By Richard Ikiebe
Some politicians depend on massive turnout to win, while others thrive when citizens are too afraid to leave their homes to vote. The recent stream of videos from Benin City, of attacks on politicians and the vandalism of a party state secretariat, reprises a familiar script in Nigeria’s fear-based politics. They are harrowing reminders that this second logic is still an active strategy.
In political theory, “politics of fear” refers to the deliberate production and amplification of fear to secure power, shape opinion and justify the measures. In a landscape already saturated by insecurity and weak institutions, violence against segments of the electorate and opposition figures is a cheap and effective way to intimidate, exhaust and demobilise the opposition.
The goal is not to win the argument before the people. It scares enough people off the path to the polling booth so that a small group of loyalists remains. Those forced to abdicate their civic role reconsider and say, “politics no concern me.” Thus, indifference becomes the first layer.
The next layer is cautious observation. This involves citizens who still watch, talk, and complain. They “sidon look,” attentive but disengaged. They have not entirely abandoned the system they no longer believe in; fear hardens their posture into resignation.
Stories of past electoral violence, thuggery at polling units, ballot snatching, and clashes with security forces add to the mix. Stay away begins to appear quite reasonable and justifiable: nothing will change, they will rig it anyway, and you might get hurt trying. At that point, “sidon look” turns fear and private cynicism into self-preservation and public silence.
Political fear is largely manufactured, crafted and transmitted through headlines, rumour and threats. Around every election, gruesome violence stories multiply about “unknown gunmen,” and neighbourhoods that had been “taught a lesson.” The discreet advice: today is not the day to move around.
With thugs and “area boys” at polling centres, masked security officers with uncertain loyalties, every citizen walking towards the polling unit is forced to ask themselves: is my single vote worth this risk? And the absence of credible protection reinforces the feeling. For many, even the determined, the answer is no. The result is low, skewed turnout, a quiet victory for the architects of fear.
In Nigeria’s patron-client landscape, fear largely travels through intermediaries. Traditional rulers, market leaders, transport union bosses and community gatekeepers sit between political elites and ordinary citizens, wielding mostly economic authority. In a healthy democracy, they would mobilise people to participate freely and defend their rights.
In our reality, these intermediaries “advise” citizens on which candidates must win to “deliver” results, and which parties must not gain a foothold in the community. The pressure for them ranges from loss of access to removal from office, or worse – physical harm. Under such conditions, their instructions become menacing signals not to come out at all. Bloc voting and mass apathy are the unlikely twins, the result of organised fear.
Fear-based politics has a simple electoral logic. High turnout creates uncertainty and genuine possibilities for change; low, selective turnout protects those already in control. When urban youth, minorities, or disillusioned swing voters decide it is safer to stay home, the electorate is filtered.
Those who remain are loyalists, dependants in patronage networks, or people mobilised by local intermediaries who can guarantee safety in return for forced obedience. In that narrower Nigeria, a winner need not be broadly popular. Fear has already structured the electorate in their favour.
As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) releases the timetable for next year’s elections, fear-based politics risks hardening into the system’s default setting. Voters betrayed or endangered in 2015 and 2023 are already inclined to withdraw. Every election cycle that rewards intimidation and demobilisation tells politicians, this works, do more of it.
If this continues, elections will rest on the consent of a shrinking, skewed slice of the population, and state legitimacy will continue to erode steadily. Over time, a culture of learned helplessness takes root; the people assume that “they” will always rig elections, and the alternative begins to feel impossible. And democracy is devoid of popular choice.
Breaking this cycle requires justified outrage and a deliberate effort to change both the emotional climate of elections and the structures that make fear politically profitable. First, physical risks must be visibly reduced. Election security cannot be an afterthought or a mere show of force; it must credibly guarantee that voters can come and go unharmed, and that perpetrators and sponsors of violence face real consequences.
Second, intermediaries must be protected. Traditional rulers, religious leaders, and market associations will stay influential, while law and public scrutiny must limit how their authority is coerced or weaponised.
Third, fear narrative must shift through counterstrokes of courage, solidarity and efficacy. Civic and political education must speak directly to fear and “sidon look,” helping citizens recognise demobilisation tactics and see abstention as a costly choice, and not neutral self-protection.
If fear remains a most reliable political instrument, each election will become another expression of a paper-thin democracy that evaporates at the polling unit. The challenge is to move from rule by fear to rule by consent, from a politics defined by who stays away to one genuinely shaped by who dares to show up.
*Dr Richard Ikiebe is a Media and Management Consultant, Teacher and Chairman, Board of Businessday Newspaper*