I will be taking you on the journey of a typical politician
who may wish to contest an election at the grassroots level of governance, which
is closest to the people and perhaps the most important. So in this scenario, the aspirant may be for a local government chairman, state assembly, or the fed
house of representative. The higher your aspiration the bigger the stake, so let’s
say Mr. X is from Y LGA. He is public-spirited and feels the best way to
make a lasting positive impact on society is to aspire to an elective role.
Once his mind is made up, is advisable to start the journey at a minimum of 18 months before an election cycle or to be on the safe side two years. My reason for this will be apparent as we go along on this journey. So Mr X first needs to decide the political party to join, he is left with three choices, either of the two behemoths or a fringe party, that often wakes up few months to an election cycle to claim a phantom third force. So for the purpose of this article, Mr. X decides to join one of the two behemoths, he must as a rule of thumb register at his ward, this is very important, you can ask Mr. Oshiomole and most recently Mr. Secondus how powerful the ward chairman can be.
Then the actual work begins, Mr. X needs to identify his party leaders within his LGA, you may ask who these party leaders are? These are individuals who most often do not have a formal role within the party structure but are influential and powerful within their local enclave. You may want to ask again, how can they be powerful if they don’t have a formal role within the party structure. These individuals act as gatekeepers for their localities and have earned quite a bit of followership and most importantly, trust, which is a very difficult currency, it takes years or sometimes decades to earn that level of influence.
Often these individuals are mostly in their 70s and 80s, they most often have held an elective position a couple of decades earlier, sometimes as far back as 40years. After the expiry of their initial elective position, they form a group which is often like a parallel structure within the party and they appear to be a group of like-minded people who are just a pressure group within the party to push their common interest. Fair enough right? At the initial stage, the leader/founder funds the group out of pocket but it gradually becomes a bargaining tool for patronage within the party, whenever they are in government. i.e. employment quota, actual party structure quota, contracts and it graduates to aspirants/candidates currying their favour to win elections. Some of these leaders depending on how they play fair and transparent amongst their followers are able to stand the test of time. Most often, such groups fizzle away, but the few ones that are able to stand the test of time become quite formidable.
Back to Mr X, once he identifies the party leaders in his LGA or constituency he visits them and officially makes his intention known, if he is lucky that in his LGA, there is an apex leader to whom other leaders defer, things will be much easier to manage moving forward, however in a scenario where there are two or more leaders that are daggers drawn amongst themselves, things become complicated. He either decides to play chicken and egg amongst them, which will be more expensive and maybe counterproductive in the long run because he may be viewed as an unstable or untrustworthy character and lose out completely or pitch his tent with one of the leaders, there is no right or wrong way in handling this situation. It depends on how politically deft and financially capable, Mr. X is.
In this scenario, Mr. X decides to pitch his tent with one leader amongst other leaders available. Remember the leader, runs a group that needs to be constantly oiled. If the party is currently out of government, the major sourcing of financing falls on aspirants due to zero government patronage. So again if the party chosen by Mr. X is not in power, he automatically becomes a major financier for the group, in fact often when Mr. X is being introduced to the group exco, he is often pointedly asked, if he has the finances for the task ahead, they do not mince words. From then on, the demand comes in torrents from the ridiculous to the mundane; Mr X becomes a captured entity, and the goal here at this point is becoming the party candidate not even winning an election.
So Mr. X still needs to build his name outside of the group, which entails embarking on charitable programs within the locality, i.e boreholes, scholarships, etc whatever he can afford within his financial capacity, again he is yet to be a candidate, he is just aspiring at this stage.
As the election approaches the stakes become higher, political party’s starts to run congresses from the ward level up to the national level to elect the structure of the party. Now the actual politicking begins, you remember the group Mr. X belongs to, needs to have their people in the party structure to be able to push their aspirants to become actual candidates. Guess who funds this process, Mr X, for him to have a viable shot at being a candidate he has to actively participate in the process and ensures his loyalists/ group members are elected into the party structure. Hope you now see the reason why the journey has to commence 18mths to 2yrs, if the aspirant is not involved in this process his candidacy prospect is quite dim.
Once this is done and dusted, then we have the actual primaries, you remember there are other groups and factions who most likely have their aspirants as well. At this stage, Mr. X will need to mobilize his loyalists and group members who were able to get elected to the party structure, these set are 90% likely to vote for Mr. X and other delegates are also mobilized as well albeit a gamble. If the odds are in Mr. Xs favor he wins the primaries and commences the next phase and on the flip side he loses, his journey and millions in expense end there. Also in very rare cases at the grass-root level, issues of parallel primaries may come up and the party ends up with two candidates. So in this scenario, Mr. X needs to pay high-priced lawyers to get his candidacy confirmed by the courts, again if he loses the journey ends with the additional expense of a court case.
Now to the final phase of the election, Mr. X is now a candidate, the election proper is now about to commence, he opens a campaign office, is advisable to open that office maybe just two months before the election. You remember those requests from the group members about two years earlier, multiply that by 100x. You are now faced with the entire community, people seeking money for burials, weddings, naming ceremonies, to even feeding. Now you are a captive of the entire community. Also, courtesy visits to traditional and religious leaders, amongst other campaign activities will gulp tons of cash. Now D day, just for clarity I’m personally against the idea of vote-buying. But again I’m referring to Mr. Xs reality. He has to mobilize funds for party agents at least two for each polling unit and additional funding to oil the process.
You may think it end here right? At this point is a situation of win or lose, well you are wrong after the election either win to lose, you most likely end up in court where you will need to pay high-priced lawyers and sometimes allegedly incentive judgments in your favour. I forgot to add as well, that you may have issues within your party regarding your primaries that Mr X could have expended millions on lawyers to become the authentic candidate of the party
On a final note, you may notice no mention of the governance capacity of Mr. X is either mentioned because is never a factor. The only factor is money, that's why we see people of questionable character end up in public office. Our leadership recruitment process is broken, the purpose of this write-up is not to discourage intending aspirants, but to perhaps bring to the fore the challenge the typical politician faces in getting elected. The entire system is broken both from the followership and political class. Politics in Nigeria is akin to advance fee fraud, where you expense an obscene amount of money with the hope to recoup 1000x when you eventually get to the office by looting with reckless abandon with zero recourse to the masses that elected you. On the flip side, there is so much trust deficit from the followership that they believe the only thing they can get from politicians is by milking them during campaigns and nothing more. There is no quick-fix solution to this problem, is an endemic systemic issue. Until those who may think they are too educated and comfortable to get into the murky waters of politics, get involved. We may be stuck in this vicious cycle for a very long time.
Oladapo Kasumu
Public Affairs Analyst, writes from Lagos. Oladapo.kasumu@gmail.com
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