When I received the email from my friend Allyce Pinchback informing me of an opportunity to volunteer for the Obama campaign, I was thoroughly excited. My excitement stemmed from two reasons: first, I wanted President Obama to win a much-deserved second term as I believe he has the heart to do what is right by all Americans; second, as a Nigerian social activist who just recently moved to the United States of America, I knew I had a golden opportunity to learn some new lessons about electioneering and democracy, in its most pristine state.
Hence, I signed up to volunteer as a neighborhood canvasser for three days leading into the election. However, the day I was billed to start canvassing, I was knocked down by a terrible cold. So I had only two days to work with, but within those two days, a period during which I knocked on about two hundred doors in the neighborhood I was assigned to, canvassing for President Obama, I did enjoy myself, I was very happy, for community service and citizen engagement is my passion, and of course I learnt a few lessons, and these lessons, I wish to share with my readers:
Democracy is a way of life: On the day of the election November 6th, owing to my experience of the nature of elections, I expected that something really different was going to mark that day apart. Alas! I was pleasantly disappointed! First, there was no public holiday; people went about their businesses as though it was just another day with nothing special going on. There were no policemen wearing combat uniforms on the streets, totting AK 47s like I was used to. Individuals walked their dogs around their neighborhoods as they did normally. There was no tension at all, no report of fighting, or ballot snatching or any form of violence in any way. As I drove to my station for the last day of my neighborhood canvassing, and throughout the hours I knocked on people’s doors, I thought about electioneering in Nigeria. I thought about all the tension that came with election days, the fighting, accusations and counter-accusations, the deployment of Armored Personnel Carriers and Military combatants brandishing dangerous weapons in the full glare of the hapless citizenry. I came to see that the difference was simple, here in America, electioneering and the democratic culture is a way of life, its nothing different from what every average American has experienced all through his or her life. However in Nigeria, because our democracy is still young, and we have gone through long years of instability and uncertainty, elections are treated as a do-or-die affair, as no one is sure what tomorrow would bring. In our sub-conscious, the Election Day is a day to compete for the spoil while it is available, and our politicians and people would spare no expense in their desperate desire to win anyhow, and at any cost. Politicians consort with thugs and give them arms across both party divides, and election days are usually score-settling days. I saw that this was because we are yet to mature really into the democratic culture, it would definitely take some time, hopefully, we would get there, I mused.
True Democracy, the participation of a willing people: The energy, raw passion and deep interest of the average American in this election was very clear. Even though, one was not likely to see this passion leading to arguments and debates between supporters of the two candidates, nevertheless, the election was passionately contested, not just by both candidates, but by their supporters as well. For Obama, the passion was demonstrated in the number of volunteers willing to leave their comfort zones to go out and canvass for him. A Nigerian friend of mine who lives in Maryland had taken a break from work, relocated to Virginia on her own expenses to spend the last week running into the elections canvassing and campaigning for President Obama. And as I drove from street to street in my canvassing operation, I ran into other canvassers, I saw them by the side of the road, on people’s porches, talking to people, encouraging them to come out and vote. I recognized them by the stickers on their chests and the flyers they carried. These were willing people, by choice, not by inducement. They believed in a cause and would go all the way to work for it.
I thought about our electioneering in Nigeria and the culture of inducement that politicians have introduced with it. The sharing of money to the electorate; the giving out of free gifts such as clothes, bags of rice, etc. just to entice people to vote for particular candidates and parties. In the recent gubernatorial elections in Ondo State, it was widely reported that a party had doled out money to the voters just to ensure they voted for that party, but were disappointed when the voters collected the party’s largesse but did not vote for them. The culture of cash and gift inducement during elections in Nigeria must be condemned and discouraged. This “jeun s’oke” culture will never birth real democracy; neither will it lead to fast development of the people. It is an insult to the Nigerian people as a whole, that a man’s vote can be purchased for as low as N500. Four years of a man’s life for N500, that is $3! Our people also must rise above petty greed, and learn to be ideological when it matters. Yes, there is poverty in the land, but N500 will not alleviate poverty, it will only amount to a quick fix, for a meal, or a bottle of beer. This for a four-year term of political leadership! Real democracy starts, when people express themselves freely and conscientiously without the influence of cash or gift inducements.
The need for Critical Infrastructure: When I arrived for the first day of my canvassing, I was given a folder that contained papers having the specific details of how my canvassing operation would be carried out. This was no blind exercise in futility; it was a properly organized, scientific canvassing. There were different folders, and each folder represented a different neighborhood. Inside each folder was a list of streets that each canvasser would visit, the address of the house, and if it was an apartment complex, the specific apartments were detailed, the name of the occupant of the house to be spoken with, the gender of the occupant and their age! It was so detailed, and I was very impressed! It was a well-researched canvassing operation that made everything so easy. I asked my Supervisor how this list was generated and how the specific people to be spoken to were chosen, and she educated me. The list was generated based on their voting pattern in previous elections. People who had voted for the Republican Party all their lives were definitely Republicans and their names were not on the list; also, people who had voted for the Democratic Party all through their voting history were definitely Democrats and there was no need to speak with them hence their names were not on the list. The list only contained the names of people whose voting patterns had been inconsistent over the years, these were the ‘swing voters’ and they were the important ones, they were the ones whose names were on the list and they were the target of this canvassing operation. A map of the neighborhood was also given to me showing the streets I would visit and the particular houses to be visited. This made things so easy, I walked straight to the houses, knocked on the doors, called the names of the occupants I desired to speak with, they would show up and I would tell them not to forget to vote and hand them an Obama flyer. In two days, during the few hours I canvassed in the morning before my work hours in the afternoon, I was able to knock on almost 200 doors and spoke with almost as many people. This wouldn’t have been possible without the list I had with me, and obtaining the list wouldn’t have been possible if the country did not have a database of people living in it, and maintaining such a database would not have been possible without stable electricity.
Again, I reflected on Nigeria, as Trade Marketing Manager II with a multi-national in Nigeria, I had worked on the compilation of the database of retail outlets across the nation, it was one of the projects I handled at the time, and I remembered how erratic and unreliable the information we gathered was, since it was gathered by hand. Only a year after the exercise, much of the data proved incorrect because people moved from one place to the other without any central authority to monitor or report such moves let alone keep trace of people. This canvassing operation I had just done reminded me of the need for critical infrastructure in Nigeria. For example, the urgent need for a national database, a live and current national database. It would greatly help in national planning in many different ways. The private sector also would benefit as corporations would find it much easier to easily and accurately pinpoint their market audiences. It would also help in our security sector, for currently Nigeria’s security sector is nothing impressive. Murders upon murders get committed and the perpetrators never get caught. I remembered when a famous politician in the South West got murdered in his bedroom a few years ago, and investigators from Scotland Yard were brought in to assist in the investigations, those investigators could not achieve anything, and they left disappointed because there was no infrastructure on ground through which they could achieve anything useful. Yes, there might have been finger prints, but where was the database of finger prints to run it against?
The same argument applies for the all-important need for stable electricity in Nigeria. The need for this cannot be over emphasized. Our development as a nation can never be fully attained without a stable grid. When experts recently announced it would take fifty years for the dream of a Nigeria with stable electricity to be achieved, I wept in my inner bowels. For that only meant one thing, my generation would never see this dream. It meant Nigerians in their thirties, and even twenties might never see a Nigeria with stable electricity. This is a serious matter, a matter worthy of a revolution. I do not want to live all my life as a Nigerian dependent on power generators.
The place of the Clergy: On Election Day morning, famous preacher Revd. Franklin Graham, son of “America’s Pastor” Billy Graham granted an interview on CNN in which he warned America against voting for Obama. He stated that the election was probably America’s last chance before an imminent judgment should Obama win the election. He made remarks that were clearly against Obama, based on his differences with Obama on issues of abortion, gay marriage, and other moral issues. When I saw the interview, I concluded that Obama might just have lost the election. For this Pastor’s clout in America is huge. If this was Nigeria, I thought to myself, this would have immediately turned the election in Romney’s favour and he would have won with a landslide. For in Nigeria, “my Pastor said…” is almost equivalent with “God said….” for many Christians. During the last Presidential elections, the incumbent President who ran on the platform of the ruling party had gotten a lot of votes from Southern Christians because they had seen the picture of a respected Pastor praying for him. They erroneously concluded that the picture was an endorsement and voted for him en masse. Less than a year into his Presidency, many of them regretted their decision after seeing how confused and ineffective the President turned out to be. Reports had it that his name popped out on Google as the most insulted President in the world! The religious hallucination being over, the harsh realities of their choice had dawned on them. While it had been clear from the beginning that this candidate had neither ideas, plans or vision for leadership, the simple picture of him being prayed for by the man of God was all they needed to make up their minds that he was God’s anointed.
After the election was over and Obama won, I reflected upon this incidence and discovered that as Nigerians, we also need to become religiously mature. We must develop and we must be able to see beyond religious sentiment. The values that are required for the leadership of a nation are neither Christian nor Muslim values, they are simply Godly values. They include vision, integrity, honesty, fairness, compassion, candor, courage, and several others. A person can possess these values notwithstanding what side of the religious divide he belongs to. The process of our development as a democracy will come hand in hand with religious maturity as a people.
These are a few of the issues I reflected upon as I participated in American electioneering for the first time. I realize that democracy is a new culture in Nigeria and it would take some time for the full impact to permeate into us as a people. I earnestly pray and wait for that day when we can really choose leaders in an environment as free and as fair as what I witnessed on November 6th in the American elections. It will take some time, but we will surely get there. I also hope that the challenges that face us as a nation in critical infrastructure will be resolved sooner than predicted. We Nigerians deserve a new lease of life too, and as the world moves ahead, we must move with it. We must not just move, we must move as champions, as the most populous black country on earth, we must justify the potentials that abide in us, one that the world sees, recognizes and stands in awe of. Nigeria must flourish again.
