Before he relinquished his status as placeholder on the Peter Obi Labour Party (LP) presidential ticket, Doyin Okupe, who is also substantively the Director-General of the Obi Presidential Campaign Organisation, derided and dismissed the anticipated alliance between Mr Obi, former Anambra governor, and the presidential candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso. The politically savvy Mr Kwankwaso was a two-term (comeback) governor of Kano State and former Defence minister. Dr Okupe suggested that the attempted alliance collapsed on the grounds of zoning and rotation. After eight years of a northerner as president, he argued, it was indefensible to contemplate another northerner as president, perhaps for another eight years. What the eminent physician omits to add is that his party’s presidential candidate is as implacable as Mr Kwankwaso. Both candidates are obsessed with becoming president.

Dr Okupe was, of course, talking theory when he suggested that rotation should trump any other consideration in determining who takes the presidential ticket. If an alliance was feasible between the LP and NNPP, Mr Obi wanted the presidential ticket for himself, and Mr Kwankwaso to serve as running mate. Theoretically, Dr OKupe was right. It is inconceivable, except you are a deluded member of the main opposition People Democratic Party (PDP), to suggest that it would be okay to give the ticket to a northern aspirant after eight years of Muhammadu Buhari in the presidency. But the PDP believes it is solid enough and inured to political adversities to dare the electorate. But their inurement notwithstanding, and as defeated Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike is showing by his intransigence, even the PDP is having a roiling time pacifying rebellion within its ranks over the disrespect for a zoning principle long associated with the PDP and advocated by its leading lights for decades.

So, in large measure, Dr OKupe is right to dismiss the short-lived and intense effort to merge tickets between NNPP and LP candidates. However, in politics, the logic of what is right or wrong, sensible or irrational, can take an ambitious politician only so far. Confronted by the political realism propounded by Mr Kwankwaso, if not the exigencies of geopolitical and population dynamics, zoning is, for small and fringe parties, transcended by ethnicity and religion. In suggesting that Mr Obi merge ticket and subsume himself to be running mate on the NNPP ticket, the former Kano governor minced no word in arguing that the northern electorate would be chary of voting for an Igbo candidate. They could tolerate an Igbo man on the ticket as running mate, as indeed they did in 1979, but they would not dare have him as the candidate.

Perhaps Mr Kwankwaso should have been more reticent in voicing out hidden realities that seem to promote political fractiousness, if not outright bigotry, but he was simply mirroring the current political conditions of the core North. The sanguinary politics of 1966 and its aftermaths are sadly not yet forgotten. The consequences of 1966 are constantly restated, recounted and reinforced down the years to this day. And those consequences are sometimes ventilated or reenacted in the existential struggle between assertive Igbo traders and adamant Hausa hosts, and between the fierce Catholicism of the Igbo and the militant Islamism of the average core northerner. These are divides the country’s leaders have been unable and perhaps unwilling to bridge. Until mutual suspicion is erased, and ethnic groups are educated about the enormous benefits of economic cooperation and social integration, the suspicions will remain, and inconsequential matters will continue to be amplified by little misunderstandings.

Mr Obi has finally got his running mate, a 46-year-old northerner, one-time senator representing Kaduna North, and founder of Baze University, Abuja, Datti Baba-Ahmed. It is hard to say whether the LP candidate seems sure of making significant impact in the 2023 presidential race, or whether he thinks his running mate will add significant value to the LP ticket. Whatever the case, he and his supporters are ecstatic about the credentials of the running mate, and even rapturous about the sole qualification of the candidate himself – his purported frugality. In some ways, the two gentlemen complement each other, and in fact accentuate the theoretical appeal of their candidacies; but whether they can transcend the intrinsic liability of their ticket and the self-limiting weakness of its ethnic and religious foundations remains to be seen.

Mr Kwankwaso will now have to forge ahead by himself; yet, even he must also succumb to the annoying limitations of his ticket, regardless of his running mate. Unlike Mr Obi whose social media denizens have popularised him beyond his ethnic identity, Mr Kwankwaso is not really known in the South. Yes, he has some name recognition, and of course southerners have heard the Kwankwasiyya hoopla, but beyond that, he might as well be the next-door pharmacist or social welfare worker.

Nigerians will now never know what chances a Kwankwaso-Obi ticket stood if an alliance had been cobbled to contest the 2023 presidential election. It is unlikely they would have gone far, in fact, to any appreciable distance. But since they are both heady and have gone their separate ways, what should have constituted their strengths – Kwankwaso’s adept politics, sometimes exaggerated of course, and Obi’s parsimonious but retrogressive management of state resources – are dissipated by their unmanageable ambitions. Overall, they have introduced some amusement into the 2023 race. If politics is entertainment, they will score very high. Unfortunately for both men, politics is a dead serious matter, demanding sacrifice, high concentration and lucubration.

Soludo, Odumeje and Anambra demolitions

ANAMBRA State governor Charles Soludo has been taking some awkward steps in politics lately. Though he did not win office on account of his political acumen, but on account of his potential to recast the state’s economy in the mould of Asian Tigers, he needs to begin developing political tact. A few of the steps he has taken so far give the impression his political weakness might overshadow his economic wizardry. At his inauguration, two vixens fought it out, thus diluting the pomp of his swearing-in ceremony. Then he compounded the matter by empanelling one of the tigresses. Now, his task force empowered to sanitise the chaotic layout of Onitsha went beyond their brief to openly and needlessly assault Prophet Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere, aka, Odumeje, of the Holy Ghost Intervention and Deliverance Ministry, Onitsha, whose church building was partially pulled down.

As the governor conceded, the problem was not the demolition, but how it was done. Said he: “Yesterday’s outing elicited emotions, not against the government’s decision, but against the imperfect and unprofessional manner in which one of the task force members discharged his lawful duty. This is deeply regrettable, and it will never happen again. I have directed that the task force personnel involved in the abuse of Prophet Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere (Odumeje) be treated in accordance with the public conduct rules that he consistently violated.” The governor may work hard to rebuild confidence in his administration over this needless and embarrassing assault, but surely he must understand that  a few more slips like this, whether directly by his office or indirectly by task forces and other government agents, could cost him dearly.

The Onitsha assault shows how badly Nigeria is encumbered with errant and malicious law enforcement agents who have lost all sense of decorum. In the age of social media, malfeasance does not go unreported. Since Prof Soludo has promised to treat the matter with all the sternness and transparency it demands, the public will expect that he will do so swiftly and unsparingly, hoping that such a brutal and uncivilised display should never occur again. A part of Odumeje’s church building may have been rightly demolished for planning violation, but it does not stop the governor from personally visiting the prophet, regardless of public opinion of the nature and doctrine of his church, and tendering an official apology over the assault. It is cal