By Alexander Ifeanyichukwu
The 2015 general elections will remain one of the most fiercely contested in Nigeria for a long time to come, furthermore the election further elevated the use of propaganda, fear and threat appeal in the opposition party’s desperation to snatch power, at all cost from the ruling party.
For any critical observer, a clear pattern has evolved in the way and manner the two leading political parties – PDP and APC have approached the campaign for the electorates’ votes. While the PDP with President Goodluck Jonathan as its flag bearer has emphasised more on its achievements in the last six to four years, the same cannot be said of the APC.
The initial campaign of the APC which showcased the beautiful pictorials of the various development projects in the APC controlled states have suddenly given way to a campaign of castigating and denouncing any and everything that the PDP at the centre may have achieved.
This obvious deviation from its earlier approach can only signal a wrong approach by the APC campaign managers who succumbed to the quick reminder from the PDP that what they were showcasing as achievements by APC governors especially in the states of Kano, Rivers and Kwara, were essentially accomplishments by these governors who were PDP governors before their defection to the APC.
Unfortunately, this painful truth seem to have caught the APC campaign machinery off guard as the party campaign has resorted to more aggressive use of the unpopular propaganda, fear and threat appeal.
So much that all that seem to emanate from the campaign office of the APC is informing Nigerians of schemes to truncate the election, imagined plan to elongate the tenure of the Presidency and most recently reminding Nigerians of certain phraseology that has been forgotten by Nigerians like “unpatriotic elements”, “this is Nigeria’s season of anomie”, and call on the electorate to “kill PDP before it kills us”, all as part of the sustained threat capable of causing panic among the populace.
Our history is replete with delusions created by crowds at political rallies organised by political parties leading them to adjudge their candidates winners before the actual election is conducted and when this turn out differently, since crowds at rallies are hardly a measure of voting patterns, violent reaction is easily encouraged. The post 2011 experience is still fresh in our memories.
The moment a political party veers off from canvassing for votes based on the issues of the day but instead focuses its attention on the wrongs of opponents without necessarily proffering better and realistic alternative, it descends to the unpalatable use of unconventional approach, usually propaganda embellished with the condemnable act of threat appeal.
The adoption of the fear appeal which is clearly an attempt to arouse fear in both the electorates and opponents is targeted to divert behaviour through threats, albeit subtle of an impending danger or harm. This is condemnable at this stage of our democracy and the attacks on the campaign train of a sitting president, is a wrong signal for our democracy.
Often, those who adopt fear and threat appeal use them as a defensive mechanism but studies conducted over time have revealed that the results are usually mixed.
While this election, in the perception of the APC presents it the biggest opportunity to clinch power at the centre, adopting fear and threat as instrument of persuasion should not be encouraged in the present circumstance.
It is getting clearer by the day that between the two gladiators, that is the Presidential candidates of the PDP and the APC, one is a much sober and amenable to democratic norms than the other who thinks use of force in whatever form is acceptable in as much as an end is achieved.
But history has shown from generations that the fear and threat appeal always end in failure for those who have trusted it because they usually do not know when they overdo it and findings show that higher levels of fear created by this method produces defensive reactions from the populace.
Reality is that with just days to the elections, Nigerians are getting a clearer picture of who the true democrats are and the pretenders are unleashing their fangs against the same people they seek to serve.
And further reminder to the APC campaign machinery is that while it is adopting every method to win the election, the heightened fear it introduces into the voters could also be reaching the entire population of Nigerians causing greater distress to citizens who are not of voting age and exposing them to undue anxiety.
Can the APC return to the issues that will benefit Nigerians, please?
Alexander Ifeanyichukwu is a public analyst and writes from Enugu