Tomorrow is the big day when for the seventh election since the return to democracy, more than 93 million Nigerians are registered to vote. It is likely to be a closely contested race with four candidates – Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) being the front runners.
Browsing: Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim
The Centre for Democracy and Development has just published a major study on social media and the 2023 election campaigns, which I summarise here (click here for the full report). Currently, the number of active social media users in Nigeria has risen from 27 million in 2019 to 36 million ahead of the 2023 elections. Given the challenge of prevailing misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms, and the way such disinformation can permeate into the media more generally, greater access to online information does not necessarily create more informed citizens. In fact, in Nigeria, it has confused the citizenry while entrenching pre-existing divides based on ethnicity and religion, especially as malinformation, the deliberate sharing of genuine information with an intent to cause harm, thrives in this election season.
The National Council of State is meeting today to address a series of crises affecting the country. Commerce is dying and the economy is likely to go into recession because of a cash crunch the government decided to create. By ensuring people with cash in their bank accounts cannot get their money, the intention of the policy is to raise the level of anger and frustration in society. Government timed the policy move to coincide with an existing fuel shortage that is also annoying citizens. Thirdly, all this is fabricated at a time of unprecedented cost of living crisis. My reading of the multiplication of vexatious policy interventions at the same time is conceived as an experiment to see how far Nigerians can be pushed before they explode.
As the general election campaigns intensify, the first problem today is how will the elections hold without money both in politicians’ pockets as well as in people’s pocket. As a parting gift to most Nigerians, President Buhari in his wisdom has decided that the current generation of Nigerians must also suffer the trauma of emergency currency change which our generation suffered in 1984. His idea then, as it is today, is that it is a method to catch looters of the national treasury who will be forced to reveal their stolen monies. The problem then, as it is today, is that whatever the merits of the approach are, there is massive collateral damage among the masses.
Yesterday, I participated in the Annual Trust Dialogue on the theme of interrogating the 2023 Presidential Agenda. In his opening remarks, the Chair of the occasion, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, expressed the strong view that we must be optimistic that positive change is possible and that indeed the time has come to do things differently, with millions of young Nigerians ready to perform their civic duty. INEC and the State must ensure they do the needful to ensure that riggers are kept out of the ring and the choices of citizens are respected.
Finally, the campaign is getting intense and exciting. Surprisingly, the current round is taking place in faraway Chattam House in London as key candidates and the INEC Chairman conduct political pilgrimages to a British Government policy centre in London to talk to Nigerians at home. Many Nigerians have correctly asked the question whether there is no policy think tank in Nigeria to receive politicians to air their campaign issues. The National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies has been mentioned by many as being the leading public think tank to handle such a task. I absolutely agree that the National Institute could play that role creditably. Unfortunately, it would not succeed because of the character of our political class that has disdain for our institutions. In fact, for the past decade, the National Institute has established a whole department for training and engagement with political parties where I have often participated as a resource person. In most of the meetings there I have participated in; the leadership of the so-called big political parties have either sent low level officials to represent them or sent no one in many cases. They suffer from colonial mentality and believe that Nigerian institutions are of no consequence and are therefore not deserving of their time. When they seek publicity, they pay tens of millions of Naira to key television stations to carry their programmes live.
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