The Labour Party has called for the cancelation of the yet-to-be-concluded Presidential election. A Party on-course to win an election does not call for its cancelation. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume Labour knows it has lost the election. The claim of violence, disenfranchisement and manipulation are normal, face-saving excuses, and by no means surprising, particularly from a Party that had no structure across the country or a critical mass of elected officials, with a candidate who is merely recognizable to the rest of the population.
Labour, its candidate and his supporters built their campaign on the assumption that they have already won the election. They relied heavily on the social media, driven by the relatively small but noisy EndSARS movement and the Nigerian diaspora, to deliver their message and win them the Presidency. They ignored the facts on the ground, such as the diversity of the nation, the sophistication of the electorate and the general population, reach and spread of the ruling and main opposition party, etc and failed to build bridges across the length and breadth of the nation. Instead, their incidiary and divisive language, alienanted them from most of the voting population.
Worse, the Labour candidate presented himself as a sectional and sectarian candidate to a nation that is so diverse in its ethnic and religious composition. His agents across the nation are generally identifiable by their ethnicity and religion. He did not hide his contempt for others who do not share in his vision of a sectional and sectarian future for Nigeria. For example, he visited parts of Kaduna State for electioneering campaign and ignored its majority Muslim population. To prove it was a deliberate choice and not a mistake, he did the same in Kano. He created the impression that he is only interested in the Nigerian Christian vote, particularly its Igbo compenent, believing these alone will deliver him the votes he needed to clinch the Presidency.
Unfortunately, this divisive strategy got uncritical and wholesale support from Christian churches across the nation, with few, insignificant exceptions. Christian clerics were lining up and falling over themselves to endorse his candidature while instructing their parishioners to “vote only for the candidate of the Church” and “in the interest of the Church” according one prominent cleric. All this was taking place in the public domain, in the full glare of the nation and to the dismay and bewilderment of its non-Christian population.
Obviously, the Labour candidate, after taking the decision to run for election to Nigeria’s highest political office, did not bother to study or learnt any lesson from the 2015 experience of former President Goodluck Jonathan who, as incumbent Present, lost his re-election in spite of the wholesale and universal support of Nigerian churches. While it is easy to conflate form with substance or noise with impact, anyone worthy for the highest political office in the land should have been able to make the distinction.
Democratic elections are designed to give voters a choice on the basis of a one-person-one-vote principle. No amount of sentiment or noisemaking will trump this principle. Now that Labour, it’s candidate, his supporters and their sectarian allies and enablers appear to have lost the election, it is hoped Nigeria will now bury this hubris once for all and accept that Nigeria is not the domain of a particular ethnicity of religion…
~ GOV. NASIR EL-RUFAI
(KADUNA STATE GOVERNOR)
