By Isaac Asabor
When Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, a Russian and former Soviet politician, who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and also as chairman of the country’s Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964, opined that “Politicians are the same all over, they promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers”, one may not be wrong to conjecture that he might have had the Nigerian politicians in mind as they are wont to make bogus promises to the electorates ahead of an election without bothering to fulfill such promises when elected into offices.
In fact, politicians have from one political dispensation to the other resorted to making unachievable promises that can be likened to turning deserts to water-logged landscapes when elected into political offices to represent their constituents; either as members in the executive, judiciary or legislative arm of the government from positions that unarguably give them the power and authority to fundamentally affect the welfare of citizens in a democracy.
In fact, in emerging economies, a pro-social policy may be held up by bureaucratic inefficiency, by the strategic conduct of elected or non-elected office holders, or by other institutional hurdles. In such settings, citizen monitoring of politician promises and behavior (checks and balances) is made harder by the lack of information about what politicians and others are up to: even if a citizen knows what a representative has promised, it is difficult to ascertain whether a politician’s actions or an institutional weakness is to blame if a pro-social policy fails. Uncertainty about the true cause, with a hard-to mitigate asymmetric information challenge at its core, will therefore often prevail.
Ordinarily, such a dilemma in a hard-to-govern environment is to introduce an incentive mechanism that seeks to align the interests of the politician and the electorate. In emerging economies, public purse constraints make such standard, and often costly, incentive schemes much less attractive. Viable alternatives should therefore be considered.
To judge by headlines in the media in recent months, Nigerian politicians might seem to be on yet a vicious cycle of promises that are from the onset made to be broken, and which are rhetorically sold to the electorates through their smooth-tongued supporters.
However, in consideration of the backward situation in virtually every sector of the economy, Nigeria is at the moment, particularly when seen from the perspective of the parlous economy, porous state of the security landscape and unprecedented perpetration of corruption, it is important for politicians to endeavor to keep promises made during election campaigns. They should have it at the back of their minds this time around that failure to do so can breed voter disillusionment with politics. Not only that, it will be democratically dubious as many voters are looking forward to cast their votes at the general elections, come next year, 2023, with these promises in mind, so it would not be an overstatement to regard breaking promises made during electioneering as a betrayal of voters’ trust.
According to applied researchers in the field of marketing psychology, just the way consumers tend to be angrier when a product fails than happy when it lives up to expectations, the electorates tend to be angrier when promises made by politicians are broken. Further, when products are deemed to be poor, there is the tendency for the consumers to generalize their collective anger to other similar products. Little wonder the electorates are wont to distrust any politician; even when such politicians is trustworthy, and meant well for the people.
In fact, it is obvious that politicians more often than not have trouble fulfilling their ambitious campaign promises when faced with the reality of leadership, once in office. Against the foregoing backdrop, one cannot but ask, does it mean “Candidates are oblivious of all potential problems and limitations to the promises they make until they are elected?” Far from it as many are of the opinion that politicians and some of their fervent supporters are scammers, particularly as politics in this part of the world is seen as goldmine.
Further, both economic and political conditions can change rapidly over the course of a politician’s term in office. As the circumstances within which politicians made promises evolve, those promises can make less and less sense. In these cases, it is reasonable to think a politician would not keep all election promises made. In short, politicians should do everything possible to keep their campaign promises, but only if it is in the public interest to do so.
Paradoxically, politicians may distrustfully break promises, but go ahead to steal public funds for their own benefit, to the extent of amassing wealth for the benefits of virtually every member of their immediate and extended families to the detriment of the people when doing so is clearly not in the public interest.
To my view, politicians should refrain from making mistakes made in present and past political dispensations. They should have it at the back of their mind that political leadership is about checking off promises made during the campaigns. In the same vein, they should equally have it at the back of their minds that the electorates are today smart enough than yesterday to tell the difference between an aspirant who is making promises for the sake of his electoral chances, and an aspirant who genuinely seeks power to better the lot of the people. To aptly put it, aspirants should refrain from promising to build bridges where there are no rivers.
