They have run the race – the big race for the ultimate political trophy in our country, the presidency. It has been gruelling for the front runners: Ahmed Bola Tinubu , Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi . And with dirt never far from politics, dirt and mud and character assassination were tossed about with the intent to sink political opponents in the slush of competitiveness. Only one of them will breast the tape tomorrow as our next president.
As you read this, each presidential candidate knows that his political fate is now in the hands of the ordinary man, the very ordinary man without a face and without a name; an ordinary man who ordinarily does not matter but yet in the quest for political power, he is the man in whose shrine the powerful and the rich and the influential are forced to worship. Tinubu, Abubakar and Obi are wealthy men who have held the country by the ears each in his own way in our national politics.
Democracy in developing nations such as ours, is the tyranny of the uninformed ordinary man. We have to live with whatever he decides tomorrow. He may decide rightly or wrongly but the law permits him to decide freely and fairly. He does not know what the man he chooses stands for; he has no way of assessing his capacity and his suitability for the elective office he seeks. He only knows that the law confers on him the right to choose rather than decide on his next set of political masters.
We have never got it right. In 2007, foreign and local election observers told the world in clear terms that the conduct of the elections that year, the second civilian-to-civilian transition since our return to civil rule in 1999, was so poor that it did not even meet regional standards. It was a painful slap on our face as a nation. But to be fair, we have made some incremental improvements in our general election since then.
But you must give it to us, the ordinary Nigerians. We are masters of the game and political brinkmanship. We always manage to pull the country from the brink of looming disasters. Whatever the pundits will eventually say, my take is that the 2023 general elections will be different in almost every particular. They will be fairer, more legitimate, and even freer, all things being equal.
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