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With the 2011
elections now entering end game phase, the debating season is upon us.
I had the opportunity of participating in a slightly different forum
for candidates: the one organised by the Murtala Muhammed Foundation as
a policy dialogue for some of the leading contenders for the office of
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Of the five invited
candidates, only three made it. There will be other platforms for
presidential candidates to be assessed, culminating in the presidential
debates at the end of the month. This is being organised by a coalition
of media and civil society organisations, headed by the Broadcasting
Organisation of Nigeria and the Newspaper Proprietors Association of
Nigeria. But if it happens that, of the many independent fora
available, we reach voting day on April 9 without having seen anything
more of the candidates than at venues and presentations arranged and
packaged by the candidates themselves or their political parties, rest
assured that my vote won’t be going to any of those who are ‘too big’
to stoop to conquer.

Rest assured? The
automatic response of most politickers and candidates is that,
actually, they weren’t all that worried about my vote; that all the
grammar and stuff about issues is not where the votes are to be had.
Even the thinking candidates will confess that if they don’t do all
those things that the thinking voter finds irrelevant, irritating or
downright infuriating (read ‘mass’ rallies, pasting posters and the
continuous — interminable — broadcast of the aforementioned ‘mass’
rallies on terrestrial television stations) then it’s as good as saying
that they are not seriously ‘on ground’.

It’s partly
because of turf wars: this is my territory. That is why some governors,
particularly in the ruling People’s Democratic Party, are determined to
prevent the opposition from holding any rally or meeting in their
states, with a variety of excuses that are as lame and insulting to the
intelligence as they are specious and immoral. The sad thing is that
the security agencies, who ought to be neutral in these matters,
willingly connive at the claims that ‘security couldn’t be guaranteed’.
The amusing thing is that such measures, designed to convey strength
and confidence, carry the whiff of desperation and fear.

The opposition, no
less determined to mark out their own turf, can hardly prevent Mr.
President from arriving in a cloud of heat, dust and traffic jams to
visit traditional rulers and hold rallies. So they have to be a bit
more creative: witness the Action Congress of Nigeria’s four
counter-rallies that coincided with Goodluck Jonathan’s descent on
Lagos on March 1. There’s also the less creative low-tech approach of
defacing or tearing down the other side’s posters.

With so much time
and money devoted to this brouhaha, it is not surprising that some
candidates are reluctant to expose themselves to the (relatively mild)
rigours of public debate, especially with people who aren’t begging
them for one favour or other. In the past, those who stood aloof did so
to convey the message that they were too big and too important to stand
on the same level as other supplicants for the peoples’ votes. Victory
is already ‘in the bag’, went the thinking, and all we need is some
shows of strength so that we can justify the landslide victory that we
intend to write for ourselves.

And since the fear
of the ‘wasted vote’ and anxiety to be on the ‘winning side’
(irrespective of a voter’s actual preferences and invisibility to the
subsequent victor) is still well-entrenched in our political culture,
it is inevitable that much of the campaign will consist of: I am
wonderful, I have done wonderful things, We Go WIN. So you might as
well vote for me.

But as the culture
of candidate debates grows, a refusal to take part on the same terms as
other contestants conveys a different message to the intended one. When
even some state governors are ready to engage in informative debate,
doubts arise about those who claim to be ‘too busy’. Suspicions
crystallise that they are afraid to participate either because scrutiny
of their record by other contestants might reveal that they lack even
any policies, let alone achievements; or because, shielded by the
soothing flattery of hangers-on and supplicants, they have forgotten
that they are mere mortals and now risk exposing themselves as
incoherent, empty and vain. Or worse.

I make no apology for belonging to the class of voters who want
something more than ‘We Go WIN’, even if only for reassurance that
candidates aren’t complete duds. It’s true that debates are a
performance, but I want to see how they perform. I want to see how
people who want to be president stand up to scrutiny and a bit of
pressure. There are more voters like me in this election than there
were in the last. And there will be more in the next. So election
debates — giving us something with which to make an informed choice —
that’s a culture candidates had better get used to.