PROPHECY! 2015 doomsday for Nigeria?

In an atmosphere of rage and controversy
Kunle Fagbemi
Sometime around 2003, the United States National
Intelligence Committee and a think tank, Fund for
Peace, projected that Nigeria could unravel before or by 2015,
citing social (ethnic and religious), economic and political crises
as predisposing factors. On the basis of the projection that
Nigeria was ranked as number 15 in the failed states index,
where Somalia is number one, the US military began simulated
war games to prepare for a war in Nigeria by 2013, but not later
than 2015. Predictably, the Nigerian government, and
particularly the National Assembly, poured scorn on the
projections and declared that in spite of the problems Nigeria
was encountering, the chances of failure were as remote as we
can wish. Since the projections were made, a few of the
countries listed in the research publication as likely to fail have
begun to unravel, many of them listed as even healthier than
Nigeria.
Whether Nigeria’s ruling elite wish it away or not, the
inexorable processes leading to state failure have continued
their relentless march since the Fund for Peace reminded
everyone two or three years ago of the apocalyptic projections.
If the elite are not too preoccupied with their own ambition for
power, the turbulent 2011 polls should serve as a poignant
reminder of the precariousness of the Fourth Republic and the
delicateness of the foundations of the country as a whole. But
whether these reminders will serve any purpose remains to be
seen, as the last of the scheduled polls for the 2011 general
elections are about to be held. Much more than the two
previous polls of the National Assembly (April 9) and
presidential (April 16), the governorship and Houses of
Assembly polls scheduled for tomorrow are projected to be the
most tempestuous. If the recently concluded presidential poll
could lead to the unimaginable conflagration of the past one
week, it is feared that the more local and intensively
competitive polls to fill Government Houses and states
legislature could unleash a fiery storm of indescribable scale.
Two main factors predispose Tuesday’s polls to this apocalyptic
prediction. One is the fact that going by the results of the
National Assembly election, the main underachiever, the
Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), stands little chance of
winning many states as its ambition demands. It lost heavily
because, in assessing the CPC and PDP and indeed other parties,
the voters did not have a sharp sense of the political and ethnic
dichotomies that have bifurcated national elections for decades.
The candidates were local people all voters could relate with,
especially in states that had long been in the Peoples
Democratic Party fold. If the voters needed to send
representatives to the national legislature, it didn’t matter so
much which parties they belonged. What mattered the most to
voters was their perception of the representatives’ competence
and suitability for the post. In turn, this perception was
predicated on the relationship that had existed between the
representative seeking votes and the voter. This relationship
was not circumscribed by the CPC, a party that, until the
presidential poll, did not loom very large in the consciousness
of the northern voter.
A second factor is the militarisation of the polity after the CPC
presidential candidate, Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd), suffered
a crushing defeat in the hands of the PDP candidate, Dr Goodluck
Jonathan. Voters in the North are now likely to be torn between
the relationship they have nurtured with their local
representatives over the years and past elections and the fact
that CPC candidates may now be pushing the agenda of
equating a vote for CPC as a loyal vote for the North, and that to
do otherwise is to betray the North and its dominant ethos. An
atmosphere of intolerance and violence may have thus been
smuggled viciously into Tuesday’s contest. Naturally, the other
candidates will not give up, and a wounded CPC will latch on to
every imaginable tactics to secure as many State Houses as
possible to underscore its conclusion that it was cheated in the
April 16 poll.
The polls have been deferred in Bauchi and Kaduna States in
deep apprehension of uncontrollable violence accompanying
the April 26 elections. Though these two states seem poised to
explode into violence, needfully or needlessly, it is uncertain
what magical balm the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) hoped to apply if the other states that
exploded after the April 16 poll again go up in flames. Some ad
hoc and youth corps members serving as electoral officers have
fled their stations, and those who will remain will certainly be
disinclined to stand up to party agents mobilised for violence
and mayhem. Yet to cancel the poll in more states than has
been done already is to endanger the entire polls and render
them inconclusive. Tomorrow will determine how this impasse
would be broken.
What is clearly obvious is that the atmosphere is so heavily
polluted that it is difficult to see how the polls will be
accomplished with anything near free or fair, let alone credible,
as the country had managed to achieve so far. Considering the
rather ham-fisted response to poll violence throughout this
polling season, and the reactive rather than proactive approach
adopted by the security agencies, more states may explode in
violence thereby severely stretching poorly equipped and
outnumbered law enforcement agencies. We may not have the
sharp divisions of the April 16 poll, and the sexed-up votes of
the South-South and the underage voters of the North may
counterbalance each other, yet, it is more likely that Tuesday’s
polls will probably be even less credible than the previous two
polls, and probably more controversial.
It is in this atmosphere of rancorous balloting and collation that
some 24 states will be going to the polls to elect their chief
executives and legislators. Among them, the Southwest will be
attempting to steer the region completely into progressivism,
the Southeast will be preparing grounds for a future attempt at
the presidency, and the various zones of the North will see
whether they can arrest the drift to anomy represented by poor
and dispossessed youths called almajirai, to whom it now
seems the North’s political, traditional and even religious elites
have become hostage. If we successfully navigate the
treacherous waters of the April 26 polls, we will still come smack
intothe middle of the seething disputation over whether the
current structure of the country, with its leprous and inchoate
federalism, can sustain the country beyond the projected
doomsday of 2015.