Crowd for hire: 2023 campaign rallies as a metaphor
...He had already being paid upfront, no cause for alarm. By Dakuku Peterside THEATRICS for winning voters’ hearts and minds are all around us. The perceptual game of showing strength in the number of supporters is an age-old effective game plan for the parties, and it is one strategy that cuts across all parties. All political parties are outdoing themselves in winning the popularity contests typified by pulling a crowd with the most outrageous noises and boisterous displays in rallies on the streets, roads, stadiums, and other venues that can contain crowds. If pulling crowds is the determinant of election outcomes, the 2023 general elections would have been won and lost. Granted, politics all over the world feed on numbers—crowds. Nigeria is no exception, and with what we have seen so far in the 2023 electoral campaigns, Nigerian politicians are taking this to another level. Nigerian politics is fueled by a slew of factors, the most important of which is money. This issue is the dif...