And where the bars of what qualifies as success are very low, or as has been the case since 2015, have been completely removed, our would-be trapeze artists need not fear much. The high-wire act that governance next year is advertised to be might be no more than another circus trick – this time, nothing but a skilled conjurer’s illusion.
There must be reason why the run-up to the general elections next year feels like a raree-show. Take the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)’s decision to charge would-be contestants for the office of president under its aegis N100 million for the nomination and expression of interest forms. You could read this, according to the party, as a hurdle that helps winnow serious candidates for the office of president from dilettantes. Given the sense that the country is in a slow-motion slide towards a ravine, our political processes can do no worse than place a huge premium on committed persons seeking to be president next year. We needed serious-minded persons to stanch the social, economic, and political slide.
Read against the process of a gradual, then sudden impoverishment of the mass of the people that has been afoot over the last seven-plus years, the requirement that candidates for office of the president first obtain a N100 million suit of forms could also feel like the party blowing a raspberry at the different arguments that have been canvassed in the search for solutions to the country’s existential problems. The more immediate sense in which this requirement contemns the whole idea of a Nigeria that works is included in the question: “How in a country where income per capita is about US$2,3000.00 would anyone find US$240,000.00 to buy these forms?”
Industrialists? We do not have many of them any longer. A statist administration having choked most of them to death through policies like the border closure and an exchange rate arrangement that requires a marabout to navigate. Fintech entrepreneurs and their “unicorns”? Most of these cohort are not old enough to be president as it were. As if any of these matters. The vast number of APC members who have expressed interest to be president (including ministers of the Federal Republic on monthly salaries of US$1,900.00) have spent their adult years in politics.
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The implications of the ongoing skylarking go way beyond this, though. Conscious of the tension between the cost of the forms, their declared incomes, and the impecunious state of the electorate to which they would eventually appeal for votes, not a few of the would-be candidates for president have resorted to the expedient of claiming that these forms were obtained for them by parties with interests vested in their persons and with pockets just as deep. How best do you get round questions of unexplained wealth?
The questions associated with the entire process are legion. However, in part much of what begins to look like a charade as we giddy-up for the electioneering proper are the contortions required by our politicians to square their lifestyles with the need to address the incidence of corruption as a major let to the country’s development.
These (interests who go about collecting forms for their principals), of course, even when they are undeclared bankrupt farmers, have to be party members. Or is it the case that the APC nomination and declaration of interest forms for the post of the party’s presidential candidate for the general elections next year may be purchased by a posse of interests linked with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?
The questions associated with the entire process are legion. However, in part much of what begins to look like a charade as we giddy-up for the electioneering proper are the contortions required by our politicians to square their lifestyles with the need to address the incidence of corruption as a major let to the country’s development. If the financial hurdles in the part of potential candidates require Harry Houdini to square the moral circle, the follow-up question is why there are so many escapologists in our political space?
One likely answer is that the task of running the country next year will look very much like a high-wire trapeze act (miserly output growth, rising domestic prices, high unemployment rates, worsening insecurity) without a safety net (low earnings from crude oil exports and difficult debts falling due). You would be forgiven for believing that in these circumstances only the foolhardy will essay the attempt. Except, though, that there’s a relationship between how one intends to strive and the standards against which he or she expects to be measured.
And where the bars of what qualifies as success are very low, or as has been the case since 2015, have been completely removed, our would-be trapeze artists need not fear much. The high-wire act that governance next year is advertised to be might be no more than another circus trick – this time, nothing but a skilled conjurer’s illusion. In fact, the high-wire might be much closer to the circus floor than the braying crowd is aware of.
