Nations, people and societies develop, progress, rise and fall based on the quality of leadership. Leadership is that essential defining factor that separates success and failure, development and backwardness. It is on this basic quality of leadership that democracy gives the people a central role in the choice of selecting their leaders. The people make a decision as to who should lead them based on the policy options provided by a plethora of candidates who approach the electorate for votes. This discourse reviews elections in Nigeria since 1999 and how the choices made by Nigerians have reflected the desire for development and progress.

The process of leadership selection is based on a presumption that the people are educated and knowledgeable enough to understand the issues and challenges in the polity and the dynamics of policy options and their implications. It also presumes the exercise of free will and that persons will not be under any type of coercion or obligation to follow any undue influence but will rather vote on the basis of conscience and reason. Furthermore, it presumes that the votes will count and leadership will be based on the informed free will of the people. This scenario develops a relationship of the people being the ultimate sovereigns while they cede power over a period of time to political leaders to run the affairs of society based on ideas presented during electioneering.

In selecting leaders, the people use a scorecard to assess the performance of leadership, especially for incumbents while the antecedents and promises of persons who are out of power are used in arriving at a decision as to whether to entrust them with political power. Good performance for incumbent administrations usually attracts endorsement for continuity through re-election. Poor performance usually attracts a change of leaders and opportunities for others to be selected.

Since the return to civil rule in 1999, there appears to be a disconnect between these fundamental assumptions and qualities for leadership selection and the outcome of elections. The former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, even in times of relatively poor performance, was boasting that it would lead Nigeria for 60 years. Some of the elections conducted between 2003 and 2011 produced scandalous results which did not tally with common sense and reason. These results did not follow the link between performance in office, accountability and re-election. Again, in the All Progressives Congress post-2015 era, some of the election results have continued to delink performance and scorecards from the choice of leadership. This development is de-marketing democracy and giving it a bad name. Essentially it delinks rights from responsibilities, democracy and development and to a great extent is responsible for Nigeria’s under-development.

What informs this development? As posited above, a good percentage of the electorate is not educated and knowledgeable enough to understand the issues and challenges in the polity and the dynamics of policy options and their implications. Voting is sometimes based on sentiments of religion, ethnicity and other primordial considerations. Thus, oppressive governments manage to use these sentiments to demonise the opposition who should have provided alternative visions of governance. This leads to the prevalence of Stockholm syndrome where victims begin to develop love, affiliation and appreciation for their oppressors and reject alternative visions of social engineering that would have saved the day. In this scenario, there is no encouragement for the oppressors to change their ways. They would rather mock parties and candidates with new ideas and affirm that they would never smell the corridors of power.

A person who does not understand the issues and policy choices but relies on what he is told by a mental superior cannot be said to be exercising his free will. Rather, the perverted free will of his instructor is at play. This is not the way of democracy and can never lead to development. Therefore, education is fundamental in our drive to improve our democracy to make it more development-oriented. An educated mind will be more likely in a position to vote without prejudices and to make informed decisions that will promote his welfare and security.

Unfortunately, the poor policy choices created by the leaders emerging from this manipulated process will not exonerate the vulnerable on whose back they rode to power. There is the weaponisation of poverty and reinforcement of the hegemony of de-marketing democracy.  The recent poverty report released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicates that 63 per cent of persons living in Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor. These people are vulnerable to vote buying. When someone is not sure of where his next meal is coming from, he is vulnerable and manipulable.  The millions of illiterate, out-of-school children who will continue the cycle in future and the chronically poor form the bulk of this electorate.

The foregoing scenario creates an obligation for the millions of Nigerians who are discerning and concerned about the poor state of development. Yes, millions who are unhappy about the economic, moral, social and security bankruptcy of the nation to come together, even if temporarily, to rescue the nation through the ballot box. The majority of the population is in dire straits; the country is gradually collapsing before us and we cannot continue to live in denial. We will either be accomplices to the decay or contribute to the building of a new society. There is no sitting on the fence. Continuity is not an option. After the votes in February 2023, we will enjoy the dividends of our vote for the next four years. And if we do not get it right, we will be part of the dialogue of constrained fiscal resources, collapse in education, health, roads, power, etc. We will continue grumbling and complaining. But our votes can stop the madness that may likely envelop the country following a wrong choice of leadership at the highest levels.

The world is not waiting for Nigeria. It would move on with or without Nigeria. The world expects us to get our acts together as the most populous Black nation. Nigeria is expected to lead the Black renaissance of democracy, development and uplift of the Black race. Apologies for why we continue to be backward will not do. Men and women who have significantly contributed to the economic and political decadence of Nigeria cannot lead us out of the current quagmire. Persons with uncleared baggage of crime, corruption etc., cannot lead us to the new society. Societies and persons who resist change will sooner than later become of no importance to the rest of the world. We are already a people left behind in time. But I hope we do not want to make ourselves totally irrelevant to the world.