A Few weeks before the June 18 Ekiti State governorship poll, ex-governor Segun Oni of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was forging ahead so dangerously that panic began coursing through the rank and file of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The fear was no longer the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the state’s former ruling party, despite the competence and popularity of its candidate, Bisi Kolawole. But in the end, the APC candidate, Biodun Oyebanji took the election by a despairing margin that confounded and paralysed the two leading opposition candidates. With more than 187,000 votes, the APC candidate bested competition so convincingly and overwhelmingly that it made any hypothetical resort to legal redress, as Mr Oni is said to be unwisely contemplating, wasteful and meaningless.

The outcome was not always certain. The PDP had virtually been destroyed from the inside by the meddlesomeness and irascibility of former governor Ayo Fayose whose needless interferences in the party had triggered irreconcilable differences between leaders of the party, particularly over the shape and temper of the party’s governorship ticket, and ultimately between the candidate himself and the former governor. Two weeks before the election, and going by the intensification of the acrimony in the party, it was clear to pundits that the PDP would not even be the first runner-up. On its own, the SDP went into the poll united and formidable, but it was a borrowed vehicle taken and driven by a strange but competent driver pushed out of the PDP. Once again, Mr Oni suffered collateral damage from powerful politic undercurrents far stronger than he or his borrowed vehicle could withstand.

Mr Oyebanji’s victory was not inevitable, considering how Governor Kayode Fayemi also foisted him on the party by disingenuous means, after squeezing powerful opponents out of the impending show by provocative means. APC is the ruling party in the state, but it operated less and less with the cohesiveness expected of the party and the inspiring democratic principles many had expected of the governor. Few weeks before the poll, it in fact looked like a revolt against the ruling party was afoot in the state. However, Mr Oyebanji’s chances were reawakened and bolstered by the euphoria that followed ex-Lagos State governor and national leader of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential primary victory. Why, the Ekiti people asked themselves rhetorically, would the state go into opposition when their Southwest son stood a good chance of winning the presidency? Losing Ekiti to either the SDP or the PDP was, therefore, out of the question.

The poll went virtually seamlessly. The electoral umpire and the security agencies passed muster, and their efficiency encouraged Nigerians that if the people put their minds to it, they could pull off any miracle. However, vote-buying festooned the poll, not as an allegation, but as a fact. Whether the votes bought and sold were sufficient to alter the outcome of the poll is a different thing altogether. As repulsive as vote-buying was, there was no sufficient indication that the forces that finally shaped the election in the closing two or three weeks before the election would have produced a different outcome from what was witnessed on June 18. The poll was a three-horse race. All the three parties that competed for the people’s votes bought votes at different prices. So, Mr Oyebanji won fair and square, despite the vote-buying stain. Perhaps he outbid the others, considering that he packed a larger war chest and attracted new recruits and converts reinvigorated by the outcome of the APC presidential primary, but the defeated cannot cry over unfair tactics, seeing that they also used the same, albeit puny, tactics.

Ekiti is lucky. Any of the three leading candidates that contested the governorship poll is competent to rule not only that state, but any other state. Perhaps the versatile Mr Oni would have been more exemplary and savvier than his opponents. His major flaw, which takes nothing from the quality and temperament he had repeatedly shown over the years, is his politics, particularly the politics of migrating from one party to another at the drop of a hat. His last foray into the governorship race saw him emigrating to the PDP a second time, and finally berthing at the Social Democratic Party for the first and probably final time. He is a natural progressive who has the misfortune of having to work or associate with governors whose respect for democratic principles was and remains less than stellar. Dr Fayemi is also a natural progressive possessing the even more preternatural instinct of an autocrat. He handles power ruthlessly, and in higher office, will handle power with more severity than the constitution allows. Mr Fayose, surprisingly, is also a progressive, perhaps a little tamer and wittier than usual, which brings him much closer to pragmatism than progressivism, but he is also a consummate and irascible tyrant with benign, seductive hue.

Mr Oyebanji has won. He should be proud of his victory. He will deliver the state to the APC in next year’s presidential poll, and will bring the state beneficially close to the centre in Abuja should Asiwaju Tinubu win the election. Apart from that, he is believed to be a competent administrator, less consumed by realpolitik than his predecessor, and possesses the urge to leave a legacy of development and growth. All his three predecessors have not quite grabbed the imagination of the Ekiti people, nor left a political culture that deviates from the repugnant state and national mean. If the governor-elect manages to resist the offensive lure of power and the arrogance that weakens the vision of great leaders, he will probably affect the state far more than his predecessors and change the lives of his people, irrespective of political associations, for the better and perhaps forever. The choice is his; for fortunately for him, the state’s mind and character are not yet etched in granite.

Ekiti’s governorship election template will be replicated in Osun state next month. The campaigns will be boisterous, generally devoid of issues, but not too difficult to predict. Just as Ekiti found it enticing to toe the APC line, Osun, notwithstanding the grumpiness of ex-governor Rauf Aregbesola, will embrace the ruling party probably with a plurality that would also be incontestable. Osun PDP’s Ademola Adeleke, the sybaritic senator, generally forswears discussions of issues, and so Governor Gboyega Oyetola will be left alone in an open field where he will boringly wait to engage any bystander and wayfarer in a debate. Sadly too, there are no third parties in the state weighty enough to be deployed as a special-purpose vehicle to win the governorship poll. The electoral dynamic in Osun may be different from that of Ekiti, but the outcome is likely to be the same.

With Ekiti and Osun safe in the APC column, especially as the PDP at the national level is nonplussed by the manner both states have elected or will elect their governors, the leading opposition party will find the dynamic of the next presidential poll a little befuddling and irksome. Third parties such as Rabiu Kwnakwaso’s New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and Peter Obi’s Labour Party are said to be making waves on social media and in some circles, but Ekiti and Osun, like other states and past federal polls, suggest the indispensability of party structures to favourable electoral outcomes. Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche movement that helped him win the 2017 French presidential poll and rubbished the larger parties cannot be replicated in Nigeria. Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities are too politically ossified within their religious and cultural ecosystems to be moved by anything but party structures and alliances. Third parties may irritate the body politic and even exude great promises of nirvana, but in the end they will succumb to the obnoxious realities which Nigerian revolutionaries always dream of extirpating with their hypothetical and theoretical swords.

Supreme Court’s moment of angst

The 14 Supreme Court justices who wrote an unprecedented letter of protest to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and National Judicial Council (NJC) chairman, Tanko Muhammad, feared that should their protest, hitherto entertained behind closed doors, become public it would be catastrophic for the apex court. The unease in the Court broke out in March and witnessed a flurry of actions to either smother the complaints or ameliorate them. Nearly three months later, partly because of the lethargy shown in addressing the very germane issues bordering on judicial administration in Nigeria, the fracas broke into the open.

At full strength, the apex court should have 21 justices. But only 15 currently shoulder the humongous responsibility of dispensing justice at the highest level. Some 14 of them, none excluded, defying the customary ethnic and religious divisions that separate Nigerians, united in calling on the CJN to take urgent remedial measures to address the problems militating against the dispensation of justice at that highest judicial policy level. They called attention to issues relating to accommodation, vehicle allocation, electricity tariff, diesel supply, internet services to residences and chambers, and electricity supply to the apex court. The protesting justices fumed that the inability of the CJN to address and resolve these anomalies, some of them wrapped in shady practices and details, called into question his good faith and administrative acumen. More, and disturbingly, they call into question the bookkeeping practices of the Court, a euphemism for corruption.

In contrast to the lethargy he was accused of showing in the matter, the CJN has promptly responded to the allegations and also made it public. In a statement issued by his special assistant, Ahuraka Isah, the CJN cheekily gave the protesting justices a slap on the wrist. He lectured them on proper behaviour and the time-worn practice of being seen and not heard. Then, in what probably qualifies for obscurantism, he talked of the ineluctability of the apex court operating in the same national environment as other institutions. In other words, there can be no special treatment as advocated by the justices. The protesting justices had hinted that they would like to know the budget breakdown of the judiciary, wondering if there were diversions, presumably illegal. The CJN simply summed up that the apex court had no budgetary allocation to cater for some of the issues raised by the justices – after about two years, for instance, since new justices were appointed. Then he virtually dismissed the expectations of the protesting justices as ‘utopian’, and capped his response by excusing the federal government and budgetary authorities for abysmally failing to recognise the salience of the judicial arm.

But it was the CJN’s seeming readiness to acquiesce to the diminution of the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court, that the justices protested against. If the CJN realised this deficiency at all, if he realised the weight of the administrative burden he was expected to shoulder, if he understood the philosophical responsibility the dispensation of justice means, he did not appear interested in addressing them in his response. A lot is on his shoulders, and the problems referenced by the protesting justices might very well be beyond him; but the inexcusable and half-hearted defence he put up and disseminated to the public shows the chasm between his understanding of his role and the needs of the apex court and its justices. Can he be trusted to find a way to bridge that chasm? It is unlikely.

The justices gave him more than enough time both to respond to the issues raised and to resolve them; that he didn’t do anything is no fault of the complainants. The fault is entirely his. He took umbrage at the justices apparently leaking their protest letter; he should more appropriately introspect and identify where he had been remiss in his duties. The administration will likely help him to shoulder on, no matter what anybody says or does, and perhaps get him to embrace inclusive style of administration and to seek help from competent aides who will help him bridge his areas of weaknesses, particularly his insufficient appreciation of the philosophical pedestal upon which the apex court must indispensably perch, even luxuriate. It is safe to say that the CJN shows a shocking lack of apprehension; why he is not bowing out is even more shocking.

Predictably, stakeholders are already weighing in on the dispute, when they should be leaning on the CJN to bow out after all his fellow justices, without exception, had passed a vote of no confidence in him and called his style and ethics into question. The National Assembly and the Body of Benchers have waded in. So, too, has the Nigerian Bar Association. But they cannot pretend not to know that years of weakening and corrupting the judiciary have endangered the apex court. Legal experts have repeatedly warned of the politicisation and ethnicisation of the appointment of justices, not to say the crass and abysmal culture of promoting unworthy judges. Efforts in the past to sanitise the process of appointment had also become ensnared by filial and regional considerations. The weakening of the judiciary, especially as manifested by poor and incompetent adjudications, became nothing but mere precursors to belittling the courts and exposing them to ulterior and sinister political manipulations. It was not surprising that these manipulations have made the courts and the judiciary as a whole to be disrespected, poorly funded, and even harassed.

The federal government was eager in 2015 to ‘reform’ the judiciary, in fact as the Muhammadu Buhari administration argued, to make it more ethical, competent and responsive to the yearnings of the common man and everyone who approached the courts for justice. Alas, the so-called reform was nothing more than a cloak to robe the judiciary in the questionable and controversial image of the administration itself. Now, the courts, particularly the appellate courts, are skewed, nervous, unsure of themselves, and despised. It is uncertain that having spent years undermining the judiciary, the administration can now quickly wake up to remedy the problem. But if they can manage the altruism they have consistently claimed to champion, they must find a way to nudge Justice Tanko into responding more scrupulously and empathetically to the legitimate and reasonable demands of the protesting apex court justices. By implication, that response would also salve some of the wounds inflicted upon the entire judiciary by years of gross administrative incompetence. No one expects administration officials to say anything inspiring about the dispute in the apex court, for they are not capable of it; but they have an obligation to go beyond saying something to doing something. After all, the current rot in the judiciary is partly, if not largely, their making.

IN the end, the All Progressives Congress (APC) didn’t need any consensus to pick the party’s presidential candidate. Party chairman Abdullahi Adamu’s curt announcement days to the primary that the president had backed the senate president, Ahmad Lawan, collapsed as soon as it was made public. Nor did the president get his wish to be allowed to ‘pick’ his successor in the same way he allowed progressive governors to ‘promote’ their successors or secure a second term ticket. In fact, all the rigmarole of more than a year to evade honouring the gentlemen’s agreement to rotate the presidency between the North and the South, led to nought in the face of the combined and determined efforts by about a dozen northern governors and ex-Lagos governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu to salvage the trust being noisily dissipated by the party, its chairman, Aso Villa cabals, and perhaps the quizzical vacillations of the president. This formula, which has saved the ruling party from implosion, may be a template for the future.

It is pointless rehashing the machinations of the party against the eventual winner of the June 7-8 APC presidential primary, or the people and interests involved in the plots. Having won the primary by an embarrassing landslide of 1,271 votes, the party’s standard-bearer, Asiwaju Tinubu, has begun the process of healing the needless divides that had fouled trust within the party, turned the North against the South, and exposed the disorder sapping the vitality and vision of the Buhari administration. It is sufficient to mention that all the plots, ranging from drafting ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele, African Development Bank (AfDB) president Akinwunmi Adesina, and last-ditch weapon Sen Lawan, collapsed before the brilliant and dogged politicking of Asiwaju Tinubu and the circumspection, ethicism and pertinacity of a faction of northern governors probably inspired by Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State and Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State.

If credit for the peaceful and transparent outcome of the primary is given to the referenced northern governors, that is, discounting the staying power and chutzpah of Asiwaju Tinubu who dared the cabal and won, it is richly deserved. They may be opportunistic in fighting for a cause whose dividends they hope to cash in the years ahead, but they proved more resolute in standing for progressive politics, despite the intimidations of Aso Villa and the northern rabble. Their southern counterparts, particularly some south-western governors, proved not only less resolute but even far less strategic. Whereas the northern governors put their money where their mouths were, nearly returning overwhelming number of votes in favour of the eventual winner, the southern governors dissipated their votes, quibbled inordinately, and even proved shifty in at least one state.

As this column consistently maintained for two months or three, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo stood no chance at all. How and why he and his supporters failed to see the handwriting on the wall is a mystery. Yes, their presence on social media was unexampled, and the aspirant’s reliance on his eloquence overweening, but those gifts and tactics are wholly unsuited to the dynamics of party primaries. The elitist and snobbish south-western audience distrusted and disliked Asiwaju Tinubu for his earthy politics and the permanent grin on his face, preferring instead the inscrutable seriousness and intellectual gravity on Prof. Osinbajo’s face, but their assumptions were not only off-key, they were also too romantic and inapplicable to the political exigencies of Nigeria. They wanted a saint, as it were, even though they had little understanding of what that meant; but in the face of hard-boiled politics, as against their political fantasies, their expectations were truly jejune. On June 7 and 8, some 1,271 APC delegates, exploded their myths and rub their noses in the dirt. Those triumphant and iconoclastic delegates conceded only 235 votes to Prof Osinbajo, 316 to ex-Rivers governor Rotimi Amaechi, and 152 votes to party chairman Adamu’s consensus pick, Sen Lawan. The margins were humiliating; but much more, they represent something new in Nigerian politics.

By given Asiwaju Tinubu only 10 votes out of a possible 288 votes, the Southeast once again manifests a troubling disconnect with that new something. The dithering Southwest is more flexible, and will sooner or later recalibrate its politics to suit the exigencies of the moment. While the North will likely continue to show fortitude and imagination in its practice and understanding of politics in the years ahead, and the South-South dithers, the Southeast may inadvertently proceed in playing the outsider politics, not only in the APC as seen in this case, but also in its PDP redoubt. Changes are no doubt afoot. The North is proving more anticipatory, calculating and responsive, if not entirely savvy and realistic, in its politics than the South. The APC presidential primary was supposed to showcase the strength and savvy of the South, particularly the Southwest, but it was the North that stole everyone’s thunder. Now, it has seemed that the North gifted Asiwaju Tinubu the crown, and even the candidate’s own talent, brilliance, decades of networking, and years of altruistic support for many Nigerian politicians, individuals and worthy causes appeared to pale in comparison.

Until next week when the candidates announce their running mates, the battle for 2023 presidency will not be truly joined. The PDP has presented ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, an old acquaintance of the APC candidate, to carry its flag into that brutal contest. They have fought together, played together, bantered with each other, mourned together, and since 2014/15 duelled. One of the two will emerge triumphant. It is not clear whether their choice of running mates will play a significant role in the outcome, but their style, which is not too dissimilar, and their depth of knowledge and understanding will undoubtedly become huge factors in the coming plebiscite. Alhaji Atiku is uniting the PDP behind him, so, too, Asiwaju Tinubu. Both parties are likely to go to war united behind their banners. The APC, however, has more to lose, having in recent years produced more ethically challenged chief executives of government agencies. So, they will force themselves into unaccustomed unity behind their candidate. Luckily for the candidate, he won the primary by an emphatic and unquestionable margin, and the losers have no straw or even broken reed to clutch at. The PDP senior elite have been harried and derided by the APC for nearly eight years; they need fear no further fall. But even they will also be united behind their party’s banner and give a good account of themselves.

The most pressing task before the candidates is the choice of running mates. Neither candidate is in a position to boast or grin mischievously about the discomfort the other is facing. The APC candidate, being a southerner, will have to surmount the religious distemper viciously coursing through the land to pick a running mate that truly suits his political calculations. And the PDP candidate will have to reckon with the atrocious happenings in the Southeast, not to say with the somewhat controversial and unlikely options in the South-South, to pick someone who will add significant value to his ticket. Neither choice will be easy. Worse, both candidates, like all the other parties, are being stampeded to make that choice in just a week, unfortunately over the din of ethno-religious clamour in the North and South. During the APC primary, one of Asiwaju Tinubu’s opponents disseminated a story that the eventual winner had picked a Muslim running mate. The candidate scrambled to debunk the story. If he would pick a Muslim, it seemed, he would want to do so after the votes, not before.

Since this piece is essentially about the outcome of the APC primary, it is necessary to say a definitive word about who Asiwaju Tinubu’s running mate might be. That choice will be hugely controversial, but since his savvy is not in doubt, what is required next is for him to approach the issue with a lot of courage. For the APC to retain its frontrunner position and stand a good and sumptuous chance of winning and retaining the presidency, the candidate and his handlers must do their electoral arithmetic well and situate it within the context of regional cultures and politics. In the coming polls, and as things stand today, the party is expected to take the Northwest by a tremendous margin, the Northeast by a decent margin, the North Central by a slim margin, and the Southwest by a clean sweep. What stands, in a manner of speaking, in the way of this calculation, it is suggested wildly in many fora and on social and to some extent traditional media, is the APC candidate picking a Muslim running mate.

But there is hardly one potential Christian running mate in the three zones in the North capable of galvanising the kind of votes and margins sufficient for an APC victory. So, if he picks a Muslim running mate, there will be outcry in the religiously polarised, indeed Pentecostal, Southwest, and North Central. But months later that outcry will be mollified by other factors that favourably dispose the candidate to the two zones. There are strident voices in the North Central and Northeast rejecting and even criminalising the choice of Muslim running mate; but the candidate will calculate the opportunity cost of a Christian running mate being unable to galvanise the rich and undiscriminating vote of the Northwest and Northeast. The APC saw the statistical glimmers of these tendencies in the primary.  The Southwest will, for instance, have to decide, on account of Muslim running mate, whether they would be prepared to sacrifice and exchange their Southwest son for a north-easterner. And the North Central, which had always thrived regardless of the religion of whoever ruled the nation, would have to determine whether the Muslim running mate factor is strong enough to make them disregard their natural instinct to embrace and promote progressive leadership.

The APC candidate will take consolation in the fact that voters, to the extent of their enlightenment, are unlikely to limit their decisions to just the issue of running mate. They will probably see the issues surrounding the polls holistically. They will want to know who can better handle the existential conundrum the country has been pushed into by years of gross leadership incompetence. Whatever drawbacks the APC candidate will grapple with in selecting a running mate will be more than counterbalanced by his publicly acclaimed intuitive grasp of developmental issues, his well-known competence in discovering and managing next generation leaders, his deep and abiding belief in the rule of law and democratic practices, and his courage, candour, earthiness, visionary policies, and depth of knowledge. A section of the electorate will prefer to continue scoffing at both his background and records as governor as well as pillory his business models and practices, not to say his statements sometimes framed in inexact and even provocative terminologies, but his inner self-confidence and his sensible distrust of elitism should serve his argument well and drive his campaign. More than his opponent, nearly everyone knows him to be a shrewd accountant and auditor; this should frighten malfeasant public officers and endear him to those exasperated by decades of desperate filching of national resources.

Asiwaju Tinubu won the primary by a wide and unequivocal margin. This is just the beginning. He knows his PDP opponents are keeping their gunpowder dry. They will unleash a fusillade at the appropriate time, especially seeing how easily the Prof. Osinbajo netizen crowd bullied and overwhelmed the APC candidate on social media during the primary. The PDP, together with his other enemies, will ask questions about his health, and keep at it for a very long time, including focusing on his quivering hand. He must prepare an answer, for he cannot shoo them away or ignore them and hope they will tire. They will refrain from focusing on his age, except to question its accuracy, for his main challenger is even older and less agile. He has had a knee surgery and sometimes has difficulty climbing stairs, but beyond a tremulous hand and a difficult knee, he is surprisingly much stronger and imbued with far more stamina than many people younger than he. No matter what he says, however, most of his opponents will persist in denouncing him. He will have to steel both his mind and gaze in order not to be distracted from emphasising his copious strengths.

His doggedness helped him overcome his opponents and enemies within the party, many of them highly placed party officials. Someone made of less sterner stuff would have capitulated. Asiwaju Tinubu will have to draw on that kind of resoluteness to surmount what is certain to be a bad-tempered campaign, some of it projected by his supposed friends. As the Ekiti delegates’ votes showed during the primary, which is yet to be refuted, injuries inflicted by those close to home will rattle him more than injuries from outside. He may have overcome his enemies within the party, he will, however, be naïve to imagine that all of them have reconciled with his presidential primary victory, not to talk of preparing to welcome his anticipated triumph in the 2023 presidential poll. He of course does not display the kind of malice and malignant hatred some key leaders in the party and his Southwest region show intermittently, a virtue he should struggle against all odds to sustain in the months ahead, he must, however, be on his toes, expecting the best and tolerating the worst.

He will also have to find a fitting response to the controversial posers thrown at his campaign by the overt politicking of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). It is not clear how the body of Christ hopes a Christian vice president would be of any help to the church, especially in view of the unique and iconic history of the early church. But for the church to repose so much hope in their running mate campaign almost to the detriment of carefully examining the pros and cons of the candidates themselves appears perplexing. In the best of times, and with the most uncontroversial of doctrines, unity in the church had always remained a chimera. For CAN to seek to herd the church in one direction against one party or the other, when their help does not come from any hill, must qualify as one of the most engaging puzzles of modern church life. There are anchors that sustain the church: crass politicking is not one of them. If other faiths repose hope in such gestures, it is not for the church to mimic the world system. In any case, the insistence on religion to define running mates may be a northern phenomenon; it is not a southern phenomenon. The church obviously flounders when it walks with strange gods.

After the running mates are known, and the shape of the combatants become clear, the nature of the impending battle to redefine Nigeria and move the country forward can be better examined. Whatever comments anyone makes now may be just prefatory. At last, however, Asiwaju Tinubu has found in Alhaji Atiku an opponent worthy of the name. The campaigns will be great and entertaining, and the outcome epochal. Many Nigerians are miffed by the ineluctable choices presented them by the APC and PDP primaries, and have even begun to fantasise, largely on social media, the candidacy of Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Their romantic notions of the presidential sweepstakes are nothing but blowsy delusions. The Obi campaign is unlikely to gain significant traction. Instead, the focus will be on APC and PDP.

TWO major events dominated the country last week: President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to All Progressives Congress (APC) governors to agree with him in picking his successor in nearly the same manner he allowed them ‘promote’ their successors at the state level, and ex-Lagos State governor and APC national leader Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Abeokuta impassioned speech against the unending plots to frustrate his presidential ambition. The consequences of both events will reverberate through the party’s special convention to elect the party’s presidential standard-bearer, and possibly ripple through next year’s general election. Even though adversarial media, not to say the feral social media, made the Tinubu speech the main event of last week, it actually pales in comparison with the request by the president, subject to the convergence and reciprocal support of the so-called progressive governors, to agree with him in picking his successor. In short, he wants consensus; but consensus driven by whom, and openly or conspiratorially covertly? Asiwaju Tinubu’s angry denunciation of his traducers within and outside the party has no bearing on the 1999 Constitution and the APC Constitution. But President Buhari’s peculiar approach to picking his successor, if carried through, could cause a tectonic shift in both constitutions akin to the counterproductive imposition orchestrated by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007.

It is unclear where the progressive governors got the impression that the president’s plaintive plea for reciprocity in picking his successor involved their active participation, but no sooner he met them than they began scheduling meetings to determine who that pick would be. It was presumptuous and irresponsible on their part and showed their poor understanding of the APC constitution and their lack of character. But presidential spokesman Femi Adesina’s clarification that the president did not invite them into the process but in fact asked them only to connive at it should help restrain their fertile imagination. The president was clear that when the governors acted like potentates in scheming their second term or promoting their successors, he was nothing but an onlooker. In effect, he simply wants them to play the same role of onlookers, perhaps giving an advice or two, but really nothing more. It was of course wrong for the president to have connived at the governors’ shenanigans in the states, for it was obvious that his reluctance to interfere was not based on ethical or constitutional considerations but on an intriguing interpretation of the doctrine of separation of powers. However, having let the governors played ducks at the states, he wants to be allowed to also play drakes at the national party level. Most of the governors, from every indication, appear ready to let him do whatever he wants. Even if they know what is right, and this goes beyond the constitution and the laws of the land, they lack the courage and the character to restrain him. He is after all the president.

In his speech to the governors last Tuesday during the consultative meeting, the president said a few things that showed the uncertainty of his thoughts or the imprecision of his speechwriters, or both. In paragraph four, he spoke of great parties being internally cohesive and led by strong leaders. This is incredible. Could these globally acclaimed parties flout their constitutions and turn them into a den of unjust and cruel manipulators and still remain great? Internal cohesion can only be built on justice, fairness and equity. The APC since 2015 has exemplified conspiracy, dissension and ruthless and restless scheming. And as for strong leadership, it must of course be presumed that the leaders in question possess the depth, intuition and character needed to firmly guide their parties. Is President Buhari convinced that the APC is similarly led? The president not only spoke entrancingly of strong leadership, in paragraph five, he also eulogises ‘stronger leadership’ which he swore ready to provide. Strong or stronger leadership must be based on the right values, his speechwriters should have warned him.

In paragraph seven, the president spoke of ‘according the governors the privilege of promoting successors capable of driving their visions as well as the ideals of the party’. Mark the word ‘promoting’. He was at least honest enough to admit that the governors in question promoted successors, not pick, as he went on to advocate in paragraph 10 when he solicited the “reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor…” The governors promoted, he wants to pick. Or perhaps the president used pick and election interchangeably. In any case, paragraph 10 cannot be read separate from paragraph seven in order to understand the president’s intention.

Whoever advised the president to urge the picking of his successor almost as a counterpoise to the governors’ promotion of their successors has done him and the APC injury that may not be easily remedied. Picking a successor in the way he meant it in his speech is unconstitutional and unlawful. He said, however, that he was still consulting, when he appeared to have in fact made up his mind. He made it up months ago when he told reporters he would keep his choice secret lest his preference be destroyed before the D-Day. The fateful day has come, and a week before the convention, he has tried to soften the ground by ‘soliciting’ the cooperation of governors and stakeholders. He was right to keep his preference like a card played close to his chest, in case it turned out that the governors and stakeholders preferred someone else, especially in light of the choice the aggressive, better organised and surprisingly more democratic PDP made during their special convention. The PDP has put their best foot forward, despite it being somewhat gangrenous; the APC will imperil itself should it put a weak, faltering and leprous foot forward.

While the president is contending with his own unforced errors, Asiwaju Tinubu exploded a depth bomb under the APC dreadnought in Abeokuta when he railed against the serial plots of the party to sideline him. His enemies and opponents have gratefully seized the opportunity of his quaint and provocative use of words to chafe at his assumptions and conclusions: he is playing God; he is full of bombast; he is at bottom a dictator; he is a narcissist; he is tribal; he is rude to President Buhari, etc. Asiwaju Tinubu has come to the conclusion that those plotting against him, including a significant number of south-westerners who lack strategic and holistic understanding of Nigerian politics, will always damn him whether he blows his top or not. He also understands that since 2015, many in the administration and the ruling party have made it their cardinal duty to diminish him and if possible politically neutralise him completely. They see him as a man who can call his soul his own, when their ideal of a president is someone who genuflects. His friend and campaign director-general, ex-governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State, is mystified by the poor thinking sweeping through the Southwest and the mindless conspiracy wafting through the ruling party and the administration. Mr Shettima knows that Asiwaju Tinubu is the APC’s most credible chance to PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar; but the party seems blissfully desensitised to that fact, while vociferous and scurrilous south-westerners don’t seem to care that their vicious campaign against the former Lagos governor is indirectly enabling a monster or a weakling to take office in 2023.

This column had wondered how Asiwaju Tinubu, after his immense sacrifice for the political advancement of the president and the APC, could stomach all the abuse and plots in the party and among the so-called cabals against him and his ambition. For seven years he had endured the trauma, including when he was not even running for office in 2019. It is, therefore, finally reassuring that he is human after all. He has tried to walk back some of the things he said in Abeokuta, including suggesting that his nuanced statements were misinterpreted or twisted. Yes, that may be true, but his opponents have made up their minds about what he said. Notwithstanding, all he had to say probably indicate how frustrated he had become after virtually giving his life to serve the party, not to say his mentees most of whom have proved absolutely undeserving, that he is still being relentlessly vilified. Asiwaju Tinubu owes the country an explanation of how he feels being shabbily treated. He should ignore the pestilential chatter on social media and the bought traditional media. There is hardly anyone but he who could have tolerated for so long the kind of abuse he was subjected to by his party and friends, including being made to be screened by a former party chairman with whom he had fallen out, and not ask for more than a pound of flesh.

The APC presidential primary begins tomorrow, and someone must emerge as candidate. The president and the governors will hopefully allow an unencumbered democratic process to prevail. But whatever they do – whether they opt for the twisted consensus some attribute to them or embrace something noble – will determine their party’s survival or implosion. They will be mistaken to think they can use state power to foist a weak candidate on the country in the face of a hungry and determined PDP. As for Asiwaju Tinubu, he has proved himself. His cathartic outburst in Abeokuta does not, strangely, condemn him; it canonises him. He is not perfect, and there are indeed justifications for some of the criticisms leveled against him; but there is no presidential aspirant in his party at the moment – not the cautious and ingratiating Sen Ahmad Lawan and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo nor the doting and impressionable Rotimi Amaechi and Kayode Fayemi – who can hold a candle to him.

Wike makes a lasting impression

After weeks of colourful campaigning, probably the most charismatically conducted among the 12 contestants who jostled for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket, it became clear some two weeks to the convention that Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike would run a photo finish with ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar. The former vice president was initially the clear front-runner even though his campaign was uneventful, festooned as it was with predictable and unearthly promises instead of memorable one-liners to enliven and captivate the crowd. But days to the fateful primary, panic spread all over the North regarding the challenge presented by the irrepressible Mr Wike. Suddenly, Alhaji Atiku did not seem unbeatable anymore. Indeed, he seems awfully vulnerable, and Mr Wike remarkably invincible. If the North did not immediately circle the wagons, as clannish and parochial as that may sound, Mr Wike, they feared, could pull an upset.

Reports have feasted on the methods deployed by the North, that is, the core North. Regional leaders scared the delegates with horrid stories of a rambunctious, radical and iconoclastic Wike, and roused their tribal and regional instincts against the colourful outsider. Inadvertently, northern political leaders forgot themselves, forsook political history and tradition, and began to see and present the PDP as a northern party, and the North as interchangeable with PDP. Bugles sounded by phlegmatic generals on distant mountain peaks rallied behind the northern cause unwary delegates who received marching orders to reject Mr Wike, the southern upstart charming them with gripping political anecdotes and choking their whispers with money. On the day of the vote, the coup de main easily became the coup de grace, as Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal, who owed Mr Wike a favour, turned coat and stabbed his former benefactor in the back. The rest is history.

Notwithstanding the late rally from the North that gifted Alhaji Atiku an improbable 371 votes, Mr Wike pulled a healthy and fearsome 237 votes. What if Mr Tambuwal had not stepped down for the former vice president? What if another northern aspirant, Muhammed Hayatu-Deen, had not also stepped down complaining about all kinds of irregularities? Alhaji Atiku’s final tally would probably have been less than he received, and Mr Wike would perhaps have stood a fighting chance of sneaking past the post. It is pointless now debating the winning scenarios. The fact is that the North became scared of a possible Wike win and therefore closed ranks, obviously displaying a better understanding of the dynamics of Nigerian politics than their fragmented, argumentative and heady southerners. The core North not only wanted a win, they wanted an emphatic win. And they got it on the dissipative heels of heedless southerners.

Mr Wike is angry that he was betrayed by Mr Tambuwal and some southerners. He is free to interpret his loss the way he wants. But the fact remains that he was outwitted by a conspiratorial core North that sees the PDP as primarily theirs to control, not necessarily to own. Ex-president Olsuegun Obasanjo attenuated their control over the party in his eight years in office, but it was somewhat reinvigorated under the listless Goodluck Jonathan presidency which conceded everything to the North but the ultimate reins of power. Under both presidents, the core North had struggled in a way they were not accustomed to in terms of exercising veto power over the party. To allow the intrepid, irreverent and outspoken Mr Wike take the flag and possibly win the main election would compel and deepen a seismic shift in the core North’s psychological understanding of its manifest destiny. The Rivers governor probably had that understanding too.

Even though no one joined issue with the wholesale purchase of the conscience of delegates, seeing that all the aspirants were probably involved in that crazy merchandising of votes to one degree or the other, Mr Wike was accused of doing it to a degree that was both astounding and numbing. Maybe in the near future, it will be known just how the Rivers governor managed to create such a huge and irresistible impression on delegates, even across the North. But whatever he did and however he did it was successful and impressive. Had he won and got the chance to replicate that formula in the presidential election, there is no telling what the outcome might be. He will be a sorry miss for Nigerian politics, and particularly for the next presidential poll.

Those who midwife the Atiku win are unapologetic. They insist that had Mr Wike won, the ruling party would have made mincemeat of him. How can they tell? The northern conspirators and Atiku supporters argue that Mr Wike lacked the depth, reach, contacts and even-temper to win, let alone be president. They dispel the notion of him growing into that role during the campaigns, for he is believed to be idiosyncratically argumentative, pugnacious and voluble. In contrast, they may have their reservations about Alhaji Atiku, but they see him as less prone to any form of radicalism or unpredictability. In fact they see the former vice president as a rugged fighter with the hunger to win, a contemplative politician with a fine eye for detail, a gregarious man not averse to the bohemian way of life. They are willing to tolerate his weaknesses than endure the strengths of the more aggressive Mr Wike.

On the whole, the Rivers governor has shown that no one is unbeatable, and that even the most maligned and distrusted of aspirants can orchestrate mindboggling upsets. If Mr Wike can prove that the resources he deployed to propel his presidential aspiration were clean, then he must be justifiably proud of his political accomplishments. To score the votes he got during the PDP May 28 convention is no mean feat. He ran a great campaign, said the right things, grabbed attention, mesmerised delegates, and created a lasting impression on both delegates and the country as a whole. He will in the foreseeable future be a force to be reckoned with in the PDP, and a courageous voice to be paid a lot of attention in the months ahead as the main opposition party prepares to face a clumsy and shifty ruling party.

Even though no political party dissociated itself from the pressure brought upon the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to extend the deadline for the conduct of primaries from June 3 to June 9, the extension will benefit the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) more than the other 17 parties. The businesslike Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) proceeded with its presidential primary yesterday. The tardy APC rescheduled its own to between June 6 and June 8, having entwined itself in the most labyrinthine schemes to undemocratically foist a candidate upon the party. Its inability to find a clear way to do that had embroiled the party in confusion, paralysis and near chaos. The party is rife with reports of a few influential and powerful outsiders working in league with party chairman and a coterie of insiders to deliver the ticket to former president Goodluck Jonathan.

The PDP had no need for plots and intrigues. Hamstrung by a dearth of powerful and acceptable presidential aspirants from the South, despite the strong challenge mounted by Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike, it had long ago thrown its ticket open to all-comers. But in the back of their minds, they will feel satisfied should any of the many northern contestants clinch the ticket. They will be confident to market ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar or Sokoto governor Aminu Tambuwal, as they will feel pleased to sell ex-banker Mohammed HayatuDeen or ex-senate president Bukola Saraki, or even Bauchi governor Bala Mohammed. They are chastened by the strong Wike challenge, but they feel assured that they will get their northern candidate without seeming to be indifferent to southern campaigns for equity and inclusiveness. If they produce a northern candidate, they do not think it will be a disadvantage to them as it will be to the ruling APC in the coming presidential polls. They believe the public will understand that though Mr Wike is eminently qualified to be president, and would prove his mettle should he be elected, he is too hysterical and abrasive to be a convincing and competitive standard-bearer.

The APC on the other hand will by next year have produced a two-term president, Muhammadu Buhari. They know in the back of their minds that they cannot justify another northern standard-bearer, but they are determined to gamble that imposition. To do this, they need time. The deadline extension is, therefore, for them. If their northern gambit proves too provocative, they seem prepared to drag the eminent stooge, Goodluck Jonathan, into the race, knowing he could only do one term before handing power back to them. Their reprehensible lust for power, rather than any anxiety about the fate of a distressed and collapsing Nigeria, propels them into the most heinous embrace and approbation of sectionalism and regionalism. Dr Jonathan has been cleared by a Bayelsa court to contest; he will be cleared by any court anyone might drag him to. He knows he will be a tool in the hands of a clique of parochial power mongers; but he is willing to damn and shred his conscience. He was a stooge before, and just like Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele whose natural instinct is to bow the knee to any Baal, it is unlikely he can be anything else all his life and politics.

The APC has grabbed the INEC extension with both hands. But they would have preferred three months extension to perfect their dishonourable plot to gift a national party, which they had hijacked at infancy with the active connivance of the president, to their former PDP enemy and helmsman. Ideology means nothing to them; honour means nothing to those who had profited immeasurably from the exertions of others; and the nascent pact of steel between the North and Southwest which could have been nurtured to fruition and to the advantage of Nigeria is being discarded, perhaps forever. Once this pact is broken, as party leaders seem foolishly and cavalierly bent on, it is doubtful whether it can ever be rebuilt. The Southwest has had a long history of distrusting caliphal politics and politicians, but one south-westerner broke the mould in 2015, risking regional emasculation and self-immolation to rekindle trust between the two regions. Now, that trust is in peril of being permanently shattered. No one will risk it in the future. The apolitical hijackers of the APC dictating the tune to the vacuous chairman of the ruling party are indifferent to the consequences. What is even more frightening is that they seem to have a backend route to involving INEC in their nefarious schemes. They got the electoral umpire to insinuate, by a written statement, the illegitimacy of the coup against ex-caretaker chairman Mai Mala Buni in early March. Now they have a deadline extension that profits the APC more than any other party.

In 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not lose that year’s presidential poll until it immersed itself in the most opprobrious politics ever, of hubris, of injustice, of extreme regionalism, and of predatory religiosity. It is strange how political parties, like individuals and nations, do not learn from history. Seven years after that unprecedented debacle, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main beneficiary of PDP’s laxity and depredation, is dooming itself to repeat history. The party is hard of hearing, and there is little anyone can say to help it avoid disaster. Two years of the most intense and crazy political machinations to help certain individuals and the core North retain power, or at least retain control of the leash of power, are coming to a head.

The signals were always there, as a matter of fact right from 2015, when an extreme and parochial cabal seized the levers of power and turned the newly inaugurated president into a befuddled accomplice. But the signals rose to a deafening pitch last few weeks when the ruling party, now firmly in the hands of an unconscionable clique, began a final countdown to subverting its own ethos and constitution as well as demolishing the wobbly surviving ramparts of democracy. While President Muhammadu Buhari railed against imposition and any ploy to undermine democracy, the implacable clique to whom he was and is still beholden foisted a chairman on the party, someone perplexed by the new but not altogether disagreeable role he was called upon to play. Then the clique exhumed its discredited and improbable scheme to reinstate into the presidency in 2023 Dr Jonathan, the dithering PDP president whom the party defeated by a convincing margin in 2015.

The plot is unambiguous, and the motive disgraceful and demeaning. However, it is unlikely to succeed, not even by a mile. Dr Jonathan has coveted the reinstatement with open, undisguised and fanatical zeal. Having spent about six previous years in the highest office in the land grovelling and conceding everything to the core North, too afraid to be his own man, he is now eager to return to enact a replay of the total surrender and ideological abjuration he has spent his adult life mastering. His former aides are appalled, and the rest of the country mystified that someone of his standing could so enthusiastically lend himself to denying the South inclusion and justice. It is clear what his northern masterminds want, and they are unashamed to expose their obsession with power and reluctance to let go of it for anything more than four years. Why such sickening abdication and collusion do not trouble Dr Jonathan’s diminutive conscience is one of the unfathomable things about Fourth Republic politics.

It is not entirely shocking that Dr Jonathan is unable to recognise the import of his abdication. However, what boggles the imagination is how he marries his grovelling with a sanctimonious analysis of Nigerian politics, particularly the ongoing primaries from which he surreptitiously hopes to gain some undue and unearthly advantage. Speaking in Abuja last Thursday during the public presentation of a book, “Political Party Governance,” written by a former Minister of State for Power, Dr. Mohammed Wakil, the former president berated the National Assembly for being self-centred and careless. Fuming, Dr Jonathan exuberantly described the primaries as an unmitigated failure. Said he: “In fact, these primaries are a mess.  If you know the standard practice, you will ask teachers here to score these primaries and they cannot get more than 25 per cent and you cannot use that process to elect the president. The process is already failed and it is not good for this country.” Does he imply that the unwholesome effort to foist him on the party as the consensus candidate will redeem the flaws in the primaries? Or is he setting the stage to legitimise the anomaly being cooked up in his favour by a select and unrepresentative group within the ruling party?

But, here comes the quixotic Dr Jonathan, ever ready to submit to heresy and accommodate and validate shenanigans: “Yes, we will manage and move on, and I pray that good people should emerge; but we hope that what has happened this 2022 will not happen again in this country.” Well, presumably, when he is coronated a second (or third) time, he will advocate corrections his previous six years in office could neither contemplate nor dare to execute. It takes a man of his peculiar gifts and ethos to condemn sharing ‘rice and salt’ for votes while lauding with enthusiasm his disgraceful lobbying of the cabal to return him to office in mockery of the party on whose platform he previously presided over the nation.

Dr Jonathan’s simplicity and naivety are helped by the shamelessness and despicable disregard by the APC clique to forcefully act on behalf of the core North and to unsolicitedly represent the nation. The president has sadly remained undecided, unsure and unable to determine which direction to turn. His controversial shuffling has enabled all kinds of charlatans to seize the levers of power and throttle the nation. Indeed, at a key moment in the life of the nation, the president went on an African Union (AU) junket, either to minimise lobby as things fall apart or to hope that the pieces would fall into place automatically. It is unnatural. The pieces won’t fall into place, and the puzzle he has given wing will not resolve itself. The APC chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, is working with both the clique holding the APC by the jugular and the cabal that increasingly looks like the Chinese Gang of Four that seized power after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

There is only one possible outcome from these crazy plots being executed by the clique and cabal. Once it is clear they will disallow a healthy and competitive presidential primary, but instead think of a controversial consensus geared towards the imposition of the despised Dr Jonathan, the APC will implode. There is no force on earth capable of keeping the party together or afloat, regardless of how many willing political accomplices they can rally to their side. Should the PDP hold a fairly reasonable and peaceful primary, they will gain from the APC implosion. But should the opposition also fall apart, then some other party, a third force born out of season, will be the gainer. The APC has spent almost two years ignoring salient developmental issues, preferring instead to manipulate power and influence in a flagrantly and recklessly regionalist manner, it is impossible that they will not be hoisted with their own petard.

Assuming the APC clique can successfully impose Dr Jonathan on the party as the ‘consensus’ candidate – and it is hard to see them do this justly or transparently – it will be interesting to see how they will campaign for his election, having excoriated and humiliated him seven years ago. If they manage the fluency to do it, it is hard to see how the electorate will not wince in embarrassment at their impudence or repudiate them and their party at the next polls. More, it will be hard to imagine the real owners of the party, the seemingly ‘disenfranchised’, roll over and die without making a last-ditch effort to salvage their party or put the nose of the charlatans holding sway in the party out of joint.

PDP jauntily picks their candidate

Both in electing their chairman last year and picking a presidential standard-bearer yesterday, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) surprised many Nigerians by the jauntiness and panache with which they played their politics. Their chairman, picked last year by a consensus arrangement that bested competition, can hold his own anywhere. He is less complicated than the APC chairman picked through an imitation consensus that was clumsily executed.

By a combination of factors, former vice president Atiku Abubakar was frontrunner going into the convention, with Rivers governor Nyesom Wike hard on his heels. Had Mr Wike managed to moderate his rhetoric and show restraint and sensitivity, his courage and quick-wittedness would have done for him what no regional or ethnic or religious advantage was capable of. He is rhetorically far more gifted than the stolid Mr Abubakar, and far more expansive, humorous, witty and agreeable, that is, when you are not on the receiving end of his coruscating remarks. This is his first attempt at the ticket, and he is doing it within the confines of a party he has stayed loyal and faithful to.

Mr Abubakar, on the other hand, is a bird of passage. Not only has he flipped-flopped remorselessly, he has also jumped ship and party so many times that it would be surprising if he has not lost count. He is not, strictly speaking, ideological, nor even philosophical when he professes ideas and logic. Loyalty to a cause or party is controversial to him, being a man with indifferent and passive attachments, a man who as he ages begins to exude a hint of alarming and cadaveric stare when he addresses issues or curries votes. Yet, he is good at politicking and strategising. By Friday night, he looked good to take the ticket. If he does it without any complications, he will give the APC a run for their money, especially if, as is feared, the ruling party bungles their choice. If he gets the ticket, he will probably run on the same ticket with Mr Wike, or someone as flamboyant as him to enliven what will otherwise be a dull ticket, the only southern aspirant in the party strong enough to galvanise his geopolitical zone.

Sokoto governor Aminu Tambuwal has strangely been the main surprise, surprise that he was unable to make the impact many believed he was capable of with his debonair looks, even-tempered rhetoric, and winsome and agreeable airs. Perhaps he lacked the financial resources to really drive his campaign, or that underneath his superficial charms hides a man subtly lethargic and soporific. Whatever the case, he seems sometimes tentative about salient issues, so extremely cautious about his politics, too intent on not making mistakes or displeasing powerful interest groups. His handling of the murder of Deborah Samuel, the 200-level College of Education student lynched by her fellow students and a motley crowd from outside the school on the grounds of blasphemy on May 12, was inexpert and unstatesmanlike. It is not clear that when confronted with crisis of monumental proportions, he can be expected to measure up. But above all, he has simply not roused the passion of delegates on a level that should make the ticket accessible to him. Unlike former senate president Bukola Saraki hobbled by geography and undistinguishing ideas and rhetoric, Mr Tambuwal had enormous but unharnessed chance to take the ticket. Do not rule him out in future if APC picks a southern candidate and wins the presidency for eight years.

The PDP is not expected to experience any difficulty in picking their candidate. They will do it, probably with aplomb; and they will have the honour, as they did when they picked their chairman, to set the pace for their undeserving antagonist, the ruling APC. What they do next with the gift from heaven is left to them.

Till he dropped out of the presidential race last week, few Nigerians were sure of the identities of those who encouraged African Development Bank (AfDB) president Akinwumi Adesina to enter the 2023 presidential race. He seemed acceptable to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, but Dr Adesina’s aspiration obviously went beyond the former president. The gaudy but awkward entry of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan was clearly the machination of a cabal in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a group of zealous plotters cockily pretending to have the ear of President Muhammadu Buhari. If Dr Adesina’s almost furtive entry was nevertheless like a bolt from the blue, that of Dr Jonathan came after months of ethical agonising on his part and importuning from an APC cabal led by former caretaker committee chairman, Mai Mala Buni, Governor of Yobe State. And finally, there was also the dramatic and puzzling entry of Senate President Ahmad Lawan into the race shortly before the curtains were drawn on nomination forms.

What is not easily obvious is that the APC puppeteers had for months wrestled with their consciences to find acceptable aspirants other than Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the man who had helped them birth the party and imbued it with a zest for competition and victory. In their minds, they were resigned to rotational presidency, having zoned party offices in the expectation that the South, nay the Southwest, would produce the presidential candidate. They had first tried Dr Jonathan and found him a hard sell. Then they encouraged other Southwest aspirants, including ex-governors and serving governors, to enter the race and test the waters. But these ones too were even harder to sell to a geopolitical zone whose mind seemed made up. Breaking the enigma with the improbable candidacy of the AfDB president easily became a farcical duty. Exasperated and exhausted, the puppeteers decided to cut the Gordian knot by quietly throwing the presidential ticket open, thus their interminable waffling. Since the party has a little over one week to their presidential primary, assuming they can’t cajole the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into rejigging the electoral timelines, expect them to be silent on their zoning decision on the almighty ticket. Their silence would of course be interpreted as endorsing open ticket.

Having in effect thrown the ticket open, some northern APC aspirants belatedly began showing interest in the race. Controversial and hedonistic ex-governor Sani Ahmed of Zamfara State declared his aspiration, but was more or less a red herring. He knew he was headed to a political void. Jigawa State governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, a principal member of the troika recklessly moving pawns on the APC chessboard, also expressed his interest after tiring of instigating others into the race. Though an old acquaintance of Asiwaju Tinubu, his aspiration was dead on arrival. Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello, the ultimate contrarian and farcical politician, also threw his hat in the ring. He is too laden with frivolities to soar.

Then the puppeteers developed a brain wave: why not drag the disinterested Sen Lawan into the race. He has the reach and contacts and name recognition, not to say a little political heft. Win or lose the nomination, it would not affect his senate presidency anyway. Thus, enter the dragon on the back of possibly the most curious sophistry ever. Justifying his entry, Sen Lawan reasoned: “The fact that (we) came out last speaks volumes, because I didn’t just wake up one morning and say I want to be President. It took a lot of time for those who believe in me to talk to me to also throw my hat in the ring. And after some time, I accepted…I am not running as a northern aspirant because the impression created is that I’m a northern aspirant or that northerners are saying they are not going to allow power to the South. I’m not running as a northern candidate. I’m running as a Nigerian Presidential aspirant and therefore I come with all my qualifications for that office and people should judge me on the basis of what I have to offer.”

Two facts are incontrovertible. Contrary to his statement, it is in fact true that he ‘just woke up one morning and wants to be president’. It is also a fact that, thanks to Mr Buni’s unending manipulations and acrimonious politics, Sen Lawan is indeed a ‘northern aspirant’ encouraged to aspire in furtherance of a northern agenda. And finally, it is also a fact that having tasted power and became intoxicated, the core North is uninterested in power shifting southward. Indeed, they have served notice that they will do everything to ensure that a shift does not happen, even if it means enabling the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to claim the crown. Both leading parties are not only playing cat and mouse with themselves to produce two northern candidates, they are also determined to play ducks and drakes with the emotions of the country, fiddling while the country burnt, and indifferent to the conflagrating conditions years of incompetence, divisiveness, and ethnic and religious hubris had predisposed the country to.

APC chairman Abdullahi Adamu has simply taken off from where his caretaker predecessor stopped. An irredentist himself, capable of fiery rhetoric, Mr Adamu has endorsed Mr Buni’s plots and embraced his rationalisations. This is why there will be nothing said definitively on zoning or rotation, and all efforts will be geared towards pushing an agenda that is clearly inimical to unity, peace and development. This column maintains that the APC unfortunately does not really have an inspiring philosophy and ideology. Not only has the party become indistinguishable from the PDP, it has also become destitute of imagination and all virtues as well as become inexorably northern to the exclusion of others. The immediate past and current leadership of the party ignore the fact that even in the party’s increasingly crass northernism, there is still a significant and powerful faction of the party that fears the impending backlash against the dangerous and inflammable insularity of the reigning faction. That other faction attempted to regain control of the party during the March coup, but failed because the president, who had initially consented to the drastic measure, developed cold feet. That other faction has endorsed the presidential ticket going South, specifically, for electoral and ethical reasons, Southwest.

Under Mr Adamu, the APC is, however, leaning towards open presidential ticket. It will take President Buhari putting his foot down to realign the party to the path of probity. But that will depend on whether he sees and correctly gauges the precariousness of the country sundered by schisms, banditry, insurgency, economic woes, religious extremism, ethnic exceptionalism, and almost total and irredeemable alienation. The president sometimes gives the impression he is astigmatic, unable to define nationhood and identify and distinguish factors leading to state failure. If he somehow rises up to the occasion and miraculously begins to see Nigeria beyond one ethnic group, and his administration beyond the venal afflictions of cabals integrated into his government, he will cut short the madness overtaking his party, rise above the pedestrian by shoring up the noble objectives of his party, and dare rather than ape the PDP which has seemed to lose its soul.

But if the president does not intervene on behalf of what is noble and lofty, and he leaves Messrs Buni, Adamu, Badaru, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi governor), and other ethnic supremacists pandering to base regional and religious agenda to run riot in the party and prostitute its soul, the APC, like the PDP, will likely plot the emergence of a northern candidate. Should that happen, should both leading parties engage in this endgame brinkmanship, there will of course be dire consequences. Firstly, the APC, as the ruling party, will lose whatever cohesion it has left, lose the next polls regardless of its bloated membership register, and fracture irreparably. Secondly, the South, perhaps too the Middle Belt, will lose confidence in the nation. The country already teeters on the brink, held together only by the tiniest of sinews, but if a few plotters manipulate and insinuate regional dominance into the body politic, there will be nothing left to hope for. The current restiveness all over the country, which has led to deep and profound cleavages, will gather speed and ultimately engender fragmentation. Thirdly, there will be nothing left to guarantee that elections will even hold. What is keeping the country together, despite minor political controversies among competing zones in the South, is the expectation that if power rotates South, perhaps the situation would not be as irredeemable as feared.

Having badly botched government’s response to the egregious murder of Deborah Samuel, a 200-level student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, flunked many national policy initiatives, and failed to tackle the country’s costly, unwieldy and untenable political system, President Buhari’s last chance to secure any legacy would be if he manages to deliver a peaceful and transparent transition to the next administration. He has so far kept inexplicably mute on the chicaneries tearing his party apart. He has not set, through persuasion, an inspiring course for his party, perhaps preferring by default to ape the PDP, and he has not even galvanised the country behind noble and unifying causes. To compound these failings with the plot to keep power in the North after his eight years in office would be unforgivable.

How Buhari should handle feckless ministers

Last week, this column applauded President Muhammadu Buhari for his prompt decision to disengage cabinet members pursuing political ambitions. While the public rightly condemned the immorality and illegality of the ministers holding down cabinet positions and simultaneously pursing presidential, governorship and legislative positions, many more Nigerians wondered why the president initially seemed indifferent to the undisciplined and unethical use of federal privileges to advance clearly personal and political ambitions. When the president finally moved against the ministers on May 11 and drove the knife deeper into their backs on May 13 by quickly organising a valedictory session in their honour, it appeared to signpost a new and decisive presidency. It would have been far better had the president never countenanced the abuse in the first instance; but for a presidency long regarded as lethargic, the belated move against the undiscriminating ministers was a promising change the public hoped would be sustained till next May.

Presidential spokesmen have not disclosed why the president organised a valedictory session for the ambitious ministers on May 13 despite giving them a May 16 deadline to resign their positions to pursue their political goals. The effect, however, was to put the president in a quandary over what to do with ministers who developed cold feet. By giving them a deadline, it was assumed that those who failed to resign by that date had opted to stay back in government. Information minister Lai Mohammed has consequently struggled with the peculiar mess created by the presidency’s haste, particularly in finding sensible and convincing explanations that help the public to make sense of the actions of the ministers hosted to a valedictory but who had opted to forego their political ambitions. If the fecund Mr Mohammed finds the mid-May events too recondite for his fertile imagination to grapple with, it is not obvious how the president would frame and resolve it.

It does no credit to the Buhari administration that some of his ministers have shown so much fecklessness. Their political ambitions are perfectly legitimate, and in fact honourable; and some of them are eminently qualified to seek other and higher political pursuits. Labour minister Chris Ngige has an expansive sense of humour, and is curiously charismatic. But the manner he recanted and the spin he put on his aborted ambition, not to say his eager readiness to forfeit N100m nomination fee, expose him as an extremely devious and cowardly man. Powerful Justice minister Abubakar Malami was too shell-shocked by the president’s readiness to dispense with his services that for much of the week after the mid-May events he was too numbed to say a word. He never thought such a far-reaching decision could be taken outside his purview. Like a worm on a hot stove, he shrunk from his governorship ambition after distributing car largess of monumental proportions and directing scathing and cynical comments at his critics.

No less fickleness was expected from the duo of Minister of State for Petroleum Timipre Sylva and Women Affairs minister Pauline Tallen. It was inconceivable that Mr Sylva could ever win the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential nomination which he coveted, not even by the appalling default mode through which he took the governorship of Bayelsa State in 2007. But lightning never strikes the same place twice in his opportunistic politics, especially when his governorship and ministerial records have been undistinguished. Mrs Tallen was more modest in seeking a senatorial seat, but by also quitting the race and burying her ambition so quickly, it became clear that she and the rest of her retreating and disingenuous colleagues, including Mr Malami and Dr Ngige, knew something more about the benefits of ministerial office than the rest of the country or even the trusting President Buhari.

There have been some legal interpretations of what it means to ‘resign’ from the cabinet. Does it become effective only after a ‘resignation letter’ has been submitted or after the approving authority, in this case the president, has sent forth his appointees? Whatever the case, the president has little room to indulge his customary dither. When he returns from his UAE trip, he will have to determine whether his hastiness in organising a valedictory session for his politically ambitious appointees was presidential or naïve and untidy. Transport minister Rotimi Amaechi and Education minister (State) Emeka Nwajiuba made the president’s work enormously easy. But neither of them stands a remote possibility of clinching the presidential nomination, of course, not even Mr Amaechi who expects a coronation of a sort; but at least they behaved courageously, responsibly and honourably.

How the president eventually grapple with the whirligig of his departing and returning ministers will reflect on the image of his administration. For almost seven years, the administration has been shambolic, insular and often misdirected, particularly after the laconic and seemingly self-effacing Abba Kyari, the president’s former chief of staff, died. And whether the president likes to hear it or not, many Nigerians think the administration has complicated and aggravated the problems of the country instead of healing divisions and propelling the country forward. There is, therefore, little confidence that the messy ministerial ‘resignations’ will be resolved in a way that burnishes the reputation of the administration.

The best option for the president is to stand his ground and let the ministers go, whether they want to or not. Had the president stopped at merely given a May 16 deadline for the ministers to resign, it would have been okay for Messrs Malami et al to retrace their steps and hang on to their plum offices. But by organising a valedictory session for the ministers, it would be untidy for the president to succumb to pressures to let them return. No one is indispensable, and in any case none of the pussyfooting ministers had recorded sterling performance in office. In the best of times, President Buhari has evinced deep vulnerability; in the worst of times, he has been ineffectual. How he handles this little storm in a teacup will ironically – as if seven years were not enough to do that – define the remainder of his controversial presidency.