Except you are Atiku Abubakar, you would accept that the 2019 general elections have been won and lost and nothing is likely to change the outcome.
But the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate is a fighter who knows that this is probably his last shot at the presidency and would use every means possible to actualise his long-cherished dream.
For him and many of his diehard backers, Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) procured their victory through massive rigging. To prove that he is right and everyone else is wrong, he has initiated a legal challenge of the declared results.
He calls the 2019 general elections ‘the worst in Nigeria’s history.’ But then it wouldn’t be a Nigerian election if the loser doesn’t cry rigging.
These polls were certainly not flawless, but by no stretch of the imagination can they be dismissed in such ungenerous terms. Most observers acknowledge that the process was largely free and transparent across the country.
Sure, there were disruptions in a number of locations. But the sinners were on both sides. For every video of malpractice which the opposition has, there are many showing people identified as PDP supporters doing dirty things. What Atiku has to prove, is whether this pattern was so prevalent across the 36 states as to invalidate the official results.
Anyone insisting that these elections were only about rigging is simply in denial. The surprising pattern of results across the country doesn’t support such claims: not even Machiavelli could have cooked them up.
Four years on, the president and APC still couldn’t manage a win in any of the South-South and South-eastern states – despite the police and military being available to be used as instruments of rigging.
In the Southwest – supposedly a stronghold of the ruling party – Atiku won in Ondo and Oyo States. In the latter, the incumbent governor Abiola Ajimobi was humiliated in his bid to win a senate seat.
Buhari only edged the former Vice President by about 10,000 votes in Osun. In Lagos, the margin between the parties closely mirrored what happened in 2015.
Should we then assume that the improvements achieved in this zone by the PDP were down to its rigging prowess?
One of the biggest stories of this election cycle was the comprehensive dismantling of the Bukola Saraki political machine in Kwara State. But rather than put his shocking defeat down to rigging, the Senate President quietly accepted his fate and graciously congratulated the winners.
As predicted, Buhari and the ruling party lost in Benue, Plateau and Taraba States because of herdsmen killings as well as issues of religion and ethnicity. Here, again, we see the rigging allegations falling flat on their face.
That leaves us with the Northwest and Northeast which, even, the most cynical of the opposition’s supporters would acknowledge as the ruling party’s strongholds – where it doesn’t have to manipulate things to achieve its ends. But the PDP would have us believe that the rigging here had to do with tweaking the margins between the parties!
With Atiku already in court, we would soon discover whether he and his party are right and the rest of the world is wrong. But on available evidence, nothing about their loss surprises me. It was something I predicted four years ago because the then ruling party misdiagnosed why it lost power.
It actually believed that the major factor in its defeat in 2015 was what it called APC’s ‘lies and propaganda.’ In rare moments of light penetrating, some of its leaders had apologised to the nation for its errors. But the ambivalence over the real source of its problems would see its other leading lights whining about being undone by propaganda.
I argued in my column titled ‘PDP must earn right to criticise Buhari’ published on Sunday, May 10, 2015, that the former ruling party would never get it right for as long as it refuses to properly identify why it has found itself in the opposition wilderness. The reason is not the rigging or propaganda prowess of its main rival.
I reproduce the following excerpt from that four-year old piece:
“Buhari’s assignment is complicated by the bitterness factor. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was unprepared for the loss of the presidency. Party spokesman aptly described his organization as ‘traumatized’.
“Many in the ruling party still cannot reconcile themselves with what has just happened: they are handing over the reins to the man they disdained and they just can’t stop the habit of sniping at him. This is the campaign that never ended, and the attacks would continue whether or not they are reasonable or morally justified.
“That the PDP is in disarray after its calamitous electoral performance is to be expected. The scope of the debacle is such that the party which has been in power for an unbroken 16-year stretch would be would be psychologically damaged for a long time.
“In Abuja, national chairman Ahmadu Muazu and members of his National Working Committee (NWC) are exchanging brickbats with aides and associates of President Goodluck Jonathan over the defeat while crossing swords with governors who want them sacked.
“The savage in-fighting that has already kicked off is not going to disappear just because a committee has been appointed to examine why the party did poorly at the polls. Peace will only come when one of the factions contending for the soul of the party prevails.
“Although there’s no unanimity as to the best way forward most members agree that PDP has to reinvent itself. But that isn’t going to happen until the party understands where it went wrong. The reactions of some of its leaders – from President Jonathan who’s already dreaming of PDP’s speedy return to power in 2019 to Muazu who’s been bragging about transforming into a vicious attack dog who will give the All Progressives Congress (APC) government nightmares – shows they still don’t get it.
“Their comments and those of their camp followers on the internet show that their understanding of their new opposition role ends with lobbing criticism and invective at every move of the incoming lot and their leader, Buhari. It was that sort of woolly-headed thinking that inspired the hate campaign strategy that backfired spectacularly of March 28 and April 11.”
Interestingly, the Muazu referred to in that piece has since defected to the APC. He is not alone; many of the party’s other leaders in the north have done the same in the last four years – further weakening it in a region where it desperately needed rejuvenation.
As for reinventing itself, the PDP has remained largely the same – making it easy for its opponents to successfully hang all sorts of negative tags on it.
Anyone who followed the party’s 2019 presidential campaign would have been astounded by the incoherent messaging. Initially, I thought it was going to revolve round the question: ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’
That singular focus on the economic struggles of Nigerians is something people from every region could have related to. But rather than make an effective case for changing the APC regime on this ground, the party quickly lapsed into its tried-and-failed abuse strategy.
Its name-calling and attempts to label Buhari as corrupt and dictatorial failed to gather traction. A reputation built over a lifetime wasn’t going to be undone by one month of electoral mudslinging – especially when sensational claims were not backed with credible evidence.
It was Atiku and the PDP’s misfortune that they were running against Buhari. Although they revile him, they should have been more dispassionate in analysing his strengths and perhaps come to more modest expectations for the 2019 polls.
The president is one of those unusual political figures who emerge once in a generation. He is the only Nigerian politician who has attracted unwavering backing from followers across a region for more than a decade. He is very much a figure in the mould of the late Obafemi Awolowo in terms of his charisma.
Beyond his much-vaunted honesty, his appeal is hard to place. He’s not popular because of any known ideological beliefs. All he needs to do is raise a clenched fist and a stadium full of delirious supporters would be baying ‘Sai Baba! Sai Buhari!’
Despite the economic challenges of the past four years, arising from the recession and the slow recovery process, his popularity has astonishingly held up in his traditional strongholds. This wasn’t down to ethnic solidarity because he was up against another northerner unlike in 2015.
Against this unusual opponent, the best the PDP could throw up was Atiku. But the strongest PDP candidate was also one who came with substantial negative baggage. It was easy for the ruling APC to define him as the graft-challenged alternative to their pristine candidate. Such was his problem with this tag that even his eventual entry into the US after 12 years – rather than being a help – further reinforced the notion of a man with a problem.
People enjoyed a few laughs over Buhari’s serial gaffes during campaign stops, but there was no comment more damaging than when Atiku proudly announced to an audience of business leaders in Lagos that he would ‘enrich his friends.’ Whatever he actually meant by that loaded statement, it was a gift joyfully received by APC influencers to further paint him as someone who was only in government for what he could corner.
Atiku and the PDP just didn’t make a good enough case for regime change and that’s why they lost. From the outset they never outlined a convincing path to victory, preferring instead to hang on to the vain belief that Buhari’s support had collapsed across the country.
The only way the opposition could have won was to break up Buhari’s base up north. Atiku failed to deliver that and just like in 2015, they were punished across the region. PDP didn’t need help across the southern zones. The party’s candidate – a northerner – should just hold up his hand and take responsibility.