The temptation to reduce the 2023 presidential campaigns to the general issues of insecurity, spluttering economy, infrastructural deficits, and anti-corruption war will be almost irresistible. How eloquently a candidate can be persuasive about dealing with them unencumbered by his background as well as connections with the current administration, will probably also be significant. Many Nigerians have counseled that the campaigns be limited to issues, just as the major issues are fairly well known. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will welcome issue-based campaigns, believing that given his experience and former executive position, he will do tremendously well in debates and field campaigns. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) has also advocated for issues in order to deflect attention from his deficient track record, despite his Anambra governorship experience. He also believes that his glibness, not to say his statistical fecundity, will stand him well on the soapbox and in debates. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will probably also welcome issue-driven campaigns, believing that his profundity and solid track record will place him head and shoulders above his opponents.
Of the three, Mr. Obi is perhaps the most eloquent and hypothetical, particularly considering his flurry of statistics, accurate or otherwise, appropriate or inappropriate. He is of course not an orator, and while he can sometimes summon the passion to place a resonant emphasis here and there, the flexibility that oratorical cadence and gravitas give are somehow lost on him. For many youths taken in by his style and audacity, he is a breath of fresh air badly needed in today’s politics. Driven and egged on by social media, his candidacy has also suddenly seemed realistic, convincing and plausible. He will successfully raise tons of money, and with the energy of youth at his disposal, propel himself to heights that would seem fictional years ago, even to him. Yes, he will love attention to be fixed on issues, but before the campaign runs its middle course, he will seem jaded, having exhausted his theoretical postulations.
Though indifferent to whatever emphasis anyone or political party might push forward, Alhaji Atiku will probably see issue-driven presidential campaign as a cakewalk. He is not as fluent and persuasive as Mr. Obi, but he can hold his own admirably, and he can argue his position disarmingly and gravely. One way or the other, his party, despite the Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike snafu, will eventually rally behind him. But the party has neither been reformed enough to add significant value to his campaign nor ideologically streamlined to the point of contextualising his arguments and giving them fillip. Like his party, Alhaji Atiku will also struggle to define himself and his politics in ways that Mr. Obi has defined himself and his politics within the ambit of youths. The PDP candidate exhausted himself in the 2019 presidential polls; but he will still raise enough money to impress, if not etch, his candidacy upon the minds and affections of the electorate.
Of the three candidates spoken about in this election cycle, Asiwaju Tinubu will have the challenge of couching his campaign in mesmerising words. He expresses himself well, helped in no small measure by his depth and vision, but it will be easily deciphered in soapbox campaigns and debates that he can’t hold the candle to the other two. Like the others, he will also see nothing wrong focusing on issues, for he is at home when it comes to that facility, but he is unlikely to dwell on it as resplendently as his other two opponents. The reason is that fortuitously, at least as far as his ongoing consultations with stakeholders and interviews show, he has begun to navigate towards his strongest point, that is, his capacity as a thinker and visionary. Perhaps his instincts tell him he outclasses his opponents in those areas, including his boldness and passion that are catalysed by a restless and ingenious spirit. To deflect his attention, however, his critics will try to demean his person in order to force him away from selling his biggest attribute.
In the end, issues will not play as significant a role as many analysts hope. It is not because issues are intrinsically wrong or inappropriate. It is simply because they have become intertwined with campaign promises, and every candidate will struggle to outdo his opponent in promising paradise. By experience, voters have become used to hearing those promises and seeing them unimplemented or even feasible. By a stroke of genius or happenstance, power supply is improving and may remain vaguely so through the elections. The economy will also likely sputter into life and maintain a steady streak of health. Insecurity is being knocked into a cocked hat, and progress in infrastructural development has been significant, even remarkable in certain areas, states and regions. The country has of course not become an Asian Tiger, but as long as significant improvements can be sustained into the presidential poll, the genie of issues will remain bottled up or vitiated.
The factors that will determine the outcome of the 2023 presidential poll will defy expectations. For a people buffeted by so many ills and privations, they will want to be convinced that the candidate to vote for possesses leadership skills, including the ability to forge consensuses and elicit trust in as many parts of the country as is politically feasible. As desirable as restructuring is, especially to the Southwest, Nigeria’s political system and democracy abjure it. Yet, the country is undergoing such structural stress that is capable of tearing the entire system apart. This is precisely where someone with a vision and the ability to drive a hard bargain and coax a consensus is needed. Mr. Obi is not that man, as entertaining as his candidacy may be on the social media. And Alhaji Atiku has flip-flopped on too many issues of late that it is hard to see him embodying that role.
Two, the candidates’ party will also be a factor. Of the three parties, the APC, which started out the year on the wrong foot, has today grown into the most cohesive and threatening. It can muster a campaign purse incomparable with those of the other two parties, including Mr. Obi’s crowdfunding razzmatazz. More importantly, the APC, despite its controversial record under the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, is still the most charismatic and organised. Mr. Obi runs on his own steam, not his party’s. And Alhaji Atiku may have introduced fault lines into his party on a scale that cannot be tethered by the gods. The PDP will need a desperate transfusion of purpose and sanctity to resemble anything like a winning machine. The APC is the incumbent party, and incumbency has its many advantages. Those advantages will likely be explored and exploited to the hilt. Labour Party may not need any explanation on the matter of power rotation, but it is hard to see the PDP justifying the retention of the presidency in the North after eight years of the Buhari administration. After a few false starts, the APC has seamlessly embraced rotation.
Three, and perhaps counterintuitively, the APC presents the country with the most secular presidential ticket this country has known since the advent of the Fourth Republic. The mixed Muslim-Christian ticket of the Buhari administration did not prevent the abhorrent and insidious sectarianism of the past seven years, evidencing the fact that the worldview of the president is what really matters. In the case of the APC, which is presenting Nigeria with two presidents for the price of one, it is offering a truly secular ticket which is probably all that the country now needs to navigate away from the crazy and overt religionisation of the presidency and the polity. But it remains to be seen just how adroitly the parties and the candidates can discover and exploit their advantages once the campaigns begin.
Ajaokuta Steel payments/penalties scandal
Just last month, the controversy over the Paris Club refund saga and the proposed deduction of $418m legal consultants’ fees from the refunds to the states reached a crescendo. While the consultants are desperate to get their money, the case is, however, stuck in court. But smack in the centre of the stalled payment is the Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) who argues that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) had no reason to resist the fees of the lawyers who saw their case through.
Another controversy, this time even messier, has broken out relating to the termination of the concession awarded by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2004 for the resuscitation of the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) in Ajaokuta and Itakpe. The concessionaire, Global Steel Holdings (GSH), citing breach of contract on the part of Nigeria, was prepared to claim over $5bn as damages. But after talks lasting many years, the undeserving company has finally been awarded $496m expected to be paid in less than three weeks.
Ignore the Paris Club refund saga for a moment. Though disheartening, it pales in significance to the GSH concession imbroglio. GSH is an Indian company that had been proved to lack the expertise to manage, let alone revive, the Ajaokuta Steel Complex. Somehow, it won the concession but failed woefully to revive the complex. On April 1, 2008, under the Umaru Yar’Adua administration, the concession, technically described as Share Purchase Agreement, was terminated just 55 days before it would have been due to be legally terminated, with Nigeria securing the added benefit of claiming about $26m in liquidated damages. Thereupon the GSH served notice of legally claim anything between $10bn to $14bn as damages. Eventually, it decided to claim $5.258bn, an amount that has now been reduced during alternative disputation resolution, instead of arbitration, to a full and final settlement of $496m.
But that is where the transparency ended. Every other thing, like the Paris Club refund, is enveloped in fog, in dismal and embarrassing opacity. On the surface, the alternative dispute resolution cannot be faulted, after the initial blunder of 2008, and the fact that had the matter gone into arbitration, the GSH would in all probability have won. By publishing the deal, the AGF office wants any Nigerian with objections to file claims. It is not clear whether there would be a groundswell against the deal, though there should be. Firstly, under the Jonathan administration, with threat of court action looming against the promoters of GSH, the Indian company waved its general claims, and agreed to hold on to Itakpe Iron Ore Mining Company while forfeiting Ajaokuta Steel. The report of a committee headed by the Solicitor-General of the Federation, Abdullahi Yola, recommending over $520m to GSH was also rejected. Indeed, reports suggested that the matter had been resolved at no financial cost to Nigeria. Secondly, the Buhari administration in 2016 okayed the new deal with GSH, and the then Mines and Steel minister Kayode Fayemi, in 2017, attested to the deal which he said did not encumber Nigeria with any costs. Some five years later, out of the blue, GSH threatened to go back to arbitration, thus prompting the new negotiations and a deal to pay the company $496m.
The recent developments have raised many questions. It would not be out of place to constitute a judicial panel to unearth the shenanigans that accompanied the contract and negotiations. One, the panel needs to get to the root of how a concession was in 2004 granted a company that had no expertise in the job it bidded for. Two, knowing the concession would fail, who instigated the termination of the concession just 55 days to its lawful and advantageous termination. Did they not peruse the contract papers competently? Three, the company engaged in asset stripping and tax evasion, among other crimes, why were its promoters not prosecuted? After all, what was involved was not private asset, but public, national asset which does not admit of forgiveness for criminal acts. Four, in 2016, the Buhari administration okayed the negotiated agreement carried out under the Jonathan administration. Why was it not implemented? The National Assembly and Mines and Steel minister announced that a deal had been reached at no financial costs to Nigeria. Why did GSH threaten to return to arbitration years after?
The $496m deal may have been done transparently, but all the issues that presaged it were anything but transparent. Many of the Nigerian officials connected with the affair were either incompetent or complicit, or both. The government has indicated it would pay the agreed sum in days, almost as if the country is being stampeded. The country has haggled over $23m Abacha loot repatriation and ASUU strike. But here are two insufferable cases of hundreds of millions of dollars being proposed to be paid to either legal consultants or a controversial and incompetent company. In total, about $900m is about to be frittered away in very questionable and disgraceful circumstances. The total sum would solve Nigeria’s education and roads problem in one fell swoop. The least the government owes Nigerians, after so much bungling and allegations of underhand dealings, is to subject the two payments to ‘integrity’ tests. The dealings are unlikely to pass muster.
Gorbachev will be missed
Most of the obituaries on the late Soviet Union leader and champion of Glasnost and Perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died two weeks ago at 91, have invariably veered towards both nostalgia for the ideological left and the transformation of the world from bipolar to unipolar. Because of the uncontrollable forces Mr Gorbachev set in motion, the Soviet Union unintendedly collapsed in 1991 after first transmuting from Soviet Russia (1917-1922) to Soviet Union (1922-1991). Elected into office in 1985 until he resigned in 1991, he supervised a reformation of the politics and economy of the Soviet Union that went horribly awry. His fascination with the France/US-type presidential system prompted him into adopting a liberalised political system, Glasnost (openness), that ultimately torpedoed communism in Eastern Europe. His economic reforms encapsulated in Perestroika was also not expertly managed, partly because it was not underpinned by a unique and homegrown economic model and ideology, like China implemented under Deng Xiaoping beginning from 1989.
The post-Gorbachev era was also sadly predicated on the wrong premises and built on inappropriate frameworks. The lack of immediate success, years of political hesitations, reduction in size of borders, collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and slow economic growth all created a vacuum the country’s national leaders yearned to fill with the nostalgic trappings of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin, current leader, exemplifies this error. Mr Gorbachev was unable to develop a unique political system to replace the old order, and Mr Putin has tried futilely to fill the vacuum with a malformed system modeled around himself. Whereas NATO is an agglomeration of developed and independent democracies, Mr Putin has attempted to compel former neighbouring Soviet Republics to willy-nilly sustain a subordinate association with Russia. In addition to promoting a few wars and land grabs, including the annexation of Crimea, the new policy has also inspired the Russo-Ukrainian war. Had Mr Gorbachev laid a solid foundation for Russian democracy, former Warsaw Pact countries would probably have seen a model to embrace and associate with, and Mr Putin would probably have had more success with his efforts to sustain a bipolar world and recreate his country’s nuanced suzerainty over the East as the US has nurtured over the West.
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