Good vs bad people
Although Bola Tinubu is the official victor of Nigeria’s presidential contest (under contentious circumstances), it was another candidate, Peter Obi, who ultimately stole the show. Obi’s campaign garnered a tremendous amount of youth energy, largely concentrated in Nigeria’s main economic centers, Lagos and Abuja. In the eyes of many Nigerians, Obi was a refreshing alternative to the establishment mold—a “good governance” man who would break the corruption streak entrenched in Nigerian politics.
We do not know what an Obi presidency would have looked like—the man himself spoke very little by way of concrete proposals, and more in vague platitudes—but a platform based exclusively on superficial anti-corruption without being anchored on a genuinely transformative program, inevitably reproduces the same undemocratic pathologies that stymie our political systems. And his economic program was garden variety neoliberal. The figure exemplifying this type par excellence was former Tanzanian president John Magufuli, whose anti-corruption provided cover for a sharp authoritarian turn. It’s not surprising when this happens. If a leader fails to mobilize the popular sovereignty of the masses, indeed if their very rise is premised on their unmediated support (in Obi’s case, his online and youthful base known as Obidients), then they will only know how to wield power by fiat. Coupled with conditions that make rule by executive power seem favorable and efficient, and “good governance” becomes a trojan horse for old-school autocracy.
“Good governance” and “law and order” turn out to be programmatic complements. Politics is reduced to narrow, moralistic questions of competent administration of the state, and all good governance populists style themselves as the right person for the job, unafraid to “clean out” corruption and restore balance and functioning to the state. All questions about what the state is for, who it and who it serves, are obscured—it must simply be preened. In South Africa, where I live, those caching on rising discontent, most vocally expressed by the country’s middle class, are the types vowing to discipline the country from its waywardness. Former Operation Dudula leader, businessman, and nativist, Nhlanhla Lux, for example, scores social media points by calling for the country to be ruled by a “benevolent dictator.” In Brazil, we saw what happened when someone rose in popularity on a similar bill as an honest, uncorrupt, man of renewal.
We must beware of tendencies to saviorism. Investing one person with all of our political hopes only hardens the depoliticization that makes them appear novel in the first place, and oversimplifies complex political problems to Manichean terms of good versus bad people. Tinubu’s win was a bad day for Nigerian society, but it’s unclear that an Obi win would have been a good day. No candidate whose followers style themselves as “Obidients” can be a harbinger for good. It is an example of precisely the dynamic that needs breaking. The task is to convince the masses of their agency.
– Will Shoki, deputy editor
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