A few weeks ago, I wrote an analysis series taking apart the main contenders and dark horses in Nigeria’s next general elections. The purpose of the series was to assess the policy positions of each of these candidates and to score their electoral viability. It was fun writing about Rotimi Amaechi’s red cap, Bola Tinubu’s Kano colloquium and Kingsley Moghalu’s Twitter Spaces, but deep down I knew that this was a sterile exercise.
The 2023 election – if it holds – will be a strategically important one, no doubt. Unfortunately, its importance will be restricted to its chance of taking Nigeria somewhere within the mere range of slightly less intolerable and much worse. Nothing systemic will change about Nigeria if Muhammadu Buhari leaves office in 2023 and is replaced by a better human being and a more competent leader. The new guy might not send soldiers to massacre unarmed civilian protesters at Lekki Toll Plaza, but surely that is not the bar for good leadership.
“It is our turn” – The Prom Queen Philosophy
The first time I heard of the prom queen analogy regarding Nigerian politics was a few years ago on the pages of Nairaland. In the typically unfiltered fashion of that platform, a poster suggested that the hysteria over the 2015 election was driven not by any worries about national direction, but simply about who gets to “date the prom queen for the next 4 years.” I found that turn of phrase incredibly descriptive and accurate because it clearly captures the basic problem with Nigeria’s presidential system of government.
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Instead of what a president is actually supposed to DO with power, the entire point of winning a presidential election here is to BE in power. It is about the trappings and paraphernalia of the office; the control over budgets; the ability to dictate who prospers and who is persecuted; the almost absolute, accountability-free power that Nigeria’s weird 1999 constitution affords to the President. Based on this structure, it is almost absurd to expect that an angelic candidate in 2023 will come in and unilaterally rescue Nigeria from the quagmire of terrible governance.
The entire purpose of Nigeria’s presidential system is to exist like a colonial governor or a feudal lord held up by the resources and taxes of the serfs. Every 4 years, the identity of the person or group that gets to boast of having the “prom queen” on their arm changes. The well being of the prom queen is not a priority, neither is that of the prom itself. All that matters is who gets the (increasingly empty) bragging rights over the rulership (as against leadership) of an increasingly bankrupt country that is falling apart at its seams.
Fundamental Change of some Sort is Inevitable
For the denizens of the so-called “Corridors of Power” in Abuja who may be reading this, it is important to understand that this state of affairs is not sustainable. The “prom queen” that they take so much pride in dating may not exist in another 10 years. I know it is a bit old hat at this point to say that Nigeria is existentially threatened, but I promise this is not made up. Nigeria is in real financial, sectarian, ethnic and territorial trouble and risks devolving into a Somalia or 1994-Rwanda type of situation.
These problems are very real. The only strategic focus of any serious politician with an interest in having something left to preside over is a fundamental change in how Nigeria operates. Call it restructuring, call it renegotiation, call it a sovereign national conference, call it whatever you want to call it. The important thing is that the Abuja class gets the point about Nigeria’s fundamentally threatened state. The prom queen does not matter anymore. Niger Delta oil is no longer the ticket it was 20 years ago. Taxation of a rapidly depreciating naira operating in an anaemic economy is not the new oil either. There is no magic replacement to keep the old patronage system working into the new decade.
It is time to accept that a certain chapter of Nigerian history as we know it is done. The politicians have to move on and find a new way to exist. So as 2023 gets here and the news headlines inevitably begin skewing toward yet another election that cannot fundamentally change or rescue Nigeria in any way, one hopes that somewhere inside all this, Nigeria’s purveyors of power actually understand that it is time to move on from the quadrennial obsession with elections.
The prom is over.
