How an anti-corruption platform both promotes and risks democracy in Nigeria

With all the problems weighing on Nigeria, from the Boko Haram insurgency to plunging oil prices and skyrocketing unemployment, it is opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari’s focus on the overarching issue of corruption that both threatens and promises to upset the balance of power in today’s elections. Pledging to root out the corruption which has shackled Nigeria’s development even as it became one of the world’s largest economies, Buhari’s message resonated with a weary public, lifting him above Nigeria’s identity politics to become its first formidable opposition candidate. At the polls today, he could win the presidential election from an incumbent party that has ruled since democracy began in 1999. However, as a badge and test of Nigeria’s political development, Buhari’s promise to sweep up corruption now threatens to provoke violence as vulnerable elites deliberate their future.

Corruption, and the audacity to fight it, has become the election’s bellwether, inspiring voters to choose a candidate based on issues rather than identity. Historically, there is no swing voter in Nigeria, a country where voting patterns are still determined by ethno-religious alliances, which politicians exploit to dangerous effect. Without ideological differences, elections are fought over government coffers instead of policy. The president in particular has enormous power over the flow of $50 billion in federal oil revenue, an amount which sacked central bank chair Lamido Sanusi alleged went missing by 2015.

{mosads}However, the same force which for decades lured candidates into office with the promise of lucrative payments, is now mobilizing voters. In a January survey of key issues facing Nigerians by polling firm Afrobarometer, 78 percent of respondents said the government had failed to fight corruption. Only 51 percent believed the government had failed in its fight against Boko Haram, which killed over 4,000 people last year according to the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Buhari has harnessed this discontent by forging an aggressive anti-corruption platform. His campaign carefully crafted the image of a bold reformer who rooted out corruption as a military ruler during the early 1980s. Counterattacks labeling Buhari as a “ruthless ex-dictator” backfired, only reinforcing the perception that he is strong enough to take on an entrenched system. The logo of his party, the All Progressives Congress, even features a broom, symbolizing it will ‘clean up’ government.

However, while Buhari’s anti-corruption reputation might win him the election, it will also threaten the transition of power in a country where political violence killed over 800 people after the 2011 presidential election. To follow through on campaign promises and appease the new class of swing voters, a President Buhari will be pressured to start his administration with high-level prosecutions. That prospect strikes fear in the ruling elite, who worry Buhari will forgo the broom, and sweep the floor with them instead.

The unease is brooding beneath the surface of a government unacquainted with the ideas of accountability or losing. It emerges in forms of violence, electoral fraud, and last month a revealing quote by Silas Zwingina, a senate candidate from the ruling party. Buhari must be stopped, Zwingina pleaded, before he “sends us to jail,” adding that Buhari will have “to build more prisons” to fit all the politicians sent away for graft.

The comments were not flippant. They reflect a genuine fear among ruling elites that they will be summarily prosecuted in a purge of economic crimes that have become commonplace. And here Buhari’s anti-corruption message creeps into dangerous territory: politicians should fear losing elections, but when they fear losing their freedom, they are prone to rash decisions. It’s a prescient caveat in Africa, where examples of incumbent presidents voluntarily stepping down from electoral defeats are few. 

That is why two weeks ago, Buhari floated the idea of a corruption amnesty plan that could pardon outgoing officials whose crimes were committed before the election. The idea has incensed his base of young supporters and may keep them home on an election day hinging on turnout. Buhari promised to sweep corruption up, they say, not under the rug. Yet, without backtracking on the promises his campaign is built on, Buhari and Nigeria could face violent and uncertain consequences if he wins. In this democracy, too much focus on the past could jeopardize the future.

Clyne is a political risk analyst specializing in Nigeria for a global risk consulting firm. Over the past five years, he has tracked the transformation of the country’s political conditions, rise of its economy and birth of the Boko Haram insurgency.