The temptation to reduce the 2023 presidential campaigns to the general issues of insecurity, spluttering economy, infrastructural deficits, and anti-corruption war will be almost irresistible. How eloquently a candidate can be persuasive about dealing with them unencumbered by his background as well as connections with the current administration, will probably also be significant. Many Nigerians have counseled that the campaigns be limited to issues, just as the major issues are fairly well known. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will welcome issue-based campaigns, believing that given his experience and former executive position, he will do tremendously well in debates and field campaigns. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) has also advocated for issues in order to deflect attention from his deficient track record, despite his Anambra governorship experience. He also believes that his glibness, not to say his statistical fecundity, will stand him well on the soapbox and in debates. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will probably also welcome issue-driven campaigns, believing that his profundity and solid track record will place him head and shoulders above his opponents.

Of the three, Mr. Obi is perhaps the most eloquent and hypothetical, particularly considering his flurry of statistics, accurate or otherwise, appropriate or inappropriate. He is of course not an orator, and while he can sometimes summon the passion to place a resonant emphasis here and there, the flexibility that oratorical cadence and gravitas give are somehow lost on him. For many youths taken in by his style and audacity, he is a breath of fresh air badly needed in today’s politics. Driven and egged on by social media, his candidacy has also suddenly seemed realistic, convincing and plausible. He will successfully raise tons of money, and with the energy of youth at his disposal, propel himself to heights that would seem fictional years ago, even to him. Yes, he will love attention to be fixed on issues, but before the campaign runs its middle course, he will seem jaded, having exhausted his theoretical postulations.

Though indifferent to whatever emphasis anyone or political party might push forward, Alhaji Atiku will probably see issue-driven presidential campaign as a cakewalk. He is not as fluent and persuasive as Mr. Obi, but he can hold his own admirably, and he can argue his position disarmingly and gravely. One way or the other, his party, despite the Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike snafu, will eventually rally behind him. But the party has neither been reformed enough to add significant value to his campaign nor ideologically streamlined to the point of contextualising his arguments and giving them fillip. Like his party, Alhaji Atiku will also struggle to define himself and his politics in ways that Mr. Obi has defined himself and his politics within the ambit of youths. The PDP candidate exhausted himself in the 2019 presidential polls; but he will still raise enough money to impress, if not etch, his candidacy upon the minds and affections of the electorate.

Of the three candidates spoken about in this election cycle, Asiwaju Tinubu will have the challenge of couching his campaign in mesmerising words. He expresses himself well, helped in no small measure by his depth and vision, but it will be easily deciphered in soapbox campaigns and debates that he can’t hold the candle to the other two. Like the others, he will also see nothing wrong focusing on issues, for he is at home when it comes to that facility, but he is unlikely to dwell on it as resplendently as his other two opponents. The reason is that fortuitously, at least as far as his ongoing consultations with stakeholders and interviews show, he has begun to navigate towards his strongest point, that is, his capacity as a thinker and visionary. Perhaps his instincts tell him he outclasses his opponents in those areas, including his boldness and passion that are catalysed by a restless and ingenious spirit. To deflect his attention, however, his critics will try to demean his person in order to force him away from selling his biggest attribute.

In the end, issues will not play as significant a role as many analysts hope. It is not because issues are intrinsically wrong or inappropriate. It is simply because they have become intertwined with campaign promises, and every candidate will struggle to outdo his opponent in promising paradise. By experience, voters have become used to hearing those promises and seeing them unimplemented or even feasible. By a stroke of genius or happenstance, power supply is improving and may remain vaguely so through the elections. The economy will also likely sputter into life and maintain a steady streak of health. Insecurity is being knocked into a cocked hat, and progress in infrastructural development has been significant, even remarkable in certain areas, states and regions. The country has of course not become an Asian Tiger, but as long as significant improvements can be sustained into the presidential poll, the genie of issues will remain bottled up or vitiated.

The factors that will determine the outcome of the 2023 presidential poll will defy expectations. For a people buffeted by so many ills and privations, they will want to be convinced that the candidate to vote for possesses leadership skills, including the ability to forge consensuses and elicit trust in as many parts of the country as is politically feasible. As desirable as restructuring is, especially to the Southwest, Nigeria’s political system and democracy abjure it. Yet, the country is undergoing such structural stress that is capable of tearing the entire system apart. This is precisely where someone with a vision and the ability to drive a hard bargain and coax a consensus is needed. Mr. Obi is not that man, as entertaining as his candidacy may be on the social media. And Alhaji Atiku has flip-flopped on too many issues of late that it is hard to see him embodying that role.

Two, the candidates’ party will also be a factor. Of the three parties, the APC, which started out the year on the wrong foot, has today grown into the most cohesive and threatening. It can muster a campaign purse incomparable with those of the other two parties, including Mr. Obi’s crowdfunding razzmatazz. More importantly, the APC, despite its controversial record under the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, is still the most charismatic and organised. Mr. Obi runs on his own steam, not his party’s. And Alhaji Atiku may have introduced fault lines into his party on a scale that cannot be tethered by the gods. The PDP will need a desperate transfusion of purpose and sanctity to resemble anything like a winning machine. The APC is the incumbent party, and incumbency has its many advantages. Those advantages will likely be explored and exploited to the hilt. Labour Party may not need any explanation on the matter of power rotation, but it is hard to see the PDP justifying the retention of the presidency in the North after eight years of the Buhari administration. After a few false starts, the APC has seamlessly embraced rotation.

Three, and perhaps counterintuitively, the APC presents the country with the most secular presidential ticket this country has known since the advent of the Fourth Republic. The mixed Muslim-Christian ticket of the Buhari administration did not prevent the abhorrent and insidious sectarianism of the past seven years, evidencing the fact that the worldview of the president is what really matters. In the case of the APC, which is presenting Nigeria with two presidents for the price of one, it is offering a truly secular ticket which is probably all that the country now needs to navigate away from the crazy and overt religionisation of the presidency and the polity. But it remains to be seen just how adroitly the parties and the candidates can discover and exploit their advantages once the campaigns begin.

Ajaokuta Steel payments/penalties scandal

Just last month, the controversy over the Paris Club refund saga and the proposed deduction of $418m legal consultants’ fees from the refunds to the states reached a crescendo. While the consultants are desperate to get their money, the case is, however, stuck in court. But smack in the centre of the stalled payment is the Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) who argues that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) had no reason to resist the fees of the lawyers who saw their case through.

Another controversy, this time even messier, has broken out relating to the termination of the concession awarded by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2004 for the resuscitation of the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) in Ajaokuta and Itakpe. The concessionaire, Global Steel Holdings (GSH), citing breach of contract on the part of Nigeria, was prepared to claim over $5bn as damages. But after talks lasting many years, the undeserving company has finally been awarded $496m expected to be paid in less than three weeks.

Ignore the Paris Club refund saga for a moment. Though disheartening, it pales in significance to the GSH concession imbroglio. GSH is an Indian company that had been proved to lack the expertise to manage, let alone revive, the Ajaokuta Steel Complex. Somehow, it won the concession but failed woefully to revive the complex. On April 1, 2008, under the Umaru Yar’Adua administration, the concession, technically described as Share Purchase Agreement, was terminated just 55 days before it would have been due to be legally terminated, with Nigeria securing the added benefit of claiming about $26m in liquidated damages. Thereupon the GSH served notice of legally claim anything between $10bn to $14bn as damages. Eventually, it decided to claim $5.258bn, an amount that has now been reduced during alternative disputation resolution, instead of arbitration, to a full and final settlement of $496m.

But that is where the transparency ended. Every other thing, like the Paris Club refund, is enveloped in fog, in dismal and embarrassing opacity. On the surface, the alternative dispute resolution cannot be faulted, after the initial blunder of 2008, and the fact that had the matter gone into arbitration, the GSH would in all probability have won. By publishing the deal, the AGF office wants any Nigerian with objections to file claims. It is not clear whether there would be a groundswell against the deal, though there should be. Firstly, under the Jonathan administration, with threat of court action looming against the promoters of GSH, the Indian company waved its general claims, and agreed to hold on to Itakpe Iron Ore Mining Company while forfeiting Ajaokuta Steel. The report of a committee headed by the Solicitor-General of the Federation, Abdullahi Yola, recommending over $520m to GSH was also rejected. Indeed, reports suggested that the matter had been resolved at no financial cost to Nigeria. Secondly, the Buhari administration in 2016 okayed the new deal with GSH, and the then Mines and Steel minister Kayode Fayemi, in 2017, attested to the deal which he said did not encumber Nigeria with any costs. Some five years later, out of the blue, GSH threatened to go back to arbitration, thus prompting the new negotiations and a deal to pay the company $496m.

The recent developments have raised many questions. It would not be out of place to constitute a judicial panel to unearth the shenanigans that accompanied the contract and negotiations. One, the panel needs to get to the root of how a concession was in 2004 granted a company that had no expertise in the job it bidded for. Two, knowing the concession would fail, who instigated the termination of the concession just 55 days to its lawful and advantageous termination. Did they not peruse the contract papers competently? Three, the company engaged in asset stripping and tax evasion, among other crimes, why were its promoters not prosecuted? After all, what was involved was not private asset, but public, national asset which does not admit of forgiveness for criminal acts. Four, in 2016, the Buhari administration okayed the negotiated agreement carried out under the Jonathan administration. Why was it not implemented? The National Assembly and Mines and Steel minister announced that a deal had been reached at no financial costs to Nigeria. Why did GSH threaten to return to arbitration years after?

The $496m deal may have been done transparently, but all the issues that presaged it were anything but transparent. Many of the Nigerian officials connected with the affair were either incompetent or complicit, or both. The government has indicated it would pay the agreed sum in days, almost as if the country is being stampeded. The country has haggled over $23m Abacha loot repatriation and ASUU strike. But here are two insufferable cases of hundreds of millions of dollars being proposed to be paid to either legal consultants or a controversial and incompetent company. In total, about $900m is about to be frittered away in very questionable and disgraceful circumstances. The total sum would solve Nigeria’s education and roads problem in one fell swoop. The least the government owes Nigerians, after so much bungling and allegations of underhand dealings, is to subject the two payments to ‘integrity’ tests. The dealings are unlikely to pass muster.

Gorbachev will be missed

Most of the obituaries on the late Soviet Union leader and champion of Glasnost and Perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died two weeks ago at 91, have invariably veered towards both nostalgia for the ideological left and the transformation of the world from bipolar to unipolar. Because of the uncontrollable forces Mr Gorbachev set in motion, the Soviet Union unintendedly collapsed in 1991 after first transmuting from Soviet Russia (1917-1922) to Soviet Union (1922-1991). Elected into office in 1985 until he resigned in 1991, he supervised a reformation of the politics and economy of the Soviet Union that went horribly awry. His fascination with the France/US-type presidential system prompted him into adopting a liberalised political system, Glasnost (openness), that ultimately torpedoed communism in Eastern Europe. His economic reforms encapsulated in Perestroika was also not expertly managed, partly because it was not underpinned by a unique and homegrown economic model and ideology, like China implemented under Deng Xiaoping beginning from 1989.

The post-Gorbachev era was also sadly predicated on the wrong premises and built on inappropriate frameworks. The lack of immediate success, years of political hesitations, reduction in size of borders, collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and slow economic growth all created a vacuum the country’s national leaders yearned to fill with the nostalgic trappings of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin, current leader, exemplifies this error. Mr Gorbachev was unable to develop a unique political system to replace the old order, and Mr Putin has tried futilely to fill the vacuum with a malformed system modeled around himself. Whereas NATO is an agglomeration of developed and independent democracies, Mr Putin has attempted to compel former neighbouring Soviet Republics to willy-nilly sustain a subordinate association with Russia. In addition to promoting a few wars and land grabs, including the annexation of Crimea, the new policy has also inspired the Russo-Ukrainian war. Had Mr Gorbachev laid a solid foundation for Russian democracy, former Warsaw Pact countries would probably have seen a model to embrace and associate with, and Mr Putin would probably have had more success with his efforts to sustain a bipolar world and recreate his country’s nuanced suzerainty over the East as the US has nurtured over the West.

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Months before a presidential election in Nigeria, political jostling reaches fever pitch. Next year’s defining poll is unlikely to be different. Because he will not be standing for reelection in 2023, incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari should rightly be inspiring the shape and colour of the next polls, not in an obnoxious, self-aggrandising way, but in selfless and self-confident push to ensure both probity in the electoral process and the emergence of a great president. The president should rightly be the cynosure of all the manoeuvres, the fulcrum upon which other efforts anchor and swing. Alarmingly, however, just as it happened in the ruling party’s presidential primary in June and the months leading to it, the president has been aloof and magisterial, promising only electoral fidelity nationwide, and to some extent loyalty to the party which he leads. Loyalty to his party should be unquestionable had he not waffled and made his support for APC candidates conditional in 2019 when his fractious party needed a man of character to be its lodestar and embodiment. As for his aloofness, it is characteristic. Because his loyalty is brittle and amorphous, and aloofness predictable and customary, these deficiencies have enabled ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo to attempt to fill the vacuum.

Of the five living Nigerian heads of state and presidents, Chief Obasanjo has been the most involved in political transitions. Goodluck Jonathan is still trying to find his feet as an eloquent and discerning former president. He is characteristically unsure of his person, politics, and ideology. Yakubu Gowon has restricted himself to advocating a spiritual agenda for the nation, occasionally offering staid and generally ineffectual advice on political ethic. The recuperating Abdulsalami Abubakar has carved a disingenuous niche for himself, which sees him, together with a few like-minded patriots, advocating for peaceful and fair electoral process. Ibrahim Babangida’s failure to return to office as an elected president, not to say his bastardisation and annulment of the 1993 polls, has not deterred him from pontificating at every election cycle on who best should win the presidential poll. But Chief Obasanjo presumptuously knows who should win, what the candidate should campaign on, and where he should come from. He has no electoral value himself, but candidates gravely and reverentially seek his endorsement, not because they think his support amounts to anything, but simply because they dread to have him snarling at them.

President Buhari has bestirred himself in recent months, almost as if he has belatedly realised the need to finish strong after about seven years of dithering. Should he assert himself, partly as a self-preserving ploy to weaken or even castrate Chief Obasanjo’s influence, he may discover the need to transcend his magisterial aloofness and work actively both to entrench electoral fidelity, as he has promised, and to back the best man to win. He will require a greater understanding of human capacity and character to discover such a man among the three or four prominent candidates, assuming his promise to back APC candidates does not already insinuate his preference; but it is precisely that understanding that many politicians find to be beyond his ken. There is indeed no proof that the adrenalin shot in the arm he has given himself in the final months of his presidency will translate to a change in attitude to Nigerian politics beyond his age-old insularity, or a change in asserting himself. If it does not, the clever and publicity-loving Chief Obasanjo will capitalise on that void.

Already, despite his denial, Chief Obasanjo has seemed to adopt Labour Party’s Peter Obi as the best man for the office in 2023. Though he claimed his presence at the London political meetings the leading presidential candidates held last month with the Rives governor Nyesom Wike’s group was fortuitous, there is reason to believe, judging from his recent statements, that he favours the former Anambra governor. He is fairly open in his support for Mr Obi, but has pretended to be impartial and even regal in pontificating on the next presidency. Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila emerged from the meeting APC leaders held with Chief Obasanjo in Abeokuta last month to enthuse about the former president’s subtle support for the APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, despite initially cocking a snook at the candidate. Given his pronouncements on Mr Obi, his presence in London, and the visitations to both Gen. Babangida and Gen Abubakar in Minna, Chief Obasanjo remains unpredictable. He may not have made up his mind irrevocably, and may yet have cause to speak definitively in future about his endorsements, but it is safe to imagine that his ship has not yet berthed.

Chief Obasanjo speaks about a national agenda he would unfold soon, perhaps after he is through with ongoing consultations. But for eight years, he had the opportunity to reset Nigerian politics and lead efforts to redefine the country’s essence. Instead, he ensured everything revolved around himself, including cajoling his party into embracing his feeble succession project. For those eight tumultuous years there was no national ideology, no national agenda, no national vision, and no rejigging of the electoral process. He is no longer a member of any political party. How he hopes to introduce a national agenda without a party, let alone a caucus of diehard ideologues and loyalists, remains to be seen. Worse, there is doubt he has the capacity to envision the next leader for Nigeria, especially seeing how accustomed he is to backing candidates who either lack self-confidence or who might give him access to the seat of power to gratify his nostalgia for Aso Villa. Neither Chief Obasanjo nor any of the other living heads of state, nor yet many of Nigeria’s statesmen who romanticise about leadership and the Nigerian experiment, possess the acuity and depth of understanding to identify and promote the right leader for Nigeria in 2023.

Compare them with the perspicacious former French president, Charles de Gaulle, who in 1967 told the United States Military Attaché to France, Vernon Walters, that Richard Nixon deserved to be and would be elected president. This was after Nixon had lost the 1960 presidential election as a sitting vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and also lost the 1962 California governorship poll, and was written off as politically dead. The French president cites Mr Nixon’ depth of intellect and appreciation of world politics, among other great reasons, to underscore his prophecy. Mr Nixon was elected president two years later in 1969. But Chief Obasanjo supports Mr Obi for the presidency based on the trifling grounds of the Southeast’s turn to produce the next president and for the sake of balance of power between ethnic groups, despite the LP candidate’s abominably pedestrian understanding of economics, global power politics, and even domestic power equations.

The failure of Nigerian leaders since Chief Obasanjo’s administration implies that there are no significant and enduring rules beyond the general provisions of the constitution to govern leadership transition. As the primaries of the two leading parties indicate, even the political parties themselves, including the contrived ones that produced Mr Obi of the LP and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), have only a tenuous system of leadership succession incomparable with that of Lagos since 2007. Leadership transition in Lagos, probably the best in Nigeria, is, however, imperfect and even deficient. For the leading parties, the situation is much worse. For Nigeria, the country is confronting a disaster, a disaster made worse by the inability of President Buhari to, in seven years, recognise the value of structured leadership succession and how to institutionalise it within the framework of the APC.

Resolving  ASUU impasse

STRIKING university teachers appear to have lost the public relations battle, but they have stuck to their guns and declared their industrial action indefinite. The federal government, however, sees the disagreement with ASUU as a turf war, a clash of egos they are determined to win. Yet, victory or defeat in this crisis is unlikely to be clear cut. Late last week, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, who is still weighed down by public perception of his administration as a failure, cleverly compared his diligent resolution of a similar strike years back with the current strike. According to him, he chaired the meeting, locked the doors behind everyone who should be involved in resolving the problem, and cobbled a tentative agreement before the break of dawn. His message was clear: the current administration is bungling the crisis.

President Muhammadu Buhari does not think he has the willingness or imagination to resolve the crisis. In a moving irony, APC governors have, however, indicated their interest in tackling the crisis, if the federal government would let them. Since the Buhari administration is worsening the crisis instead of looking for a way out, its failure should encourage the progressive governors to give it a try, for whispers are beginning to be heard that the strike may weaken the ruling party’s election campaign. The governors know that if they lose the presidency, a bandwagon effect could produce electoral outcomes that would bury them, notwithstanding the axiom that all politics is local. If the administration knows this, its negotiators have not demonstrated any unease.

The federal government should eschew hubris and restart negotiations with ASUU. It is damaging to the administration’s reputation to expect striking teachers to demonstrate patriotism by returning to work when the government itself has been loth to accept responsibility for stymieing the future of youths by its obduracy and legalistic interpretation of Labour laws.

Wike, Ayu dig their heels in

For weeks on end, the bitter quarrel between Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman Iyorchia Ayu has dominated newspaper headlines without becoming blasé. Day in, day out, headlines scream news of their intransigence and announce their positions in the trenches. Months ago, not too long after the PDP primary ended anticlimactically and PDP presidential candidate ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar spurned Mr Wike to select Delta State governor Ifeanyi Okowa as his running mate, there was a fairly recognisable chance of reconciliation. Now, that possibility seems quite remote. Alhaji Atiku gives the impression he needs Mr Wike to make victory in next year’s presidential election certain. As a result he has been less impervious to reconciliation, and even less eager to call the bluff of the Rivers governor, despite his camp urging him to damn the consequences. Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal and Dr Okowa are the major reasons for Mr Wike’s fury, much more than Alhaji Atiku’s primary victory. Both, unlike immoderate and inconsequential Atiku aides, have wisely and discretely kept out of the fray. They have said little about the acrimonious intraparty fight, not even snide remarks and gestures, and have sponsored nothing demeaning about the enraged governor. No one, however, knows how long the Delta and Sokoto governors, not to say the increasingly testy Alhaji Atiku, will keep their powder dry.

Not only is Mr Wike deliberately and provocatively sailing close to the wind with his intransigence, he has also begun to psychoanalyse his opponents, particularly the obdurate Senator Ayu, with whom he exchanges brickbats daily, and former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido, whom he sees as irreverent and abusive. Newspaper readers are kept constantly entertained by the exchanges between the antagonists. Neither wants the other to have the last word. So, who will call the truce? Alhaji Atiku, who is anxious to unite the troops behind his candidacy, but who probably triggered the war in the first instance? The embattled Sen. Ayu, who now seems to enjoy his newspaper battles with the Rivers governor? Or Mr Wike himself, the adamant, imperious and self-assured politician who does not flinch from war, nor wince at abuse, no matter how gross? Or the opportunistic Mr Lamido whose political star had dimmed but wants it rekindled? Mr Wike describes the former Jigawa governor as a self-centred political in-breeder for promoting his son’s governorship ambition. More, when Sen. Ayu dismissed the Wike camp as children for seeking his dethronement, the Rivers governor riposted that the party chairman was an ingrate who paradoxically was taken from the gutter by the ‘children’ and made party chairman.

The invectives are unlikely to stop. Worse, the party is divided down the middle, to the considerable unease of the presidential candidate. It had taken the retention of Sen. Ayu as party chairman to ossify that division, but it is unclear, given how the antagonists have dug their heels in, whether that division would not have occurred by some other agencies and calcify as a result of the behaviour of the combatants. The immediate cause of the party squabble today is Sen. Ayu retaining the party chairmanship despite Alhaji Atiku’s election as presidential candidate. The Wike camp had sought his replacement with a southerner as chairman, arguing that it was unrealistic and provocative for the North to hold down the top offices of the party. The skewness of the positions, argued the Wike camp, would not favour a successful campaign in the South. Alhaji Atiku has been uncharacteristically reticent. But responding to the fears of party failure, Sen. Ayu had declared that his election to a four-year term was non-negotiable, and could not be capriciously altered by the Wike camp simply for the heck of it.

Then the combatants met in London, and it seemed a seismic shift was in the offing. The implacable Sen. Ayu might after all be persuaded to sacrifice his position, regardless of the constricting provisions of the party constitution that straitjackets his replacement to the same North. What the noise of the party chairman now indicates to the chafing and agitated Wike camp is that Alhaji Atiku is absolutely not keen to replace the party chairman. The chairman is his man: loyal, abnegating, euphoric about the Atiku candidacy, and unquestioning. Replacing him with an ‘unknown southern foreigner’ would be catastrophic. And if the presidential candidate stands solidly behind the embattled chairman, who is to move him from that coveted seat? Nobody. As of today, Sen. Ayu is immovable. The regnant opinion in the party is to dare the Wike maelstrom: heavens won’t fall, the Atiku/Ayu camp surmises. Mr Wike does not, however, appear ready to relent, though his options are narrowing badly, and his position becoming untenable. It will take a miracle to turn things around in the governor’s favour. Interestingly, he seems to sense the Atiku camp’s desperation, and has suggested acidly that if the PDP wishes to lose the election, he would be glad to lend them a helping hand. PDP leaders don’t want to sacrifice Sen. Ayu, but they can’t have their cake and eat it. They will, therefore, have to sacrifice Mr Wike, though the witty and gregarious governor loathes to be the sacrifice, preferring instead to burn the roof down, particularly with Sen. Ayu and the casual Alhaji Atiku in the building.