While the campaigns for the 2023 election will commence in September, the leading candidates and their numerous supporters are already talking tough about the likely outcome of the presidential poll, the most prestigious among the political prizes to be won. It is normal in an election year or more precisely, in an election season that more of such political banters will be heaped on the electorate through the ubiquitous social media, the traditional media, both electronic and print, as well as beer parlours and other gossip centres.
The presidential candidates will have to live with how critics view them as well as how the electorate and party supporters portray them. They must be prepared because the unwritten law of politics is that if you don’t want to scrutinized, don’t enter the arena. If you don’t want to be criticized, please keep off Nigerian politics. If you don’t want your secrets to be exposed, never you venture into politics. In politics, there is no privacy, everything about a politician, especially one seeking to be the president of the most powerful black nation in the world, will be made public. They will say what you did and what you did not do. They will search for the schools you attended and verify any certificate and expose your business interests and partners. Nigerian politics is such that if you don’t want the heat, you should keep off the kitchen. If they did it to past candidates, it is likely that they will do the same to you if you venture to contest for the presidency or even any post for that matter including the post of a council chairman. In politics, what you sow is what you reap. The way you treat others is the way you will be treated, a sort of measure for measure, fire for fire. In 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was demonized and called all sorts of names by the APC and their attack dogs in order to chase their leadership out of power. The supporters of the current All Progressives Congress (APC) ensured that President Goodluck Jonathan was chased out of power by all means foul and fair. Apart from labeling him clueless, weak and corrupt, they use other unprintable epithets to tar Jonathan and supporters in bad colours. They even called PDP supporters, the Wailing Wailers, an imitation of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Although imitation is allowed in science and arts, but it must not be negatively applied. People should not be blackmailed because they believe in a cause or support a particular politician.
Even after President Jonathan surrendered to them by willingly accepting defeat, they did not leave the man alone. They consistently pursued him and tried to make him irrelevant but their plans did not work. The PDP is even lenient in its role as an opposition party to the APC. They have enough issues to campaign against the ruling party. But PDP is not doing enough in that regard. That is why the APC has the temerity to continue to taunt PDP and blaming the party for its inefficiency and misrule.
But today, how is market? Is ASUU not on strike? Did electricity workers not put the country in darkness on Wednesday before the government asked for two weeks break to sort things out? Are Nigerians better off now than they were in 2015 when this change administration assumed office? The answer is not in the affirmative. Nigerians are no longer happy. They are angry. Some of them cannot eat good food. Some have even become so weak in the other room due to government’s economic strangulation and insecurity and poverty. What is the value of the naira to the dollar now? Is it N650 or N700 or more? It may reach N1000 one day. Compare it with the situation in 2015 and tell our readers which era is better. Are we not selling oil at higher prices now? What has happened to the subsidy regime which the APC said was ridden with massive corruption? Why has the government not mustered the political will to deal with corruption in the subsidy regime or remove it completely? Why is the regime running away from restructuring it promised to do? Why has it not implemented the APC version of restructuring?
There are so many questions to ask and I hope they will be willing to provide the right answers. Why it is so easy to campaign and demonize those in power, the APC has proved so eloquently that it is not so easy to do those things promised during campaigns. The APC government promised, among other things, to tackle insecurity, fix the economy, provide steady power and fight corruption but over seven years down the line, not much has been achieved in these sectors.
They are still giving excuses and asking for more time for a regime that will end in May 23, 2023. Our national debt has risen so high that we spend so much to service debts. The debt is now in trillions of naira and still rising. The government is still involved in binge borrowing. The APC national chairman, Abdullahi Adami, recently said the government can borrow till eternity. Good enough, Adamu has been excoriated for such unfortunate statement. No government can survive by borrowing till eternity. Apart from becoming the poverty capital of the world under the APC government, unemployment is rising steadily. Instead of offering apology for the glaring failure, they are grandstanding to elongate our misery and poverty index. They want to extend the hunger and darkness in the land. Nigeria cannot develop when the universities are under lock and key and when the national power grid is collapsing week after week and when insecurity is walking in all fours in all parts of the country. Some Nigerians doubt if the 2023 elections can hold in the face of rising insecurity. It is the duty of the government to ensure that the election holds and that the outcome reflects the wishes of the people. But for sanity to prevail in the media space and for responsible communication to thrive, there is need to avoid the use of intemperate language, provocative utterances and ethnic profiling while campaigning for your favourite candidate. The political campaigns must be issue-based and devoid of threats to people and groups by party supporters. The promotion of one’s candidate should not be used as an avenue to vilify others or address them in pejorative terms or in local parlance overheat the polity and open more our fault lines and expose our differences the more.
An election season should not be the time to bring the worst in all of us because politics is a partisan game where only one winner will emerge. Although the campaign period offers commentators and supporters the opportunity to show the strengths and weaknesses of the major presidential contestants, it must not be turned into a media war or intra-ethnic crisis, considering the country’s diversity. Let the supporters of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of APC, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and other presidential candidates market their candidates without heating the polity, and without being abusive to supporters of their opponents. The current democracy has been with us since 1999 and we have had general elections since then. Nigeria will not end because we will be having a general election in 2023.
The current de-marketing of some targeted presidential candidates is not healthy and it is not even good for the candidate you are marketing. In a few weeks time, the presidential candidates will be unveiling their manifestoes and what they will do for Nigerians if elected into power. They should say exactly what they will achieve with appropriate timelines. It is not good to promise what is unachievable. We have had enough of politicians who regaled us with sweet words, empty promises and later failed to fulfill even half of such promises.