Election

You've probably all heard/read/seen the news of the explosion at the INEC offices in Suleja, and the subsequent explosion at a vote collation centre in Maiduguri, as well as the blast in Kaduna. Campaign season has been violent as usual, and these were the thugs' end-of-season exclamation points.

Voting in the National Assembly elections went off relatively peacefully this weekend.

I am tempted not to say anything about the election itself, and to focus (as per usual) on issues that are never mentioned or addressed by politicians in their campaigns or in office. Notably, consolidation and cost-cutting in our over-expensive, over-burdensome administrative structure (as sketched out in this, and many other prior blog post) will simply not happen. Fundamental reform of the Nigerian Police Force (argued for in this, and many other prior blog posts) will not happen either.

Besides, there is no point saying anything when results are not final. Not just the results for the National Assembly, but all results. Only then can you say what patterns have been revealed.

So far the only "pattern" (if it holds out) established is that the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has become the new AD/UPN/AG-type party that controls the Yoruba-majority states. I suppose this is good news for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) which each seemed to be aiming (despite rhetoric to the contrary) to take the NCNC/NPP and NPC spots for the Igbo-majority and Hausa-majority states respectively. I don't know what that means for the Peoples Democratic Party, heirs to the NPN/SDP/NRC "gather all the Big Men together under one tent" strategy, nor am I sure what that means for the prospects of pan-Nigerian political parties (as opposed to regional outfits). All I can say is if the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) is wiped out in Kano by the CPC (likely) but holds on to Borno and Yobe, they would have metamorphosed from a new NPC into a new version of the late Waziri Ibrahim's GNPP.

Is it me, or do we just go around in circles, coming back to the same place we started rather than moving forward to something different .... something better?

Another interesting trend is some of the early victories by opposition parties over the PDP have involved former members of the PDP running on opposition party tickets after failing to win the PDP ticket. Prominent among these early winners is George Akume, who was an 8-year PDP governor of Benue State, and is now a newly re-elected ACN senator (having only recently decamped to the ACN).

In the fluid world of Nigerian politics where men hop from party to party depending on short-term Realpolitik, it is hard to conclude that the victory of any one party in a specific election means anything different from the victory of a rival party in that same poll.