From the moment earlier this month when President Goodluck Jonathan announced that Nigeria’s elections were being postponed by six weeks, voters have been holding their breath.
The presidential poll, now scheduled for March 28, will be the most keenly contested election in recent Nigerian history. For the first time since democracy was restored in 1999, there is a possibility that the incumbent may lose to an opposition candidate.
The most recent polls show Jonathan running neck and neck with General Muhammadu Buhari, the gap-toothed former dictator whose popularity has been boosted by public discontent with Jonathan’s mishandling of the country’s natural resources, his slow reaction to recent national emergencies and a failure to deal with both rampant corruption and the jihadist insurgents of Boko Haram.
Many Nigerians recognised early on that they had to pick the lesser of two evils. The current government has proved a disappointment but Buhari comes with baggage, having ruled the country for two years after the army snatched power from a democratically elected government in 1983.
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During that spell in office Buhari enacted a series of profoundly illiberal laws, including a ban on publishing stories that could bring the federal government or public officers “to disrepute or ridicule”.
Soldiers were deployed in the streets to whip people into compliance with new rules requiring, for example, orderly queues at bus stops. But Nigerians understand that to thrive, they have to learn how to forget. Buhari is considered one of the least corrupt of the country’s rulers, even by those who do not support him.
The forgiving disposition of the Nigerian electorate is understood by a political elite that now operates with breathtaking shamelessness. Farouk Lawan is a parliamentarian who has done as much as anyone to expose wrongdoing in the Nigerian government.
He headed an inquiry that exposed the details of a fuel subsidy scam which reportedly cost the country $6.8bn. Yet in 2013, Nigerian newspapers reported that he had been filmed accepting $500,000 in cash from a businessman whose company was under investigation.
At first Lawan denied having “demanded and received any bribe from anybody”. Press reports say that after video evidence was submitted to the police Lawan backtracked and admitted to taking the money — but claimed he was only doing so to gather evidence of the pressure that his committee was under.
His party seems either to have accepted the explanation or to have disregarded the allegations; Lawan is seeking re-election as the People’s Democratic Party candidate in this year’s elections to the House of Representatives.
All sides in politics benefit from Nigerians’ collective amnesia. Jonathan’s supporters seem to have forgotten that the reaction of the first lady to the mass kidnapping of school girls by Boko Haram was to express doubt that the abductions had even taken place.
They seem to have forgotten that it took Jonathan three weeks to say anything about it. They forget that as he preached anti-corruption, in 2013 Jonathan pardoned a convicted corrupt politician — his former boss and mentor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. Nigerians who support Buhari are surely forgetting the illiberal excesses of his brief rule.
The country meanwhile teeters on the precipice, with dwindling foreign reserves, unbridled corruption, a crumbling economy and a war against Boko Haram that has so far lasted for five years with no end in sight. Nigerian voters know very well how to be in the difficult space between a rock and a hard place.
In the coming election, they must consider what we need to remember about the records of all the candidates seeking office.
This article was first published in the FT.
Elnathan John
