Some Kind Of Incumbency Factor, Nevertheless

WAS just starting to write my thoughts on the abuse of the incumbency factor when a friend phoned to ask if I was back from the Ukraine! I told him I was never in Ukraine but he said he had just read an email purportedly written by me asking desperately for help because I was stranded over there. It was only then that I realised my email account had been hacked into by some sick idiot.

It has become something of an over-rehearsed and tired script of the internet criminal to say his or her “victim” was stranded in Ukraine; I believe I might have read such a script on more than three occasions and it shows the lack of originality on the part of the internet criminal. I feel quite pleased that, in my instance, no one believed the script. Those who cared to read it – some actually ignored it – said it couldn’t have been a decent person like myself writing such rubbish. So it is shame on the shameless internet criminal, whatever his or her motives.

Now, to the important subject of the incumbency factor. The incumbency factor is a political term for the advantages easily ascribed to an incumbent who is seeking re-election. He or she is believed to have an advantage over a challenger by virtue of having held the office being contested for a specific period of time. For instance, the incumbent can advertise his or her position by pointing to what he or she has achieved while in office and the favours that could still be dispensed. Unlike the challenger who would have to invest much money in introducing himself or herself to the public, the incumbent is perpetually in the news. Both the televisions and newspapers scramble to report whatever an incumbent President is doing or about to do. Principally because of the advantages of incumbency, it has always proved to be an uphill task for a challenger to defeat an incumbent President who has not performed too badly in the eyes of the public.

However, what should not be an incumbency factor but crudely is, has been the abuse that could be injected into the electoral process by the one in power. For instance, the ability to influence the rigging of elections has become something of an incumbency factor in our electoral politics.

The political processes were manipulated in 1983 when Shehu Shagari sought re-election and it was a similar case in 2003 when it was the turn of Olusegun Obasanjo to do so. Corrupt electoral officials, helped by the complicity of men and women in uniform, facilitated those historical infamies.

Perhaps, more than in the aforementioned eras, the outright use of money to corrupt the electoral process has never been as profound as it was in the re-election bid of Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Delegates were bribed to vote one way or the other in party primaries, while religious leaders were induced with monetary gifts to predict his successful re-election. And what about that despicable picture of Jonathan, surrounded by corrupt and over-induced traditional chiefs, each pointing a charmed walking stick in his direction. They proclaimed he had won the 2015 election by virtue of their imagined supernatural powers; ordinary Nigerians did not matter! Jonathan seemed to be living in an era when the voice of the palace was taken to be the voice of the people!

If the current administration of Muhammadu Buhari is indeed for change and knows the full implications of that philosophy, then the twin culture of election rigging and electoral corruption cannot be its cherished inheritance. The reform of the political processes must be a priority of the current administration. The one that would be celebrated in history, that candidate for immortality, must be prepared to sacrifice what could have been personal advantages on the altar of the greater good.

Generally, there must be professionalism in our electoral politics. If an incumbent president desires to be re-elected, there should be no need pretending about it – no insulting our collective intelligence by deploying paid sycophants to be begging in the streets for him or her to do so. Nigerians deserve to be respected as the intelligent and sensible people that they are.

Let’s face it, Nigeria has had more years of democratic experience than Ukraine and should be that county for frequent visits! Nigeria should by now be one nation whose people enjoy the perceptions of decency and civilised behaviour in the eyes of the world.

Dr. Akinola wrote from Oxford, United Kingdom.