Busuyi Mekusi

Had it not been for the prescriptive norm of succinctness in titling, I would have preferred ‘Beleaguered Family, Tattered Umbrella and Blunt Broom’ in today’s reflection. As pockets, but serious, of insecurity cast huge clouds remotely around the forthcoming general elections in Nigeria and Mahmood, like Emefiele, becoming politically exposed, political gladiators have sustained their hankering for votes from electorate by visiting major cities/state capitals to de-market opponents and assert their confidence to win. Like I mentioned before now, verbal tirades against opponents have dominated the campaigns of the two major parties, APC and PDP, with supposed ‘hired crowd’ constituting the audience to candidates who majorly speak, generally and not specifically, above the heads of the people.

The LP third force candidate, Obi, has not been spared by Tinubu, the APC candidate, apparently because of the potential threats he poses to his winning the constitutionally-required states on the first ballot. Obi has enjoyed tremendous goodwill from the majority of disenchanted youths that seek a replacement of what they consider as the old unbeneficial order. Rabiu Kwankwaso, the candidate of the NNPP, was initially categorised with the other fifteen political parties fielding presidential candidates until some allies and commentators configured him as a dark horse that could use Kano and some states in the northwest to cause an upset. His invitation to Chatham House, just like the three other candidates, seemed to prove that the 2023 race is not a three-horse race, after all.

Nigeria political atmosphere remains in the grip of traditional old order that have leveraged on privileging aristocratic positioning to strangulate the younger ones. Fledging politicians could only feather their nests through godfatherism. The masses would not support ambitious ones among them, but would only complain about the status quo and get induced to help sustain their oppression, evidently in love with their oppressors.

Democratic opportunities, or what are called dividends of democracy, have been reduced to tokenism and personalisation of common good. Angry electorate are too hungry to act, but systematically willed to stomach infrastructure of vote buying, that is usually the winning streak for some Nigerian politicians. Ayo Fayose has been unusually quiet, as the detractors of Wike’s G-5 governors are desperately committed to the demystification of the latter’s deification.

The roof-top lamentations of the PMB government about crude oil thefts is a pointer to failure, as criminal billionaires in dollars are as audacious as kidnappers who now detain families of their victims that visit them for ransom payment. Who would gainsay the fact that Nigeria is a miracle centre? Political disaggregation, economic disempowerment and social dislocation in Nigeria are some characterisations that peculiarly configure the country as a queer third-world. These pervasive politico-economic and psycho-social challenges of Nigerians are largely responsible for the types of logos adopted by political parties for the purpose of identification and structuration for political engagements. This is more so as every human society responds to the ideals of signification in semiotics.

Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce’s efforts in interrogating the place of the signifier and the signified have opened our minds to the simple logic of assigning symbols in human communications. This is as every linguistic ordering relies absolutely on using an object or something to stand for another thing, to which there is usually no direct connection.

The arbitrariness between an object and what it stands for typifies the revocability of such engineering. It is similarly noteworthy that the society plays a major role in assigning meanings to symbols. Symbols also help to avoid circumlocution as they fire people’s imaginary and convoke a pictorial representation of the meaning that is being produced through the use of a particular symbol. The seven symbols named in semiotics are; pictogram, ideogram, icon, rebus, phonogram, typogram and logo.

Political party symbols are as important as the candidates being presented in any election in Nigeria. This is because while the logos, pictures and names of candidates usually feature in banners for campaigns, it is only logos that are listed on the ballot papers, against which thumb-printing is done by voters. The intricacy inherent in the logo of the party and the candidate attached to it for a particular election in the past contributed to attendant ambivalence in litigation and legal propositions. For now, the logos of four political parties participating in the imminent presidential election, APC, PDP, LP and NNPP, shall be examined to unpack the circumstances that led to their adoption, and the messages they portend for the parties and Nigerians, given present experiences and that of the recent past.

The symbol of the family used by the Labour Party (LP) is indicative of the proletariat outlook of the party, and a promised commitment to every member of the family; father, mother and children. Even though the number of children is limited to the average elite western-style, each household is called upon to own the party and support it. Obi’s representation of the face of the party, and the majority support allegedly drawn from youths as we approach the 2023 election, may not fit into the pigeonhole hitherto established for it. The spur of the moment that birthed the new movement in the party is considered too weak to sustain the tempo to the end, and deliver a win to the candidate. The party remains a formidable force, nonetheless! 

Realistically, the family symbolised in the LP is presently embattled and embittered, with; the stories of 3 trillion naira subsidy payment on fuel for six months by the government, while citizens still buy at deregulated prices; the issue of 20 million out of school children; embarrassing index of 133 million multidimensionally poor Nigerians; frightening unemployment; insecurity; poor healthcare amidst medical tourism of the political class; etc.

The PDP umbrella is supposed to shield people from atrocious weather, with the slogan of room enough for all. The party was established as a national platform by gladiators with long hands to shake across the Niger, and had the ambition to rule for 60 years.

The party was tattered by a defeat after 16 years on the saddle, due to internal implosion that was caused by regional interest, personal agenda and the much celebrated corrupt and ineptitude of the Jonathan’s administration. The ongoing attempt by Atiku to mend and parade the umbrella is undermined by old stocks like Wike that refuse to knit with migrating members who once jumped out of the party to enhance their fortunes in the APC.

The ruling APC came to power as an amalgam, peopled by strange bed fellows signified in some hands holding the broom, with boisterous skillful propagandas and systematic manoeuvrings. The symbolism of the sweeping propensity of the broom aligned with the party’s change mantra, and swept off an incumbent. Illustrative of long usage exemplified by the almost eight years of PMB’s government, the soft broom could not conveniently clean corruption, sweep away poverty, and got blunted by insecurity that was said to be degraded but with upgraded velocity. No doubt, the broom is since blunt and requires a strong hand to unearth stubborn stains, scoop dry droppings and scrub for hygiene. Undoubtedly, the sticky attachments on the blunt broom are inhibitive, and would undermine the desired result, if left untrimmed and without recalibration.

NNPP that was an old horse reawakened by the politically sagacious Kwankwasiyya maestro has as its logo a basket filled with fruits and cash crops, that are enliven on the sides by leafy portraits. While it symbolises agrarian commitment, the candidate, Kwankwaso, is reputable for his talakawa politics, with the superb performances that defined his two-term tenure as governor of Kano State.

The twin-challenges of insecurity and flooding confronting farming in Nigeria may have been responsible for the food inflation in the country and the attendant poverty. This is not to mention the division created between the north and the south by marauding herders that wilfully destroy farms and maim farmers in most southern states. The needless profiling of Nigerians of Fulani extraction and the grandstanding posturing of Miyetti Allah did not just raise political dusts but strained nerves. One wonders, though, if good leadership should be sacrificed on the altar of ethnic jingoism!

Nigerians may not be very schooled and sophisticated to interpret the validity and potency of symbols in logos of political parties, but the logos speak to the material realities in the countries. Apart from the logos of political parties that are socio-culturally abstract and evasive, most logos of the eighteen political parties, both the serious ones and pretenders, presenting presidential candidates are instructive and forward-looking in the project of a new Nigeria.

By and large, as Nigerians go to the polls, they should be reminded of the import of semiotic significations suggesting that families are embattled; tattered umbrella continues dangerously with its leaks; as the blunt broom remains ineffective unless handled and shoved vigorously by strong hands. If not for personal aggrandisement and the many attractions in political offices, democracy should be about the aggregation of many views for collective good.