What will you vote for?

At the end of the parties’ primary election season last month, we have an estimated sixteen candidates lined up to contest next January’s presidential election. I said “estimated” because as at now, nobody can say with certainty what the final number will be. One because, some parties are fielding more than one candidate and there is no knowing at this stage which one of them, if any, will be on the ballot; some registered parties are waiting for the courts to annul INEC’s election timetable and give them more time to nominate their candidates; at least one party, Accord, has disowned the man announced as its presidential candidate; at least one party, APGA, has adopted the candidate of another party, APC, as its own; and some of the presidential candidates, of one PDP faction and of one ADC faction, are suspected to be clones who will later step down for another party’s candidate.

Just like the multiplicity of candidates has caused confusion on the political scene, among party “supporters” running helter skelter to identify the winning side, in the courts, on INEC’s website, in the social media and in the pockets of big businessmen who must make donations in anticipation of later patronage, there is also confusion in the mind of the ordinary voter as to who to vote for, and why. The why comes before the who; a voter must first work out his main motivation for casting a vote, and then determine which, if any, of the available candidates fits the bill. “Available candidates” is very important becomes in this liberal “democratic” arrangement, a voter might know the ideal person that he wants to see running the country, but if that person is not on the ballot as sponsored by a registered political party [and, for that matter, a party faction authorized by the courts and INEC], then you cannot possibly vote for him.

What are the available criteria by which a Nigerian voter can make his 2027 decision? First of all, you must decide for yourself if the people currently in power satisfy your wishes, whether you want to retain them in power for another term or whether you want to throw them out and look for a substitute. In other words, in Nigerian parlance, whether you want continuity or change.

A voter who opts for continuity must be satisfied with the current security situation or at least, with the effort being made to combat insecurity, insurgency, kidnapping, banditry and terrorism; he or she must evaluate the state of the economy and cost of living or at least with the effort being made to address them; and must be reasonably satisfied with the political optics in terms of messaging, empathy, quality of appointments, balancing and fight against corruption.

A voter who decides to go for the opposition in next year’s election still has a problem because as at now, there are at least a dozen opposition candidates. In every African election where the incumbent government was defeated, an irreducible minimum condition is the unity of the opposition. In Nigeria we had the perfect example in 2015, when four main opposition parties united. Two months ago at a meeting in Ibadan, opposition leaders pledged to unite behind a single candidate. They have not yet done so, but it is possible they may do so later this year.

A voter may decide to cast his vote based on fidelity to a certain political party. Old and well established political parties have certain advantages over new ones. Some voters in Nigeria have loyally voted for certain political parties as a family tradition, or because it is the fashionable thing to do, or due to peer pressure, due to personal benefit, or due to compelling social reasons. During the Open Ballot voting of the Babangida era, a man arrived at a polling station with a large number of supporters to queue up for SDP, only to see that NRC chieftains brought his sick and elderly father-in-law to stand at the head of their queue. He quickly ducked out but pleaded with his supporters to go ahead and join the SDP queue, which they refused, saying if he as the leader will not join the queue, they too will not.

For many a Nigerian voter, given the ideology-bereft, program-free, open entry and open exit, amalgam of strange bed fellows nature of our political parties, other criteria come into sharp focus, such a region and religion. Much reference is made in the media about “North-South rotation principle” of the Nigerian presidency, but no one can produce a paper where it is written, so it is not really etched in many voters’ minds. Probably because of this belief however, one newspaper calculated that 13 current presidential candidates are from the South while two are from the North. That is even because one, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, was disowned by his Accord Party after he reportedly “won” the primaries.

Trouble is, some Nigerian voters are not satisfied to vote on the basis of a very large area such as South or North. Some Northern voters still want to know if the candidate is a Far Northerner or a Middle Belter, while many a Southern voter wants to know if the candidate is Yoruba, Igbo or a Niger Deltan. Even within some smaller areas, many a voter will still go further down to a specific tribe, state, or clan.

Gender could be the determining factor for some voters. As it is, only one political party, Young Progressive Party, has fielded a female candidate, Anita Zugwai-Chukwu. Women make up roughly half of our 93 million voters. If only all of them will vote for a female candidate while the 14 men in the race split their votes, State House will be brimming with fashionable head ties, designer handbags, colourful make ups and high-heeled shoes by May next year.

There are Nigerian voters who hate to be on the losing side and will decide who to vote for based on the number of votes the candidate garnered in a previous election. Since Bola Ahmed Tinubu got 8.7 million votes in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar got 6.9 million and Peter Obi got 6.1 million votes, many a voter will hedge his bets by voting for one of them [or all three of them], never mind that each election has a different set of circumstances.

For some voters, a candidate’s running mate is a very important factor. NDC party’s candidate Peter Obi, for one, is clearly hoping to reap from the cult-like, though geographically narrow following of his running mate Rabi’u Kwankwaso, who got 1.4 million votes in the 2023 election. For another candidate, the incumbent who is foot-dragging on announcing the choice of his running mate, any miscalculation could drive the entire North East, or even the whole Far North, into the waiting hands of the ADC candidate.

I suspect there are some voters in Nigeria, old women especially, who will want to vote for a candidate because he has contested many times. One person on the 2027 ballot has been trying for 33 years to become president. It reminds me of an elderly prince in Zamfara who had been praying for 40 years to become the village head of his home village. He finally said, “Oh Allah, I have been praying to you for 40 years to make me the village head. Please give it to me so that You will rest and I will rest.”

At least some [sophisticated] Nigerian voters will say they are waiting for candidates’ policies and programs before they make their choice. They will be waiting for Godot. In 2015, an APC team of intellectuals rolled out a mouth-watering program to be accomplished within three months, only for the party to disown it once it was ensconced in power. One candidate’s most famous inauguration day decision to abolish fuel subsidy was not found in his election program. The most solemn promise, to provide stable power supply, is still a work in progress.

Where candidates in Nigeria do not have clear programs, they resort to banalities, such as good looks, flamboyant dress and beauty of wives. In 1983, Mohammed Abubakar Rimi climbed the podium and said all Nigerian women will vote for NPP because of the handsome looks of Jim Nwobodo and himself. Many Nigerian voters like dazzle; standing on an Awka street one day in 1983, in broad daylight, I was nearly blinded by the shine of Nwobodo’s ring as he waived from inside his car. All the people standing there with me were happy; “It is Jim’s diamond ring!”

And then, many voters are captivated by dazzling oratory. In this election cycle however, there are no dazzling orators. No man of timber and caliber K.O. Mbadiwe; no philosopher king such as Bola Ige; no fiery speaker like Aliyu Sabo Bakin Zuwo; no master of Greek and Latin like Abdulkadir Young-Sidi, and no Yusuf Maitama Sule, who can say the same thing in twenty different ways.

The final and, for many voters, the most decisive criterion for choice of candidate to vote for, is Stomach Infrastructure, the Indomie, rice, salt and sugar distributed by campaign workers from house to house the night before the election.