Elections have their metaphysical contents and attributes which enable pundits and analysts to smartly predict their outcomes as well as decipher their transcendental messages. When an election is about to enthrone a new leader, a sense of anticipation and euphoria is palpable; and when an election is about to dethrone a leader, a sense of gloom equally hangs portentously in the air, unmistakably, cruelly, relentlessly and imperiously. The 2015 elections are less than eight momentous weeks away, but even before then, in the past one week or more, they have begun to tell their stories, indicating just how ruthlessly they are capable of modulating political destinies and fortunes and rewriting the entire social, cultural and economic algorithms of Nigerian life to create a new society.
It is anticipated the changes will be truly fundamental, even tectonic. They will guarantee wide-ranging deconstruction and reconstruction of political parties, individuals, religions and all aspects of freedoms, democracy and national institutions. In any case, the changes seem now inevitable, perhaps fortuitously, if not auspiciously, mediated by the All Progressives Congress (APC). It is impossible to predict that at its formation in February 2013, the APC was capable of triggering, not to say midwifing, the whole range of changes being witnessed today, changes that are affecting the structure and, more importantly, the values of Nigerian politics. Barely two years down the line, the country in fact seems on the verge of major shifts in the business of politics and governance.
Before the APC national convention of December 10-11, few thought the process of electing the party’s standard-bearer could be concluded peacefully and almost flawlessly, in view of the calibre of the contestants and their unyielding ambitions; or that the party could emerge from its internal election with a huge momentum going into next year’s general elections and with the transformed image of a well-organised party and a government-in-waiting. By some incredible and unexpected mix of factors, the APC has emerged as a mature party, and its candidate, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, a solid contender for the presidency capable of beating the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan. Suddenly, after he emerged as the candidate, Gen Buhari’s stature seemed to grow, expanding in refinement and carriage. His faults have not disappeared, certainly not his taciturnity, nor his policy weaknesses, nor his abrasiveness, nor his past policies and decisions, many of them quite reprehensible. But strangely his faults no longer seemed to matter.
What seemed to matter, what seemed to loom ever larger, was that the internal processes of the party during its convention had ennobled the candidate and transformed him curiously into a statesman and able leader whose age had become an asset rather than a liability. Placed side by side the scientific campaign of Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, the surprising energy of former Vice President Abubakar Atiku and the effervescence of Governor Rochas Okorocha, Gen Buhari’s languidness became an asset, evoking the quiet detachment of royalty and the superior air of monarchy. And placed side by side the suffocating paralysis of the Jonathan presidency, not to say his overarching impotence in the face of insurgency in the Northeast and the creeping economic crisis to which he seems to have no answer, Buhari’s hard visage and implacable discipline give refreshing indication of the can-do spirit needed by a wearied country. Nearly two weeks after his election, the positive transformation of candidate Buhari is yet to abate.
Analysts had also feared that if the APC mismanaged the selection of Gen Buhari’s running mate, it could spell doom for a ticket they had tentatively designated as a winner. And for a crazy few days after the party’s convention, it seemed the APC was fated to choke on the selection of a running mate. That the party did not choke, and even surprised the people and itself by surviving the complex process of selecting a suitable running mate, gave the impression that fate had a hand both in the selection of Gen Buhari’s running mate and the continuing denudation of Dr Jonathan’s capacity to govern. It seemed that fate itself was tired of the sheer magnitude of indiscipline and incompetence under which Nigeria was decaying, and was determined to instigate a great and radical change. Nothing the Jonathan government said or did against the opposition mattered anymore; and no step taken by the opposition party, nor any election and selection it did, was misplaced. Indeed the two faces of fate began to manifest: its relentless ability to promote; and its cruel ability to demote — the former enjoyed by the APC, and the latter suffered by Dr Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
It will take some time before the dynamics of the great changes being experienced today can be explained. Three times Gen Buhari offered himself to lead the country, and three times he was rejected. Throughout the contests, public perception of his character and competence ossified. Indeed, it seemed to get worse even as his electoral performance paradoxically improved. He wasn’t seen as less sectional, less bigoted, less vengeful and vindictive, nor less intellectually superficial — until his party’s convention in Lagos, when by a supernatural sleight of hand, the oft-rejected politician began to warm the cockles of people’s hearts, his spectacular Lagos victory even eliciting euphoric celebration in unexpected quarters.
As if fate had not dealt the country its most puzzling hand yet, try explaining the emergence of Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of law and former Lagos State attorney general and commissioner, as Gen Buhari’s running mate, or the fact that he seemed to be an acquired taste, his attributes and suitability for the position of running mate beginning to glow immediately after he was selected. He was not top on the list of those penciled down for the position, and few thought he had the electoral weight required to catalyse the doughty general’s apparently controversial appeal. But soon after his selection, everyone began to recognise and praise the countervailing attributes of his credentials. His legal mind, democratic antecedents and solid international exposure complement Gen Buhari’s harsh antecedents and damaging insularity, analysts crooned. And his Southwest background, with the possibility of attracting block votes, say others excitedly, enhances the northern appeal of the general without deepening the exclusion many feared the South-South and Southeast would feel if neither was included on the APC presidential ticket.
After the APC convention, Nigerians began to experience the strange feeling that Gen Buhari could win the poll this time around. This strange and puzzling feeling made the contest for the running mate position much keener than it should have been. Almost overnight, the planks upon which the ruling PDP had built Dr Jonathan’s re-election chances began to collapse. The Jonathan presidency had suggested that Gen Buhari was a northern irredentist, and his ambition a reflection of the North’s retrogressive and oligarchic tendencies. But his emergence at the Lagos convention from a party some felt was distinctly Yoruba or Southwest put paid to that snide aside. It became meaningless talking of ethnic divisions without explaining why the entire Northwest, Northeast and Southwest rejoiced at the general’s convention victory, or explaining why he was elected with a nationwide landslide.
The PDP also built its campaign on labelling the APC Islamic and the general a bigot. But the selection of Prof Osinbajo, a scholar, top pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), and liberal south-westerner effectively destroyed that plank and silenced the PDP. The ruling party will not be able to deploy the ethnic card; now the religion card has also been taken from it. It must now run on its records; but the records are paltry and unusable. Just eight weeks or so to the general elections, the PDP has discovered it has no fearsome weapons to deploy and no records to clutch at. Its diatribe against Buhari, in the face of the enormous liability of Dr Jonathan’s own fallibility and puny records, will be completely ineffective. Neither the acerbic Pastor Bosun Emmanuel of the RCCG, who produced a scathingly inappropriate video against the APC, nor Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), who has left no one in doubt where his sympathies lie, will be able to rouse sectarian animosity against the APC ticket without offending the largest Pentecostal church in Nigeria. This indeed are troubling times for the Jonathan campaign. On the eve of a major battle, campaign aides have discovered they have deployed with the wrong weapons and are tactically outmanouevred.
Perhaps the greatest strength of the APC, which will conduce to its victory in the February polls, is its ability to reach consensus after healthy but sometimes very boisterous debates. Nigerians and the PDP had expected the APC to fracture before and after its conventions, for as they said the party was an agglomeration of strange bedfellows. And for a while it looked like the party would factionalise, especially after its tense convention to elect its chairman in June. That convention led to the exit of Tom Ikimi, a former Foreign Affairs minister and erstwhile party chairman in the short-lived Third Republic, and the angry defection of former Borno governor, Ali Modu Sherrif.
The party is probably surprised itself that it is still going strong, and is even poised to win the great prize. The APC and its progenitors were described and ridiculed as lacking in internal democracy. But in its Lagos convention, it conducted perhaps the most democratic election for a standard-bearer ever. More, in spite of the tense atmosphere and angry exchange, it selected a running mate in fairly contentious circumstances without destroying its unity. In fact in both cases, it managed to elect and select with great aplomb. It is quietly and engagingly discovering how to balance arguments and interests among its powerful constituent groups, how to manage the influence of its leaders who came to the party with different party cultures and huge stocks of authority, and how to create a level playing field and a sound and almost unbreakable internal democratic process. This ability will probably lead it to victory in the next polls.
The governors are thought to be all-powerful, but as the election of the party chairman showed, they can be checkmated without destroying their ability to restrain future excesses by other interest groups within the party. The candidate himself, in spite of his idiosyncrasies and antecedents, is learning how to build a consensus, as was shown in the selection of his running mate. The party’s leaders are also imbibing the cultures of moderation and give-and-take, and appreciating the necessity of counterbalancing one another’s influence and power. For instance, the selection of the running mate pitted many of the party’s leaders against one another, with some Southwest leaders including Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Bisi Akande on one side, and the governors and some of the party leaders on the other side. In the end, the hard bargaining, negotiations, disappointments and triumphs led to the stock and measure of Prof Osinbajo rising as a compromise candidate for the coveted position.
Rather than focus on the quarrels and problems encountered in electing and selecting its candidates, the party should start to learn that these disagreements strengthen the party, ennoble it, help its leaders to put their best foot forward, and prepare it for the give-and-take necessary to become a successful ruling party, unlike the PDP which has been moulded into an intolerant oaf by former president Olusegun Obasanjo. APC leaders must refuse to dwell on their disappointments, notwithstanding the colourful media reports of how they lost and chafed, if they are to derive the advantages of the salutary manner contests for positions and values are done within its own ranks. They must recognise that fortuitously they are discovering that their party is unlikely to ever be dominated by any group or person: not the president, should they win the poll, nor the lawmakers, nor the seemingly but temporarily influential governors, nor any of its powerful leaders. There will only be temporary dominance of one group or the other now and again. There will never be permanent dominance, for the party is now too large and too nationally important to be dominated by one group or the other for a long stretch.
Party leaders may be starting to learn that every position, idea and policy must be contested using superior arguments and brilliant, democratic manoeuvring. This is their best chance discovery, a discovery that is bound to serve them very well now and in the future, a discovery they will do well to reconcile themselves to. For the old ways of their component parties are gone for good, and the new ways of doing things must be accommodated; for nature itself is fatefully seeming to prepare them for true leadership, and gifting them the internal processes they will require to govern the country successfully, intelligently and democratically from next year.
