It Is As Much Whom You Vote For As What You Vote Against

Sonala Olumhense

Hello Nigerian!

Do you have a voter card? If so, you are truly precious as the 2023 elections approach. Precious because you can help determine whether Nigeria lives or dies, and what your children remember you to be.

It is a straightforward election for the soul masquerading as one for the stomach. If you buy the propaganda that it is for your stomach, you could sell your voter card or vote for those who are waving stacks of money at you.

The entire world saw this scenario play out only a few months ago in the party primaries as delegates were bought and sold, sometimes shamelessly in front of video cameras.

Similarly, you could take the money next February, having persuaded yourself that that money would feed you for life. This is the stomach argument, but deeper down than your stomach, you know that that money will not satisfy the burning in your soul, leaving you to hurt permanently in both your stomach and your heart.

So this is your first voter card? That mostly means you were born when the Fourth Republic began or soon after that. You are most probably therefore excited to be preparing to cast your vote for the first time. I share your excitement but let me now share some thoughts about this election: vote for the future, not the present.

A lot of the candidates: from the local levels up to the presidency, are counting on your gullibility, not your intelligence. It is why you are now seeing and hearing from office-holders at various levels that you have not seen for four years because they are once again candidates. They are counting on you to be gullible enough to believe in their promises rather than their track record and character.

This applies most spectacularly to the presidential election, which is understandably the most advertised.

So how gullible are you? Predictably, the leading candidates are delivering manifestoes and homilies as we speak. Have you bought into one yet?

Well, they are expecting you to buy all the rosy plans and promises they are marketing, and you are probably painstakingly examining them to determine WHICH is the best towards determining WHO is the best.

That is a magician’s trick. The test of your gullibility. The proper order is WHO is the best before WHICH. If a candidate is defective, his candidature is defective and therefore irremediable. One or two errors of judgement should not kill a candidate or candidature, but a man who has swum in excrement and mud all his life cannot claim he cares about potable water. The blind cannot lead the blind, simple.

To that end, I hereby examine the five persons most related to the presidency and the race for it. The first is Muhammadu Buhari, the incumbent, not because he is running, but because he is key to who wins it.

Once again Buhari lies in a British hospital bed as we speak, as he has done at will for an otherwise embarrassing total of about seven months since he took office in 2015.

The APC leader claims to be an effective leader and a corruption combatant, yet he has serially-contradicted his own April 2016 directive stopping medical tourism for officials, refused to disclose to Nigerians the nature of his ailment and what he is spending to care for himself at public expense. He has neither built any hospitals to cater for Nigerians nor honoured them for their massive support in 2015. That is: he has made hypocrisy a personal standard.