It is easy to stay in the comfort of our rooms, posting and reposting online telling people to go and get their PVC and as well admonish them to vote during elections and not to sell their votes for a few cups of rice and 10k naira. But the truth of the matter is that the people who decide election results are not online. It is hard to imagine, but that’s the truth that doesn’t respect your feelings. Internet penetration in Nigeria still stands at a rate of roughly 45.5% of the total population. So, get over yourself.
In the last election, Tinubu won with the lowest margin and figure in all of Nigeria’s 4th Republic elections. Tinubu is the president of Nigeria today because around 8 million Nigerians voted for him in a country of over 220 million, and over 100 million eligible voters. Tinubu won the election with around 35-40 percent of the votes cast while Atiku, Obi and Kwankwanso shared the other 60%. If there had been a coalition between these 3 against Tinubu, they would have won.
Some people still believe the election was rigged against Obi. I believe it was possible, but I didn’t choose to follow that line of analysis. What actually happened was a conversation between two variables. Education and Tribe. Obi had appealed to the minds of all educated Nigerians, and the majority of all educated Nigerians and the majority of Southerners had voted for him. And anyone who has experienced elections in Nigeria knows clearly that: 1. We have more uneducated people than educated people (don’t get it twisted). Secondly, the uneducated people vote more than the educated people. Education in this context is operationalised as those who have a university degree and are critical in mind and thought and are devoid of any misguiding sentiment in the selection of their most credible and worthy candidate for the job. Tinubu appealed to the uneducated demography of the Nigerian society, the ruling party’s competitive advantage as well as Westerners and the Yoruba Ronu flag. Atiku, on the other hand, leveraged more on a tribal card as a Northern candidate and the almost decrepit structure of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). While Obi was winning in the cities and university communities where there is a high concentration of educated citizens, Tinubu was winning in the countryside with more uneducated majorities.
In all of these, it is glaring that the destiny of current-day Nigeria was largely shaped by uneducated voters, and this brings us to a big question: since the majority of the Nigerian populace are uneducated voters, what will be the future of the next election? Will the uneducated voters win again? What should we do? Is lack of education enough reason to deny a man his universal adult suffrage? It is in view of answering these questions that I remembered the modest proposal of John Stuart Mill for voting.
A proposal for voting by John Stuart Mill favours universal suffrage; however, he proposed a system of plural voting where some individuals will get more votes than others. And it all depends on education. He proposed that unskilled labourers should get 1 vote, skilled, 2 votes, their supervisors 3 votes, higher skilled workers like manufacturers should have 4, learning professions 5 or 6 and those with university degrees should have the most. And if for some reason, your occupation does not show your learning, there should be an opportunity to show your knowledge before you get the 5-point voting. Most votes for the well-educated.
Do you think John Stuart Mill cracked a code that can help us get the right people into power, especially in a nation like Nigeria struggling to get it right? A careful sleuthing into this proposal has created a divide among many scholars and individuals. Generally, many well-educated people support Mill’s proposal, but on the other hand, some scholars and individuals negate the proposal that lack of proper education does not deny a man’s decision-making ability. Education might correlate with fine-tuning decision-making process for the achievement of stronger goals and objectives, but not a strong reason to deny anyone the right to vote. And in the matter of who will lead a nation, every adult should have the right to decide.
However, looking at the context of Nigeria where many people do not even know how to differentiate party symbols from one another and get to vote according to the dictate of a man standing in a corner telling them to vote for the symbol of, let’s say, an umbrella, and get 20k. Do you think we can adopt Mill’s proposal?