‘Tomorrow’s presidential elections therefore provides an opportunity for Nigerians to reposition the country for ultimate greatness. This is a make or mar elections season. Someone has mischievously said that if Nigerians do not get it right this time around we should approach the British to recolonise Nigeria again. As grotesque as this may sound, it reflects the frustration and desperation of the masses’
IT is ironic that about 24 hours to the Presidential elections most Nigerians are still economically and socially crippled. While the drama over the collection of new Naira notes from banks and ATM points is simmering, the tension at homes and on the streets have reached an all high.
Last week Friday, Samuel, a young man who hails from Plateau State travelled from Lagos to Abeokuta to be able to withdraw N5000 from his bank account. Since he noticed that all the branches of the bank where he maintains an account were practically under lock, the young man resorted to travelling outside his resident state to save himself from avoidable death through starvation. According to him, he had not eaten for three days because he could not have access to his money. As soon as someone gave him a gift of N1000 he had to engage his brain and legs for survival.
Worsening the nation’s economic situation is the near collapse of almost all the banking Apps used for online transactions. Some Nigerians have reported that they are only able to make transfers at past midnight.
The fuel queues may not be as long as they used to be. This is due to the fact that each filling station is now selling a litre of premium motor spirit (PMS) at a price solely determined by the manager. In Lagos State, the prices of PMS vary from N220 to N380 per litre depending on what part of the state you are buying from. Everyone is now a law unto himself or herself in Nigeria. Even governors like Umar Ganduje of Kano, Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna and Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State have been publicly challenging the authority of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as part of the new naira imbroglio.
As all these uncertainties continue things are falling apart with the speed of a tsunami. Business owners are already groaning. Sanusi Dantata’s case typifies the disillusionment of most business owners in Nigeria with the downturn in the economy. Sanusi, an entrepreneur, is the son of the late business mogul Abdulkadir Dantata, recently lamented on his twitter handle that patronage has been very poor. His poultry store that produces about 500 crates of eggs every day now has a stockpile of unsold eggs because customers are not buying like before. This is despite the tactics of his company in reducing prices by 20 percent and a policy of accepting online payments as well as old naira notes from customers. The silver spoon businessman agonised that, “We all are suffering for the sins of a few!” If a chip off the old block of wealth can publish his anguish it can only be left to conjecture that the less than average business owner whose voice is not heard is already on the throes of death.
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his famous Canterbury Tales, once quipped, “If gold rust, what shall iron do?” There is no sector of the economy that is not adversely affected by the hydra-headed crisis. The staff members of companies now go to work on alternate days. For manufacturing concerns, this is a major blow to productivity.
Tomorrow’s presidential elections therefore provides an opportunity for Nigerians to reposition the country for ultimate greatness. This is a make or mar elections season. Someone has mischievously said that if Nigerians do not get it right this time around we should approach the British to recolonise Nigeria again. As grotesque as this may sound, it reflects the frustration and desperation of the masses.
This is no doubt a weekend when “…the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood” in Nigeria’s politics to borrow from President Muhammadu Buhari’s proverb of May 2012. As the Presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Buhari was reported to have declared ‘kare jini, biri jini’ in BBC Hausa service. In the rebuttal of the English interpretation written by Umar Bello published on 18 May, 2012 by an online newspaper, he explained that this Hausa proverb “is mostly used where fierce competitions occur especially in sports and politics.”
It is certain that tomorrow’s three horse race elections will be a fierce contest. The nationwide opinion polls commissioned by Anap Foundation and conducted by NOI Polls Limited have shown that Nigerians in all the regions of Nigeria are equally passionate about tomorrow’s elections.
Whoever is declared the winner after tomorrow’s presidential elections may not immediately guarantee the kind of peace that we witnessed after the 2015 poll. While the results of the elections were still being counted former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan called then candidate Muhammadu Buhari to congratulate the latter as the President-elect.
The prospect of this repeating itself after tomorrow’s elections are very slim. Going by the tone of the most popular presidential candidates during the electioneering campaigns, it will be wishful thinking to expect any of the three frontliners to concede defeat without challenging the results that INEC will declare. It is also unlikely that the supporters of any of the trio of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar will eat the humble pie if their respective candidates are not declared as winners.
Barring any major last minute manoeuvres, the possibility of a landslide is very slim at the polls tomorrow. This means that election results may be contested up to the Supreme Court. With the apex court not wanting to be a scapegoat, the contest shall remain a fierce one.
General Buhari may have spoken too soon in 2012 about a fierce political contest. Now that he has been facing strident contentions from some governors who are members of his party, he should have a better understanding about how the dog and the baboon slug it out in the jungle. Shall we now ask, “Is President Muhammadu Buhari among the prophets?”
* Dr. Adeduro is a Productivity Consultant and a Public Affairs Analyst
