By Steve Osuji
Just as we had in 2023, it’s a three-horse race once again. Nigeria is set for another general election with three major candidates on the ballot.
In Nigeria’s election history, (as it is in presidential elections around the world), it has always been two frontrunners. But in the last election, a certain Peter Obi crept into the ballot through the back door.
Using the instrumentality of a floundering Labour Party, he literally set Nigeria’s political landscape ablaze. Presidential elections have never been the same since then.
The 2027 election is by the corner and three, not two presidential wannabes are jostling for the top job yet again.
Peter Obi (NDC), Atiku Abubakar (ADC) and the incumbent, President Bola Tinubu of the ruling APC. But there are 16 others too. We forbid to call them spoilers and clowns!
OBI’S BLITZKRIEG
In 2023, Peter Obi wasn’t only the X-factor, he was widely acclaimed to have won the election before INEC brazenly ‘glitched’ it and awarded it to Tinubu. Election observers said so; decampees from the ruling party who were cohorts in the rigging crime, have been confessing in lachrymal mea culpa, how they stole in broad daylight, a poll Obi won by miles.
Today, the incumbent sags under the dead weight of an illegitimate mandate. A stolen mandate would often render leadership arduous and rudderless.
The incumbent’s response to Obi, the third force and the people’s choice was to seek to bar him from the ballot ab initio. Obi’s Labour Party was torn to shreds by the rampaging APC ruling house. But the stubborn gadfly yet again, managed to get on the arena, under the umbrella of a new, fledgling party, the National Democratic Congress.
Immediately Obi joined the NDC, it blossomed to become probably the biggest party in Nigeria overnight.
That’s the power of organic followership.
Apart from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and to a lesser extent, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, no other political leader in Nigeria’s history has managed to garner Obi’s power and momentum.
With a movement which grew by its own manure and named itself Obi-dients, they had insisted that it was Obi or nothing. They vowed never to settle for a second fiddle position. This drove Obi to decamp once again. He left the African Democratic Congress where the party was bent on denying him the ticket even though he has the mo and the magic.
As in 2023, Obi remains the issue today in the run-up to the 2027 election. Most remarkable about this candidate is that he seems to buck all electioneering trends. No elaborate campaign councils, no billboards, no radio and television commercials. Nothing of such stuff Obi has described as “criminal structures.”
Many state governments have made it very expensive and almost impossible to campaign in their domains.
Most have imposed outrageous fees for outdoor bills. Some dimwits have even insisted candidates must get written permissions from them first.
These undemocratic injunctions seem to target candidate Obi.
A near-bloody episode happened in Benue State on Tuesday when thugs who were apparently state-sponsored, physically blocked the highway and denied Obi access into Makurdi. It took Obi’s gracious nature to avert a fatal clash. He led his team back!
He has said he would campaign directly and not by proxy. He would reach out to Nigerians and not just by touching base but by truly feeling their pains. He has traversed about half the country already in the short period the campaign whistle was blown.
ATIKU’S BOMBSHELLS
The flag-bearer of the ADC has kicked off his campaign with a most enviable strategy that may have not only destabilised all opponents, but has the incumbent in panic mode.
He’ has focused on the major mistakes of the APC in the last three years.
Atiku started by jeering at the so-called fuel subsidy. He would tinker with it because Tinubu’s model has not only failed, it has left the populace prostrate.
He will give scholarships to Nigerian students and not bond them to sovereign loans. Meaning that he may disband NELFUND, the much bragged about, corruption-ridden National Education Loan Fund.
Atiku, the old political fox, has pursued Tinubu to the US to finally unravel his certificate and narcotics shenanigans.
This barrage of political firestorm has probably sent president Tinubu fleeing to catch his breath and rework his campaign strategies. Officially though, the president is on vacation in Europe for about three weeks. But people are asking, which serious politician would jet off to holiday abroad at the beginning of campaign in a major election cycle?
TINUBU’S DOODLE
Apart from the damaging effects of the political salvos from opponents, the APC’s campaign may have come unstuck when the long list of its campaign council members is found to be filled with rogues, embezzlers and bandits.
The deafening uproar that ensued caused the list to be hurriedly trashed. Three weeks later, APC has not been able to constitute a campaign team.
The president who is to lead the charge won’t be back till October when electioneering would have been halfway gone. What does that say? Perhaps that’s a show of confidence?
Even at that, the incumbent is a vastly damaged product. His first term so far has been an abysmal failure. With 60 million Nigerians heaped in the dunghills of poverty, Tinubu’s campaign is dead on arrival. He has nothing concrete to campaign with. Some wags have actually conjectured that he’s on the run!
JOKERS, SPOILERS, MASQUERADES AND CLOWNS
After the top three runners, the rest of the park falls into categories to be described as jokers, masquerades, spoilers and such.
Two stand out: Mr Donald Duke who aligned himself with the parochial Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).
If President Olusegun Obasanjo as he was in 2006 had picked Governor Donald Duke (as he was) as running mate to the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Duke would likely have the status of a former president right now instead of Goodluck Jonathan.
IS DUKE A PAID SPOILER?: As a result of the sterling pedigree of Duke as governor of Cross River state (1999 – 2007), many of us rooted for him at the material time, to run with Yar’Adua.
If not for the dynamics of geography in Nigeria, Duke would have been President of Nigeria already. That’s how enchanting a politician he is/was.
And this leads us to question? After 20 years of being at the cusp of glory why would Duke descend to the current inglorious state of playing spoiler?
Everyone who knows DD is wondering what infernal folly is driving him now. What the heck is he doing in PRP, they muse? Why PRP or all parties? Isn’t it more honourable to align forces with a team seeking to rescue Nigeria? Isn’t he troubled by the state of the nation today? Wouldn’t he he proud to be among the crowd that takes Nigeria out of the woods? What would he tell his grand children if Nigeria upends as a result of the current suicidal incompetence and exponential graft? All this doesn’t matter to him?
Perhaps he never had any nobility in him? Maybe overrated after all!?
But some observers have ventured that he’s not running for president, he’s a mere spoiler! He’s probably on retainership of sorts with Abuja.
That seems beyond reason but Nigeria’s politics is not a game for the rational.
Whatever the case may be, Duke’s glorious political life has been quenched at noon. What a pity.
WHAT’S GOV. SEYI UP TO? Seyi Makinde, the outgoing governor of Oyo State has moulded himself into an enigmatic politician after an impressive eight years in office.
He defied the ruling party and President Tinubu’s autocratic tendencies.
For instance, the day he announced his presidential interest coincided with the blitzing kidnap of school children in Oyo schools.
Yoruba say, the witch cried today and children suffer misfortune tomorrow. You need no calculator to do the maths.
This is why when Gov. Seyi called for an international audit of the Oyo kidnap saga, the ruling party apparatchiks were much distraught. It would seem as if Seyi spoke treason going by their responses.
Seyi Makinde’s candidacy can only be a dross to President Tinubu in Oyo State and the south west.
It is even feared that he may align with NDC or ADC at the last minute.
That would be a dagger to the heart of APC and a huge bolster to Seyi’s bona fides to statesmanship.
Should he align with a winning party, he would immediately become the most important politician in Yoruba land after the fall of Tinubu!
And lest we forget, like Obi and Kwankwaso, Makinde also boasts of some organic followership in Oyo State.
SOWORE THE CLOWN: One can’t help seeing the serial presidential contest of Omoyele Sowore as mere clowning around. This is probably the third time he’s running for president. Though Yele sounds smart on the face of it, but why this serial stupidity?
Why can’t he start from the National Assembly or governorship level at that?
Just because he was a student union leader doesn’t mean he can catapult himself to Aso Rock simply by contesting! Could he be suffering from a case of arrested development? Does he think he’s still on campus?
Well, let someone whisper to Sowore that he’s never going to be president of Nigeria even if he tries till the end of time. Unless he reworks his strategies and start from the lower rungs.
He also appears like an autocrat: how come he’s the only one in his party. Did he cannibalise others or he’s a lone ranger?
Maybe someday when he becomes a true democrat Nigerians can begin to take him seriously.
LIKE SOWORE LIKE ADEBAYO: Another perennial presidential candidate is Mr. Adewole Adebayo, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Adebayo is imbued with immense economic brilliance but he must have failed his political courses in school. SDP used to be a sizable party with men of stature. But Adebayo has reduced it to the size of his lean frame. Like Sowore, he’s the sole contender, the rooster among the chickens. No other name or face. That’s a red flag already!
THE REST OF THE JOKERS: THERE are 19 presidential contenders altogether. Beyond the top three, and the two spoilers, the remaining 14 may well be advised to go for mental health check up while there’s yet time.
Why would people with no name, nor face nor pedigree deign to seek to run a country? Why don’t they consider governorship or the legislature as stepping stones?
One wagers that these are busybodies and people with easy cash to burn. In every election circle, they only succeed in elongating the ballot paper and making the process more cumbersome for the voter. In the years ahead, we must find a way to discourage people like these from plaguing the system with utter folly.
LAST LINE: WHERE IN THE WORLD IS PRESIDENT TINUBU?
Yes, we have been informed he’s on vacation for some weeks. But this column doesn’t think a sitting president has the luxury of total privacy for weeks on end.
The presidency of a country bears a country’s sovereign authority. It’s like a monarch of yore reigning over a kingdom.
A President, like a king, should never go to another king’s domain to hibernate for weeks on end. It speaks ill about the state of his kingdom.
Today, most leaders create exotic vacation spots at home where they retreat to and unwind. Most presidents shun medical tourism in another country. Apart from the security risk, even minor national entities have upgraded their health systems to the point that high-emd facilities serve their leaders and create medical tourism in the process.
It’s unacceptable that a Nigerian president still travels to another president’s domain in search of rest, recreation and medical support in 2026.
For weeks our president is incommunicado!
That is perverse indeed.
