Gladiators ready to roll out…but where is the beef?
Another gloomy Independence Day “celebration” tucked under the belt it is time to let real politic commence. And it has. While former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has made a statement of intention by formally declaring, the others are still a bit coy.
Well not exactly all of them. President Goodluck Jonathan’s handlers might say that he is still undecided, but hey! Who is fooling who? With the unrelenting “aerial bombardment” of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) and a myriad of supporting cast the incumbent President already dominates the air waves. In this view, the little inconvenience of the interpretation of the electoral act remains just that, inconvenient. In the meantime the expected great Jonathan adoption has occurred.
The other perennial hopeful is also very hot on the starting block. Mohammadu Buhari’s has moved from posters to a formal declaration of intent. All the aspirants however look very much dressed up with nowhere to go. A crucial question now haunts the polity; this is “where is the beef?” it is a profound commentary on the state of the republic that with just months to go, no convincing alternative programme is on offer.
This has much to do with the nomenclature of the concept of an “opposition” in a rentier state. The inability of the dominant alternative, the All Progressives Congress (APC) to transform itself into a real government-in-waiting stands out as a fault-line and is certainly disturbing. For the cynic, this is interpreted as the proposition that what we actually have is a choice between tweedledee and tweedledum or no choice at all! In other words, Nigeria is actually a one-party. Like any one party of course, there are factions and tendencies.
The inability of the APC to transform itself into a credible alternative perspective makes such a proposition look rather appealing. The party has built from the top to presumably downwards. The framework has been to cobble up a winning electoral coalition in an attempt to form a new national majority as counter-poise to the PDP behemoth. To do so, it has had to drag into the net, all the flotsam and jetsam.
In this shifting quicksand of the amalgamation of indeterminate loyalties, some of the flotsam interpreting which way the wind is blowing have had a change of heart. They have gone right back to where they came from. This is the nature of hurriedly cobbled together electorally directed seemingly winning-formulas.
For this reason, there is no credible government-in-waiting which is actually what the republic desperately needs. The APC should have pursued a different strategy from bottom-up. This would have encompassed a real grassroots movement woven around an alternative programme. Such a programme would have challenged the PDP and the Jonathan administration on the “Nigerian paradox.” This well-known absurdity has been often stated. It focuses on the contradiction manifested in a political-economy in which the overwhelming majority gets poorer as the coffers of the state gets fuller. This paradox is why the incumbent federal government cannot mimic Bill Clinton’s re- election slogan ’’ if you are better off today than four years ago vote for me’’ This is why there is such an urgent need for an alternative programme to convince the electorate to change course.
Such a programme based on a clear alternative perspective would have been appealing across the board. Not least, to an increasingly stifled middle class and the perennially up and against salary earners. It would have reinvigorated the political atmosphere. Unfortunately, the absence of a convincing alternative programme means that the election will be fought within the framework of the present toxic atmosphere.
And it is toxic. Without an alternative perspective, no prizes will be given out for guessing what follows. What will follow is an election based on religion and ethnic calculations. All elections are divisive, of course this one will be more than that. It will shake the very foundations of the raison d’etre for the country’s rationale for peaceful co-existence in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.
Everyone will bear the consequences. Unfortunately much of the burden will fall on the bottom 70 percent who are stranded below the poverty line. The atmosphere envisaged induces nostalgia for another era when there were real political parties who fought elections on the basis of relatively well thought out programmes based on sensible financial costing. Unfortunately, for the well-being of an already dysfunctional republic this election will be fought on parameters positioned on fear, loathing and hate. At the end of it all, the search for a formula on which to base the nation’s continuing peaceful-coexistence will subsequently become very urgent. For the elections will have deepened the fault-lines. And it might not be so easy to patch up again not unlike the aftermath of Humpty-dumpty’s great fall.