The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Zoning: PDP goes definitely Machiavellian

    Zoning: PDP goes definitely Machiavellian

     When the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Executive Committee (NEC) met in July in Abuja, party bigwigs restored the sanctity of their zoning arrangement by ceding the presidential ticket for the 2027 election to the South. Reason, it seemed, had prevailed. But in reality, they merely recanted their belief in open contest because they got their fingers badly burnt in the 2023 election. In fact, the leading apostate who led them down the red gullet of a bruising and bloody battle to defeat, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, had jumped ship and given the party the leeway to embrace political sanity. He had suspected that on the zoning matter, not to talk of the possibility of securing the nomination, he would be unable to tame or charm the young party iconoclasts spoiling for a fight. With his exit, the party was, therefore, freed of any encumbrances that had shackled them and made them vulnerable since 2015.

    By embarking on a new zoning arrangement in total repudiation of their wayward ways at the last presidential poll, they have finally signaled their resolve to fight to the bitter end in the next polls. What may not be obvious to them, however, is that they have in consequence decided to go Machiavellian in their politics. At their founding in 1998, they adopted certain high-sounding principles to guide their internal and external relationships. Though they sometimes fell into error, as the foundational mistakes of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency showed when he tried to embody the party, they often regained their senses and retraced their steps. But in 2022, when they enabled Alhaji Atiku to hijack their soul and processes, they voted for expediency over their own constraining rules and regulations that strike at their core. They may still have a long way to go in pacifying restive and powerful groups in the party, but by and large they are relieved and enthusiastic about the general, even if vague, consensus they have reached so far.

    Party leaders appear glad to be rid of the imposing Alhaji Atiku, but are unsure how to handle the more obstreperous Nyesom Wike, former Rivers governor and now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister. Somehow, however, they think building consensus in their party may translate into either a miracle at the polls or at least a revivification that warms the cockles of their hearts. For them, these are sanguine times. So flush with excitement was the party’s national vice chairman (Southwest), Kamoru Ajisafe, about the new consensus that he was prepared to swear about the party’s newfound direction. Should the party win the 2027 presidential election, he exulted, he would work against any PDP president interested in a second term in 2031. He surmised that party leaders were united in that position. PDP or not, every aspirant worth the name has made a similar promise: each has promised only one term if the country would give them a chance. The promise assumes the formidability, if not unassailability, of President Bola Tinubu who seemed even more entrenched today than he was vulnerable in 2022. Coming against such a man, they reasoned, a candidate must have a great bargaining chip. That chip is one term, a ruse one of their own, the acerbic former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai, has described as hypocritical, sensational and dubious.

    Read Also: BREAKING: Nigeria beat Rwanda to keep World Cup hopes alive

    The party should have avoided making a one-term promise. That ruse should have been left to the aspirants, and possibly too the party’s nominee. The PDP had no business immersing itself in that boondoggle or lending the party name to a scheme so inglorious and so provocative that it beggars belief anyone could swear by it. But once they broke their own zoning rule in 2023, it was but a short distance to infamy. Behind closed doors, they acknowledged that in 2023 they had no southern candidate of repute, not one person capable of taking on the APC juggernaut. The resort to Alhaji Atiku was a consequence of their desperation, an admission that they lacked both tactics and strategy, an indication that since their founding, when the voices of their principled comrades were silenced, they had lacked direction and any sense of the long-term. Now their folly has come home to roost. Despite the seeming unflappability of Alhaji Atiku, and regardless of whatever political platform he finally chooses to enter the 2027 race, the general understanding is that the North will not return to the presidency until 2031. The PDP has acknowledged this fact, but rather than take the admittedly costly long-term perspective, they have joined the rat race in their desperation to return to office. Yet, they really have no powerful something to beat the APC’s something. They have opted for recourse to the country’s political brothels to seek out a candidate able to trounce the APC, but are making heavy weather of it. They have toyed with Peter Obi, the former Anambra governor of no fixed political address, but have discarded the idea for being too outlandish. They are also flirting with the vacillating former president Goodluck Jonathan, but he too has continued to pussyfoot, waiting for foolproof nomination guarantees. Given their mood and desperation, PDP leaders appear prepared to clutch at any straw, anyone they think remotely capable of flexing some muscles in 2027.

    If the party manages to overcome its many self-induced leadership and membership crises, it will still have one more major hurdle to cross. That hurdle, despite the enticing certainty of its new-old zoning arrangement, concerns how to find a nominee capable of beating the ruling party. Since they prefer the fortuity of discovering a candidate rather than rebuilding their party and grooming bright and credible nominees, they must be prepared to go through the ordeal of deploying hoaxes and unscrupulous tactics to fight major electoral battles. The outcome will not always be favourable, but the party itself has never in anyway been profound or thorough in its modus operandi.

  • North frantic about 2027

    North frantic about 2027

    Not the entire North, of course. Just some powerful elements and groups in the far North. No one can fully explain why these groups are frantic about 2027; but either singly or collectively, or sometimes through the eyes of the Peoples Democratic Party that often postures as a northern political organisation, they have advanced various theses about regional marginalisation to justify their impending rebellion against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Tinubu. The plotting has manifested across all strata and political parties, with some observers even fearing that the kind of internal (party) revolt and betrayal that undid former president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 might be replicated in 2027.

    One of the theses the powerful groups have advanced is the bogey about appointments and projects marginalisation. It is of course a ruse, considering that the lion’s share of projects and key administration appointments have been colonised by the Northwest, and with the entire old North having the quantitative upper hand. The country, not to say the regions, is not tired of accusations and counteraccusations of one region dominating the others, or of incipient Fulanisation, Yorubanisation, and Igbonisation of government and society. As long as the country remains structurally ossified and immersed in the unitarism or centralisation of the polity and government, there will be no end to centrifugal agitations. Some interest groups and political parties in the far North have seized upon these agitations to press, sometimes in inflammatory words, their campaign for change, a campaign that completely ignores or downplays the immense economic change and advancement the APC administration has inspired in two years of heavy lifting.

    Read Also: Every Nigerian child deserves good education—Gbajabiamila 

    Unmindful of repeating the tragic mistake of 1993 when some elements in the military and polity thought it abhorrent to endure four or eight years of the Moshood Abiola presidency, disaffected and mainly northern groups have intensified the campaign to ditch the APC government by facilitating the return of Dr Jonathan, or even doing the unthinkable by baiting former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, or at worst organising to split southern votes in favour of a northern candidate, possibly former vice president Atiku Abubakar. They have also advanced the thesis that the APC administration has been lax in tackling insecurity, despite the North being both directly and indirectly responsible for the mayhem. The grounds for the campaigns are weakened with each passing day and administrative milestone, but northern politicians like former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai, gripped by buyer’s remorse, have stuck to their campaigns and their guns. It does not seem as if the far North can in fact bear the thought of not sitting in the saddle of power for any stretch of time, let alone eight years. The federal saddle is their stimulant, but a dangerous and anachronistic addiction with fearful consequences for stability. 

  • How long can Wike walk the tightrope?

    How long can Wike walk the tightrope?

    Former Rivers State governor and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, is not by any stretch of the imagination the friendliest of politicians, but he remains colourful, charismatic and entertaining. His posture on Rivers politics is hard to codify, and even more bizarre is his perspective on opposition politics as defined and executed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of which he is a member. On Monday, he and his co-travellers in the party poured cold water on the new deal reached by the party to conduct its November 15 elective convention, a six-point demand which must be satisfied in order to enable the party legitimise its dealings. Among other demands, the Wike camp of about four former governors insisted that the party must end micro-zoning, retain the chairmanship position in the North Central zone, conduct fresh congresses in Ebonyi and Anambra States, and order a new zonal congress in the Southeast and local government congresses in Ekiti State. Exasperated, their balloons deflated by the fresh scent of discord, some PDP leaders shot back that they would fearlessly confront the Wike camp and not buckle under pressure or allow themselves to be held hostage, while dismissing the complainants as potential ‘blackmailers’ and a ‘camp of fools’.

    For about two years, observers had squirmed over Mr Wike’s politics as a cabinet member of an All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, describing him as an unprincipled politician running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. For the same period, he had managed to maintain a delicate balance between his position as a PDP leader whose choices shook the party to its foundations during the last elections, and as a minister in the Bola Tinubu administration torn between loyalty to his new boss and duty to his party. He has not quite resolved the dilemma, and has consistently and thus far put on a bold face when compelled to take a definitive stand; but as the 2027 elections draw near, his ability to walk a tightrope will be sorely tested. Indeed, it is already being badly tested as the party inches near its elective convention. Party leaders put all their eggs in one basket, believing that the convention would put paid to the shenanigans of ‘fools’ playing ducks and drakes with the affections of party members and leaders. It is not certain whether their hopes are well founded, for the Wike camp is also both strong and sizable, not to say battle-hardened and eager to cross swords with the fiercest and swiftest in the party.

    But Mr Wike is keeping his cards close to his chest. No one is sure what joker his camp holds, but unlike the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the feisty patrons of the traumatised Labour Party (LP) which embraced strong-arm tactics to enforce obedience to their interpretation of court orders, Mr Wike, a lawyer himself, and his camp may opt for the litigious route. Whether that would be enough to stall the PDP convention will depend on how their unpredictable lordships view the case. PDP leaders had taken care to carry the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) along when they held their National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja, and have notified the electoral body about the upcoming national convention. They have also made peace with Iliya Damagum, their former protem chairman whom Mr Wike loved; and pacified the sometimes dithering Samuel Anyanwu whose cause Mr Wike previously advanced tenaciously. Little by little, however, Mr Wike’s men in the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) are either being neutralised or won over. If an irrevocable court order cannot be procured to stymie the convention, Mr Wike will be left with his yesterday men, the former governors of Enugu, Ekiti, Abia, and Benue, to prosecute a war he now increasingly seems fated to lose.

    What ails Mr Wike more than anything else is his impetuousness and glibness. Indeed, he is not averse to walking a tightrope, whether it casts him as an unscrupulous politician or not. Needled by angry newspapermen besotted to the opposition, whether that opposition is led by Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi, Mr Wike had responded to the speculation of planning to contest the next presidential election by suggesting that he would commit himself to President Bola Tinubu lock, stock, and barrel. If that is the case, does he not see a contradiction between supporting the ruling party against his own party, the PDP? He waffled some arguments and wished away the dangerous suppositions and inept attempts to corner him. Engaging in two-timing, and dating two ‘ladies’ with aplomb, unfettered by the howls of outrage and disgust by Nigerians who view with dread the contradiction of lying in bed with the APC administration and smooching the disgruntled PDP reclining on the sofa, can be problematic. The outraged spectators have begun to see the FCT minister as deliberately committed to forestalling a return to normality in the PDP, thereby castrating it and deterring it from reclaiming its winning ways.

    Read Also: BREAKING: Nigeria beat Rwanda to keep World Cup hopes alive

    Despite the general outrage, however, Mr Wike has proven adept at wrong-footing his opponents in the PDP generally and in Rivers State in particular. Two qualities stand him out. Though sometimes regarded as a roughneck, his instinct for political strategy has remained well above average, sometimes even seeming to be canonised by the favourable outcomes his style and strategies engender. He is a hard working public officer, unafraid to confront the hobgoblins of Nigerian politics wherever they are. Though his political vision may lack much refinement and depth, he is nevertheless a rarity among his peers. He continues to stand out, and is an asset to any administration. In addition, Mr Wike’s six grievances are germane to the politics and internal dynamics of the PDP. If he heads to court and the temples of justice are inured to the criticism of those who accuse the judiciary of compromise, they will find merit in his complaints and will grant him reliefs of all kinds. What remains for the PDP, therefore, is to appeal to public sentiments and paint the FCT minister as an agent provocateur and a two-timing and unscrupulous politician working for the APC administration. The characterisation will resonate, but it will crumble under legal scrutiny.

    The PDP has become testier and more desperate than ever. Judging from their intemperate responses to Mr Wike’s nimble footwork, they seem willing to go for broke. The FCT minister knows this, or at least senses that the opposition party is spoiling for a fight, a fight that could entail his expulsion. While he will not back down, he appears aware that he does not hold as many aces as he held and played in 2023 when he took the battle to the grumpy Alhaji Atiku and won. Mr Wike may wish to prolong the current fight to as close to the next presidential election as possible, but the PDP bigwigs, who are experts at trench warfare themselves, also know this and are determined that the turf battles be fought now rather than in the future. Even if tightrope walking becomes too demanding for the FCT minister, and he eventually capitulates along the line, it is uncertain that the PDP, as it is currently run and constituted, can profit from the surrender. They don’t have a viable presidential candidate, and, despite casting their net far and wide, are unlikely to find an extraordinary politician in the next six months to put them in good stead to make a great impression in 2027.

  • NBA throws caution to the wind

    NBA throws caution to the wind

    In a style distinctly imitative of the bullying tactics of Peter Obi’s Obidient movement, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) last week at its annual conference in Enugu threw caution to the wind and immersed itself in the murky waters of politics. One of the moderators of the conference, Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television, asked the gathering of lawyers three loaded and leading questions about the state of Nigeria during the panel discussions session. The lawyers of course had no elbow room to answer the questions in a way their Law professors would applaud them. The problem was not that questions were asked, as defective and unprofessional as they were, or that the Bola Tinubu administration was or was not popular with the NBA or any other professional bodies for that matter. The problem was that the questions were posed mala fide, and the answers chorused by the lawyers were unflattering of an association which seemed at peace with the contradiction of collecting donations from the Siminalayi Fubara administration in Rivers State and relocating the conference to another state.

    In Enugu last week, the bar association gave the impression it had the courage to speak truth to power, and saw neither fallacy nor contradiction appointing themselves as the country’s conscience and pathfinder. If it is established that Mr Okinbaloye posed his controversial questions to the general conference in collusion with the NBA leadership, it may signal the precipitous decline of a great association which had for decades maturely and brilliantly approximated the yearnings of Nigerians and fought for the rule of law. Under the presidency of Olumide Apata, the association found it difficult to extricate itself from crass politicking. Under Afam Osigwe, the current president, the NBA is further immersing itself in politics, doubling down on poor judgement, and inadvertently whittling down the influence of an otherwise respected professional body. It had no reason to solicit for financial assistance from any state government, as it did in Rivers, but if offered unsolicited as it claimed, it should know better than to receive it. Such assistance compromises both the independence and influence of the NBA. The association’s bad calls are now worsened by crass politicking.

    The conference theme was “Stand Out, Stand Tall”. The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, applauded the theme and warned against the creeping commercialisation of justice in Nigeria. According to him, “Today, justice is increasingly becoming a purchasable commodity, and the poor are becoming victims of this kind of justice, while the rich commit all manner of crime and walk the streets scot-free.” Challenging the lawyers, he said: “You are resolving to uphold the highest principles of the rule of law to ensure that everyone, including those in power, is subject to and accountable under the law. If we are able to do this, we would have addressed the core of the crisis of governance in this country.” He is right, despite the NBA refusing to profit from his counsel. Indeed, when an association receives donations from a government body and refuses to refund it when it is accused of repudiating the understanding reached between the two parties, it is not hard to explain how and why unhealthy influences insidiously corrode the independence of the judiciary. In the Rivers State/Enugu State hosting controversy, the NBA demonstrated lack of faith as well as showed poor understanding of political and ethical boundaries.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s FX reforms position Naira as export engine – Yakubu

    Nothing shows how deeply misguided or even compromised the NBA has become than its invitation to one of South Africa’s opposition leaders, Julius Malema, the controversial and fiery leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who was expelled from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in 2012. He had been president of the ANC Youth League, and had twice or thrice been convicted of hate speech, the last conviction verdict passed last Wednesday. He is a supporter of Hamas, and was last June denied visa to the United Kingdom for “behaviour non-conducive to public good.” At the NBA conference, his pretty anodyne speech waxed lyrical about why Africa should synergise industrialisation and beware of debt trap. He also condemned xenophobia, and called for continental cooperation in furtherance of African unity. If his hosts had expected him to engage in the fiery rhetoric he is famous for in South Africa, which has led him to three hate speech trials, they were probably disappointed. But overall, the invitation to the 44-year-old Mr Malema was a reflection of the infantilism that started manifesting during the presidency of Olumide Apata (2020-2022), slowed down a little by the presidency of Yakubu Maikyau (2022-2024), but has now revved up and reached its apogee under the present NBA leadership.

    If the elders of the profession were upset by how the conference turned out or the histrionics that polluted the sanctity of the meeting, they were perhaps too polite to complain. When Mr Okinbaloye led the conference to its three denunciations, the elders seated at the front row wearing glacial expressions and sitting through the charade grimly. They did not join the chorus, did not find the leading questions amusing, and only rose to their feet when the panel moderator called for a standing ovation for Interior minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo. The opposition, whether in the political coalition or the Obidients, has seemed to perfect the art of singling out a few members of the Tinubu administration for endorsement. Last May, former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai singled out Bosun Tijani, Communications and Digital Economy minister, for endorsement, insisting that he stood out in the administration, and was a candidate to be retained as minister if the coalition took the presidency in 2027. In Enugu, the NBA also singled out Mr Tunji-Ojo for applause, indeed standing ovation. A few more such trivialities and demonstration of partisanship might irreparably split or damage the association.

    The NBA had slated former president Olusegun Obasanjo as chairman of the opening ceremony of the conference. They had a sensible reason to do so. The former president, who is considered one of Mr Obi’s leading supporters, recently dug his political heels in with the sanctimonious blather about running out of time, given his age, and needing to help midwife a new Nigeria. He downplayed or was silent about his massive contributions in undermining democracy and enthroning illiberal tendency on the country as president. But he has always had the courage of his convictions. Had he attended the conference and witnessed the hysteria Mr Okinbaloye inspired among the lawyers, the former president might have inundated the gathering with his narrow and self-gratifying message of change. Lawyers are conversant with the technicality of leading questions, but so too are journalists. Both professions always recognise when they are being led by the nose by vested interests who seek to promote private agenda. Why the lawyers’ conference chose to dismantle the guardrails that protect their profession from the scourge of partisanship and frenetic leadership, and instead hurtled down the slippery slope of politics, must be the puzzle of the year.

  • Atiku’s shock and awe

    Atiku’s shock and awe

    Shortly after one of his spokesmen, Ola Olateju, a professor, reported former vice president Atiku Abubakar as placing his desire to help rebuild Nigeria above his ambition to be president, another spokesman, Tunde Olusunle, quickly corrected what he described as the wrong impression given of the former vice president’s political ambition. Dr Olusunle then went on to quote Alhaji Atiku as considering his ambition indistinguishable from the goals of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the party the coalition of opposition parties hope to use to win the presidency. Of course both Alhaji Atiku and Dr Olusunle sadly misjudged the altruism Prof Olateju tried to insinuate into the former vice president’s ambition. Instead, the second spokesman colourfully suggested that the “ADC is leading a potent mass movement which will shock the world (in 2027)”, and would “upstage the status quo in a way which will leave doubters dumbstruck.” Phew!!!

    Read Also: Nigeria’s gas production rises to 7.59BSC daily

    Instead of admitting ADC’s clumsiness and hesitations in organising itself, and instead of accepting blame for taking over the party and nearly running it aground, Alhaji Atiku has reportedly blamed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for ridiculing the coalition party and promoting discord in the opposition. The former vice president has not disclosed how he would enact the shock and awe, but the world remembers with sardonic amusement how some two to three years ago Iran had threatened and promised to dismantle Israel should it attack its proxy forces in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. Israel took only 12 days last June to dismantle Iran. What Alhaji Atiku and the ADC need to do is boast less and organise more. But, like Peter Obi of the LP/ADC/PDP, having never had to set up a party nor run it for any length of time, the former vice president has proved that his forte is talking the talk. Talking the talk, he has determined, is more agreeable and far gentler on his ageing frame and less demanding on his desperate mind.

  • Zoning: PDP bites the bullet

    Zoning: PDP bites the bullet

    As they prepare for their national convention in November in Ibadan, Oyo State, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last Monday fatefully but controversially took steps to reposition their party into winning ways. At their 102nd National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja, the party considered the report of the 44-man zoning committee headed by Bayelsa State governor, Douye Diri, and without much ado agreed to zone the party’s presidential ticket to the South. They had learnt hard lessons from a similar exercise before the 2023 poll when they threw the ticket open and almost immediately came to grief. What they didn’t say before the last poll, because it was obviously impolitic to voice it, was that they didn’t think they had a viable presidential candidate from the South competent to give battle to the entrenched All Progressives Congress (APC) whose leader, Mohammadu Buhari, had a cultlike following, and whose presumed presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, combined the pugnacity and wiliness of a political avatar.

    What they were uneager to contemplate in 2023, they have now embraced cheerfully, hoping that in the 2027 presidential election, their main and obsessive focus, they would deliver to themselves a brilliant and salutary outcome. As usual, their calculations are a little skewed, and their preoccupations with pursuing just one goal at a time a little misplaced. Regardless of the hysterical reaction of former Rivers governor Nyesom Wike, not to say the self-justification he bandied around after the presidential poll, the PDP didn’t lose in 2023 because a northerner picked the ticket; they lost because their standard-bearer, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, miscalculated badly. Therefore, using their 2023 electoral experience to project into the 2027 race may be a reflection of their sloppy political calculations and strategy.

    The PDP has resisted every entreaty to rebuild and reform. By refusing to follow that reformist path, they have consequently been unable to discover where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The fact is that the party is fundamentally flawed and needs deep structural reengineering. It has never had a candidate it built and promoted to the national stage. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo was a self-made man coarsely hewn by the military. He was dragged from retirement and propelled into the State House, his path perfumed with lavender. The PDP did not have the independence or even political ethic to discover him, let alone turn him into a statesman. A product of military imposition, he in turn imposed his successor, Musa Yar’Adua, in the most brutal and abrasive fashion. Goodluck Jonathan, who was the third PDP president in 16 years, rose from being a deputy governor for four years to governor for two years, and was then catapulted by Chief Obasanjo’s fiat into the vice presidency for about three years, and finally on to the presidency. Unlike the APC, the party had been robbed of the expertise and due process needed to produce a presidential candidate.

    Alhaji Atiku, the political nomad, had to return to the PDP when he needed rehabilitation, and the party also needed a financially loaded weapon they could deploy in 2019 against the APC candidate, the late President Buhari. Despite his being positioned by circumstances to win the 2023 poll had he played his cards with the dexterity the moment called for, the party’s awkward abridgement of due process and its infantile desperation to profit from other people’s misfortune combined to thwart their ambitions. Barely two years after the 2023 debacle, the PDP now appears poised to repeat the mistakes of the past. It has refused to address its major weaknesses, including not mastering the art of producing winnable presidential candidates, and also refusing to structure itself in such a way that its platform, ideology, and apparatchiks form a coherent whole able to reproduce its kind. Months ago, speculations were rife that Oyo State governor Seyi Makinde might give the presidential race a try. Then stories drifted towards Bauchi governor Bala Mohammed, despite his obviously delinquent appeal to antediluvian politics.

    But after the PDP last week resolved its zoning conundrum that cost it so much in 2023, it jettisoned the idea of fielding any northern candidate and has shifted focus to a southern candidate. Because it is fixated on the next presidential election rather than rebuilding everything the party represents, it is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past by drafting mercenaries as their champions and standard-bearers. All its previous candidates, without exception, had been mercenaries, from Chief Obasanjo in 1999 to Alhaji Atiku in 2023. Now, the party is actively considering Peter Obi, the same peregrine who clumsily and opportunistically hoisted the LP flag in the last election and etched on that flag the emblem of the Christian crusader. Mr Obi had jumped from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the PDP, and then on to the LP, and is now making sheep’s eyes at the PDP. The Bauchi governor confirmed that the party was mollifying him. He also confirmed that they were speaking with Dr Jonathan, who has been more stable in the party than the flighty and precarious Mr Obi.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s FX reforms position Naira as export engine – Yakubu

    Whether the PDP will be able to endure the extreme cautiousness of their skittish targets remains to be seen. Mr Makinde’s ambition will not fly. He neither has the charisma nor the money to be a serious contender. It is suspected that he knows his limitations. Dr Jonathan will be plagued by doubts as to whether he is qualified to run or not. But there is simply no way to know this until he enters the race and is buffeted by litigations. Mr Obi is the archetypal Teflon politician. He will not commit himself to any party until he is sure he will get the ticket. He has gallivanted around the political coalition leaders now coalescing in the African Democratic Congress (AC), but refused to fully enlist in the party, knowing full well that Alhaji Atiku is sitting pretty in the ADC. Mr Obi remains in the LP but has proved incompetent to grapple with the party’s complex situations and conflicts. Unfortunately for him, no one in the PDP can give him the ironclad assurances he craves. In the past decade or so, the PDP needed Dr Jonathan to stand strong for the party and offer it the guidance the party sorely needed. Instead he had sulked from the sidelines, angry, he claimed, at the way he was betrayed. Bereft of any lodestar, despite the half-hearted presence of the former president, the party has again begun desperately fishing for a standard-bearer, an opportunist and defector from anywhere.

    In the weeks and months ahead, the PDP will face many twists and turns. It has refused to build a candidate from the bottom up, preferring instead to steal fruits from other people’s trees. In fact, it may already be too late for the party to engage in the careful political cultivation needed to produce a winner. They will, therefore, simply close their eyes at a point and pick somebody, no matter how unelectable. Like the ADC hopes to do and has probably begun a dress rehearsal for that purpose, they will then go on to deploy ethnicity and religion to destabilise the ruling party in order to knock it off its confident perch. They will also hope to elicit the interest and help of the meddlesome Chief Obasanjo whose judgement over the decades has been nothing short of the disastrous, and whose vitriol and sanctimoniousness has produced no equal anywhere, no, not even in Donald Trump’s America.

  • It was more than by-elections

    It was more than by-elections

    Three political parties are much talked about in the build-up to the 2027 elections: the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the coalition’s special purpose vehicle African Democratic Congress (ADC). The first two are political war veterans, while the third was born out of due season, a little disoriented and abused. Joined in battle for the first time on August 16 in a three-horse by-elections race, the first two proved their mettle, while the third came an embarrassing cropper. Had the ADC proved its mettle by outscoring one of the first two even without winning outright, the country would by now be in an uproar, and coalition faithful encouraged by that hypothetical performance to begin making vaunted claims and welcoming defectors en masse. The ADC may be led by talkative and intrepid champions, but its leaders were unwise to have rushed the still unprepared party into a bruising and bloody political war that has now prematurely revealed a number of noticeable undercurrents in the shifting politics of the core North.

    The elections were held in 12 states across two senatorial, five House of Representatives, and 10 state assembly constituencies. The APC won in 13 constituencies, while the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) won in two, and the PDP and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) won in one each. The overhyped ADC led and inspired by former vice president Atiku Abubakar, former governors Nasir el-Rufai, Rauf Aregbesola, Aminu Tambuwal, and Rotimi Amaechi, among many others, not only failed to fly, as a newspaper colourfully put it, but there were also doubts last week when the election results began to filter out that the party even had wings. It may be too early to project how the parties will finally shape out in the next general election, but if the APC had lost or struggled, or split the honours with another party, the celebration in opposition ranks would be without precedent. That it won hands down has given it bragging rights. Party leaders and rank and file are relieved that they won, and won very handsomely. Having secured this by-elections advantage, among many other advantages that give it an early lead, they will hope to build on the August 16 successes and profit from the discouragement certain to cast a pall over the competing parties.

    The APC has a curious genetic makeup. Though generally well-organised, it has really never produced a highly popular champion to be its standard-bearer. In 2015, it won both the presidency and the National Assembly against the run of play, and indeed by fairly comfortable margins. In 2019, despite shambolic governance, it again won the elections. After what many analysts saw as a dismal record weighed down even more by an underperforming president, the now late Muhammadu Buhari, the party again surprised bookmakers by winning the 2023 polls by a comfortable margin in a three-horse race that could easily have produced a hung parliament. The party’s genetics then got more arcane at the last by-elections. Certain that the APC and its president had executed gut-wrenching economic policies deserving of severe punishment at the next polls, any polls for that matter, the country placed their bets and waited for the ruling party to receive a drubbing. Instead, the APC swept nearly everything in its path, winning by emphatic margins across four geopolitical zones. To boot, the elections were generally fair, despite opposition bellyaching.

    Read Also: First Lady empowers Lagos residents, unveils plans for elderly support nationwide

    But a few unheralded shifts are beginning to be noticeable. Firstly, constituents and party faithful are beginning to stabilise their membership and own their political parties, producing an inexplicably filial attachment to the parties they are growing to admire or even love, regardless of their antinomian properties. These shifts are noticeable in states where their governors have started to perfect the art of connecting, sometimes colourfully, with the electorate. It is of course not impossible for unseen tectonic political plates to shift and cause a party or governor to be defeated, but that shift would likely henceforth require such force that no ordinary opposition leader can summon. In Edo, Governor Monday Okpebholo of the APC has matured very quickly and mastered the art of addressing the hearts and minds of the Edo electorate such that voters can’t imagine jilting their lover. For the vacant Senate seat of Edo Central, the governor’s APC swept the poll by a dizzying 105,129 votes to the PDP’s 15,146 votes. For the Ovia House of Representatives seat, the APC also took it by an astronomical 77,053 votes to the PDP’s meager 3,838 votes. It was a shellacking of the most definitive variety authored by a governor who, when he was a candidate, was ridiculed as lexically profane.

    In Kaduna, Governor Uba Sani of the APC has proved to be a revelation. Resolute, deep and unpretentious, he has moved mountains to heal the ethnic and religious divides in the state. Armchair analysts and critics had touted the by-elections in Kaduna’s three seats as a war between former governor el-Rufai, whether he had made up his mind regarding where to belong between the ADC or Social Democratic Party (SDP) or not, and Governor Sani. Mallam el-Rufai drew huge crowds to his rallies and, with his fiery rhetoric and political invectives, postured as the real master of Kaduna. He was unsparing and loquacious, but as temperamental, divisive and imperious as ever. In Zaria Kewaye state constituency where he campaigned for the SDP, a party he claimed he still belong to even though he is recognised as one of the top leaders of the ADC, the APC took it by a solid 26,613 votes to SDP’s 5,721 votes. And in Basawa state constituency, where the less acrimonious PDP was prominent on the ballot, the APC took the seat by 10,926 votes to the PDP’s 5,499 votes. Neither ADC nor SDP fared well. And in the even more significant Chikun-Kajuru House of Representatives seat, the APC got an emphatic 34,580 votes to the mild-mannered PDP’s 11,491 votes.

    Apart from the APC taking two state seats in Taraba and Adamawa, though by narrow margins of a few hundred votes, equally telling was the APC victory in Niger State where the party took the state seat of Munya constituency by 12,556 votes to the PDP’s 5,646 votes. In Niger State, Governor Mohammed Bago has become one of Nigeria’s most colourful governors. Though he sometimes finds illiberal tendency irresistible, he exudes courage and depth while showing clearly that he does not lack direction. Both he and Kaduna’s Mr Sani have deliberately worked to acquire a pan-Nigerian approach to politics, refusing to restrict themselves to the ethnic and religious cocoon with which Mallam el-Rufai has framed and constrained his politics. It is also remarkable that despite the unremarkable exit of former APC national chairman Abdullahi Ganduje, the APC was not embarrassed in Kano where the indomitable Rabiu Kwankwaso holds sway. The APC not only took the state assembly seat of Ghari/Tsanyawa, it insisted that the Bagwai/Shanono seat was stolen. In short, constituents may have begun to take ownership of both their parties and constituencies, probably indicating emotional connection far beyond the obtrusions of local supremos or the pains and gains of national economic and social policies.

    Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently but a little hazy, the results of the by-elections reveal a war of replacement taking place in the core North. The region had been dominated by political leaders who subscribed, either openly or covertly, to ethnic exceptionalism, sectarian politics, feudal economic practices, and general retrogression. Decades of holding sway at the national level had done little to assuage their greed or their disinterest in alleviating the circumstances of the poor and alienated in their region. Gradually, but somewhat steadily, new leaders with a totally different worldview of nationalism and service are replacing the Ibrahim Babangidas, Atikus, el-Rufais, and surprisingly Kwankwasos. They may resist the trend, and convince themselves that their politics of stirring revolt against their opponents, whether in Abuja or in other parties, would work if reinforced by malicious propaganda, but as the by-elections indicate, changes are afoot. The likes of Messrs Bago and Sani are deliberately flirting with new political paradigms of inclusion, service, secularism, and nationalism. They are slowly and secretly repudiating the politics and ideology of domination, and are reaching out to kindred spirits nationwide. They have seen the new approach work at close quarters, and are tantalised by its potentials. They suspect it will be difficult, for the poor people they preside over are not as exposed and knowledgeable to comprehend the fundamentals of the economic change and social and political realignment needed to lift the country from poverty, or appreciate the dangers that would follow the division hardening everywhere in their region. Indeed the Kaduna and Niger governors know that decades of administering jaded panaceas have failed the region and impoverished its people. More, they sense that if change is not courageously embraced now, the explosion certain to come later might be unmanageable.

    The by-elections indicate that the country might be moving in a different, beneficial direction. In the months ahead, and in coming polls, proponents of the old politics will stubbornly resist change, and will double down on the ancient methods of political mobilisation. Their tactics will work in many places, and a significant section of the electorate will be enticed by the sorceries of the regional ancients, but overall, the replacement afoot will continue apace until politics in Nigeria assumes ideological hues. New leaders unencumbered by the politics of hate, division, religion and supremacy are emerging. That emergence will not be surefooted for the core North, for there are too many ancient religious and ethnic roadblocks engrafted into the system, but it is hard to see how it can be aborted entirely or even delayed for much longer. What cannot be doubted, however, is that a struggle to determine which direction the core North will go is already being fought. The shape of the war and the identities of the combatants may seem a little foggy at the moment, but the fight will intensify in the years ahead, and Nigerians may even be pleasantly surprised to discover that the positive aspects and outcomes of the struggle will, sooner than expected, impact the next general election as the region’s old political soldiers fade away.

  • PDP still the main opposition

    PDP still the main opposition

    The diminution of the PDP did not start with their losses in the 2015, 2019, and 2023 elections. It started way back in the Olusegun Obasanjo years when the former president whimsically destroyed the party’s internal cohesion. If that long-lasting weakening is to be reversed, the party’s feuding leaders will have to inspire a deliberate rehabilitation of their party, its ideology, structure, and ambition. After many electoral debacles, however, it is uncertain that the party has learnt any lessons. Last Thursday, a section of the party’s leadership met in Lagos under the aegis of the PDP Southern Zoning Consultative Summit and ended up reinforcing their awkwardness at putting their house in order. Not only was the invitation to the summit lacking in rhyme or reason, it seemed to have been convoked to deliberate on the zoning subject agitating the party at every level. Much more troubling, there was no one among the summiteers who sounded placatory, accommodating, and circumspect.

    Nevertheless, as last week’s by-elections showed without a shred of doubt, the PDP still has so much going for it and can hopefully produce a leader worth his salt to reinforce their strengths, someone who has the spirit of the gods, a consensus builder capable of separating the wheat from the chaff. In the 16 seats contested in the by-elections, where the PDP not win, it came second in 11 constituencies out of 16. By winning just one seat (in the Ibadan North House of Representatives seat in Oyo State), the party clearly will be punching above its weight to think that after the destructions wreaked upon it by three distressing and epochal electoral losses, it could retake the presidency in almost one fell swoop. Politics is not magic. By coming second in 11 constituencies, the PDP, however, announced itself as the leading and undisputed opposition party in Nigeria. In contrast, the then Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had presumptuously tried to knock the PDP off that perch in 2023, though the upstart party was infamously hijacked purposely for the presidential poll, and its presumptive leader never really had any sense of proportion or structure, nor respected any ideology.

    Read Also: Adeleke commends Tinubu, Ribadu for busting terror cells in Osun

    When the PDP succumbed to the first of three election losses in 2015, no one doubted it was the main opposition party. It had been weakened by internal revolt and conflict, and abused and denounced by defectors, starting with former vice president Atiku Abubakar, but no loss was sufficient enough to obliterate its structure or wipe off the gains it had painstakingly accumulated since 1999. Hard as Alhaji Atiku and other coalition leaders have tried, they have been unable to assemble a force strong enough to overthrow the it as the main opposition party. Fortunately for the party, the coalition of anti-APC forces inspired, financed and directed by the former vice president and now domiciled in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has so far been unable to present a united front. Until the August 16 by-elections, coalition leaders could not determine whether to move en masse into the ADC or Social Democratic Party (SDP), or remain in either the PDP or LP. Confused, destitute of ideology, and discouraged by the uncertainties surrounding their parties and the unsavoury turn of events, they projected interests that intersected in the three parties which they plan to deploy against the APC in 2027.

    The PDP may lack a powerful unifier or even a collegiate of implacable consensus builders, and may yet be undone by those deficiencies, but they are clear in their minds that they remain the unassailable opposition party, a runner-up to the APC as it were, the second leading party which the ADC, SDP or any other party willing to sell its soul cannot overthrow. It will be ambitious of the PDP to hope that even if they manage to unite and zone their presidential ticket to the South they can find a worthy champion to fly their flag at the next poll, let alone win. For the PDP, the chances of reaching an understanding with the inchoate political coalition may exist theoretically, but it is hard to see them submitting themselves, their nationwide structure, their ideology so-called, and their legacy to an amorphous group of ambitious coalition politicians. They may sometimes feel suicidal, judging by their often inane choices, but they have enough believers in their midst who understand that there are some people by whose hands they must not die. They were desperate to win in 2019, believing that their loss in 2015 was a fluke; and were even more desperate in 2023 when they were willing to be suckled by the tiger, Alhaji Atiku, but they must now educate and persuade themselves on their almost inexistent chances in 2027. Instead of desperation, they should reinforce their capacity as the main opposition party, and go back and reform and rebuild – a task they had shrunk from since 2015 – in order to have any chance in 2031.  

  • Babachir Lawal oversimplifies bitter politics

    Babachir Lawal oversimplifies bitter politics

    If Babachir David Lawal, a former secretary to the government of the federation, had ridden quietly into the sunset after his removal from office in 2017, he would have been long forgotten. He may lack the depth many Nigerians thought he was capable of, particularly having once assumed a high-profile public office, but he is devious enough to recognise that he needs to sustain his bitter remonstrations to maintain political relevance. He has kept up the flurry, excited that impressionable newsmen have found his postulations irresistible and worthy of adorning newspaper front pages. But if you are going to be very loud, why not add some glamour and substance to it? Not Mr Lawal. He inflicts himself on the public, and does so with bitter and provocative efficiency. Last Monday on television, he was in the public face again excoriating President Bola Tinubu whom he described as arrogant and pompous, and also pontificating on the 2023 presidential election, and stereotyping and psychoanalysing the Yoruba. Casting himself as the ultimate demolition man, he constantly feels a burden to ladle out bucketfuls of invectives now and then to every passerby, especially the ones who would fetch him newspaper headlines.

    Mr Lawal has sadly not lived down his removal in 2017 as SGF over allegations of misappropriation of funds voted to alleviate food scarcity in the Northeast. First suspended by President Muhammadu Buhari in April of that year, he was eventually removed seven months later, because his stay in the administration had become a liability. He still smarts from that job loss and public disgrace. In any case, he severely left the late president out of his misery and has instead trained his guns almost exclusively on President Tinubu. Some Nigerians resent the president, particularly his political contemporaries frequently outsmarted by him, but few among them ever decribe him as arrogant. It is okay to dislike the president, indeed for no reason at all, but if a reason would be cited, it should at least contain some logic. But hear Mr Lawal on President Tinubu: “He is arrogant. The guy has an arrogance that belies definitions…The problem with Bola Tinubu is that he thinks I’m the one that offended him. I didn’t offend him; he offended me and he is full of himself, and he thinks that he is now so-called president…I believe he didn’t win the election.”

    Read Also: IPLAN to law enforcement agents: Stop profiling Nigerian content creators

    Similar to how some parts of Nigeria demonstrate dreadful unease when it comes to the Yoruba, the former SGF also swallowed the common stereotype of the Yoruba as arrogant and imperious. According to Mr Lawal, “The problem with the Yoruba – and I still repeat it – is that when you support them and they win, they turn around to convert you, behave as if they have subdued you, as if they have conquered you. They will not count your support…When I used to say that all the time, even when we sat in his house, they would say, ‘No, it’s not like that’…We that are not Yoruba—we regret it, because when you go there, they throw us out.” It is pointless trying to debunk Mr Lawal’s assertions. That view of the Yoruba is widely held in the Southeast, mused over in the South-South, and during the decolonisation process in the 1950s, northern political leaders felt the sting of Yoruba imperiousness. But the mistake the critics make is to ignore the fact that the Yoruba are no fan of one another either. Their elite ridiculed and conspired against Obafemi Awolowo before independence and in the First Republic, treated MKO Abiola with contempt until he won the 1993 election, and as ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo among many others have shown, the Yoruba have been the chief antagonists of their own causes more than anyone else. By making President Tinubu the archetypal Yoruba, the SGF clearly shows how little of the Southwest he knows.

    Perhaps the worst fallacy Mr Lawal committed was his insistence that Mr Obi won the 2023 presidential poll. He did not present any proof other than to say he had proof. Yet he was in the Labour

    Party during the poll, but did not think it fit to lend his proofs to Mr Obi to prosecute their outlandish case in the courts. In addition, he lied about contributing to President Tinubu’s election when he was all along fanatically promoting Mr Obi. The newspapers and social media will obviously continue to indulge Mr Lawal for some time to come. Indeed, the country will give a hearing to anyone with a modicum of talent for abuse and who can pillory the president. Mr Lawal will receive premium mention for his continuing and irrational characterisation of the president, for his pedantic consideration of social, political and economic issues, and for his rage against, and unsparing hatred for, the Yoruba, a trait shared by some geopolitical zones and persons. Do the Yoruba even know how deeply resented they are?

  • Fayemi, Amaechi and ADC

    Fayemi, Amaechi and ADC

    In his wildest dreams, former Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi, could not have imagined that the talkative former Rivers governor Rotimi Amaechi would reveal the foundational details of the conspiracy that led to the formation of a political coalition movement against the All Progressives Congress (APC). Last week, on television, perhaps exasperated by his fellow former governor’s dissembling, Mr Amaechi exposed the conspiracy, revealing that he and the former Ekiti governor inspired the beginnings of the coalition force. Nigerians believe him. Neither Dr Fayemi who has kept spectrally quiet nor his spokesman who merely warned against social media gossips has denied the story. After all, said the former Ekiti governor, he had endorsed Ekiti governor, Abiodun Oyebanji for a second term. How that absolved him of anti-party plots is hard to understand.

    Read Also: IPLAN to law enforcement agents: Stop profiling Nigerian content creators

    Dr Fayemi reserves the right to plot against his friends and lionise his enemies, just like the bitter and vexatious former Osun State governor Rauf Aregbesola; but his comrades in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) are tired of his double-dealing and want him to clarify his stand. The trouble, however, is that unlike Mr Aregbesola, Dr Fayemi still has a conscience disturbed by his errant choices. He is aggrieved for being left out in the cold when President Bola Tinubu constituted his cabinet, but he recollects the president’s immense contributions to his election and reelection, without which he could not have actualize his ambition.

    But being lukewarm in politics is as debilitating as it is counterproductive. Dr Fayemi may congratulate himself for not yet immersing fully in the ADC, for the adopted party is convulsing with internal and legal conflicts of all kinds, but he will do more than just immersion once the coast is clear. And he is of course not alone in sitting on the fence. He is in solid and infamous company with former vice president Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, both of whom are on the horns of a dilemma over the many troubles of the ADC. He may also exult for not burning his bridges yet, and like the Pharisee, he may even joke about the irreligious Mr Aregbesola provocatively invoking God as the patron saint of the coalition party. But soon, Dr Fayemi will have to determine whether to go the whole hog in rebellion or retrace his steps. His choice will depend on whether the temptation to unhorse President Tinubu is more vengefully satisfying than the trouble his conscience will give him.