Like gun-wielding terrorists, the political class in Nigeria has consistently exploited the widespread poverty in the country to perpetuate themselves in power, while the masses, who truly have the electoral power, have been made to groan under heavy suppression and oppression, IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI reports.
IN the build-up to the June 12, 1993 presidential election in the country, the late Nigerian businessman and politician, Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola christened his presidential campaign manifesto, ‘Farewell to Poverty’ perhaps because he was convinced that there is nothing divine about poverty.
The late MKO must have strongly believed that poverty is man-made and can be eliminated with thought-out social and economic policies. But while the Hope ‘93 manifesto rightly fetched him sufficient votes to win the presidential poll, he never lived to achieve his poverty eradication agenda for the teeming Nigerian voters whose hopes for complete freedom from the heavy stronghold of criminal dictatorship were cruelly dashed.
The military government dramatically annulled the election. This sparked violent protests nationwide, culminating in the imprisonment and eventual death of the acclaimed June 12 election winner.
It is over 33 years now that Chief Abiola, whose campaign inspired much hope, died, but the mission to free Nigerians from the claws of rampaging rulers has remained a mirage, while the country has continued to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of poverty.
Between 1993 and now, the country has painfully emaciated like a child battling Kwashiorkor, as the so-called democrats who came after Abiola, instead of reducing the rising poverty, have consistently weaponised it to perpetuate themselves in power. The people, who should hold the democratic power, wallow in the murky pool of poverty. Consequently, instead of brimming with abundance, the country, over the years, has notoriously become the poverty capital of the world.
Today, the Nigeria Poverty Map (NPM) says 133 million people which is about 63 per cent of the country’s population are multidimensionally poor. Out of this, about 86.1 million of them representing 65 percent are said to be in the North, while nearly 47 million others representing 35 percent are said to be in the South.
“Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing,” the National Bureau of Statistics said.
The multidimensional poverty, according to the NBS, is higher in rural areas, where 72 percent of people are poor, compared to 42 percent of people in urban areas.
As famous civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, once said that poverty is a weapon of mass destruction, institutionalised poverty has over the years become the greatest tool and asset of an average politician in the country.
Like gun-wielding terrorists, the entire political class in Nigeria has consistently exploited the widespread poverty to win elections. Nigerian politicians wield the poverty instrument to fight their enemies, and suppress dissenting voices. Their pro-poverty strategies, observers say, have manifested in the various incidents of vote-buying and monetary inducements that have plagued successive elections in the country in the last 23 years.
Trading on election fields
Last Saturday, Nigerians went to the polls for rerun and bye-elections in 26 states of the Federation. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which conducted the poll, had promised to make the election, not just credible, but also free and fair.
However, as usual, politicians unleashed their weapons again. They threw hot packs of naira notes to the voting fields across the states and the hungry electorate couldn’t help but to grab them.
According to reports, different incidents of vote-buying and other irregularities were recorded across the locations where elections were held.
“I was offered a sum of N20,000 by one party agent, while another person promised me N10,000 before I voted and to receive an additional N20,000 after voting to make the sum of N30,000. I am still taking my time to know who to vote for depending on how much they can offer me,” said a voter identified as Abubakar Ibrahim during the rerun election held in Yabo Local Government Area of Sokoto State last Saturday.
But some politicians have even curried political favour with lesser amount of money and very embarrassing foodstuffs in the previous elections. Yiaga Africa, a civil society organisation, said during the 2023 general election, politicians and their unscrupulous party agents wooed and ridiculously patronised many Nigerians, who it said, bowed to the treachery and sold their votes for an amount as low as N1000 with a wrapper and a pack of spaghetti each.
A governorship candidate in Enugu State, Chief Frank Nweke Jr., has also described the exploitation of the people’s endemic poverty by politicians in a manner that suggested that it had become a deliberate political strategy aftermath of 2023 general election thus: “The most vulnerable and impoverished became prey to vote buying by some political parties with as little as N500 or packets of noodles in some places. At Udenu, parties competed for the votes of our people with N2,000, a plate of jollof rice, Okpa, and a bottle of soda.”
Chatham House verdict
According to Dr Leena Koni Hoffmann, an Associate Fellow of the Chatham House Africa Programme, “Vote-trading has become a widespread practice in Nigeria, where democracy has struggled to be fully consolidated due to the country’s complex political landscape and its entrenched corrupt political class.”
She said, “Where acute socio-economic hardship persists, vote-selling traps citizens in self-sabotaging, clientelist relationships with political leaders.”
According to her, while most Nigerians think it is unacceptable for a citizen to exchange his vote for money or a gift as revealed in the second household survey by the Chatham House Africa Programme’s Social Norms and Accountable Governance (SNAG) project conducted in 2018, vote-trading, across the country, has been “primarily driven by material context and immediate circumstances such as economic hardship or a fear of intimidation or violence.”
Old Roman empire dictator example
Meanwhile, the old Russian empire dictator, Joseph Stalin, had one time offered what could be seen as a vivid description of how the Nigerian ruling class weaponise widespread poverty to consolidate political advantages.
The Russian dictator had painted the picture when he gathered his closest advisors one time ago to show them how easy it was to control a person who had already been conquered. He began the storyline by bringing in a live chicken, which he then proceeded to pluck until it was naked and bleeding.
“Now, watch where the chicken goes,” Stalin said as he put it on the ground. And finally freed from its torturer’s grasp, the chicken wasted no time getting away. However, when it failed to find an exit, it readily returned to Stalin and attempted to warm itself between the dictator’s legs. Stalin then took out some grain from his pocket, which he fed to the chicken.
The chicken ate the grain despite the pain. When Stalin started to walk around the room, the chicken timidly followed him, leaving a small trail of blood wherever it went. “So, you see,” Stalin said to his advisors, smiling. “People are like chickens. You pluck them, and then let them go. Then you can control them,” he added.
When compared to the Nigerian situation, the chicken can be seen as an average hunger- stricken Nigerian, with the Russian dictator being a typical Nigerian politician, while the grains depict the lump sum of money the political gladiators often throw to the people to cow them into submission during the election period.
Ezekwesili on growing mass
impoverishment
Former Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, while speaking at an event in Ikeja, Lagos last year during the commemoration of the June 12 Democracy Day in honour of late Chief MKO Abiola, had spoken extensively on the growing impoverishment of the vast Nigerian majority.
“What was the rate of poverty when Chief MKO Abiola enunciated a manifesto that talked about farewell to poverty?” she asked. “What you can see clearly from the indicators is that poverty has increased.
“If you have 133 million people living in poverty, then it means that you must focus the government on them. But what has happened is that the political class has monopolised the political and governance space and taken absolute control, excluding the citizens for whom the democracy should be. The political class has weaponised poverty as an instrument of perpetual control.
“Unfortunately, some of the 133 million people don’t vote and when they have the power to vote; they don’t know how to exercise that vote in their interest. What do you then do when the excluded have a way of conspiring with a system that has excluded them to entrench the exclusion?”
“I have seen that when countries are governed by people who get it, what they need are sound policies, strong institutions, and effective and efficient investment in public goods and services; when citizens have them, they attain a height of productivity and lift themselves out of poverty,” she added.
According to her, the citizens occupy the highest office, and what will guarantee progress in perpetuity is the office of the citizens. As a crunch rescue move, the activist said, “We must all commit to activate our office as citizens; that we are tired of being docile citizens of Nigeria and thinking of ourselves as powerless. You are powerful beyond what you think. Stop swallowing your voice. Stop being distracted by daily bread issues. We need a coalition of forces of citizens to say, ‘we can reclaim our land.’
“This is not about tribe; it is about the massive exclusion of the majority of the citizens of the land from what governance should be all about. When you see concepts like adherence to the rule of law, participation, responsiveness, transparency, accountability, equity and equality, then you know there is good governance. But when you don’t see these, then you know there is no good governance,” she added.
The socio-psychological effects
Offering the socio-psychological effects of the anomaly, a columnist with the West African Pilot, Dr Okey (Oduma) Chidolue, said: “Weaponised poverty turns many people into brutes, makes them make poor rational choices and remoulds them into willing tools in the hands of desperate politicians, with devastating effects on the society”.
He said: “In Kenya, their elite provide employment opportunities to their youth and adult population alike. But in Nigeria, the elites provide poverty and unemployment to unsuspecting youths and adults. That way, they cannot think right or think at all. And, this is the kind of toxic environment that enables so-called elites to hold onto power.”
According to him, “Elite weaponization of poverty and elite rascality are bad. But judicial rascality is deadly. It is the beginning of the end for any democracy because no democratic government can survive judicial rascality and indiscretion, particularly in this day and age of social media.”
While calling for sustained information campaigns, community action and locally enforceable public commitments to collectively shun vote-buying strategies and other clandestine tendencies of the Nigerian political class, Hoffmann said: “Political actors who buy votes should be made to face stringent consequences. Political financing reform, and ensuring election security and ballot secrecy, will be equally vital in addressing the malady.”
In his article entitled ‘Political Corruption and Poverty in Nigeria’ published in the African Journal for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, a lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Studies, Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, OO Faloore, said to reduce poverty, immunities of politicians should be scrapped, while law courts should be strengthened to adjudicate without fear and favour and public annual declaration of assets of political office holders should be made compulsory.
As the country aches at all fronts, other observers have said the only way out is for the oppressed masses to keep speaking the truth to those at the corridor of power, just as they call on the government to take the people out of the current boiling point by cutting the cost of governance for the betterment of the hungry and angry Nigerians, saying if the government blocks all leakages and channelled public funds into meaningful development; the country would be better. But will this admonition be taken seriously by the present administration, going forward, only time can tell.