NIGERIAN ELECTORATE CATEGORIZED

It is a normal thing for Nigerians to blame the woes of our nation on bad leadership; leaders who did not hijack power but were elected, and many were reelected by majority of the citizens. Illiteracy keeps reducing by the year in Nigeria but our level of education has refused to reflect in our election results. Here in Nigeria, we vote for those who have nothing to offer mostly, cuius culpa? We should blame the electorate, yes entirely. Electorate are qualified voters while voters are those that actually cast ballot in an election, as it is, voter is a subset of electorate. I have witnessed several elections in Nigeria since 1992 therefore I can say one or two things about the Nigerian electorate under the categories below.

The Dibo ko sebes. Dibo ko sebe means ‘vote then cook soup’ in Yoruba language, it is used to describe vote buying and selling. Nigerian politicians do not really need to rig elections anymore, all they must do is to give money to anyone that vote actually vote for them, eventually, the highest bidder will win the election. Unfortunately, this is the largest category among Nigerian voters for now. They could sell their vote for as low as #5000 (around $10) to vote against common sense .The conversers will argue that the money they are offering you is like a win-win: there is no assurance that your desired candidate will do well and you are getting paid to vote – very despicable. Vote buying and selling is not new to Nigerian politics, just that the amount of money they now offer has greatly increased. The largest population of Nigeria falls below the poverty line; therefore they are easily swayed by paltry sums. Dib ko sebe has helped to keep unrepentantly incompetent hands power all over Nigeria. It is widely believed in Nigeria that the leaders love to keep the populace in abject poverty to keep vote buying easy with little sums.

The Resolutes. A lower percentage of Nigerians vote for the candidate of their choice without allowing any dissenting voice; they follow their candidate to the end. In this vein, yours truly has been an ardent supporter of Asiwaju Segun Oni right from time because of Asiwaju’s leadership prowes. Unfortunately there are some issues with this category of voters. First is that many of them believed in the wrong candidate for sentimental reasons like religion, ethnicity, political party gender bias etc. secondly, many of them believed in the wrong candidate because of propaganda, lies and deceit. For example, some Nigerians believed that a Buhari government would rid Nigeria of insurgency even when he publicly said a fight against boko haram is a fight against the North. Before Buhari, we were only facing insurgency in 3 northern states, but now, insurgency, banditry and civil unrest has engulfed Nigeria. Another problem with this category is that their votes can be easily rigged due to the bridge provided by the vote sellers discussed earlier on.

The spectators. The spectators are a large chunk of the electorate, some of them do not even have voter’s card, some do possess the card but they will not vote. Surprisingly, almost everyone in this category is either educated or at least well-to-do. Some of them believe that their vote won’t count, some believe that voting or not voting has no effect on them, some complain of time, some complain of location, some complain of… just myriad of reasons but eventually they don’t vote. This doesn’t mean that they don’t have a good choice among the candidates; it just means that they are voting against their own choice indirectly. Some people were forced to become spectators by the antics of our politicians. For example, in the last gubernatorial election in Osun state, many eligible voters were allegedly disenfranchised because they wanted to vote against the powers that be. Some Igbo have also accused our electoral body of not releasing their voter’s card that they applied for in Lagos.
The foreigners. I spent some weeks visiting the capital of Zamfara and Katsina states in 2018, the total number of people I encountered throughout the states were just too small that I went to enquire where everyone went. I had to ask because Katsina turned in 1.4 million votes during the 2015 general election while Zamfara turned in 761 thousand votes, very large number compared to most of the southern states. My friend who was a resident of one of the states told me that a chunk of the voters are foreigners but they are registered to vote here in Nigeria, they do come during elections to cast ballot. He also said many citizens are fleeing the northern state to other parts of the country because of the shameful security situation of the land. I will also categorize the underage voters as a part of the foreigners because they are not supposed to be part of the election but they vote to jack up the numbers.

The English politician Charles James Fox said ‘all political power is a trust”, and we often say ‘national leaders reflect national character, in other words, we have been electing the kind of leaders who are our direct reflection, or better still we have been electing the kind of leaders that we deserve! But do we really deserve this misrule? Are we that bad? I for one will not agree. We are like a prisoner under gag. 2023 is another opportunity to speak loud and clear; I pray we get it right this time.

Ola Olusola writes from Igede Ekiti.

Ok