Thought for the Week, August 30, 2026

 

I wrote what follows in the build-up to the 2019 elections.  Eight years later, the issues remain the same.  That is why this is being republished.  In 2019, I wrote:

In every election, there is an issue at stake, an issue that is to be addressed.  Beyond all the campaign and carnival, propaganda and vote buying, there is a question Nigerian voters should be asking themselves and all those who present themselves as candidates in the next elections.  The question is: what is at stake in the 2019 elections?

        The presidential election is no doubt the one that attracts the greatest attention.  Most Nigerians believe the issue is: who gets elected President? But while that is of immense importance, it is not the most important question.  The reason why Nigerians think that is the most important issue is because we run a system where all our lives depend on the government in Abuja and the head of that government.  But the issue is not primarily whom to vote for—the presidential candidate of the ruling party or the presidential candidate of the main opposition party or the presidential candidate of any of the other parties.  At every level of the scrutiny—presidential and gubernatorial, senatorial, national or state assembly elections—the real issue is not whom to vote for.  Of course, that is a very important issue.  But it is not the most important.

        The real issue is: at the conclusion of the electoral process, would Nigerians have their country given back to them?  Would we have elected men and women who will return the land around the Niger—Nigeria—to its rightful owners, that is, citizens of Nigeria?  Would Nigerians have elected political office holders who really understand what democracy is all about or would we have elected a class of politicians bereft of democratic temperament and credentials? 

        The issue is no longer to be ignored.  Ignoring it largely contributes to the issues of poverty, insecurity and corruption.  Those three are only symptoms of our sickness.  To treat them alone is not to be a wise physician.  A wise physician treats the cause.  A quack goes after symptoms.  We should be asking ourselves: what causes the triple problem of poverty, insecurity and corruption?

A people disposed of its land is a people impoverished.  This is our story. That is and has remained our predicament as Nigerians.  Ours is the history of citizens of a country whose constitution empowers the state to dispossess the people of their land. 

        Impoverished by a strange constitutional arrangement, a political configuration that effectively places the land, all that is on the land, and all that is under it—specifically its minerals, and most specifically its oil wealth—in the hands of the state, there is a cut-throat competition for access to the riches of Nigeria.  Since the riches of Nigeria are in the hands of the state, to become a functionary of state, which is what it means to run for elective public office, is to gain access to the riches of the state.  If you are not in power you must be in the corridors of power.  Most of those involved in the competition—political parties, their members, sympathizers and candidates—often resort to means that compromise security.  Every election season comes with a bumper harvest of militias.   That is one way by which the current constitutional arrangement paves the way for insecurity.  But there is another way.

        By virtue of the current constitutional arrangement, the state is more powerful than the citizen.  The state is itself reduced to state functionaries, holders of political offices like the President, Governors, legislators and all who work with them.  Since the all-powerful state is reduced to its functionaries, Nigeria’s security agencies are deployed to protect state functionaries, not the citizen.  Hence, the level of insecurity, already heightened by an unhealthy competition for access to the riches of the land through a corresponding unhealthy competition for access to public office, is worsened by the fact that state functionaries are protected to the detriment of the security of the citizen.

        When the citizen and his or her properties and investments are not secure, the land becomes a place that is unconducive to investments.  An inclement investment climate scares away investors who otherwise would have provided jobs for Nigeria’s teaming population of young and unemployed.  The swelling army of unemployed becomes an army of young people who can be used to rig elections and foment violence before, during and after every election season.

        When, by virtue of the current constitutional arrangement, the state becomes more powerful than the citizen, functionaries of a powerful state tend to be powerful.  They can do anything with impunity.  The culture of impunity engendered by the current constitutional arrangement provides a fertile ground for corruption.  People steal Nigeria’s money and, as long as they have friends in the corridors of power, they get away with it.  So we have moved from a poor constitutional arrangement to poverty, from poverty to insecurity aggravated every election season, from insecurity to aggravation poverty.  At the root of our problems is a constitutional arrangement that has dispossessed, impoverished, disabled and disenfranchised the Nigerian. 

        The way we Nigerians vote in the 2019 elections will either address or fail to address these and related concerns.  This is not a vote to be cast on ethnic and religious grounds.  Nigeria urgently needs legislators and administrators who are keenly aware of the urgent need for constitutional reforms in this country.  She needs to elect leaders who have the political will to effect these reforms, and who are endowed with the practical wisdom to bring these reforms about.  Nigeria needs leaders who will work to strengthen her young and fragile democracy.

        But the reality on the ground is that there is no evidence that these issues will be addressed.  If anything, what is clearly perceptible is that votes are being bought already.  Campaign grounds have become theatres of violence and distribution of bags of rice, garri, and cooking oil.  The campaign, like previous ones, is not issue driven.  It is driven by abusive words, mudslinging, fake news, accusation and counter-accusation of corruption. There is nothing to show that the outcome of the next elections will be in the interest of the people of Nigeria.

        We need not be discouraged.  Perhaps it will be the beginning of our long crawl out of the hole.  To paraphrase what St Augustine of Hippo wrote at the end of the first part of his book On the Trinity, at the end of the next elections, we would not have found what we are looking for.  Perhaps we would have found where to look for it.  That is, if we ask ourselves the right questions in the midst of the spiritual, moral and political confusion into which we have plunged ourselves.

© Father Anthony Akinwale, O. P.