By John Amoda
ELECTIONS and electoral politics assume that electorates are homogenous in outlook, values and interests but are divided in their opinions on how goals commonly shared are to be actualised. Elections assure that qualitative differences have been replaced by quantitative differences on methods. Elections therefore assume the electorate are united on ends but divided on means; they assume unity of objectives and divisions on strategies and means.

Elections most importantly assume ideological consensus but dissensus on policies, programmes and projects. Within such structure of assumptions majority and minority differences are numerical and summarise voter preferences in the election of candidates. They do not define permanent groups but sums of votes cast for candidates competing for offices on same platform as may be the case in party primaries or on different platforms as is the case in multi-party elections.

All the above notwithstanding, in traditional representative electoral politics, majority and minority describe divisions of populations of the society that structure the electorate; these divisions may be racial, cultural, ideological or sectarian. This is the case in plural societies like the United States and Nigeria. Majority-minority divisions become electorally relevant where group voting is the case and candidates with cross-group support and appeal are rare.

Such polarisation around group differences carry for numerically organised electorate the implication that electoral parties organise either in terms of polar opposition as is the case in the Cypriot electorate divided on ethnic bases or in terms of coalition of value-compatible groups or parties whose internal structure of authority reflects the balance of power between the coalition members, as has been the case and remains the case in Nigerian electoral politics.

It is against this theoretical framework that we undertake the appreciation of Salamanu Jafardeen’s news analysis in Next On Sunday September 12,  2010 on the 2011 elections. His entry is titled: “Minorities take charge”.  The 2011 elections will likely be pivoted in bringing minority candidates to dominant political positions. The forecast is anchored on two cases, the gubernatorial case in Kaduna and the presidential race.

“From the Nigerian presidency to the Kaduna State House, next your appears to be a year when several minority and domination.”

How will this be the case? This question leads us to the examination of existing arrangements instituted in the Constitution to ensure inclusion of minorities in power sharing. Apropos inclusiveness, the Section 14 (3 and 4) of the Constitution are as stated below:

“The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few States or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies.

“The composition of the Government of a state, or local government council or any of the agencies of such government or council and the conduct of the affairs of the government or council or such agencies shall be carried out in such manner as to recognise the diversity of the peoples within its area of authority and the need to promote a sense of belonging and loyalty among all the people of the Federation”.

The composition of governments and of its agencies at the three levels, and the conduct of their affairs are to reflect the diversity of the peoples of Nigeria because discriminatory monopoly of office holding and consequent bias in the conduct of office holders are promotive of strifes, conflicts and disunity. Loyalty and sense of belonging are to be fostered at the federal, state and local government areas through deliberate inclusiveness in composition of the government and of its administration because exclusive control of government has been a threat to the security of the state.

Thus the federal character statecraft has also resulted in the fostering of loyalty to the nation through state and local government creation that democratise majority status in the polity. Thus as the structure government evolved from three-regions-to four- regions, to 12 states and onto the 36 state and 774 local government. areas structure, so has new and different majorities been created out of old minorities while new minorities created thereby have harboured hopes that they too through the creation of states in which they will be majority will find their place in the Nigerian polity.

Thus the fear of minorities that they could be locked into a condition of perpetual minority have fuelled demands for state and local government creation. When Salmanu Jafardeen contemplates the prospects of a reverse dynamics, of minorities taking charge, the conclusion attracts the need for critical assessment. It can be argued that the heat the issue of setting aside the zoning features of the PDP constitution has generated is precisely because of the consensus that the federal character inclusiveness should be the context of such an innovation.

Zoning and rotation alongside the federal character inclusiveness continue to be reflected in the structuring of choice of candidates for officeholding by parties which are themselves federal character structured. The question yet to be confronted by the PDP hierarchies is evident in their ambivalence.
Is zoning being set aside once and for all times?

Or is it being set aside to accommodate the fact of incumbency? Incumbency as a factor in the selection of candidates has emerged accidentally and this is the challenge that the PDP in particular presently confronts. Can the party cohere without ‘Federal Chractering’ the office of the presidency? Can incumbency determine opportunity to contest or must it always determine such opportunity? These questions do not support the conclusion that the ascendance of Yakowa in Kaduna and of Jonathan in Abuja translates into a radical change in Nigeria’s Majority Dominance Electoral Politics.

Indeed accommodating the political ambitions of the incumbent President of the Federation and the Executive Governor of Kaduna will not usher a Non-Majority Dominance Politics. These candidates will succeed or fail through the reconfiguration of majorities in the 36 States and Federal Capital territory and not by the supplanting of Majority Dominance Politics by Minorities Relevant Politics. The PDP Politicians have their homework cut out for them and like Houdini they will improvise a solution. The question of the cost of such improvisation must be acknowledged for some paying will be done.