I expect a new leadership that will work towards economic prosperity for Nigeria – Sandy

Jonathan Sandy, PhD, is the chairman of the Regional Centre for Governance and Security Policy Initiative (RCGSPI) in West Africa. He is well-travelled and versed in the politics of many countries on the continent and beyond. He prefers to be called ECOWAS’ son, although he hails from Sierra Leone. On the sidelines of the just concluded Africa Business Convention (ABC), a business conference and investment expo organised by BusinessDay, Sandy spoke with ZEBULON AGOMUO, Editor, on the coming general election in Nigeria, his expectations, the threat of insecurity, among other issues. Excerpts:

As an expert on security matters and you have been in Nigeria and know a lot about the country. What is your perspective on the insecurity in Nigeria, particularly now that the country is going into a general election in the next few weeks?

You know there’s a common saying that when Nigeria is under attack the whole of West Africa is also affected. When you talk about the population size; besides, this is our headquarters in Abuja, for ECOWAS. You know, we are all children of the ECOWAS community, therefore, any instability, whether political insecurity has ramifications and implications for what happens in West Africa. So, as much as this is a difficult year, not only for Nigeria because for my country – Sierra Leone, we will also be going through election; and then we have Liberia, Mali, there’s a number of elections lined up in West Africa and perhaps the rest of South Africa. But what we have been seeing over time, political instability or conflict, management, and administration of election has been one of the trigger points or drivers of instability; especially when the electoral competition has been based on identity politics and issues that have to do with religion in some occasion. We are particularly worried in Africa for Nigeria’s election not that we have not had political transitions, but how are you going to manage that political transition when as we go to the polls in the next two or three weeks, it is uncertain whether we have – people call it the three – horse-race. So, it is unpredictable whether it is going to be Peter Obi, whether it is going to be Tinubu; or whether it is going to be Atiku. But that is the beauty of democracy. At least, we hope that when people go to the ballot box and the outcome will be acceptable to everyone; that’s what we look forward to. But as a mix, the African Union and the ECOWAS for example, are putting in place all measures, and a lot of instruments are being put in place to mitigate the potential fallout from the electoral process.

Over the years, ECOWAS, African Union, and even the United States election monitoring groups would warn that whoever that sponsors violence would be sanctioned, but at the end of the day, the politicians would still instigate violence and nothing happens to them. Then, these bodies would come again after four years to repeat the sanction threat. This seems to have even emboldened violence sponsors to be more devious. What is really the problem?

Well, in Africa we have a number of committees, and legal and policy frameworks. One of them is 2009 for Constitutional Change of Government which includes issues of protests, sanctions, and military regime. A change by military regime and unconstitutional means of government is not acceptable to the African Union. So, when you talk about sanctions, it is one of the tools we use. We’ve seen a case in Mali where Jonathan Goodluck is pushing very hard, even though we have sanctions; these sanctions as you know have to be passed through intermediary forces, such as the US Security Council at the African Union Council; yes, we sanctioned Mali or any other country, yet citizens are the ultimate sufferers of these sanctions. The level of income inequality between the rich and the poor is astronomical. It is becoming a serious challenge in Africa. Therefore, even when we talk about sanctions, who are the losers and winners of sanctions; definitely, it is the poor; so, we really, really need to reflect on how we apply sanctions. In the current context, we do not pray for Nigeria to fall, because we know the electoral competition should be peaceful, credible, free and fair; and free of politically-related violence. That’s what we pray for; because we do not want the current situation in the Lake Chad Basin – Boko Haram, the spillover effect on West Africa of the Al-Qaeda and the network of ISIS; all of these have implications for driving foreign direct investment into our region; and therefore, we are particularly worried about that. The issue of how would the election play out so that peace and stability will be restored back in Nigeria is particularly crucial as we move towards the event of 2023. But it is good that the election will come in February; some scholars are speculating a runoff and we hope during that run-off and the political transition; it will be managed for the people of Nigeria and the people of West Africa and Africa as a whole. We look forward to what we call the spirit of African solidarity, Africans for Africans. That’s why some of us are here and with our knowledge in election security, administration and management, threats, and risks related to security, we hope everything will go well. Definitely, there is the spotlight of violence but we hope this will not escalate to anything that will destabilise or force migration and displacement. If you imagine, Nigeria falls, even one percent of your population will swallow countries like Sierra Leone; The Gambia, and many others on the continent. So, we do not look forward to that.

I am optimistic that the election, even if it goes to run-off; will be one of the best cases we have seen in recent times; as we have seen in Kenya where His Excellency, William Ruto won; and I hope that Nigeria takes the lead; it will not definitely relapse into an unconstitutional change of government as we saw in some of the Francophone countries.

From your observation, do you have any iota of doubt that the election will not hold or may be postponed as a result of insecurity; a crisis arising from the recent naira redesigning, and the fuel crisis in the country right now?

Well, if Donald Trump could lose the election, because of economic hardship, the impact of Covid-19 and the global health crisis, and insecurity around the globe; you know globalisation has had its implications on election outcomes. I am worried a bit but in the context of Nigeria, there is opportunity. The incumbent is not on the ballot; therefore, the incumbent is exiting; that’s what I mean by the political transition. How that is going to be managed is critical and with the 18 candidates that you have; I was part of the annual summit of Political Parties Leadership organised by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS); I was one of the guest speakers as well; that was in December. From what I saw, it seems there’s enhanced political cooperation which is part of the indications we watch for when we have tendency threats or triggers of political violence. So, I think, the trigger points are not so escalated. In our national security language, we say it is not up to Level 2. That being said, the international community has a role to play through the ECOWAS particularly to keep an eye and watch on the level of transparency and accountability, especially when it comes to the transmission of the election results, this is where you are using a new system – the BVAS and how INEC will manage that is very critical as well. On fuel, maybe by the time, Dangote finishes the refinery infrastructure, maybe and the subsidies are taken away, it can cushion that; the only thing I am worried about is this concept of currency redenomination which is typical not only in Nigeria; recently we went through that, and that has really increased what we call hyperinflation; because there is too much money in circulation but too few goods; therefore, the exchange rate which according to the Vice President of Ghana, if you don’t get the economic fundamentals right, the exchange rate will expose you. This is the circumstance we find ourselves. I hope that the cost of living crisis that persists and poor economic arrangements, especially in the lack of access to the local currency will not deteriorate to the extent that it will escalate in instability.

You may have listened to some of the languages used by politicians during their campaigns. Rather than issue-based campaign some are employing intemperate language in total disregard for the letter of Peace Accord they signed. What is your take here?

When compaigns get hot, the issue of propaganda, hate speech will emerge. This is not peculiar to Nigeria alone. In fact, it gets nasty; we are lucky this time because in Nigeria, by now, the level of political and election-related violence was expected to have escalated; but so far, in the cyberspace war, we have seen accusations and counter-accusations about corruption; wasteful spending and people’s past records instead of focusing on the future on the kind of Nigeria and West Africa that we want, this is what we want the candidates to focus on, but unfortunately, people are going back to the past which though is important, but the future matters more. I think you have good candidates; the problem is the supporters and the membership; how do we organise a disciplined and organised campaign team so that it will have the tendency to reduce political and election-related violence so that it will not escalate; I think the Peace Accord, we call it code of Conduct, is a step forward. I hope the various political parties, especially the topnotch ones should adhere to some of the provisions and the articles within the Peace Accord itself; so that we should not drag Nigeria back into conflict; that have implication for macro-economic growth in the sub-region as well as doing business; because the risk of doing business is helping political uncertainties around that, and how do we manage political uncertainties, so that we can mitigate the risks and attract foreign direct investments. We hope that Nigeria will not go through that type of crisis where change or what we call the political transition from one regime (from an outgoing president to the incoming president) cannot forestall doing business in Nigeria; cannot stagnate the society itself which will have implications for medium to long-term for every citizen of West Africa or Africa as a whole. Remember that Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are leading the economy in Africa; so, if anything happens to Nigeria, the nature of the investment, type of investment, and cash flow into this economy will have a far-reaching effect. We look forward to the new president coming so that we can collaborate on a single currency, and West Africa will begin to enjoy that collaboration.

Last year, election was held in Kenya, where William Ruto, who was vice president, defeated Raila Odinga. Ruto was not supported by his boss, Uhuru Kenyatta, the then-sitting president; but the people wanted a change. The youth population rallied round him and gave him massive support to clinch the victory. Now, INEC has said that the youth population on the voters’ register is huge. Do you see the youth play a similar decisive role here also?

It is a very interesting model to look at and how the Kenyans even went up to the Supreme Court and through the decision of the highest court in the land, Willian Ruto was sworn in as president of Kenya. I am happy. A few days ago, Raila Odinga was in Abuja; we should be looking at elections as football competitions. People ask me, why do you think William Ruto won the election? I said it was clear; if you look at his campaign message – the policy agenda he was promoting – ‘dynasty versus hustlers’; and the hustler model in the economic chart means bottom-top approach. How do we ensure that we close the inequality between the rich and the poor; how do we ensure that the micro-economic variables/determinants are closely also linked to the macro-economics of most African States, the IMF and World Bank come, focus on macro-economic policies but there is no trickle-down effects. You talk about GDP growth rate- 5 percent, 10 percent – but how does that translate to the poor and Oxfam has released their research on inequality and it shows that in Nigeria for example, inequality is about 17 or more percent which means that poverty indices are increasing just as in Sierra Leone and in many of the African countries. So, I expect that this election will be crucial to get the right type of leadership that will be inclusive and foster national unity and as a pathway towards economic prosperity for Nigeria and West Africa as a whole.

To what extent do you think the youth will determine the outcome of the election?

Youths everywhere are strategic. Remember on the continent we have 1.3 billion youths. But the majority of them which is about 55-60 percent are about the youth bulge. So, it has a lot of implications for the election outcome. Youths have realised that with the increase in knowledge and awareness raising, they have a vested interest in campaigns and politics. So, it is a good thing. We need to be bringing them to the table; we need to discuss with them so that they can decide their destinies as we take the exit in terms of succession plan and therefore, what is interesting is that is a wave of change. We have the Arab Spring; where things happened and we saw what it led to in Egypt, Tunisia, and some other Arab countries. In Ghana recently, it is the youth again; what I mean is the role of the youth, particularly in influencing electoral outcomes because they form the bulge of the population. In Kenya, most of the elders and bourgeoisie were behind Raila Odinga, while the vulnerable youths and wheelbarrow youths were behind Willian Ruto. So, let’s see the dynamics of how that will play out, but it is unpredictable in the context of Nigeria because this is a unique election where up to two weeks to the election, you can hardly define a clear-cut margin, that is the tempo; I hope nothing will go wrong and that we will secure the kind of peaceful and credible election so that the political transition from President Muhammadu Buhari outgoing and then the incoming president can be looked at in a transparent and coherent manner where we all can be happy. My last statement; I also will like to leave this with you. As we pray, June 24th will be my birthday and that will be the day we will be going through the presidential, parliamentary and all our other elections in Sierra Leone and I will be a candidate as well. Such as in 2018, I was also a presidential candidate. This time around, I hope that with an understanding of Sierra Leone’s domestic policy needs, foreign policy, and regional policy needs, I will be able to combine that to make sure I bring Sierra Leone to a table so that in a world of interdependency, regionalism, and globalisation, we can all survive as a nation and a people. I am a son of the ECOWAS Community; therefore, when people ask me where I come from, I tell them I am ECOWAS’s son.