The belief and assurance that were ushered in by the electoral reforms of the two former presidents have since given way to pessimism and hopelessness, with people now seeing voting and elections as an albatross to the nation’s progress rather than exercises meant to usher in growth and prosperity. This discontent and disillusionment have heightened in recent years owing to pervasive economic hardship and the cost-of-living crisis.
The 2007 presidential election in Nigeria is widely deemed as the most contentious and perverse. It was fraught with irregularities and manipulations. It was marred by violence and rigging. At the core of the abhorrent elections of 2027 was political violence. So atrocious was the poll that the winner, former president Musa Yar’Adua, declared that the election that produced him as president and brought him the highest office in the land was deeply flawed which led to his initiation of a comprehensive electoral reform that brought some semblance of tidiness, credibility and maturity to our election until the progress was upended in recent years.
While public consensus and jury out there is that the Yar Adua and Goodluck Jonathan era brought a much-needed sanity, civility and cleanup not just to our electoral system but to our fledgling and fragile democracy. It gave people hope and renewed their belief in democratic rule. But that was over a decade ago. The belief and assurance that were ushered in by the electoral reforms of the two former presidents have since given way to pessimism and hopelessness, with people now seeing voting and elections as an albatross to the nation’s progress rather than exercises meant to usher in growth and prosperity. This discontent and disillusionment have heightened in recent years owing to pervasive economic hardship and the cost-of-living crisis.
The worry of many Nigerians isn’t so much about the troubling and precarious condition of the nation but how the only democratic means, free fair and transparent election, they have to salvage the situation, rescue themselves from the clutches of corrupt and unscrupulous politicians, pull the nation out of doldrums and change its current trajectory are actively being destroyed and made impossible by the government of the day and the ruling party in connivance with public institutions who are supposed to stay away from politics and remain neutral in matters of democratic activities.
In what appears to be a glimpse of what the 2027 election will look like, we’ve witnessed incidents of political violence in the last two weeks alone targeted at members of the opposition coalition Party, the African Democratic Congress, ADC. Last Saturday, the official defection of former governorship candidates in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, to the ADC, was marred by political violence. Miscreants and thugs sponsored by the ruling All Progressives Congress stormed the venue of the event in the Alimosho area of Lagos State and brutally attacked many of his supporters and destroyed their possessions. The development should not be all too surprising to those who have followed Lagos politics religiously since the return to democracy in 1999.
Since the commencement of the third republic, violence, murder intimidation and brazen impunity have become key components of Lagos politics and vital ingredients of winning elections. These appalling and uninspiring undemocratic features have come to be the enduring attributes of the state and have shaped not just its politics but also the governance of the state. But Lagos State is not the only place where the signs of things to come are being foretold through sheer use of violence and barbaric attacks on political opponents as the ruling party seeks to stifle, destroy any opposition and tighten its grip on power.
On Wednesday, members of the ADC were reportedly attacked by a clutch of thugs who were allegedly acting at the behest of the APC in Ondo State. The incident happened while the ADC members were holding a ward meeting at Ward 8 in Akure South Local Government Area, three ADC members were injured, while several others narrowly escaped. Last month, members of the ADC and the social democratic Party (SDP) were attacked by hoodlums in Kaduna during a transition meeting and inauguration of the ADC in the State.
This act of violence and intimidation against political opponents leaves a sour taste in the mouth. They are detrimental to our democracy and could engender a chain of events that will destabilise the nation. The last time we checked, freedom of association and political gathering are enshrined in our constitution, and these repeated attacks on the opposition are a direct assault on our constitution. They create a climate of trepidation ahead of the 2027 general elections as the long-suffering and much-tried electorate begins to cast doubt on the possibility of changing the government through elections.
Even more disconcerting is the fact that the people behind these frontal assaults on our democracy are those who claimed to have played a crucial role in the struggle for democracy and ushered in the fourth republic. Now that they have ascended to power using the democratic ladder, they have decided to remove every rung of the ladder and destroy it to stop others from using it. Such act and behaviour is not different from the one displayed by the military regimes they fought aggressively to take power from. If anything, it’s worse.