leading candidates belonged the main contending religions in the country; Christianity and Islam. The race divided the nation down the centre; it was a miracle that the elections ended without violence given the level of religious incitement on both sides.
Unfortunately, the division remained deep long after the polls. I wrote: “Regrettably, rather than abate in the post-election dispensation, hate speeches have almost spiraled out of control finding new expressions in the form of demands for secession and restructuring. As it is now, social media platforms have been taken over by hate-mongers who seem to be equally divided between “hailers” and “wailers;” the “hailers” are those supporting the … APC government of President Muhammadu Buhari and the “wailers” are the supporters of erstwhile President Goodluck Jonathan.”
I blamed the persistence President Buhari. His “5% versus 97%” remarks in Washington DC was a costly Presidential faux pas. In response to a question from a reporter in Washington on allegation of favoritism, the President replied that he would favour the section of the country that gave him the majority of votes over that which didn’t support him.
Critics say the President’s action and body language bespoke of this mindset; his appointments in public offices, especially in the military and security sector, his handling of Fulani herdsmen killings, the location of capital projects, etc. They argue that Buhari has been unable to build a one united nation. In response, they insist that the way out is the restructuring of the country.
At the national level, the ethnic and religious tone of the 2019 campaigns would predictably be less intense on account of the fact the candidates of the leading parties, APC and PDP, are both Fulani and Muslims but it is doubtful if hate speech would vanish completely. In the end, however, contention over real issues will carry the day in the campaigns. The President would still contend with accusation of nepotism, of not projecting justice, fairness and equity for all Nigerian, of being a sectional leader, etc. Like during Jonathan’s time, the continuing Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen violence would be his Achilles’ Heels. The shielding of corrupt APC politicians from prosecution, illustrated in the Gundujesque scenario, speak poorly of his performance in fighting corruption.
At the regional level, I am worried by the Northern situation and the arrogance of people like the Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai. One of the reasons for the North’s recurrent violence is lack of diversity management skills. The worse culprits are its leaders; if they are not making incendiary speeches somewhere, they are setting ethnic and religious groups at war.
Just recovering from a religious crisis that crippled his state for days, Governor Rufai decided to replace the decades-old, Muslim-Christian gubernatorial ticket with a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Granting, for a moment, that Muslims have the majority population to give him victory, is his decision a wise one for a highly volatile state like Kaduna?
On an ordinary day Kaduna State is a hot-bed of ethno-religious tension. Indeed, the tension between the two religions of Christianity and Islam as well as unbridled elite competition within the environment for power and privileges has provided a host of triggers for violence in the State. It is a characteristic the state shares with Plateau. But Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong has invested time and energy in building a more ethno-religiously tolerant society since he came to power. He was able to bring over board the long-ostracized Muslim-dominated Jos North local government area into the political mainstream of the state. In spite of recurrent violent hiccups, this has largely stabilized the inner city. In Kaduna, El-Rufai is doing the reverse; dislodging the large Christian population.
Religious extremists like Governor El-Rufai relish in building divisions in the society and, therefore, make the people like Governor Lalong look like sell-out by the other side. The 2019 elections will provide a hard choice for Kaduna and Plateau State people: A choice between an exclusivist and an inclusive government respectively.
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