Beyond Politics of Endorsement, Decamping, Adoption and Monetary Donation

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Election period is very intriguing as it comes with different “games” and events. What is not possible in ordinary time is very possible in election season. Desperation and extremism find their completeness in election period. Fake promises, fictitious achievements, blame game/ justification of unfulfilled campaign promises, and other related acts of propagandas play out very well when the clock of elections tickens closely.

Amongst all these political gimmicks, the ones that make major headlines in the media especially the social media is the “politics of endorsements” and  decampings from one political party to another.

In the build  up to the 2019 Presidential Election, the whole Country witnessed the politics of endorsements and decampings. Politics of endorsement was so laughable and ridiculous to the extent that an association of witches/wizards was reported to have endorsed a particular candidate for the 2019 Presidential election in Nigeria!

Ironically, at the end of every election, little or in no way do we see the impacts of the much-talked-about endorsements, adoption and decampings except for the tensions and divisions they generate and/or create before the election day and even after the election.

Nigeria is an interesting nation with a hilarious political structure. Kogi State on its part, has become the theatre of Nigeria’s political comedies on one hand and tragedies on the other hand. When a Country’s political structure is founded on comic and tragic dramas, the fate of that Country is clumsy from the very beginning.

As the gubernatorial elections draw near both in Kogi and Bayelsa States, the politics of endorsement, decamping, adoption and monetary donations have taken their usual positions in the Nigerian politics. Day by day, we read on social media about the mass exodus of people from one political party to another.

In Kogi State for instance, it is one news of how PDP members and stalwarts have decamped to the ruling APC in one day, and then,  how APC members have moved to the PDP on another day! Interestingly, these news of decampings are always stage-managed and politically sponsored.

Sometimes, the people who present themselves as decampees from a political party are either people who do not belong to any political party at all or those who are already existing members of the political party they claim to be decamping to.

Similarly, in Kogi State today, we hear news of the endorsement of one candidate and another by various personalities and groups. We also read and hear of the adoption of candidates by other political parties, some of which many of us never knew that they (the political parties) are even in existence in the first place.

Ironically, unpopular political parties who have no financial strength to field in candidates to contest in an election now earn popularity through endorsement and adoption of candidates from the popular political parties! Some of these political parties doing the endorsement and adoption do not have any single office in the State.

If not political madness, how can a political party with no structure or even an office in a particular state run to the press to declare its endorsement or adoption of a candidate from another party in the state?

The folly of these ridiculous styles of politicking is one that cannot be overemphasized. Funny enough, majority of the people who claim to be decamping from one political party to another political party as well as those who endorse and or adopt candidates for an election under various political auspices, do not have Permanent Voters Card (PVC). In other words, most of these noisemakers all in the name of decamping, endorsement and adoption are not registered voters in the state where they carry out their show of shame!

Of what benefit is the mass exodus of people from one political party to another when 99% of them do not participate in the election itself? Of what political value is the endorsement or adoption of a candidate by another political party when the endorsing or adopting political party has no structure in the state where the election will take place? Does endorsement, decamping or adoption produce magic votes?

As a matter of fact, Nigerians have taken these ugly political trends to the extreme height of paupers and others in their stead donating money to politicians as an expression of support of their political ambitions. This is what one of my Lecturers back then in the Nigerian Law School, Lagos Campus, Mr. Nelson Ugbanya (now a Judge of the National Industrial Court), used to describe as “object of charity doing charity”. If not a case of object of charity doing charity, how can a person or group of persons who cannot afford good three square meals in a day due to the harsh economic policies of politicians whom they enthroned or rather, who imposed themselves on them as their leaders, suddenly lose memory of their hardships and gather their last tokens as donations to the same politicians who orchestrated their woes? When victims of unjust system turn around to finance the architects of their agonies, no one need be told that their liberation is far.

By and large, experience has shown that electoral success is beyond the politics of endorsements, decamping, adoption and monetary donations. Politicians should rather go for the votes of the electorates and not for the endorsements, decamping, adoption and monetary donations of people who are eligible but not registered voters!

– S.O. Akobe, Esq. is a Lawyer and a Social Commentator.


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