Those who have started imagining that the seamlessness that characterized the United States’ presidential election of last week should give Nigeria cause for reflection do not yet understand the character and characteristic of Nigeria and the entities that make it up. Nigeria is like no other country. It is peopled by strange elements to whom shock is a concomitant bedfellow. The typical Nigerian is thick-skinned. He is hardly perturbed by the unusual.
If the typical Nigerian were made of a normal stuff, he would have been aroused into deep reflection by the fact that the result of the American election, as we all can bear witness, was made public within 24 hours. The losing candidate, Kamala Harris, accepted the result without a whimper. She did not contest anything. Instead, she radiated warmth and gracefulness. A few hours after the results were known to one and all, she stepped out with gait to deliver a moving speech. If you thought she would betray the emotions of a wounded heart, you got it all wrong. She was full of vitality and vibrancy.
But she hit the bull’s eye when she told her countrymen that she was “so proud of the race we ran”. Rather than look or sound despondent, she told her supporters to “fill the sky with the light of optimism”. They must not give up for the simple fact that people are reluctant to embrace what has never been done before. The fact that it has never been done before, she counseled, does not mean that it can never be done. She was simply in her elements. No stalking. No floundering.
Harris, in all seriousness , did not disappoint. She remained that candidate who, even though she was introduced midway into the race, hit the ground running instantly. Her boss, President Joe Biden, had so much confidence in her that he nominated her to replace him when it became evident that he would no longer be physically and mentally strong enough to continue functioning as president after his current term. In her loss, Harris did not lose her gracefulness. She remained convivial. Her electrifying smiles remained intact . She remained the captivating personality that she is known to be.
Then enter Biden, the sitting president who ceded the ticket to Harris.
He addressed Americans, full of smiles. He had no problem with the outcome of the election. Americans had made their choice. For president Biden, that choice must be respected because, as he said, “you cannot love your country only when you win. You cannot love your neighbour only when you agree”. Rather than bicker over the outcome of the election, he wants Americans to bring down the temperature. Like Harris who had the large heart to call Donald Trump to congratulate him, Biden extended his hands of fellowship to the president-elect by inviting him to the White House to discuss issues bordering on transition of power. That is democracy in action. There was no attempt to abuse the power of incumbency. The White House did not manipulate any state institution to suit its purpose. The electoral commission remained the people’s institution, not the property of the party in power. In the United States, institutions work. They do not play the manipulative game. They do not exist at the pleasure of the authorities.
I am almost tempted at this point to compare America’s election with that of Nigeria. But I will not. The basis for such comparison does not exist. What we can say instead is that the two countries and their systems are poles apart. While the United States can comfortably lay claim to democracy, Nigeria cannot. That is where the problem is. Nigeria also claims to be a democracy. This claim, whatever it is worth, has always made it a laughing stock in the eyes of the civilized world. If there is any point of convergence between America and Nigeria, it is the fact that, like Americans, Nigerians go for elections. But unlike Americans, Nigerians do not go to the polls to elect leaders. Rather, election in Nigeria is just a convenient platform for selection. And as in Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection, only the fittest survive. Nigerians do not go to elections to win or lose.
Election is just an avenue to demonstrate how tough or weak the contestants can be.
If there is anything that has dragged us out to engage in this issue, it is the fact that most Nigerians, having seen the way Americans elected their president through a seamless exercise, are hoping, and even believing, that Nigeria will, someday, begin to get their elections right just like Americans. But I dare say that this will hardly come to be. The hope is anchored on nothing. Nigeria cannot begin to function well just because some people wish it to be so. Hope for a better tomorrow has to have a basis. There is none in the horizon. In Nigeria, everything is heading in the opposite direction because Nigerians themselves want it so. Nigeria, as a matter of fact, represents oppositeness.
Going by the way things have been going in this country for decades and the complete absence of a silver lining at the end of the long, dark tunnel, it will not be out of place to say that Nigeria is wired or programmed to be the way it is. In other words, the country is destined to fail. If it were not so, the people will not be complacent in the face of wrongdoing. Nigerians appear to be accustomed to wrongs so much so that they shrug it off whenever it rears its ugly head. A people who do not want to be governed in a wrong way will naturally rise up against bad governance. But Nigerians do not . They look at bad governance and rationalize, and even internalize it. Then, it becomes a part of them, indeed, a way of life.
In Nigeria, manipulation of the electoral process is the normal way of doing things. In fact, Nigeria will not be Nigeria unless election results are falsified. That has become the standard practice. We saw all of this in the February 25, 2023 presidential election. It was the election in which the electoral commission that invested billions of Naira in technology came out to claim that a glitch took place on Election Day, a development it said, made it impossible for it to upload the results of the elections on its portal. It was only able to do so when it was through with the manipulations. Nigerians saw it all but were unable to respond to the perfidy.
No matter what we say or do not say, the United States’ election holds no lesson for Nigeria. We can only romanticize it in our private corners. But we will learn nothing or forget nothing. The Nigerian mind is so overtly corrupt that good examples cannot thrive in it. It is therefore most ridiculous to put Nigeria on the weighing scale with America. Both cannot be viewed with the same lenses. To try to do so is to make Nigeria look more grotesque.
QUOTE:
“No matter what we say or do not say, the United States’ election holds no lesson for Nigeria. The Nigerian mind is so overtly corrupt that good examples cannot thrive in it. It is therefore most ridiculous to put Nigeria on the weighing scale with America”.
