Contrary to the impression they have tried to give, the Igbo seem to be playing politics with the politics of 2023 presidency. It is right to play the politics of 2023, which they think they are doing; but to play politics with the politics of 2023 presidency tells a far different story from the one the Southeast is narrating to Nigerians. Since last year, the Igbo have stridently reminded the country that fairness and equity demand that all political parties, particularly the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), should nominate their presidential candidates from among Igbo aspirants. No one has heeded them, and no one is likely to heed them as the race for the top position intensifies in the coming months. It will not be because the parties, or Nigerians as a whole, repudiate the principle of fairness; it will be because apart from the Igbo convincing themselves that it is their turn, no one else, in a manner of speaking, is convinced.

Nothing really substantially disqualifies the Igbo from seeking the presidency. They are academically, emotionally and physically qualified. What indeed stymies the Igbo quest for the presidency is their inability to expertly play the politics of the presidency. George Obiozor, President-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the umbrella socio-cultural body of the Igbo, last Wednesday voiced the frustrations the Igbo face in their quest for the presidency. It is unfair, he said, that neither of the two leading parties seemed to be seriously considering Igbo aspirants for the top position. He listed how many times the other major ethnic groups had won the presidency or became the vice president, and rued the perpetual disadvantage in which the Igbo, who were yet to claim the first or second prize even once since 1999, were locked. He is statistically right but politically incorrect. Politically speaking, for instance, he concluded that in 1999 the PDP and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) acting jointly with the All Peoples Party (APP) nominated their candidates, Olusegun Obasanjo and his main challenger Olu Falae, from the Southwest. Had he contextualised the unanimity of the parties against the rage that accompanied the annulled election of MKO Abiola, he would have got a different picture. There was no other time in Nigerian history when such unanimity was contrived among political parties, not even after 1999. It won’t happen now, and probably not ever again.

Prof Obiozor suggested that zoning the presidency to the Southeast was an idea whose time had come. He could not be more mistaken. There are a number of factors that must align for an idea or movement to mature. Other than the Southeast itself, which is increasingly desperate about the subject of who becomes president, few Nigerians seem to think the idea of a Southeast presidency is urgent. First, apart from tribe or region, other qualifications are being bandied about, such as age, health, paper qualification, network, political base, and regional and national acceptance. By placing undue emphasis on candidate’s tribe, Prof Obiozor and others like him may be tilting at windmills, ignoring current realities. He also seemed to suggest that in 1999, the Southwest was not even more prepared than the Southeast in 2015. Well, that is arguable. It is not a region that prepares someone; it is the aspirant who prepares himself. And an aspirant’s preparation is neither region-specific nor tribe-specific.

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo president omits the most crucial qualification an aspirant must possess in seeking the presidency. What matters most is not the zone, tribe, academic qualification, age, health or wealth of the aspirant. What matters most, and which the Southeast has simply refused to contemplate, is how widely connected the aspirant is and whether he can be trusted. In 1999, Chief Obaanjo was known and trusted all over Nigeria except among the Yoruba, though the Southwest seemed to think Chief Falae, also well-known around the country, was better. In 2011, because of the religious antecedents of aspirant Muhammadu Buhari, President Goodluck Jonathan was better trusted, having ruled as president for about one year plus. In 2015, with Dr Jonathan distrusted by the North and the Southwest, and with insecurity mounting, aspirant Buhari miraculously became better trusted. In 2023, the question is who will be best known and trusted? Has the Igbo produced an aspirant who is well known and trusted?

Until the Southeast can answer those questions, its quest for the presidency will remain a chimera. The agitations and anxiety of Prof Obiora are understandable. It has been long since the Igbo produced anyone in the presidency. After Nnamdi Azikiwe’s titular presidency and Alex Ekweme’s vice presidential promotion in 1979, it has been one long and ghostly silence from the Southeast. No, the region does not deserve that demotion. But until the Igbo recognise that what matters is whether they can produce someone the rest of the country can trust, they are not going anywhere. Their quest is complicated by the vestigial politics of the civil war, residues that still reverberate most egregiously in northern politics, and particularly in President Buhari’s archetypal antagonisms. After winning over the North the Igbo must also find the formula, ethics, politics and commonsense to moderate their distrust and resentment of the Southwest, which took root during colonialism and continued well after independence.

The task is long and arduous. They must recognize the obstacles before them and quit sentimentalising presidential politics. It is a tough business winning the presidency. It is a national assignment for the aspirant. There will be no free lunch, and no unprovoked consensus by political parties, now or in the future. Perhaps in the years ahead, the cerebral and eminent professor Chukwuma Soludo will have done enough with Anambra to grab national attention, and not become an anticlimax like the maverick and eclectic Aminu Tambuwal who has neither distinguished himself in Sokoto State as governor nor sustained national admiration in the same firm and buoyant way he endeared himself in the parliament to Nigerians during the giddy years of Dr Jonathan.

Unfortunately for the Igbo, they have managed to produce political clowns like Rochas Okorocha with his profligate statues. There is not one governor of distinction; not David Umahi, the pretender from Ebonyi, nor Okezie Ikpeazu, the irreverent and blundering politician and governor of Abia, nor Hope Uzodinma, the abrasive opportunist of Imo, nor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the dour governor of Enugu whose gritty realism has disabled him from becoming as distinguished as many expect. So with the Southeast turned a barren wasteland of cultic politics and rampant and uncontrollable revolutionaries, it is fitting and proper for the Ohanaeze Ndigbo to first look inward, educate south-eastern politicians to embrace global perspective as it were, and encourage them to reach out to the rest of the country in politics of inclusion and unashamed repudiation of the worst in their regional politics, and gently coax them away from the primordial and snobbish supremacy with which their politics is suffused.

Surprisingly, Ohanaeze is even advising Igbo politicians not to accept to be anyone’s running mate in the next presidential poll. They are good enough for the number position; they should not settle for the number two. How wise that admonition is remains to be seen, especially in light of the incompetent and amateurish politics south-easterners have played at the national and regional levels in the past decade or so. The Igbo have not played presidential politics right, and must first acknowledge this depressing truth before thumbing their nose at one position or the other. For a people whose presidential politics has not gone beyond the sentiment of cajoling the country to cede the number one position to them to satisfy equity and fairness, and who have not produced an aspirant the country can trust – someone who would help bring some form of closure to the tragic and traumatising events of January 1966 – it is hard to see them having a choice. They are unlikely to get what they want; they should grab what they are given.

Ekiti primaries as Russian roulette

In readiness for the June governorship election in Ekiti State, both the APC and PDP have concluded their primaries and demonstrated quite tragically why neither deserves to win the poll. Ex-governor Ayo Fayose, an otherwise likable and gregarious PDP politician, was farcical on the day of the primary. Though Akwa Ibom governor Udom Emmanuel chaired the primary election committee, and there was a mathematical streak of credibility to it, it was nevertheless punctuated by discord, disaffection, and Mr Fayose’s own bohemian style of rustic politics. The winner of the primary, and Mr Fayose’s preferred aspirant, Bisi Kolawole, took 671 votes, while his nearest challenger, ex-governor Segun Oni, had 330 votes. Mr Oni, an engineer would have won the primary and stood the best chance of winning the main election in June had he played his politics right.

For the APC primary which came one day later, there was neither a streak of credibility to the primary nor commonsensical management displayed. Apart from being choreographed from Abuja, the direct primary poll, designed to placate dissenters and give a sense of inclusivity, manifested nothing remotely resembling credibility but instead finally disillusioned those who placed redemptive capability upon that mode of primary. The APC primary was classical Russian roulette, with the gun procured in Abuja, and the cylinder of the revolver spun by the remonstrating Jigawa governor Muhammad Badaru Abubakar. Governor Kayode Fayemi’s preferred aspirant, Biodun Oyebanji, won by 101,703 votes out of about 183,000 APC members in the state as against Kayode Ojo’s 767 votes, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele’s 760 votes, former Minister of Works, Senator Dayo Adeyeye’s 691votes, and House of Representatives member, Femi Bamisile’s 400 votes. For a primary election Mr Badaru swore no one boycotted, it is strange that none of Mr Oyebanji’s opponent scored a modicum one thousand votes.

Sen Adeyeye puts the dispute in anguished perspective. According to him, “There was no election; they just concocted results among themselves. All the people that conducted the election were members of Oyebanji’s campaign team. We have the list. That was the basis of our petition. On Wednesday, we complained to Governor Badaru that there was no way all the electoral officers could be members of Oyebanji’s campaign team. He said each of the seven of us should bring 20 names to make 140 whereas Oyebanji’s team had 531 names and he did not use any of the names we gave him. He just stuck to the list that Oyebanji’s team presented. We were supposed to meet Governor Badaru by 9am, and he cancelled the meeting – what display of arrogance? Don’t we have the right to complain as contestants? All those who conducted the purported election and took results to the collation centre were all Oyebanji’s people. Which kind of primary was that?”

Then Sen Adeyeye added the clincher, reminiscent of the last Anambra governorship poll in which Andy Uba’s primary election votes could not be replicated in the main election even by a moderate show: “One of the sources in the state government told me on Wednesday that they would put me in the fourth position. They wrote the result. How could Oyebanji have scored over 101,000 votes? In Ekiti State, votes have never been more than 300,000 for all parties combined, so where did they get that over 101,000 for one aspirant? Are they not deceiving themselves?” What Sen Adeyeye and the other six aspirants who boycotted the primary do not know is that should the matter be litigated, as they have threatened, there is no indication they will get redress.

Dr Fayemi’s calculations may in fact be engagingly realpolitik and unvarnished. He believes that come what may, he should influence who his successor would be if he is to have a base for any future relevance and aspiration. Neither Sen Bamidele nor Sen Adeyeye, who are both strong-minded and independent, would dignify him with that base. Secondly, he probably reasons that the ‘defeated’ aspirants would in the final analysis be pressured into a rapprochement. And if any of the angry aspirants is backed by the party’s national leader Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the exigencies of presidential primary, if not the presidential poll itself, would compel all parties to the dispute to sheathe their swords. Asiwaju Tinubu would consequently be presented a fait accompli, a galling choice akin to that between the devil and the deep blue sea. But they underestimate Ekiti who are sometimes not averse to cutting their nose to spite their face. The APC in Ekiti is not only playing Russian roulette, it is toying with political brinkmanship. Should the charade in Ekiti be swept under the carpet, especially with an unpredictable judiciary, there is no telling what other schemes the Mai Mala Buni crowd in Abuja, particularly the infamous troika insulated by the Justice minister Abubakar Malami, would not inspire both in their convention in February and presidential primary later on in the year.

Fuel subsidy nuisance

After calculating the political cost of removing fuel subsidy as projected in the 2022 budget in order to give full rein to the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the Muhammadu Buhari presidency felt unable to manage the anticipated fallout. Last December, it had projected the removal of the subsidy in January, but after much opposition, it moved the implementation date to June. But both dates have now been jettisoned. In fact the subsidy removal measure has been completely abandoned by the Buhari presidency due to the security and political implications certain to follow the policy. So, how on earth does the government decide its policies: whimsically or deliberately, sentimentally or factually?

That the presidency did not initially work out the implication of implementing such a drastic measure in a pre-election year shows how detached it is from reality. Even now, many state governments are busy designing and implementing measures that will probably cost them the support of voters. For state and national elections coming up early next year, 2022 is a year to be cautious, empathetic and generally placid. The Buhari presidency of course knows that fuel subsidy must be removed, assuming the government is right in its calculations that retaining the subsidy would cost about N3trn. But there is no way it would get away with removing it without attracting devastating electoral punishment.

The next government will have to remove the subsidy early in its first term; but it must first convince the public that the subsidy is as inordinately high as it has been projected. And unlike the amateurish palliatives drummed up by the Buhari presidency, the next government must put sensible measures in place that would shield the people from the traumatising effects of the policy.