Main PagePostponed Elections: Chimamanda Adichie Is Angry!
Democracy, Deferred: Postponed election, an
embarrassment of bad choices, by Chimamanda
Adichie.
Last week, Victor, a carpenter, came to my Lagos
home to fix a broken chair. I asked him whom he
preferred as Nigeria's next president: the
incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, or his challenger,
Muhammadu Buhari.
"I don't have a voter's card, but if I did, I would vote
for somebody I don't like," he said. "I don't like
Buhari. But Jonathan is not performing."
Victor sounded like many people I know: utterly
unenthusiastic about the two major candidates in
our upcoming election.
Were Nigerians to vote on likeability alone, Jonathan
would win. He is mild-mannered and genially
unsophisticated, with a conventional sense of
humor. Buhari has a severe, ascetic air about him, a
rigid uprightness; it is easy to imagine him in 1984,
leading a military government whose soldiers
routinely beat up civil servants. Neither candidate is
articulate. Jonathan is given to rambling; his
unscripted speeches leave listeners vaguely
confused. Buhari is thick-tongued, his words difficult
to decipher. In public appearances, he seems
uncomfortable not only with the melodrama of
campaigning but also with the very idea of it. To be a
democratic candidate is to implore and persuade,
and his demeanor suggests a man who is not at
ease with amiable consensus. Still, he is no stranger
to campaigns. This is his third run as a presidential
candidate; the last time, in 2011, he lost to Jonathan.
This time, Buhari's prospects are better. Jonathan is
widely perceived as ineffectual, and the clearest
example, which has eclipsed his entire presidency,
is his response to Boko Haram. Such a barbaric
Islamist insurgency would challenge any
government. But while Boko Haram bombed and
butchered, Jonathan seemed frozen in a confused,
tone-deaf inaction. Conflicting stories emerged of an
ill-equipped army, of a corrupt military leadership,
of northern elites sponsoring Boko Haram, and even
of the government itself sponsoring Boko Haram.
Jonathan floated to power, unprepared, on a
serendipitous cloud. He was a deputy governor of
Bayelsa state who became governor when his
corrupt boss was forced to quit. Chosen as vice
president because powerbrokers considered him
the most harmless option from southern Nigeria, he
became president when his northern boss died in
office. Nigerians gave him their goodwill—he
seemed refreshingly unassuming—but there were
powerful forces who wanted him out, largely
because he was a southerner, and it was supposed
to be the north's 'turn' to occupy the presidential
office.
And so the provincial outsider suddenly thrust onto
the throne, blinking in the chaotic glare of
competing interests, surrounded by a small band of
sycophants, startled by the hostility of his traducers,
became paranoid. He was slow to act, distrustful
and diffident. His mildness came across as
cluelessness. His response to criticism calcified to a
single theme: His enemies were out to get him.
When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, he and his
team seemed at first to believe that it was a fraud
organized by his enemies to embarrass him. His
politics of defensiveness made it difficult to sell his
genuine successes, such as his focus on the long-
neglected agricultural sector and infrastructure
projects. His spokespeople alleged endless
conspiracy theories, compared him to Jesus Christ,
and generally kept him entombed in his own sense
of victimhood.
The delusions of Buhari's spokespeople are better
packaged, and obviously free of incumbency's
crippling weight. They blame Jonathan for
everything that is wrong with Nigeria, even the most
multifarious, ancient knots. They dismiss references
to Buhari's past military leadership, and couch their
willful refusal in the language of 'change,' as though
Buhari, by representing change from Jonathan, has
also taken on an ahistorical saintliness.
I remember the Buhari years as a blur of bleakness.
I remember my mother bringing home sad rations
of tinned milk, otherwise known as "essential
commodities"—the consequences of Buhari's
economic policy. I remember air thick with fear, civil
servants made to do frog jumps for being late to
work, journalists imprisoned, Nigerians flogged for
not standing in line, a political vision that cast
citizens as recalcitrant beasts to be whipped into
shape.
Buhari's greatest source of appeal is that he is
widely perceived as non-corrupt. Nigerians have
been told how little money he has, how spare his
lifestyle is. But to sell the idea of an incorruptible
candidate who will fight corruption is to rely on the
disingenuous trope that Buhari is not his party. Like
Jonathan's People's Democratic Party, Buhari's All
Progressives Congress is stained with corruption,
and its patrons have a checkered history of
exploitative participation in governance. Buhari's
team is counting on the strength of his perceived
personal integrity: his image as a good guy forced
by realpolitik to hold hands with the bad guys, who
will be shaken off after his victory.
In my ancestral home state of Anambra, where
Jonathan is generally liked, the stronger force at
play is a distrust of Buhari, partly borne of
memories of his military rule, and partly borne of
his reputation, among some Christians, as a Muslim
fundamentalist. When I asked a relative whom she
would vote for, she said, "Jonathan of course. Am I
crazy to vote for Buhari so that Nigeria will become
a sharia country?"
Nigeria has predictable voting patterns, as all
democratic countries do. Buhari can expect support
from large swaths of the core north, and Jonathan
from southern states. Region and religion are potent
forces here. Vice presidents are carefully picked
with these factors in mind: Buhari's is a
southwestern Christian and Jonathan's is a northern
Muslim. But it is not so simple. There are non-
northerners who would ordinarily balk at voting for
a 'northerner' but who support Buhari because he
can presumably fight corruption. There are northern
supporters of Jonathan who are not part of the
region's Christian minorities.
Delaying the elections is a staggeringly self-serving
act of contempt for Nigerians.
Last week, I was indifferent about the elections, tired
of television commercials and contrived
controversies. There were rumors that the election,
which was scheduled for February 14, would be
postponed, but there always are; our political space
is a lair of conspiracies. I was uninterested in the
apocalyptic predictions. Nigeria was not imploding.
We had crossed this crossroads before, we were
merely electing a president in an election bereft of
inspiration. And the existence of a real opposition
party that might very well win was a sign of progress
in our young democracy
Then, on Saturday, the elections were delayed for
six weeks. Nigeria's security agencies, we were told,
would not be available to secure the elections
because they would be fighting Boko Haram and
needed at least another month and a half to do so.
(Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram for five
years, and military leaders recently claimed to be
ready for the elections.)
Even if the reason were not so absurd, Nigerians are
politically astute enough to know that the
postponement has nothing to do with security. It is a
flailing act of desperation from an incumbent
terrified of losing. There are fears of further
postponements, of ploys to illegally extend
Jonathan's term. In a country with the specter of a
military coup always hanging over it, the
consequences could be dangerous. My indifference
has turned to anger. What a staggeringly self-serving
act of contempt for Nigerians. It has cast, at least for
the next six weeks, the darkest possible shroud over
our democracy: uncertainty. Source: The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/
archive/2015/02/nigeria-election-democracy-
deferred/385341/#disqus_thread
(Quote) (Report) 3 Likes (Like) (Share)
embarrassment of bad choices, by Chimamanda
Adichie.
Last week, Victor, a carpenter, came to my Lagos
home to fix a broken chair. I asked him whom he
preferred as Nigeria's next president: the
incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, or his challenger,
Muhammadu Buhari.
"I don't have a voter's card, but if I did, I would vote
for somebody I don't like," he said. "I don't like
Buhari. But Jonathan is not performing."
Victor sounded like many people I know: utterly
unenthusiastic about the two major candidates in
our upcoming election.
Were Nigerians to vote on likeability alone, Jonathan
would win. He is mild-mannered and genially
unsophisticated, with a conventional sense of
humor. Buhari has a severe, ascetic air about him, a
rigid uprightness; it is easy to imagine him in 1984,
leading a military government whose soldiers
routinely beat up civil servants. Neither candidate is
articulate. Jonathan is given to rambling; his
unscripted speeches leave listeners vaguely
confused. Buhari is thick-tongued, his words difficult
to decipher. In public appearances, he seems
uncomfortable not only with the melodrama of
campaigning but also with the very idea of it. To be a
democratic candidate is to implore and persuade,
and his demeanor suggests a man who is not at
ease with amiable consensus. Still, he is no stranger
to campaigns. This is his third run as a presidential
candidate; the last time, in 2011, he lost to Jonathan.
This time, Buhari's prospects are better. Jonathan is
widely perceived as ineffectual, and the clearest
example, which has eclipsed his entire presidency,
is his response to Boko Haram. Such a barbaric
Islamist insurgency would challenge any
government. But while Boko Haram bombed and
butchered, Jonathan seemed frozen in a confused,
tone-deaf inaction. Conflicting stories emerged of an
ill-equipped army, of a corrupt military leadership,
of northern elites sponsoring Boko Haram, and even
of the government itself sponsoring Boko Haram.
Jonathan floated to power, unprepared, on a
serendipitous cloud. He was a deputy governor of
Bayelsa state who became governor when his
corrupt boss was forced to quit. Chosen as vice
president because powerbrokers considered him
the most harmless option from southern Nigeria, he
became president when his northern boss died in
office. Nigerians gave him their goodwill—he
seemed refreshingly unassuming—but there were
powerful forces who wanted him out, largely
because he was a southerner, and it was supposed
to be the north's 'turn' to occupy the presidential
office.
And so the provincial outsider suddenly thrust onto
the throne, blinking in the chaotic glare of
competing interests, surrounded by a small band of
sycophants, startled by the hostility of his traducers,
became paranoid. He was slow to act, distrustful
and diffident. His mildness came across as
cluelessness. His response to criticism calcified to a
single theme: His enemies were out to get him.
When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, he and his
team seemed at first to believe that it was a fraud
organized by his enemies to embarrass him. His
politics of defensiveness made it difficult to sell his
genuine successes, such as his focus on the long-
neglected agricultural sector and infrastructure
projects. His spokespeople alleged endless
conspiracy theories, compared him to Jesus Christ,
and generally kept him entombed in his own sense
of victimhood.
The delusions of Buhari's spokespeople are better
packaged, and obviously free of incumbency's
crippling weight. They blame Jonathan for
everything that is wrong with Nigeria, even the most
multifarious, ancient knots. They dismiss references
to Buhari's past military leadership, and couch their
willful refusal in the language of 'change,' as though
Buhari, by representing change from Jonathan, has
also taken on an ahistorical saintliness.
I remember the Buhari years as a blur of bleakness.
I remember my mother bringing home sad rations
of tinned milk, otherwise known as "essential
commodities"—the consequences of Buhari's
economic policy. I remember air thick with fear, civil
servants made to do frog jumps for being late to
work, journalists imprisoned, Nigerians flogged for
not standing in line, a political vision that cast
citizens as recalcitrant beasts to be whipped into
shape.
Buhari's greatest source of appeal is that he is
widely perceived as non-corrupt. Nigerians have
been told how little money he has, how spare his
lifestyle is. But to sell the idea of an incorruptible
candidate who will fight corruption is to rely on the
disingenuous trope that Buhari is not his party. Like
Jonathan's People's Democratic Party, Buhari's All
Progressives Congress is stained with corruption,
and its patrons have a checkered history of
exploitative participation in governance. Buhari's
team is counting on the strength of his perceived
personal integrity: his image as a good guy forced
by realpolitik to hold hands with the bad guys, who
will be shaken off after his victory.
In my ancestral home state of Anambra, where
Jonathan is generally liked, the stronger force at
play is a distrust of Buhari, partly borne of
memories of his military rule, and partly borne of
his reputation, among some Christians, as a Muslim
fundamentalist. When I asked a relative whom she
would vote for, she said, "Jonathan of course. Am I
crazy to vote for Buhari so that Nigeria will become
a sharia country?"
Nigeria has predictable voting patterns, as all
democratic countries do. Buhari can expect support
from large swaths of the core north, and Jonathan
from southern states. Region and religion are potent
forces here. Vice presidents are carefully picked
with these factors in mind: Buhari's is a
southwestern Christian and Jonathan's is a northern
Muslim. But it is not so simple. There are non-
northerners who would ordinarily balk at voting for
a 'northerner' but who support Buhari because he
can presumably fight corruption. There are northern
supporters of Jonathan who are not part of the
region's Christian minorities.
Delaying the elections is a staggeringly self-serving
act of contempt for Nigerians.
Last week, I was indifferent about the elections, tired
of television commercials and contrived
controversies. There were rumors that the election,
which was scheduled for February 14, would be
postponed, but there always are; our political space
is a lair of conspiracies. I was uninterested in the
apocalyptic predictions. Nigeria was not imploding.
We had crossed this crossroads before, we were
merely electing a president in an election bereft of
inspiration. And the existence of a real opposition
party that might very well win was a sign of progress
in our young democracy
Then, on Saturday, the elections were delayed for
six weeks. Nigeria's security agencies, we were told,
would not be available to secure the elections
because they would be fighting Boko Haram and
needed at least another month and a half to do so.
(Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram for five
years, and military leaders recently claimed to be
ready for the elections.)
Even if the reason were not so absurd, Nigerians are
politically astute enough to know that the
postponement has nothing to do with security. It is a
flailing act of desperation from an incumbent
terrified of losing. There are fears of further
postponements, of ploys to illegally extend
Jonathan's term. In a country with the specter of a
military coup always hanging over it, the
consequences could be dangerous. My indifference
has turned to anger. What a staggeringly self-serving
act of contempt for Nigerians. It has cast, at least for
the next six weeks, the darkest possible shroud over
our democracy: uncertainty. Source: The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/
archive/2015/02/nigeria-election-democracy-
deferred/385341/#disqus_thread
(Quote) (Report) 3 Likes (Like) (Share)
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