The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Lofty ambitions kill the stormbird – Marabouts nail Atiku and effectively killed off Peoples Democratic Party

Tinubu has a reputation for thriving in adversity. How he usually triumphed over vicissitudes of life, and politics, is an act of God. He had spread his tentacles to the six zones. He had built bridges. He may have started the journey to Aso Villa, since he was governor of Lagos between 1999 and 2007. He told Nigerians that it was his long life ambition to serve the country. Tinubu had honed his skills of dialogue and persuasion, consensus building, tolerance, accommodation, and ‘give and take.’ His greatest attribute is his forgiving spirit.

A believer in consultation, debate and power of ideas, Tinubu is a powerful organiser, mobiliser, thinker and strategist”. -Emmanuel Oladesu, Deputy Editor, The Nation.

These are extremely sensitive, if not dangerous, days in our country and the least one should be considered doing is gloating over the last presidential election. However, drawing attention to some or any of its key takeaways should be seen, more rationally, as undertaking a timely, historical responsibility of showing Nigerians, particularly the youths, that unbridled ambition, as in Atiku’s, is so dangerous it could birth totally unexpected results that one would regret forever. Or how on earth could Atiku Abubakar’s overarching ambition to be president of Nigeria, at all cost, have been seen, apriori, as capable of literally erasing from the Nigerian political map, a once glorious political party like the Peoples Democratic Party, once described as the largest party in Africa?

Ambition, they say, kills the cat, but it can do far worse; and if PDP knows what just hit it, its leaders, even members, should be weeping rather than protesting the election process, as they claim they are doing, and the Bwala’s of this world resorting to meaningless sophism on television.

It is obvious that looking at the party’s performance and post election national spread, a monumental disaster, which needn’t have been so, befell both the party and its presidential candidate.

This piece will try to examine how, and why.

In the 2015 and 2023 Presidential elections in both the Southeast and the Southsouth, PDP performed as follows:

State                           2015                                      2023

Abia                      368303         (94.18%)       22,676

Anambra            660762              (98.52)            9036

Ebonyi                 323653               (88.94)         13503

Enugu                  553003              (96.48)         15749

Imo                        559185             (79.55)        30234

Akwa                   953304               (93.73)      214012

Bayelsa                361209              (98.48)         68818

CrossRiver       414363               (92.09)         95425

Rivers                 1487075             (94.99)        88468

From the above, it needs no gainsaying that candidate Atiku has practically buried PDP.

But how did he achieve this millennial feat?

It goes back a long way to what

Presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina was saying when he wrote: “that marabouts, prophets, some pastors, preachers and witches and wizards formed a “confederacy” and said Atiku would become president”.

Our ever ebullient, eager letter writer of a former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, had in his book, MY WATCH, put it much more brutally when he wrote as follows about Atiku, his Vice for 8 years, 1999 – 2007: “ From the day I nominated Atiku to be my vice, he set his mind not for any good, benefit or service of the country, but on furiously planning to upstage, supplant or remove me at all cost and to take my place.

“That was what I brought him for, but he was impatient and over-ambitious. He was not ready to learn and to wait. His marabout, who predicted that despite being elected as governor, he would not be sworn in as a governor, which happened, also assured him that he would take over from me in a matter of months rather than years.

“All his plans, appointments of people and his actions were towards the actualisation of his marabout’s prediction. Once I realised his intention and programme, I watched him like a hawk without giving any indication of what I knew and letting down my guard. I could not succumb to the distraction, diversion and malevolence of an ambitious but unwise deputy”.

That, unfortunately, has been the Atiku mindset until the recent election and so furiously driven towards it was the man that everything else, even the country’s survival as a united entity, became secondary.

So consumed with becoming president was he, like when he futilely hoped to be promoted Customs Controller- General, over which he allegedly resigned that, according to Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, he asked President Goodluck Jonathan, a sitting president who had trailed him all the way to the UK to solicit his support for the 2915 presidential election, that he should renounce his candidacy so that he, a Northerner, could contest as the PDP presidential candidate in his place.

So overarching was this ambition that Atiku could not see the unfairness and inequality inherent, in another Fulani succeeding President Mohammadu Buhari, a Fulani, after 8 years, in a country with over 250 ethnic groups.

If he couldn’t see that, there was no way he could have been moved by the Southern governors’ resolution, across party lines, that the presidency should come to the South after Buhari. Rather, what caught his fancy was to ensnare Governor Okowa, who hosted the meeting at which the Southern governors took that solemn undertaking, and made him his Vice Presidential candidate. Given that mindset too, and believing he would be the adopted candidate of the North, he graduated from one mistake to another. For instance, directly after the PDP Presidential primaries, he had visited Wike, who came second in the election promising, and assuring, him that the next thing was to get party Chairman, Dr Iyorcha Ayu, to resign since both the candidate and the Chairman could not both come from the North. He even offered him the Vice – Presidential position.

But Atiku was playing politics as he knew, only too well that he was not disposed to Ayu quitting his office. It was speculated that he was Atiku’s link to the man working for his victory at the Villa. Wike, for instance, once said the following:”They are arrogant because they believe somebody in the presidency is backing them. But what they don’t understand is that the same person backed somebody in the APC presidential primaries and the person failed.

“I will tell Nigerians at the appropriate time the person in the presidency backing them”.

This assumed support from higher quarters was why Atiku finally unbelievably mismanaged the G-5 affair and brought political disaster on both himself and his party.

What, for instance, would it have cost Atiku and the party if they had quietly eased out Ayu who ended up dismally failing the party at the election proper even in his Benue home state which the APC won handsomely?

Labour party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, merely seized on Atiku’s vaulting ambition and his inability to demonstrate leadership within his party, to help put the final nail on PDP’s coffin, relying on a combination of youth anger(#EndSars#) Igbo chronic insularity and irritant Pentecostalism( a new and very dangerous introduction to the Nigerian political space).

Nigerians won’t miss the Peoples Democratic Party but would never forget its 16 year stranglehold of 1999 – 2015, especially the Obasanjo portion of it.

March 5, 2023
SNAPSONG 182

And the People Voted

They did all they could
To bar the way to the polls

They hired rainmakers
To drown the day in pestilential flood
They paid the harmattan
To harm the streets with blinding dust

They confiscated our money
And forced the banks
To padlock their gates
So “cashless” pockets menaced our lives

They pumped flammable chaos
Into the petrol tank
With orchestrated scarcity
In our engines and silenced factories

Serpentine cash lines
Crisscrossed petrol queues
As our streets became an angry hell
Of premeditated pain and hunger

But We the People
Refused to take the bait
On the duly appointed day
We trooped out to cast our votes

They did all they could
To block the road
But our wisdom found a way
Around their plot

March 5, 2023
Tinubu: Takes two to tango!

“In the widely read treatise: “Leadership Challenge” (written by the duo of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner), the main ingredient of leadership as attested to in more than 25 years of research inquiries spanning all the continents of the world, was integrity. Hence, the acronym from the book: DWYSYWD (meaning: “Do What You Say You Will Do”). Personally, this columnist would congratulate the President Elect whilst whimsically whistling into his ears: “May your road be rough” (apology to the late Tai Solarin, dogged educationist, social crusader and politician of repute). Taking cognizance of the acceptance speech of the President Elect, he palpably perceives his job well laid out for him. Operationalizing the mandate and manifesto is the kernel of the matter that will ultimately make the followers (citizens) to see, feel, touch and embrace their longings and yearnings. This is what is tagged good governance: doing good for the greatest number of people.”

Saturday, February 25, 2023 has gone down in history just like June 12, 1993. To this columnist, the presidential poll of February 25, 2023 was the most keenly contested election in the history of Nigeria. However, in the last edition of this column, as pinpointed, the most credible, peaceful and acceptable election thus far in Nigeria’s chequered history was the June 12, 1993 presidential election. It was won fair and square by the flagbearer of then Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Moshood Kasimawo Osuolale Abiola (aka MKO) who roundly defeated his only opponent, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC). There were only two parties then. However, the political perverts and mischievous militicians, wining and dining with military top brass, torpedoed a triumphant and titillating electioneering process that eventually sent Nigeria into another awful and awkward military interregnum – an adventure that set our country back for many years in the wilderness! May we never tread along that trajectory of torture again!! The presidential and national assembly elections of 25th February 2023 have come and gone! Winners have been rejoicing while losers have been sulking; the pouting of some was vociferous and surprisingly illogical taking cognizance of the allegation of rigging the elections. However, the allegation of electoral heist being peddled, mostly by the duo of Labour Party (LP) and People Democratic Party (PDP), is rationally illogical and immaterial when viewed against certain metrics and yardsticks of monitoring and evaluation of electioneering process. In the context of this column, the postmortem analysis will be fixated on the presidential election.

Presidential Poll: Postmortem

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will be assessed pre, during and post-election. There was a huge preparation on the part of INEC preceding the February 25th 2023 election; much of this was well stated in the last edition of this column. However, in terms of logistics, INEC fell short of the high rating recorded in the 2022 gubernatorial elections of the duo of Ekiti and Osun States. They were late arrivals of men and materials at some polling units in some states of the country. Nevertheless, security was well provided. Yours sincerely was on TVC News a day after the declaration of result (precisely on Thursday 2nd March 2023), and I did commend the maturity and professionalism displayed by the police and armed forces personnel on duty virtually in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria to ensure peace, safety and sanctity of the poll. In addition, the conduct, counting cum collating of the votes at most polling units were transparently carried out with all parties and voters witnessing the process except in places where there was violence. In the latter case, the votes were voided. Votes were also voided where there was over voting; INEC seemingly has ‘learnt lessons’ by preventing the ugly monster that reared its head at the Osun gubernatorial election in which the interrogation of BIVAS exhibited and exposed overvoting. In this last edition of this column, it was curiously pinpointed that election result should be declared promptly as a mark of peerless poll. However, it was not so with the presidential poll of February 25th 2023 as INEC, in these days of digital technology, taking cognizance of the humongous resources in their kitty, should be able to deploy rugged and robust technology that could resist any assault from any internet daredevil denizens. INEC could learn from other countries in subsequent elections. The National Assembly (NASS), going forward, may need to streamline or moderate the Electoral Act especially in the aspect dealing with the announcement and declaration of the winner of the presidential poll. It is not only a sheer waste of time and resources but heightened tension of the citizens after elections conducted and announced at state levels would thereafter be announced and declared again at Abuja! Going forward, in these days of digital technology, the NASS and INEC should put heads together and ensure that once elections are declared at state levels, it should be a live telecast that the INEC Chairman simultaneously seated at the International Collation Centre (ICC) will witness and declare the announced results. There is also a point worth mentioning here: INEC failed to communicate appropriately the nauseating and nasty experience of the combat its servers were confronting due to the incessant and intense onslaught from daredevil internet warriors ready to compromise the figures. Effective and efficient communication, handled in a matured manner, is sine qua non to a peerless presidential election.

Tinubu: Chief Servant in word and deed?

There was a governor in the north central region who once mouthed the moniker or sobriquet, Chief Servant. He was nothing near in word and deed as he could not walk the talk. In the widely read treatise: “Leadership Challenge” (written by the duo of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner), the main ingredient of leadership as attested to in more than 25 years of research inquiries spanning all the continents of the world, was integrity. Hence, the acronym from the book: DWYSYWD (meaning: “Do What You Say You Will Do”). Personally, this columnist would congratulate the President Elect whilst whimsically whistling into his ears: “May your road be rough” (apology to the late Tai Solarin, dogged educationist, social crusader and politician of repute). Taking cognizance of the acceptance speech of the President Elect, he palpably perceives his job well laid out for him. Operationalizing the mandate and manifesto is the kernel of the matter that will ultimately make the followers (citizens) to see, feel, touch and embrace their longings and yearnings. This is what is tagged good governance: doing good for the greatest number of people. This columnist was upbeat as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his acceptance speech declared with enthusiasm:

Read Also: APC group asks opposition to join hands with Tinubu to develop Nigeria

“Political competition must now give way to political conciliation and inclusive governance. During the election, you may have been my opponent but you were never my enemy. In my heart, you are my brothers… Many people are uncertain, angry and hurt; I reach out to every one of you. Let the better aspects of our humanity step forward at this fateful moment. Let us begin to heal and bring calm to our nation.”

This columnist is elated that as at the time of going to the press, there is a proactive and practical way forward as the President Elect has set up a Reconciliation Committee to interface with the duo of the flag bearers of the Labour Party (LP) and People Democratic Party (PDP), former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi. Inclusion, even though opposition is permitted in democracy, is core and crucial at this stage of our nascent democracy.

Next, candidly he pontificated on the youths’ palpable angst against the system that have denied them access to enviable quality of life in comparison to their colleagues in other climes. He went further: “Now, to you, the young people of this country, I hear you loud and clear. I understand your pains, your yearnings for good governance, a functional economy and a safe nation that protects you and your future.”

In my first meeting with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu shortly after the June 2014 gubernatorial election in Ekiti which was shared on TVC News Breakfast as “My Asiwaju Story”, shortly before this presidential election, I did succinctly and saliently state that leaders in Africa always tend to think for followers, unknown to them, that it is better to listening to the tinkering of the followers like Hilary Clinton did at the initiation of his campaign for the Senatorial seat of New York. One germane thing that the President Elect needs to imbibe now is the art of empathic listening. It is simply and squarely listening, putting himself in the shoes of others who are pained without interrupting the flow of speech, for expression suppressed can turn to depression. It takes two to tango! The President Elect is on one side and the mass of followers is on the other side. Asiwaju Tinubu should be better prepared to interface with the youths taking cognizance of the youth bulge in the population projection of Nigeria. Failure to do this comprehensibly now may spell doom for our collective political future. As a grandfather, I can say categorically that most of them are not wont and wired to our way of thinking and doing that has not exhibited any positive or palatable outcome. Personally, convincing some of my daughters to follow my direction was like forcing water to flow uphill; many of them are disenchanted and dispirited with the set of old politicians, regardless of the party of affiliation. The young people see all of you as the same. Truth be told. Will you as the President and Commander in Chief, truly act as the Chief Servant, to set the tone that it would not be business as usual? Will you walk the talk? Will you Do As You Say You Will Do (DWYSYWD)?

Moreover, possibly at your inauguration, Mr. President Elect, you may need to set up a truth and healing commission since you speak about healing in your acceptance speech. In this same country, please take note that some people were displaced from their homesteads and farmlands, some were killed or maimed, many were kidnapped and later released with humongous resources while others had their villages pilloried and burnt. All eyes will be on you not to just gloss over these obnoxious and odoriferous acts of some errant citizens and some carried out with callous foreigners in cahoots with fellow countrymen. The bottom line is the urgent need, possibly within the transition, to truly interface and engage with religious leaders: separately and jointly. The religious lines should be blunt in our national lives. This columnist lived before in south eastern Asia nations of Singapore and Malaysia. The latter, though a Muslim country, allows for citizens and residents to practice their religions in harmony with others and to not bring that to private and public offices. In addition, Nigeria should play down on race or region!

First and foremost, you are a Nigerian. However, this is not an excuse to skew appointment to one part; any Nigerian, in private and public office, should not see himself as an Ibibio, Bachama, Nupe, Igala, Fulani, Mumuye, Idoma, Yoruba, Kanuri, Ebira, Benin, Ijaw, Hausa, Urhobo, Tivs, Itsekiri, Igbo, Gwari, etc.

Surmising succinctly and saliently, the President Elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, should be at the receiving end if he truly desires healing within the house called Nigeria. Going to the 2023 elections, Nigerians were divided! Over the years, the duo of APC and PDP have their fair share in the rot in security scares and economic eccentricity: the raison d’etre for the youths protesting with their votes against the old brigades in both parties. It is gratifying that the President Elect has assured that incessant strikes will be a thing of the past whilst there will be inculcation of students’ loan to aid indigent students. Hence, university autonomy is on the way! Moreover, in exhibiting and amplifying their angst against the incumbent government, the Christians both in the northern and southern part of Nigeria, having lost properties, possessions, lives and limbs, resorted to wage ‘war’ against the ruling party by being vehement and vociferous with their votes in the February 25th presidential polls. In essence, the President Elect should not wait till inauguration; this transition offers the opportunity to engage and interface with religious leaders in both Christianity and Islam. Will Tinubu indeed be a Chief Servant – in word and deed through demonstration of emphatic listening leading to healing? We are following and flowing along as a stitch in time saves nine!

John Ekundayo, Ph.D. – Harvard-Certified Leadership Strategist, and also a Development Consultant, can be reached via +2348030598267 (WhatsApp only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com

March 5, 2023
Sanwo-Olu once more
- The Lagos State governor has performed; he deserves reelection
In “A galaxy of projects” published on this page on January 29, 2023, I had done justice to my advocacy for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s second term bid. That was when President Muhammadu Buhari came to commission some landmark achievements of the administration. Ordinarily, the governor’s achievements cutting across virtually all sectors should speak for him. Indeed, it is incredible how far he has been able to travel in just four years. He needs revalidation of his mandate to complete the good works that he started.

Sanwo-Olu has in the last four years constructed more than 308 roads, fixed many others just to ensure that Lagosians dance ‘palongo’ less on the roads. I am particularly happy to note the tarring of several inner roads, particularly in the Agege area. Not only are the inner roads being tarred, they also come with drainage to take care of flooding.

Many people have also spoken glowingly about the Sanwo-Olu government’s giant strides, especially at the grassroots. One of such persons is Funsho Oshunleti, an entrepreneur based in the United States. He said that Sanwo-Olu has harnessed human and capital resources in his service to Lagosians, adding that “Lagosians are much aware of Sanwo-Olu’s achievements which include…the repositioning of the health sector through the building of more health centres at the grassroots, and a free health policy for children below 18 years and adults above 65 years of age.”

Oshunleti goes into specifics.

“In the area of infrastructure, some of the projects Sanwo-Olu carried out are; the Lagos-Ogun boundary roads, Lekki-Oniru Traffic circulation projects, Pen Cinema Flyover and road networks in Somolu, Ikoyi, and Victoria Island. The Lekki-VGC Regional Road and Lekki-Epe-Ibeju Road expansion projects are transformational infrastructural projects that will improve the quality of life”. He forgot to add the gigantic works at the Ikeja axis which, when completed, would make visitors to wonder if the new Ikeja, whether along or inside, was the same old Ikeja that they used to know.

The government has constructed at least 19 magnificent housing projects in all parts of the state as part of the Greater Lagos journey. These include 38 units of two and three-bedroom flats at Channel Point apartments on Victoria Island, 100 housing units in Ikate, 84 units in Lekki Phase 2, 120 units Cotland Villa, Igbokosu, 774 housing units Lagoshoms, Sangotedo Phase 1 and 48 units of Greater Lagos LBIC Apartments at Pen Cinema, Agege, given free of charge to residents as compensation for the demolition of their houses during the construction of the 1.4-kilometre Pen Cinema Bridge, among others. According to Gbenga Omotoso, commissioner for information and strategy, “these housing estates have state-of-the-art infrastructure — good roads, drainage, water and sewage treatment plants for the comfort of residents. Our administration has provided these housing estates to achieve the goal of making Lagos a 21st century economy.”

The administration has also invested greatly in healthcare. It has constructed maternal and child centres at Epe, Badagry, Eti-Osa and Igando. This has brought down both maternal and infant mortality in the state. Contrary to experts’ prediction during COVID-19 that corpses would be picked all over Lagos, the government’s handling of the situation proved the experts wrong.

The Sanwo-Olu administration is rebuilding the 108-year-old Massey Children’ s Hospital on Lagos Island into the biggest pediatric hospital in West Africa. The government has renovated its general hospitals on Lagos Island, Harvey Road, Yaba, Isolo, Ebute-Metta and Ketu-Ejinrin. The 320 primary healthcare centres are being renovated, with 78 of them running 24/7. Floating clinic has been commissioned for the people in riverine areas. Over 700,000 people have benefited from the state’s health insurance scheme popularly known as ‘Ilera Eko’. ‘Jigin Bola’ (Bola’s eye glasses) initiated by the Bola Tinubu administration has been relaunched by the Sanwo-Olu administration.

Of course, the government is also investing in education, from the primary to the tertiary level. It has done 1,087 education projects, commissioned 15 brand new schools in one day, supplied public schools with 86,000 pieces of furniture, built 1,400-bed hostels for its model colleges. The Lagos State University (LASU), has also benefited immensely from the Sanwo-Olu administration. About 4,000 flats have been commissioned for members of the staff of the university, the government also commissioned the students arcade even as it is building an 8,272-bed hostel for the students. In like manner, the government has provided 450,000 pupils with e-learning devices and trained more than 18,000 under its Eko Excel Programme.

Another area that the Sanwo-Olu government is leaving indelible marks is transportation. The government has continued to work along the inter-modal system of transportation simultaneously, which is the best for a state of Lagos’ mega city status. The aim is to ensure seamless transiting from one mode of transportation to another. On January 24, President Buhari was in the state to commission the first phase of the 13-kilometre Blue Line Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT). This, and the Red Line from Agbado to Marina, as well as the second phase of the Blue Line Rail Mass Transit when completed would be moving one million people daily. Time spent in traffic jams and the stress would also be reduced.

Things are tough this time around, no doubt. That should not call for despondency. Much of what is happening is beyond the state government. So, whatever is happening now should not be enough reason to abort the developmental strides in the state. Indeed, the Sanwo-Olu administration has had to package palliatives for the vulnerable to cushion the effects of the naira scarcity that attended the currency redesign by the Godwin Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This is quite thoughtful of the governor who, apparently did not want a repeat of the devastation that Lagos suffered as a result of the 2020 EndSARS riots in the state.

Sanwo-Olu has done so many things in less than four years, hence, it is impossible to do justice to his achievements in one single piece. Even political detractors with a little fear of God cannot deny this. The best that they can say is that the government could have done better. Of course, room for improvement there always will be. (85 LINES).

A most wicked Naira redesign

All through February, 2023, this column has been hammering the so-called Naira redesign by the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele. I doubt if there has ever been any topic I wrote on in four consecutive weeks in my over three decades of column writing. From “Where are the new notes ” (January 15), to “This pain is getting worse” (Feb. 5), “Emefiele’s peculiar mess” (Feb. 12), “Nothing has changed” (Feb. 19), and “IGP and Emefiele’s Korowona virus”, (Feb. 26), the message was the same: this redesign is not working. In fact, it is poison. Or, what do you call a policy that makes it impossible for people to access their hard-earned money even as they sorely needed money to cater to their daily needs and even emergencies? I said this was confiscation of people’s money, not redesign.

The Supreme Court on Friday confirmed this much in its final judgment on the matter. It had ruled on it before, and asked the government to allow both the old and new Naira notes to co-exist, pending the determination of the suit brought by some state governments. The apex court went on to add that the policy as is infringes on fundamental human rights of Nigerians. But President Muhammadu Buhari countermanded the apex court, and instead, ordered that only the old N200 notes should be recirculated. The N500 and N1000 notes remained banned. Even then, the President’s order has not solved the problem. The old N200 is nowhere to be found. Nigerians have continued to remain refugees in their banks, keeping vigil for Emefiele’s elusive new notes.

It remains to be seen how the Federal Government wants to deal with this monumental embarrassment that the Supreme Court’s judgment implies. In sane climes, someone or some people will pay for such embarrassment. But it is the kind of fate a government suffers when it gives big responsibility to Lilliputians and people with small minds. I said it before that the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami is putting on oversized shoes, sitting on the chair that eminent Nigerian jurists of international repute sat on decades back. Emefiele on his part kept pointing accusing fingers at the banks for the failure of his policy. Yet, not one bank chief executive is in court to explain how they disbursed the new notes allocated to them.

It is not enough to say the president was deceived. That could not have been a reason to defy the Supreme Court. Be that as it may, if we cannot ask the president to step down for allowing himself to be deceived, we can at least ask that those who made it impossible for our oracle to speak like a truly caring oracle that he should be, be relieved of their jobs. Their continued stay in government somewhat implicates the president in the satanic plot.
March 5, 2023
Presidential election: Matters arising

It’s good to know that two runners-up in the just concluded presidential election have opted to seek legal redress to contest the victory of Senator Bola Tinubu as President-elect in accordance with the law of the country and best practice in any democratic contest.

Based on their vast experiences in politics and having won and lost elections before, they definitely know better than some of their supporters who think resorting to violence is a better option.

The February 25th election is not the first in the country and those who have lost in the previous ones, especially President Muhammad Buhari have always gone through the Tribunal, Appeal Court and Supreme Court to contest their defeat.

There can always be grounds for contesting the outcome of any election, but the legal way is to abide by the laid down procedure and not seek to disrupt the collation or advocate for violence.

We have enough examples in the country where candidates said to have been defeated according to the electoral commission have been declared winners and have been sworn in as the right occupants of the elective positions.

Supporters of the defeated candidates, especially first-time voters need to learn that democracy is not about seeking to win through the undemocratic process like taking the laws into their hands no matter how strongly they think their candidate deserves to win.

It’s unfortunate that some aggrieved supporters are expressing lack of confidence in the judiciary to ensure that justice is done to the petitions by their preferred candidates, there are enough examples of tribunal and court rulings since 1999 to show that candidates who can prove their case get justice no matter how long.

It’s not enough to claim that the election was rigged, there must be enough evidence that must be substantial to invalidate the total outcome of the election. In any election, someone has to win, others will lose, and there will be another time to contest and win.

Those who prefer protesting and resorting to violence in support of their candidates must realize that those who supported the winner of the election will also resist any move to upturn the results through any illegal means.

Supporters of defeated candidates will do well to heed the counsel of the contestants who have urged them to remain calm and allow them to seek justice through the right means. They cannot afford to be crying more than the bereaved and should not do anything their candidates cannot defend.

One other crucial lesson first-time voters need to learn from this election is to fully understand what it takes to win the presidential election. Despite available information, many seem to be carried away by voting in their polling booth and neighbourhood

I warned in a Facebook post that “there is more to winning the presidential election than having more votes in one polling booth and fewer votes in another. The ongoing hysteria about polling results across parties is unnecessary.”

The requirements are not new and there is no point arguing over their application in determining the winner of the election.

The winner will not only be determined by the majority votes but the required 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds spread in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

So, winning is not just about winning in one state, it’s about winning in states that have a large number of voters and even where you don’t win, get the required 25 per cent of the votes that can add up to have the majority votes.

There was no point in debating if the winner of the Presidential election must win 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory or not. One does not need to be a lawyer to know that winning in FCT is not a requirement but that it should be treated like a state.

There were hitches and discrepancies here and there during the election, which all the parties benefitted from, but they are not enough to discredit the outcome as some will want the world to believe.

March 5, 2023
Embarrassing end to naira swap policy

On Friday, the Supreme Court finally laid to rest the controversy surrounding the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) naira swap policy. It took three sittings of the apex court, two attempts by the federal government to tweak the deadlines beyond which the notes would cease to be legal tender, and massive political and socio-economic disruptions to bring the suit initially brought by Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara States to an embarrassing close. The CBN had unveiled the new naira notes in October, ordered Nigerians to swap their old notes with the new ones beginning from mid-December, and had set a January 31 terminal date for the notes to remain legal tender. The deadline was suffocating and immensely disruptive, but after one extension terminating on February 10, the administration put its foot down and refused to budge, except for President Muhammadu Buhari’s February 16 concession to allow the N200 notes remain in circulation following the apex court interim order keeping the notes in circulation until the end of the suit.

Well, all is well that ends well. The apex court has finally ruled that the notes will remain in circulation until December 31, a great relief for bank customers who had been unlawfully denied access to their money. That new date should give the CBN, no matter how malicious it is, enough time to withdraw the old notes and replace them with redesigned notes. It was thought that when the court sat on February 22 it would give a definitive order on the naira policy consequent upon the Buhari administration’s refusal to obey the interim order to keep the old notes in circulation. Instead, the court adjourned till after the presidential poll, a move many thought showed a reluctance to take on the administration or an indication that the court connived at a policy suspected at the time to be largely political. The apex court, analysts also expected, should have guarded its reputation and powers more jealously by hammering the administration’s impudence in retaining only the old N200.

By describing the Buhari administration as dictatorial and autocratic, and the naira redesign policy as unlawful and maliciously executed, the Supreme Court finally left no one in doubt how strongly it viewed the government’s malfeasance. The judgement not only restored the court’s integrity and dignity, it also reestablished its powers, especially going by the logic of the judgement and the harshness of its denunciation of the administration’s disobedience. The poorly executed naira swap policy should have led to the resignation of the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, and the Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. But two interim orders later and the pains the policy inflicted on the country have proved insufficient to push the two officers out. With the apex court judgement, not to say its harsh excoriation of the administration’s abuse of power, it is incredible that both Messrs Emefiele and Malami are still sitting pretty in office.

Few Nigerians, however, expect both the CBN governor and the Justice minister to resign or be fired. This is because the naira swap policy is widely believed to have been designed to undermine the campaigns of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate. But by early February, it seemed the plot to undermine the party and whittle down its chances in the impending poll was not succeeding. This was because the APC and its presidential candidate sensibly distanced themselves from the naira swap policy, sided with the suffering masses, and rallied against the poor execution of the swap. By February 25, it was clear that the plot against the party and its candidate had virtually failed. The party went on to win the presidential poll by about 1.8m votes, and so far had also secured more than 50 Senate seats. Its commanding lead was unassailable. If despite the punishingly tight deadline given for the naira swap policy the APC still won, and won handsomely, administration officials must wonder what came over them.

APC governors, many of whom joined the suit, have strenuously attempted to distance the president from the ill-fated policy. They are unlikely to succeed. Nigerians see the entire administration as culpable. President Buhari has less than three months in office; it is worrisome that he got himself embroiled in a messy and doomed policy. No one thought of impeaching him for disobeying court order, and no one could haul him in for contempt; but his administration will be stigmatised with a nonsensical naira policy and flagrant disobedience to court orders. For an administration that has chalked up a fair amount of great infrastructural interventions, conceiving and executing the naira swap policy and disobedience to courts are not the kind of legacies to flaunt as it winds down.

Obasanjo, youths and presidential poll

EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo manifested his idiosyncratic bitterness once again when he inspired a three-pronged response to the February 25 presidential poll. First, years after indicating that he had retired from active politics, he publicly and actively endorsed Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) for the presidency. He gave indication that he was dissatisfied with the other two leading aspirants, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Mr Obi had no inspiring track record, and had no coherent and plausible answers to Nigeria’s existential crisis, but was determined to harness divisive religious votes. Nevertheless, Chief Obasanjo embraced his aspiration. It was clear he loathed the other aspirants and would do everything to undermine them.

Second, he incited Nigerian youths against their elders, urging them to take over the country because they constitute the largest voting bloc. He gave no sensible or practicable roadmap, except to suggest that the youths could furnish their own revolution within the ambit of Mr Obi’s naïve and utopian aspiration. And when it looked like the presidential election votes were going the way of the APC, Chief Obasanjo cried foul and called for partial disruption of the electoral process. Again, he did not indicate how constitutionally feasible that would be, or what facts were available to him to make him suggest such drastic and catastrophic remedies. Both the PDP and LP, knowing they were losing or had lost, embraced the former president’s scheme and began to campaign for vote cancellation. In the end, no one listened to them, not least the electoral umpire, INEC.

And third, after failing to truncate the election, Chief Obasanjo was reported as advocating for mass action to undermine the May 29 inauguration. He is inciting youths and any other aggrieved group to join hands to disrupt the march towards May 29. Again, he does not indicate how that would not fit in to his appalling interim government gambit, just like he and others had embraced in 1993 to the country’s dismay and anguish. As a former president, especially one who had superintended and defended perhaps the worst election in Nigerian history, he has not shown by logic or evidence how he and others hope to manage the new and complicated but unconstitutional process.

Clearly, his unsolicited intervention is not because he loves Mr Obi or because he thinks him fit to occupy the highest office in the land winning essentially Igbo and Christian votes. It is also not because he loves Nigeria so much, as indeed his own leadership records have shown. It is simply because he cannot contemplate being sidelined or submitting himself to the rule of any elected president who does not owe him an obligation. He should be watched closely, for he would not mind bringing the whole democratic edifice down.

March 5, 2023
The man who walked on water

Tuesday was a battle. It was not a duel against malevolent spirits and other scary demons. Neither was it a mortal combat against ogres. It was a duel with nature. And as Shakespeare famously noted, nature must obey necessity. By three in the morning, yours sincerely had lost the battle and had been knocked cold on the canvas. After two sleepless, excruciating and nail-biting nights of watching the results of the presidential elections roll in with almost deliberate tardiness, nature finally had its way.

By the time one woke up two hours later, a new dawn had broken over the country. Bola Tinubu, our long-standing friend and political comrade in arms, had been declared President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It was the stuff of scintillating fiction.

It has been noted that Nigeria is great movie crafted by a master artist at the height of his power and full of strange twists and even stranger turns. The canvas bursts with tumultuous characters, sacred monsters and human fiascoes from bygone and better forgotten ages. Perfidious prelates, mutinous mullahs, political astrologers and other spiritual carpetbaggers abound. They ply their trade without any concession to truth or fidelity to trustworthiness.

Not many people thought that this epic of daring, this audacity of the immensely courageous, could be carried off without some elemental upheaval. But there you had it, slowly unfolding before the naked eyes. The political map of Nigeria was being redrawn, perhaps forever and if not so in the very long interim.

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning. The sky was as clear as it was candid. The nation was eerily quiet. There was something surreal and even unnatural about the atmosphere. The jubilation and applause was muted and restricted. The protests were half-hearted and constricted.

Yet for a people who have just managed to elect their first truly civilian administration in the post-military era without the nuisance of military interlopers and shorn of the influence of the old selectorate, it is all the more confounding. Great events often announce their arrival with underwhelming aplomb.

Not even the man of the moment was spared the pervading sobriety. The president-elect appeared sedate, subdued and sombre, exhibiting commonsensical restraint and uncommon statesmanship. Perhaps the reality that he had just pulled off the greatest political siege in the annals of the nation and the burden of expectations going with this finally dawned on him. The man who walked on water has finally arrived at the lonely harbour of political intrigues and mysteries.

An Ibo proverb has it that if a man says yes, his chi, or personal god, must concur. It is a propellant of militant self-belief and unrelenting self-assurance. Tinubu has walked his talk. A fighters’ fighter and perfect embodiment of the warrior-spirit in politics, his outburst about emi lokan has already entered the nation’s political folklore and cultural lexicon. No matter what happens hereafter, the man has already passed into legend in his own life time.

Not unexpectedly, it is the nature of what happens hereafter that has further divided the nation and split its fractious political elite down the line. As this column never tires of warning, elections never resolve national questions but often serve to exacerbate them.

Yet the irony of the Nigerian conundrum is that these countervailing forces can be used as building blocks for a new nation in which no hegemonic bloc, ethnic formation, religious phalanx or military guild can dominate or prevail without intricate negotiations and alliances with other ascendant groups. No group can lord it over the entire nation for long without the situation dissolving into fratricidal violence.

In the event, it is the group with the least polarizing baggage and the negotiating skills to broker deals with other contending groups that is assured of reasonable success in the postcolonial emporium. As hobbled and disorganized as the APC appeared going forward towards the election, this is the lesson the party and its flag bearer have been able to teach the nation.

Those in the heat of battle or hand to hand political combat never see the situation as it truly is. Outsiders often see us better and from a sharper focus. The Americans provided the best description of the just concluded elections when they deemed it as most competitive. Nothing can be more perceptive.

The election hugged all the fault lines and flashpoints of ethnicity, religious rancor, demographic polarization, inter-generational conflicts, gender disparity and class disequilibrium without any one of them or a combination thereof being powerful enough to take down the country. At the end of the most consequential presidential contest in its post-military history, the nation is still standing.

There were so many surprises and unfathomable twists. It will be safe to conclude that nothing is sacrosanct again. All revolutionary reordering of the society often begin as minor political hiccups. As we have noted, we may be witnessing the forcible reimagining of the political cartography of the nation as handed down by Lord Lugard and as reinforced by the advent of unitary government. Nigeria may yet involuntarily restructure itself to a more livable country without formal battlement.

We say formal battlement because lives have already been lost. Due to what is known as the cunning of history, men join particular battles without knowing what higher causes they are being used for other than what they think they are fighting for. This perhaps is what the President-elect meant when he said that he himself may well be an agent of a bigger phenomenon.

With this election, we have witnessed the disappearance of the twelve million votes warehoused somewhere in the core north permanently poised as a weapon of electoral shellacking. In retrospect, no one can be sure of the actual existence of this mythical electoral incubus usually called upon to steamroll the rest of the country into electoral compliance. All we know is that even General Buhari lost in his home state of Katsina.

Second is the decline and political superannuation of certain apex sociocultural organizations in the country. Out of abiding respect, this columnist will not mention names. But it is now obvious that they have been punching above their real weight and are of scant electoral values when the chips are really down.

They have survived for long by skillfully aligning themselves with the mood of their respective regions. When they stray and go off message, humiliation and disgrace follow. In order to avert the looming terminal disaster, their regnant rumps must now go back to the drawing board. In Yoruba culture, there is a protocol for the retirement of pertinacious elders from partisan politics and this may be what is unfolding before our very eyes.

   Finally, this election has shown the terminal unraveling of the old class of military selectorate, the men of the 1975 post-Gowon power consortium, who have held the nation by the political jugular ever since and whose word had been final in selecting who rules and runs Nigeria. This time around, their whimsical and hypocritical endorsements amounted to little within their own catchments areas.

They left things too late until bitter defeat and demystification became their lot. Unfortunately, it is obvious that they can no longer call for reinforcement from the usual quarters. Fortunately, Nigerians are a kind and forgiving lot. They will accord them full respect and recognition in appreciation of their past services to the nation once they gracefully refrain from meddling in our affairs.

The obverse of the coin is equally interesting and full of mystifying portents. It is generally acknowledged that the heroes of the APC sudden renaissance against all odds and conventional wisdom are the northern governors who stood firm against the polarization of the party as its presidential primary took a nasty and unpredictable turn.

But they themselves have not been able to prevail in their respective states. The feisty and rambunctious Nasir el-Rufai barely hung on in bitterly divided and polarized Kaduna State by the skin of his teeth. Aminu Masari was narrowly edged out in Katsina State. Governor Mai Mala Buni lost Yobe to PDP while the courtly and affable Abdulai Umar Ganduje was steamrolled by the Rabiu Musa Kwankanso blitzkrieg in Kano.

The substantial votes accruing to the APC in these core northern states cannot be lightly discounted. But the fact that the governors struggled to barely retain the status quo is an indication of the unstable political dynamics in that region and the fact that the north is yet to throw up a dominant political figure post-Buhari. Politically speaking, everything is up for grabs in the north.

It is a measure of the unruly dynamics and the desacralizing momentum of the unfolding political era that the victorious APC flag bearer lost his Lagos base to a coalition of ascendant forces. This is the state where the former senator has loomed large, unchallenged and seemingly unchallengeable in the last twenty four years since the return of civil rule. As if to add to the bitter pill, the APC was also wiped out in Osun State, a core Yoruba dominion and bastion of progressive politics.

    Despite this tumultuous yearning for change in other parts of the country, it is only in the South East that we witnessed the return of the phenomenon of total voting. Buoyed by ethnic hysteria and egged on by irrational fears masquerading as facts, it is an anti-democratic ethnic census; the equivalent of circling the electoral wagons. It can only provoke similar neuroses in other nationalities and return the country to its 1966 default setting.

How this will help Peter Obi grow his “revolutionary” momentum remains to be seen. Without any doubt, the most substantial factor impacting the recently concluded elections is the demographic shift in favour of youth. But it is a phenomenon mainly restricted to the predominantly urban conglomerations of the nation. Without ever tending the revolutionary gardens or weeding the shrubs, Obi has cashed in on the cocktail of ethnic resentments, economic inequities and generational disillusionment.

    But revolutions and revolutionists are usually made of sterner stuff. A person cannot learn to be left-handed or leftist-leaning in old age. Lacking an organic backbone and totally bereft of a vision for the radical transformation of the society beyond its soporific shibboleths, Obi’s inchoate ensemble is likely to coalesce around its ethnic substratum in the coming weeks. As the gloves come off, the “revolutionary” himself is likely to be outed as a smart Alec merely gaming the system.

  With ethnic revanchists on the prowl stoking the fire of national conflagration, the president-elect has his work cut out for him. Going forward, a lot will depend on his legendary political skills and capacity for conciliation. For now, congratulations are in order.

March 5, 2023
Akin, how now?

(History will not vindicate the unjust)

At every turn in human history, the heavily bearded figure of Karl Marx keeps popping up. The great German philosopher it was who noted that history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second as a big farce. Perhaps in postcolonial Africa we must upscale a third category to the German’s famous admonition: Tragic farce, which is a combination of the laughable and the tragic.

Yours sincerely was bemused to no end seeing our old political collaborator and beloved aburo, Akin Osuntokun, with Peter Obi, his current principal, railing and thundering against perceived electoral injustice which has robbed them of their presidential mandate. The mind rolled back to 2003 twenty full years ago.

After the egregiously rigged presidential election of that year which returned General Obasanjo to office, Akin Osuntokun, as the Director General of the Obasanjo Campaign, told a peeved and pained General Buhari to go to court if he felt that his democratic right had been trampled upon. From his American base, yours sincerely fired a warning intervention: Autogolpe As Endgame was the title.

So pissed off by the tragic travesty of an election was Chief Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi, the late Aro of Mopa, a former chairman of the winning party, that he noted cryptically and presciently that the election was so badly flawed that something good was bound to come out of it. One never knew that the great bureaucrat was also a master dialectician.

Twenty years later, the table has completely turned with the clinically detached and icily unflappable General Mohammadu Buhari now dealing the cards, and it is Akin together with his current and past principals now bemoaning their fate and wailing to the high heavens about electoral injustice. What goes around must come around. Have these people forgotten about the law of Karma? As the Yoruba people will put it, the pounded yam of twenty years can still burn with a scalding ferocity.

We can now wind back a further twenty years from 2003 to 1983. That was forty years ago. As the nation was combusting and convulsing from self-inflicted electoral wounds, another principal cohort of the Obi revanchist confederacy was on NTA justifying the electoral heist with his customary superficial inanities . That was the infamous Verdict 83 anchored by the equally infamous Walter Ofonagoro.

At the height of the farcical TV sham a completely bedraggled and weather beaten Akin Omoboriowo, the man announced by FEDECO as the winner of the Ondo State gubernatorial tussle, shuffled in. He was heaving and panting. According to him, he had to change vehicles six times before he could reach Lagos from Akure.

The putative governor was fleeing from the people who purportedly elected him. Snooper can now reveal that the FEDECO man who announced the result, a man of otherwise unblemished professional reputation, reached his Benin homestead in a police armoured vehicle with the strict instruction not to tarry anywhere in Ondo territory. From his then University of Ife base, yours sincerely fired a salvo: The Guardian and the State of the Nation. (The Guardian, November 1, 1983). A few weeks after, the Shagari government became history.

Forty years after and with the victors now becoming victims, Nigeria is still struggling with democracy. The problem with the nation is elite perfidy. Up till this moment, it has not occurred to our political class that electoral fascism is an impersonal terror machine; an equal opportunity terminator which only recognizes its extant masters. You can cry till tomorrow. It is not a weeping contest. When the democratic gloves are off, what remains is a brutal, bruising, bare-knuckle struggle for raw power.

Democratic emancipation in a fractious, multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation is not a tea party. Neither does it obey a cheery linearity. Wise nations convert the ugly experiences of the past to the building blocks of a new beginning. You ask the Americans, the British and the French. Rather than throw away the baby with the bath water, we can convert the surprising openness thrown up by this last presidential election to the building blocks of a new nation. The alternative is chaos and anarchy.

March 5, 2023
Issues in the presidential election

It was easily one of the most keenly and bitterly contested elections in this dispensation since 1999. The intense competitiveness of last Saturday’s presidential election was reflected in the number of states won by the leading political parties with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) winning in 12 states each including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, which went to the LP. Mr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) swept the polls in Kano as had been widely envisaged.

The degree of competitiveness is clearly a function of the substantial credibility and integrity of the electoral process notwithstanding some of the technical hitches as well as logistical failures experienced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the initial phases of the exercise on polling day. Sporadic acts of violence in some areas were quickly contained by security agencies. Hijacked Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines were promptly replaced. The shortcomings witnessed were insufficient to fundamentally change or alter the ultimate outcome of the exercise. The election largely reflected the will of the electorate. Despite the glitches, which are understandable since there are no perfect elections anywhere in the world, those who contend that this was one of the best-organised elections in this dispensation cannot be faulted.

Indeed, the voting pattern and trend of support for the leading presidential candidates confirmed the projections and prognostications of many analysts and pundits before the elections. Perhaps the greatest revelation of the election was the performance of Mr. Peter Obi on the platform of the Labour Party (LP). Many analysts and members of the dominant parties had dismissed the LP as lacking in the elaborate structures needed to win a national election. The party had no governors and hardly any seats in the National Assembly or state legislatures. It could not boast of controlling any Local Government Area. Yet, Peter Obi won emphatically in the five South-East states and also recorded electoral victories in Lagos, Plateau, Delta, Edo and Nasarawa states outside his home region. Obi skillfully projected himself as a ‘born again’ politician of sorts with a mission to fundamentally overhaul and radically reform the prevailing system.

To those who rallied to his trumpet call, it did not matter that as governor of Anambra State for eight years and running mate to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 presidential election on the platform of the PDP, Obi was part and parcel of the system he now disavowed in often trenchant language. Had Atiku won the 2019 election, Obi would have been in office as Vice President of Nigeria today and would most likely have been on the ticket of the PDP in that capacity in this year’s elections. Obi was an entrenched member of the subsisting system and only quit the PDP to pick the ticket of the LP when it dawned on him that he could not clinch the PDP’s presidential ticket at the primaries. There is no significant difference between the values Obi stands for and the philosophical orientation of the PDP or any of the other dominant parties.

Yet, Obi is one of those who have vehemently denounced and rejected the outcome of the elections as well as voicing his intention to challenge the results in court. But if the election had been rigged against him as Obi insists, how on earth could he have won over 90% of the votes in the South-East while the other leading candidates performed abysmally in that region? Indeed, the South-East was easily the most monolithic and one-sided in terms of voting pattern while other regions were more diverse and liberal in their voting behavior. While the LP recorded 1,960, 589 votes in the South-East, the APC and PDP scored 127,605 and 91,195 votes respectively. If the election was indeed rigged against him as Obi alleges, how come he defeated Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s APC in Lagos State, a party that had won every election in the state since 1999? Can it be that elections were free and fair only in those states where Obi’s LP won?

Running a most divisive campaign, Obi, apart from understandably enjoying the massive support of his Igbo kith and kin, also deliberately and consciously courted and sought the Christian vote never giving a thought about the dangers of politicizing religion in a complex, multi-religious polity like ours. Engaging in what has been described as “church tourism”, Obi made a point of attending the annual mass gatherings of the mega Pentecostal churches where he was rapturously received by some of the leading pastors openly endorsing his candidacy. This is one of the reasons why the APC’s Muslim,-Muslim ticket, chosen for strategic and pragmatic electoral purposes, became a contentious issue, particularly in Christian circles. The Christian factor was thus a key consideration that swung substantial Christian votes to Obi in states like Plateau, Nassarawa, Delta, Edo, and even Lagos to some extent. However, the obverse side of the coin in this regard was the dismal performance of Obi in the North-West and North-East. Those pastors who were openly and sometimes threateningly projecting Obi as a Christian candidate were unwittingly de-marketing him in key Muslim areas with substantial voting numbers.

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his party, PDP, which came second in the polls with 6,984,520 votes has also not unexpectedly rejected the outcome of the polls and also hinted that he will be going to court to challenge the results. However, Atiku ought to have known that he was headed for defeat even before the votes were cast. His strategy was to project himself as a Northern candidate hoping to win massive votes across the North while calculating that Tinubu and Obi would split the Southern votes to his electoral advantage. However, the APC governors and other younger and more liberal elements from the North were determined that the zoning policy of rotating power between the North and South must be honoured in the best interest of equity, justice and national cohesion. Thus, even though Atiku won key northern states like Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa, Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Kaduna, and Taraba, the magnitude of his victory was marginal as Tinubu came a close second in many of these Northern states won by Atiku. The APC had total votes of 1.7 million to PDP’s 1.4 million votes in the North-Central. In the North-East, the APC scored a total of 1,185,458 to the PDP’s 1,741,845 thus coming second in that zone. And in the North-West, APC scored 2,652, 253 votes to the PDP’s 2,329,540.

Again, the PDP inexplicably went into the election as a divided house especially with the grievances of the G5 governors – Benue, Oyo, Rivers, Abia and Enugu – not addressed by the party and its presidential candidate. The indifference of the governors to the Atiku campaign no doubt partly contributed to the loss of the party in all the South-East states as well as in Rivers, Benue and Oyo states. Although he has attributed his loss in the election to rigging, Atiku himself acknowledged that lack of cohesion within the ranks of the party contributed to the disappointing performance of the party. As he told the press, “Obi took our votes in the South-East and the South-South but that alone cannot make him President. We are ready to dialogue with Obi with a view to forming an alliance”. But such an alliance or mutual understanding should have been undertaken before the elections, not after. Lack of cooperation and a working relationship among the leading opposition parties rather than the rigging allegation is responsible for the outcome of the elections. It is unlikely that either the PDP or LP could single handedly defeat the APC at the polls.

Although he was the most vilified, denigrated, and relentlessly attacked by his adversaries and opponent, obviously because of his front-runner status in the race, Tinubu overcame all odds to triumph at the polls and emerge as President-elect. His victory demonstrates once again that it is impossible to become President of Nigeria based on the votes of just one region or religious faith. The Director of Media and Publicity of the APC PCC, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, makes this point succinctly, “God created our country in a way to make it impossible for any part of the country to exist without the other. The framers of our constitution also worked to bind our country together with provisions that will make it impossible for a section of the country and any religion to have political dominion over the other. What this means is that any aspiring politician for the presidency of Nigeria must have a strong Pan-Nigeria appeal and strong support and must be embraced by adherents of other religions”.

Tinubu has been forging friendships, building bridges and forming alliances across ethnic, regional and religious lines over the last three decades and this was reflected in the outcome of the presidential elections. Amazingly, it appears that Tinubu contested not only against candidates of other parties but also some forces within his own party who were unenthusiastic about his candidacy. Thus, how do we explain the inexplicable protracted fuel scarcity as well as the abrupt cash swap policy that threw hundreds of thousands of Nigerians into indescribable pain and anguish right into the election with the strong possibility that many would be angry enough to vote against the ruling party and its candidate?. But the Jagaban triumphed. However, for the first time since 1999, his party lost in one of its most formidable strongholds, Lagos, where APC lost to the LP by 9,848 votes.

From all indications, however, the dynamics of the governorship and House of Assembly elections in the state next Saturday will be different. Many complacent APC leaders and supporters who had taken victory for the party for granted will be highly motivated to come out en masse to vote for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s election. In any case, the presidential election in Lagos was not reflective of the relative strengths of the parties in the state. For, in last week’s election, the APC won the three Senatorial seats as well as 20 of the 24 House of Representatives seats. Those who continue to wail that last Saturday’s elections were rigged will have to explain how the APC lost in Lagos or how President Buhari’s party lost in Katsina or how governor Nasir ‘el-Rufai lost in Kaduna or the loss of the DG of Tinubu’s campaign team, Governor Simon Lalong, in Plateau State to name just a few in elections that were allegedly characterized by large scale fraud.

March 4, 2023
Snapsong 181

Not a poet by accident

Overheard one morning from a soulful exchange)

You are no poet by accident

     For you didn’t wake up one morning

To a medley of songs beneath your pillow

     Begging for a place between your lips

You are no poet by accident

     For no riffs rushed down your rafter

With you scampering around the room

     Knowing not what to do with

A sudden barrage of blessings

     While a strange wind walloped the walls

As the door creaked between its posts

     Like a sentry with a half-open mouth

You are no poet by accident

     For the sun stood sky-centre

The day you were born

     The light which peeped between the curtains

Was soft and blissfully bright.

     Lyrical hands bathed you in singing water

The household was one happy chorus

     Of the anthem of your melodious arrival

Calm clay cushioned your toddling steps

     Gentle rains nurtured your tuneful leaps

Your lullaby was love and lilting lilies

     Ebony-born, with a song for every season.

February 26, 2023