When a liquid is flammable, it doesn’t take a lot to start a fire with it, and this is what we should keep in mind as we consider how increasingly fiery the Nigerian presidential campaigns have been since the 2011 campaigns. In 2011, Muhammadu Buhari was the presidential candidate for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and had a cult following that rioted after his loss to Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and left more than 800 people dead with 10 members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) who were ad-hoc workers for the Independent National Electoral Commission deliberately targeted and murdered.
The Rise of Cults of Personality in Nigerian Politics
In 2015, Muhammadu Buhari became the presidential candidate for the APC, and instead of people being worried about the negative intensity that surrounded his previous campaign, even more people bought into it, and the term “Buharist” became, at least for a short time, a term of endearment that was seen as describing a Nigerian passionate about a new glorious Nigeria.
Was this based on a detailed body of governance principles and policy directions shown to be associated with success? Not at all. It was about the man.
Any person that expressed opposition or doubt was drowned in hostility and abuse, with some people going as far as writing to the employers of those who opposed the Buhari candidature, demanding that they be sacked for not wanting Nigeria to get better.
Buhari won. For the first few years of his administration, those who described themselves as Buharists simply chose their stance on policy directions based on what Buhari praised or criticised.
That campaign period was easily the most toxic in Nigerian history, and eight years later, the election campaign period preceding the exit of Buhari has been almost as toxic as the 2015 period. Some claim it was more toxic, but I think we will only be able to say so when a sufficient amount of time has passed and recency bias is no longer an issue.
“In governance and nation-building, the clearest evidence of the quality of your opinion is the extent to which people fight to live in the space governed according to the culture that you profess.”
Cheta Nwanze Tweet
America’s Culture Wars – A Useful Parallel?
Some have described the radicalisation of political camps as similar to the culture wars that have infected the political and media space in the US. Is this accurate? Well, America’s culture wars are defined that way because they are a contest between a liberal secular community and a conservative church-friendly community looking to have their principles and policy directions guide how the country is run.
A culture war is about a competition of principles and ideas. The US culture wars cover ideas covering everything from town planning to economic policy to healthcare to abortion, gay rights, and so much more. Regardless of how one might feel about either side, there is an effort made to think deeply about the policies associated with either side, and they experiment with their ideas in the territory they have control over, and judgments can be made on the quality (or lack thereof) of the outcomes.
Nigerians do not even do proof of concept. In governance and nation-building, the clearest evidence of the quality of your opinion is the extent to which people fight to live in the space governed according to the culture that you profess. Today we have a situation where half a million people move from California to Texas in response to the governance methods and quality of life. The Cold War between the US and the USSR was a Culture War with military elements, but it was ultimately won by the marked difference in the quality of life and economic development associated with the parties involved.
What we have increasingly had in Nigeria from 2015 to 2023 is not a culture war.
“Buharism, Trumpism, and other similar movements are cults of personality without actual cultures, that have tapped into a latent anger and bitterness built up in people over the years.”
Cheta Nwanze Tweet
Trumpism and Buharism: Cults of Personality without Substance
If you ask 100 passionate supporters from the sides involved in the hostility to identify the policy or cultural differences between their side and the group they are critical of; they are overwhelmingly likely to point to perceived character traits possessed by one or two individuals in either camp and be unable to show how their own culture or policy directions are distinct from that of their opponents. I daresay that deep inside, most Nigerians on all sides of Nigeria’s divide will likely identify more with the Right of the American divide, especially on social issues. No, what we have in Nigeria is not a culture war but more like Trumpism, which derived from the Culture Wars in America.
Buharism, Trumpism, and other similar movements are cults of personality without actual cultures, that have tapped into a latent anger and bitterness built up in people over the years.
A cult of personality develops around an outlandish or exaggerated devotion to a charismatic political, religious, or other leader by people who use them as their avatars that they project their feelings through. One of the reasons why cults of personality are so successful is how good they are at meeting social needs.
The members of these cults of personality create exaggerated perceptions of their leaders and use them as interfaces with their environment. They ascribe a saintly and almost deified quality to the person and use their devotion to this myth to do horrible things while giving the excuse that they are just trying to save society.
They then develop their lingo, emotional bonding rituals, and myths while maintaining a spate of hostile interactions with other groups to strengthen their sense of uniqueness and separation. Members commonly feel the need to make a public show of hostility to signal their commitment to the cause, which gives rise to an inclination to radical behaviours and othering.
That’s why you will notice that Trumpism and Buharism are primarily about the person, not a philosophy or a particular governance model. They have no deeply discussed or well-defined policy frameworks, and they are more embraced by those who desperately need a medium that stirs deep emotions and allows them to channel their latent anger and dissatisfaction.
Ideology 0 : 3 Cult of Personality
We are dealing with cults of personality, not culture wars, and this makes it even more dangerous because there is no option for people to test their ideas and let results show what is better. It is very difficult to identify a major bone of contention based on a significant variance in actual ideological positions. It is just people personalising things that shouldn’t be personalised and predictably ending up fighting each other.
Cheta Nwanze is the Lead Partner at SBMIntelligence, a Nigerian think-tank and heads the research desk. He has worked in numerous Information Technology and Media organisations, key among them are the Daily Times of Nigeria, where he was managing editor for a while, and the defunct 234NEXT.
Cheta is passionate about writing and has published numerous articles in Sunday Telegraph, Premium Times, the Cable, and Financial Nigeria, all in Nigeria. His opinion pieces have been published in the Africa Report, Africa Is A Country, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian (UK) and SuperSport (South Africa). He tweets regularly at @Chxta.