2023 Polls: NBA conference as litmus test

Before, during and even after it ended last Friday, the 2022 Annual General Meeting (AGM), of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) had attracted significant attention nationwide, courtesy of its theme – ‘Bold Transitions’, which endears itself to various interpretations.

However, given the run of the current political season, a congruence between the season and the theme as well as a most appropriate interpretation remains obvious as by the dispensation, presidential candidates for various political parties were invited to address the converge of lawyers. 

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It is also a measure of the profundity of the theme that throughout the conference and after it, gist circles across the country had been dominated by issues from its course. This is therefore kudos to the organisers for demonstrating welcome sensitivity to a national impetrative, which is to get 2023 polls right, in all ramifications. 

Lawyers by their profession are often the most connected with electoral matters, especially when litigations and interpretations of issues are concerned. It is also by the same token that the NBA AGM and its outcome, proved to be a litmus test for defining where the country is, where it needs to go and where it may eventually go when the 2023 polls exercise runs. Remarkable in this respect were the submissions by the Presidential candidates that honoured the invitation, and which need to constitute the main elements as well as thrusts of political conversations henceforth.  

For instance, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), harped on the issue of devolution of powers from the federal tier of governance to the states. In spite of the manifest constitutional underpinnings for this issue, it had remained thorny in contemporary Nigeria where the mindset of winner-takes-all dominates the political conversation across the country, and engenders a situation whereby government officials at a higher tier assert themselves on those at a lower tier in a master-servant relationship. For instance, it needs to be recalled that up till this moment the issue of Local Government autonomy remains one of the ‘Achilles Heels’ of governance in the country, with successions of state governors considering it as anathema. The same situation also prevails in several points of interface between the federal and state governments, with the former asserting its unitary command structure (a legacy of the past era of military administrations in the country), over the latter. Today, Nigeria is a democracy with partial adoption of democratic practices, but retains a military-style command brain-box. The impact of this syndrome on the country’s democracy is one of arrested development.

In his submission at the NBA forum, Kashim Shettima the Vice Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and who represented Bola Ahmed Tinubu the party’s Presidential candidate, apparently confined himself to extolling the disposition of his party to act with dispatch when and if they return to power in 2023. He must have been guided by at least two factors. Firstly is the understanding that having been in power for the past seven years, Nigerians are much familiar with what the APC will offer, especially with the serial claims by Tinubu that if the party returns to power with him at the helm, there may not be a significant departure from the style of the present administration of President Muhamadu Buhari. Secondly must be the fact that Shettima was at the NBA forum as a proxy and restrained himself from anticipating as well as pontificating for Tinubu as after all, you cannot shave a man’s beard in his absence. Meanwhile, not a few Nigerians however, have their impressions of and experiences with the current administration in the country, and may have already decided on who to vote for, come 2023 polls.  

When it came to the turn of Peter Obi the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), there was an effort by him to take Nigerians to the root causes of failure of governance, which ordinarily constitute raw nerves to the leadership community of the country, but the knowledge of which serves as sweet music to the wider society. By adopting a comparative analysis between Nigeria and other countries, Obi dragged into sharp relief, some of the problems with Nigeria in empirical terms and graphic clarity. Needless to state that such had been his style of campaigning which had also driven his public rating high, in the country’s political space.

While the submissions of the party candidates may not immediately transform into specific electoral capital, to discredit their impact on the political conversations across Nigeria, is to misread the picture. Talking big grammar before the NBA is no guarantee to winning the Presidential race even for the incumbent APC, including the penetrating impact such a venture may have on the intelligentsia of the country. Yet, it is a good start for the country in respect of the forthcoming polls in which the conversation is yet to condense into game-changing strands.  

It is now left for the respective political parties to capitalise on the lessons and insights from the NBA AGM, and reinvent political debates in the country, as 2023 polls will prove to be a different ball game where only political parties whose messages resonate with the public weal, will win.