Two different issues were joined at the hip over the past week as the 2027 presidential election campaigns roll on. The first is the apparent descent of the campaign rhetoric from policy debates to foul language and outright insults by opposing candidates and their surrogates. The second is the political and moral burden of a campaign of insults in a climate of heightened insecurity across the country. Both represent a direct threat to the election, if in different ways. It was discomforting to watch Vice President KashimShettima say at the inauguration of the APC presidential campaign council last Wednesday that former Vice President AtikuAbubakar “was trained in Kano School of Hygiene as Duba-gari in Hausa and Wole-wole in Yoruba”. In case you are thinking that it was a normal campaign jab, it wasn’t. It was the peak of a series of disrespectful comments and direct insults by various actors in this campaign.
First, for anyone familiar with the historical and cultural signification of the terms “Duba-gari” (in Hausa) and “Wole-wole” (in Yoruba), the Vice President’s comments were nothing short of a verbal onslaught. As officials who toured homes and neighbourhoods to enforce public health regulation during the colonial and early independence periods, the Duba-gari had a notorious reputation and were universally despised for their corruption and high-handedness. Bringing that up in association with Atiku at this stage of his professional and political careers is directly a disrespectful reference to the man’s humble origins. But Atiku is not an innocent victim in this exchange of derogatory name-calling, and Shettima, in fact, was probably replying in kind for receiving the worst of it traded so far. I had heard former Vice President Atiku refer to President Tinubu as “Bola” at least three times before anyone in government drew attention to it, and it felt wrong each time I heard him say it. I thought Atiku was doing himself no favours by openly disrespecting the office he has spent three decades seeking. The office of the president is a living and permanent institution of the Nigerian state, and whatever anyone might have against any current or former occupant, the office itself has an independent identity that must be respected and protected. No one is better placed to do both than the man who has sought it seven times in 33 years, that is, Atiku.
So, when I saw Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo politely but firmly call it out, I thought it was just right. People cannot create a mess in front of the house they seek to enter. By repeatedly and publicly calling “Bola” in reference to the president, Atiku is saying that Tinubu might be president, but he is a ‘nobody’, to borrow a Nigerian parlance. This is the implicit missile Shettima’s pointed counter-offensive was directed at on Wednesday. But for both, it didn’t start last week, and for Shettima, there is an intimate and painful personal dimension to it all. At a recent ADC campaign rally, Senator Dino Melaye directly and openly insulted Shettima’s parents, using an abominable word that I cannot put in print here. The senator spoke in fluent Hausa, which made it even more painful because of the audience. Melaye also claimed that he was retaliating against Shettima’s public attacks on Atiku. Retaliation for political jabs is normal, but directly and publicly targeting Shettima’s parents was completely out of order and beyond the boundaries of decency or campaign politics. We are in Nigeria, the heart of Africa, where there is absolutely no justification for insulting other people’s parents.
The bigger problem, however, is that Atiku kept quiet over this. The former Vice President was not personally at the event, but since everyone has heard what Melaye said, he certainly should have corrected his foot soldier on this, and done so publicly and soon afterwards. Even if Atiku feels bad about some of Shettima’s comments against him—and some of his interviews make clear that he does—the proper approach is to show leadership and restraint, which is to call out Melaye that insulting the parents of a sitting Vice President is out of order for a campaign stump. Atiku’s silence on this is approval, and a dangerous escalation of the situation. Shettima, too, must understand the same thing. That Atiku is calling Tinubu “Bola” is an indication, perhaps, of some personal issues between the two men; after all, their relationship goes back decades. If Tinubu feels bad about it personally, he has his own mouth. More importantly, any Nigerian would be justified to throw off their clothes and fight another who insults their parents. But not every Nigerian has the honour of being elected Vice President as Shettima is, and so the response must be different. I would rather Shettima had taken the matter to the Nigerian public, that Dino Melaye is insulting his parents on behalf of Atiku, and that Atiku has kept silent over this. Nigerians will judge the rest for themselves.
All of which brings us to Tinubu himself, who, unfortunately, is by no means innocent in all of these, and likely the main cause of it all. President Tinubu has a disrespectful tendency not to refer to his opponents by their names, appropriate titles, or positions. At a campaign event in Delta State in November 2022, for example, Tinubu, then a presidential candidate, said: “The other one, that one, he think na statistics we go chop, he lies with arithmetic that no Indian can solve it. To mention his name is a disgrace to me sef”.Tinubu spoke in pidgin, but the message is clear. He was referring to Peter Obi, a former governor, a former vice-presidential candidate, and then the presidential candidate of the Labour Party directly competing against Tinubu in the 2023 elections. Such a reference to one’s opponents in an election cannot be right. Yet, it is this same attitude of “to mention his name is a disgrace to me sef” in reference to Obi that, deliberately or not, Tinubu has carried over to Atiku in this campaign as well. While hosting the re-elected Governor AdemolaAdeleke of Osun State at the State House earlier in August, Tinubu said, among other things: “Okay, let’s look at the trajectory of history. I saw one of my opponents now say he will go back to subsidy. I read it. That is a demonstration of serious ignorance on governance and economy”. I saw that too in real time, and I felt just as uncomfortable. The opponent has a name, don’t they? In fact, if you guessed that it was after this event that Atiku started referring to Tinubu as “Bola”, you might probably be right. President Tinubu himself, I think, threw the opening salvo in all of these verbal missile attacks.
But the real issue here is political legitimacy, of the persons involved, and of the institutions they represent. If a president thinks just to mention the names of his opponents is a “disgrace”, then they are denying legitimacy to those opponents as equal players in the game. It is blatantly disrespectful of the opponents, but also of the system as a whole. Equally important, the legitimacy in question is not Tinubu’s to confer or withhold from his opponents; it comes from the Nigerian Constitution and the Nigerian people. Tinubu is no more entitled to it than his opponents, or, for that matter, any other Nigerian. In a democratic election, the least the winner can do is to show respect to their opponents, for giving a good fight, just for showing up. President Tinubu should recognize and abide by this simple principle; otherwise, the knife will inevitably cut both ways, and sadly, to the detriment of our democracy. In short, this is no longer a traditional joke between Fulani and Kanuri, nor normal campaign jabs. This is now getting out of hand, and it must stop.
The post Now, a campaign of insults? By Suleiman A. Suleiman appeared first on Vanguard News.