The day the President came to town

Yesterday saw President Goodluck Jonathan's 'Flag Off' (as they say here) of his election campaign in Kaduna. 


A few days ago, we inadvertently drove back through Lafia at the exact time that he was kickstarting his campaign there. As we made our way slowly through the busy streets, every billboard we saw bearing Jonathan's face had been splattered with heavy black paint. Later, we discovered that his cavalcade had been attacked with sticks and stones. So, figuring this event may bring trouble with it, we worked from home. Only to find that the ceremony was taking place in the football stadium, only a few hundred metres from our house. Throughout the day we heard helicopters coming and going, biplanes flying overhead with election campaign banners and load shouts and cheers from the speakers and their excitable audience. 


As we listened to the chants of 'P...D...P' (the name of the president's - and in fact the country's only real - political party), I began to feel uncomfortable. The repetitive and increasingly manic nature of these chants felt more like mass hysteria: it was politics, Jim, but not as we know it. I tried to remember prime ministerial speeches in the lead up to British elections, tried to imagine a situation in which s/he would be helicoptered into a sports stadium filled with screaming fans, spend a few minutes speaking to notes written on two sheets ripped from a jotter pad (no word of a lie), and then sit back for minutes on end whilst a senior member of the party chants in unison with the crowds "CON-SER-VA-TIVE!!!!".


It was pointed out to me, that while this was anathema in British politics, it wasn't a million miles from what I've seen of US politics. Certainly, I'd seen Barack Obama in large stadia in front of throngs of screaming supporters. Presumably he travels by helicopter at times. And have I seen US political gatherings where large numbers of party members chant the party name or some slogan or another? That sounds believable. (Although, as I think about it, I'm imagining Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell on the receiving end, which is no less scary than a Nigerian rally, if you ask me.)


So maybe I'm just not comfortable with that style of politics (British reserve, and all) and I would have felt just as uneasy if I'd been living in a mid-town Chicago apartment during Obama's campaign trail. Or maybe, the recent history in Nigeria (and, let's face it, the constant bad press it receives, both internally and internationally) has coloured my view and led me to assume that large groups of politically excitable Nigerians are inherently dangerous. Ultimately, I think it's simply that that level of crowd hysteria - which is being fomented not even by a rousing and moving speech, but by the mindless repetition of three letters - is something we should all be a little uneasy about.