Weekend Box: Nigerian elections, Dahl controversy & more
Welcome to the Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
NEW NIGERIA?
Tomorrow, voters in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, will cast their ballots to elect lawmakers and the president. Nigeria’s electoral history is chequered, marred by irregularities and abuse of power, but there is an overriding sense of optimism this time around that this could be the most free and fair election yet. So, what makes this election different? Past presidents have typically emerged from one of the two dominant parties: the All-Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). However, after just a few months of campaigning, Peter Obi from the Labour party – a relatively minor opposition party - is electrifying Nigeria’s young and disillusioned voter base. Some 40 per cent of 93m registered voters in Nigeria are below 35 and their hunger for change is driving a democratic awakening.
Over the past few years, the country has shrunk from its stabilising, influential position in the region as it grapples with corruption, violence, low life expectancy and withering economic prospects. Nigerians are poorer today than they were ten years ago and Obi, who is the first credible “third-force” candidate since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, represents a growing frustration with the political system. His army of young supporters believes that under his presidency a new Nigeria is possible. This has rattled the election’s main frontrunners: Bola Tinubu from the APC and Atiku Abubakar from the PDP who to many, present more of the same. Although he has never been convicted of any crime, the origin of Tinbu’s huge wealth is a mystery and Atiku similarly has a long trail of corruption allegations. Comparatively, Obi, who is the youngest candidate, has a relatively clean bill of health - a rarity among Nigeria’s political class.
However, some say that Obi’s strong polling figures, which typically target internet-savvy, literate sections of the population, should be taken with a pinch of salt and his lack of resources and political base could be his downfall. Nevertheless, tomorrow will be close. It will be a test for the candidates and for democracy, in a continent where free and fair electoral process continues to be under attack.
TECHNOCRATIC PANIC
Two stories this week illustrated how technocratic proposals for improving our lives need convincing advocates and may provoke storms of conspiracy-fuelled fury. Firstly, former political rivals Sir Tony Blair and Lord (William) Hague of Richmond joined forces to call for a radical technological revolution in governance, based on everyone in Britain being assigned a digital ID. This revives the thinking behind the Identity Cards Act, passed by Blair’s government in 2006, but repealed by Theresa May’s government soon after. Meanwhile, the proposed adoption in Oxford of the ‘15-minute city’ concept of localised urban planning prompted demonstrations against ‘green tyranny’ by the anti-vax fringe.
Blair and Hague’s smartphone-based digital ID would incorporate the user’s passport, driving licence, tax records, qualifications and right to work, with the aim of transforming access to public services. While acknowledging that such ideas have been contentious on civil liberty grounds, they argue that we already live in an “entirely digital age” in how we access personalised private sector services, so we should access public services in the same way.
Post-pandemic and in conditions where better-targeted government benefits and services are needed by many, their case is perhaps more convincing – an absence of integrated personal data has become a major delivery challenge. No political party has yet floated digital ID, however, a poll by JL Partners in 2021 found that 55 per cent of the public supported adopting a form of digital ID verification, while only 28 per cent were opposed.
Yet our second story underlines the sensitivity of such innovation when for some the spectre of the ‘Great Reset’ looms. French academic Carlos Moreno’s idea of the ‘15-minute city’ has innocuous origins: an attempt at urban planning to deliver local communities where everything we need is walkable and traffic jams are consigned to the past. Yet seven years on, the idea has become proof for some that Covid lockdowns have paved the way for ‘climate lockdowns’. Oxfordshire county council’s plans followed experimentation with ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods’ and do have decarbonisation in mind, but it takes a conspiratorial leap to see them as a plot to lock us down into submission.
Nonetheless, politicians, governments and policy bodies must choose their framing and terminology wisely when proposing new ways of living.
Photo Credit: Rawpixel
TOMATOES CANNED
You might have noticed a distressing lack of tomatoes during a recent supermarket trip. A sudden shortage has forced some of the UK’s leading supermarkets to announce they would have to limit the sale of tomatoes, along with certain other fresh vegetables.
We have become so accustomed to having foodstuffs from all corners of the earth waiting for us in shops that when an item – particularly a staple – is unavailable, even temporarily, the shock is indeed newsworthy. (Who can forget the great Covid-induced flour and pasta dearth of 2020?)
The British consume some 500,000 tonnes of tomatoes each year, 80% of which are imported, leaving the UK vulnerable to shocks in the supply chain. This week’s shortage has been triggered by a cold snap in Spain and north Africa, where many of the tomatoes we eat during winter come from.
However, as the Sky News Economics Editor Ed Conway explained, a lack of tomatoes and price inflation has been on the cards since the arrival of the energy crisis last year. Tomatoes are grown during the winter in northern Europe, including the UK, within vast greenhouses. The recipe for these rapidly growing tomatoes is heat, CO2 and fertiliser. All three of these have become far more expensive since natural gas prices spiked. This in turn has led to producers in the UK and the Netherlands opting not to bother growing tomato crops this year.
Thankfully, industry experts tell us the shortages won’t last for long. The UK growing season will kick in soon, and supermarkets will find other sources of supply fairly quickly. Yet it is a reminder, if only a small one, of the fragility of food production and why calls for greater self-sufficiency are getting louder.
BABY BUST
Amongst the headlines this week is the news that South Korea’s fertility rate is at an all-time low at 0.78%. Breaking its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate.
But should we be worried? It appears the tabloids want us to believe so, with the typical scare-mongering headlines. Some articles link the falling rate with the failure of the Seoul government to encourage couples to have more children. Others, like Hawon Jung in the New York Times, argue that the women of South Korea are made feel like ‘baby-making machines’, and the declining birth rate is a response to the discrimination and violence women face.
The 4.4% fall in babies being born since last year, for the third year in a row, is of great concern to President Yoon Suk-yeol. His newly elected conservative government has blamed feminism for the decline and responded by taking drastic measures such as removing “gender equality” from school textbooks. These sentiments have been echoed by the Japanese government who believe their own population decline is a sign of social dysfunction. Both countries have since adopted measures to incentivise birth rates, such as offering money for the first year of the child’s life.
However, is there an argument to be said that we should be celebrating this decline in fertility rates? This was the topic of discussion at yesterday’s UN’s Future of the World Global Policy Dialogue which focused on the Future of Population Growth. Alas, it is not as simple as it seems. Declines in fertility are not intrinsically linked to population decline and the climate crisis is moving more rapidly than the effects of a decreasing population. As such, it’s difficult to make a definitive judgement.
One thing is for sure, South Korea’s baby bust will not go away with incentives alone. In a country that still frowns on single parents, with IVF treatment not available to single women, there are greater societal issues at play that need to be addressed.
Photo Credit: solarisgirl
MOVING THE DI-AHL?
The question of how we approach canonical, classic, and even beloved works of art that express outdated or offensive attitudes is a complicated one. Yet, as Puffin has learned this week, the answer might not be so simple as ‘write them out of existence and hope for the best.’
Late last week news broke that the children’s publisher would issue new versions of Roald Dahl’s popular books, reviewed by sensitivity editors and edited to remove language deemed controversial or insensitive. Changes range from the word “fat” being scrubbed from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ in multiple places, to revisions along lines of gender (e.g. “Evil person” for “Evil woman” and “Flood of people” for “Flood of females” in ‘The Witches’), to references to the infamously imperialist Rudyard Kipling being written out of Matilda.
News of the revisions has incurred the ire of everyone from authors Philip Pullman and Salman Rushdie to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. While the changes have been widely decried as censorious, Simon Heffer of The Telegraph has gone so far as to call them nothing less than “George Orwell’s chilling prediction” of totalitarian censorship in ‘1984’ come true.
There is another way of looking at Puffin’s editorial decisions: an obvious business manoeuvre, following Netflix’s acquisition of the Roald Dahl Story Company which owns the copyright to his oeuvre. The mega-streamer would be none too pleased if the series they are currently developing based on Dahl’s writings were harmed by public scrutiny of unsavoury and offensive elements in his books. Whether the old adage that ‘all press is good press’ now pays off for them remains to be seen.
For those keen to grab the original, ‘uncensored’ Dahl before he’s off the shelves, The Telegraph have reported on “a six-volume Folio society set of Roald Dahl books…listed for £250” on eBay. By the time you read this, however, it may already be gone.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.
For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.