By Obi Nwakanma

Yesterday, Nigerians went to the polls to begin the round of elections that would lead up to the presidential election this Saturday. Starting with the elections into the parliaments, these elections do highlight aspects of an emerging national electoral culture that we will need to think a bit more about in the future.

What is the real value in staggering these elections? Should we hold state and national congressional elections on the same day as we hold the presidential and gubernatorial elections? Could the staggering of elections not amount to some kind of a gerrymandering? Nigerians will have to decide this. There are those who say that the high number of electoral positions in fray makes a single-shot election, certainly not impossible, but problematic: it may overwhelm the logistical capacity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in the extreme.

The results of yesterday’s elections are, of course, just streaming in. The election fever remains high. Violence have been reported in many of the known flashpoints. But, elections, however, they test our boundaries, our patience, our desires, our anxieties, are the civic gifts of a free society.

 Nigerian nationalists began the fight for the right to vote in the early 20th century led by nationalist resistance figures as  Herbert Macaulay who in 1923 formed the Nigerian National Democratic Party. This fight opened up the opportunity for the first elections in 1923 following the concession made by the British colonial government for election of three unofficial members of the Legislative Council from Lagos and one from Calabar by residents of these towns – presumably Nigeria’s first major cosmopolitan cities.

It was, of course, even then, not universal suffrage. The electorate was restricted to people making a minimum of One Hundred Pounds a year in these towns. However, this concession was itself significant, and moved therefrom, towards the nationalist agitation later led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe on his return from the United States via Ghana to Lagos in 1937 for universal adult suffrage and total political freedom for the colonies.

The rights of Nigerians to vote and be voted for was once again abridged during the terrible years of military dictatorship. Very little, and occasionally symbolic rights to vote were granted, but largely an entire generation grew up without the rights to vote, with little knowledge of the democratic process, and indeed, a psyche rooted in the authoritarian ethic that shaped  the manners and discourse of the era.

It is this instinct – this lack of democratic awareness that would make a governor of a state, alight from his car and punch-up a Catholic priest for “blocking his entourage” or allegedly lock a Nigerian citizen in the governor’s office – a public facility – and administer the whip on him for being in opposition to the policies and perhaps inefficacies of his administration.

This instinct, a throw-back to when an Alfred Diete-Spiff could lock up a journalist and order his military aides to shave his hair with a broken bottle with no consequence because the governor was the embodiment of a praetorian law and order, backfires in a democracy.

In a democracy, there are not only courts and Tort practices that guarantee the individual’s right to seek the protection of the courts, there is also the court of public opinion. It is this court of public opinion to which we take recourse in a democracy. This court becomes valid and convenes at the season of elections when the population, armed with that single ballot, the highest gift of citizenship that guarantees the equality of all citizens, make a choice of whom to offer the mandate to serve.

Yesterday, that supreme court of public opinion conveyed in Nigeria and began to make its decisions on whom we can trust for the next four years to speak for us; represent Nigerians at the high legislative chambers of the land, and in effect hold the destiny of this land in their hands in that interim.

The fever is high and the expectations are equally high. Nigerians want change. Change from a country that many see as stymied by too many incompetent executive and legislative actions. Change from poverty and ignorance. The vote, therefore, must reflect this willingness to trust the public life to the true servants of the people: that is what elections are all about: it is the biggest recruitment fair in the land.

 Candidates have made their pitches to the public. Some we have bought, some we have not as the results roll in. But there are important issues arising from this election – in the pattern of support and in the emergence of that pattern as the results begin to roll in.

This nation cannot afford the hardness of old political fault lines – the so-called North-South divide. Yet we must equally recognise, and I give the example of the United States, in which these regional political patterns have been colour-coded as Red and Blue – “Red States” for the Republican, and the “Blue States” – for the Democrats, and we see that much of the red spots are South and the blue spots are North in US elections, that elections frequently, perhaps necessarily, take regional hues.

 That is the beauty of democracy. We agree to disagree. Therefore, the fear-mongering and the fierce drums of war sounded by certain sections of the community about the implications of the political differences in Nigeria is to be discountenanced.

The North-West might vote in one bloc and the South-South might vote in another according to how they perceive their interests, but these interests must coalesce in the long run towards nation-building.

Therefore, it must be said, whoever is elected into the chambers of the National Assembly, or whoever becomes president by next week – either the incumbent or any of his serious opponents – there must be one consideration: the highest national interest of this land called Nigeria. It must be turned into Africa’s own land of opportunities. We must take a step back from the fever of elections and begin the very question that rests at the core of our dilemma: it is the question of the workable structure of this nation.

Do we need 36  states plus a federal capital? Do we need this number of people in the National Assembly? Do we need a multiplicity of state houses in states that could be nothing more than mere county districts in a properly organised federation? Do we need the number of federal ministers at the executive council the presence of whom offer nothing but flab to the already overweight structure of the Federal Government?

The Central Bank Governor, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, made very penetrating remarks about this recently, drawing fresh attention to the overbloated structure of the central government. Surprisingly, this issue of the structure and the restructure of the Federal Government and of the federation of Nigeria did not gain traction as an electoral issue. Only one candidate made some issue of it – Muhammadu Buhari.

Nonetheless, whoever wins the presidency next week must work with the National and state Assemblies to begin the process of restructuring Nigeria, because Nigeria cannot afford the current cost of elections and the current cost of maintaining the overbloated federation, in which a single member of the National Assembly earns about $100,000. It is a sin in this sea of poverty