Why poor Nigerians didn't bother to vote

By Brendan Walsh
4 red be Better Off Without Religion."
Well, maybe. What do you think? Do you care all that much? A few years ago a poster advertising a public debate on the issue might have drawn a dozen or so beadles to a school refectory. When Richard Dawkins was slated to propose this motion a few weeks ago the demand for tickets was so great the organisers had to switch the venue to the enormous Central Methodist Hall in Westminster to accommodate the crowds.
When I arrived early to get a decent seat there was already a long queue stretching down Victoria Street. I chatted to the editor of the New Humanist, who was handing out free copies of his magaZme (tagline: "promoting humanism and rational inquiry and opposing religious dogma, irrationalism and bunkum"). I confessed that I was in the mumbojumbo business myself. We chatted happily, co-conspirators equally pleased to see God and religion back on the public agenda.
Inside, Dawkins told the story of a university lecturer in the United States explaining the theory of evolution to a class of undergraduates. "All the students sat with their arms folded," he explained. In their essays the students went through the motions of describing how species evolve by natural selection, but in fact they didn't believe it for a moment. They'd had creationism fed to them in church by fundamentalist preachers, and their minds were quite closed to scientific argument. Later in the debate, while Julia Neuberger chipped in cautiously in defence of the overall benefits to the human story of religious ideas, Christopher Hitchens spluttered and heckled, and Dawkins leaned back imperiously in his chair, his arms neatly folded across his chest.
There's plenty of Very Bad Religion around that we'd all be much better off without. But we draw up the battle lines in the new War of Religion in the wrong place. The division is not between sacred and secular or between people who believe in divine providence and people who believe in evolution. These are mythical oppositions. The re-al divide is between looking and listening with our eyes and ears open to the wonder and strangeness of things, and sitting with our BM1S folded and our minds made up. And we see these two different temperaments inside and outside both church and the laboratory. Afew days later I fly to Lagos, Nigeria. No one is able to hazard a precise figure but there are going on 20 million people squeezed improbably into this mega-city of stupendous clamour, hysteria, patience, menace, invention and theatricality. I attend a wedding in the scruffy but modestly prosperous suburb of Surulere. Nothing is more important here than weddings, funerals and other events and ceremonies. Their planning and preparation comprise a major proportion of most ordinary people's energy and resources. The street in front of the bride's house is closed off at both ends, the holes in the road filled in and a carpet laid over it, and a marquee set up. Women bring plates of jollof rice and chicken from the house to the guests. passing over a narrow concrete walkway that crosses the open drain running along the length of the street. There is a smell of diesel fuel from the hired generator. The electricity supply in Nigeria has reduced to a elk trickle. On a very good day, a family 'night have power and light for a couple of hours. The groom's sister arrives direct from hospital in a wheelchair, determined to enjoy the fun in spite of still recovering from gunshot wounds. There has been an increase in raids on bars and nightclubs in recent weeks, and she had been caught in crossfire between security guards and armed robbers in the restaurant where she was having dinner.
The elections to decide the governors of Nigeria's 36 states were held on April 14, and the election to decide the new President was last Saturday, April 21. I wandered round polling stations in Lkoyi, the nearest thing in Lagos to Hampstead or St John's Wood. The agents of competing parties swapped good-natured banter, and voters exchanged pleasantries with the police and election officials. Elsewhere, things were less convivial. Around the country, dozens were killed. Despite the widespread fraud, bribery, vote-rigging and violence, which have led to some oppo.sition politicians to demand a re-run, voters may see one civilian president being replaced by another civilian president for the first time since Nigeria won its independence from Britain in 1960.
Even if the transition is completed smoothly, there is no reason to imagine that the new administration will be markedly less venal and inept than the departing one. The switch from military to civilian rule eight years ago has led to what bankers and foreign investors call "imprOved economic indicators", though this doesn't cut much ice with most residents of Surulere, who only have light for a few hours a week. I meet several people who had not registered to vote, shrugging their shoulders and saying that the results have been decided in advance so why bother?
But the Church urged the faithful to participate in what is a patchy but determinedly emerging democratic process. One bishop was reported as saying that in spite of the inevitable attempts to rig the elections Catholics should register to vote on pain of excommunication. It is, he insisted, "your civic responsibility and a sacred duty".