Until Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, dropped out of the six-horse race to pick the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket for the presidential contest, it was hard to tell whether former military head of state, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, would have achieved runaway victory. I rooted for Hon Tambuwal for reasons I had spelt out in this place at least three times. I expected he would win or come near doing so for possessing believable democratic credentials, for being liberal and gregarious without being populist and pedestrian, and for being modern, expansive, intellectual, intuitive and full of solicitudes, as his fellow lawmakers can attest. But as I warned here last week, would the country still be ready for him some four years or more down the road? Of the five aspirants left in the race, I think that notwithstanding his weaknesses and adeptness at courting controversies, Gen Buhari is today easily the man to beat. This will be his fourth try, and the last. His 2011 effort was his best attempt ever, physically, emotionally and logistically. However, I think he will run the 2015 race virtually in a state of suspended animation, buoyed up by other people’s emotional capital, logistical deployment and physical rigour.
The other four aspirants can’t hold the candle to Gen Buhari, notwithstanding his advanced age and sworn mendicancy. Abubakar Atiku, for reasons best known to nature, is dogged by bad press, some of it actively cultivated and insinuated by his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nothing was ever really proved against him, but Chief Obasanjo and many others seem to believe that the former vice president lives above his means, procures favours with disarming malfeasance, and dispenses them equally mala fide. Chief Obasanjo is notorious for never proving any allegation he makes, and is in fact never interested in substantiating anything were he to be deliberately and violently prodded. The country has unfortunately embraced the same notoriety, against which Alhaji Atiku will constantly come a cropper. And given the military and political exigencies of the moment, it is doubtful whether the easy-going affirmation of Alhaji Atiku, his self-assuredness, his accessibility and consensual politics, and his talent for head-hunting excellent technocrats will avail much or persuade the electorate to give him a chance.
Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State holds a lot of promise both as a thinker and as an administrator. In Kano he has provided the state a safe pair of very steady hands, and has handled governance with the care, trust and even-handedness the constitution quintessentially envisages. He has rebuffed the xenophobia rage that lathers many parts of Nigeria, and promoted the kind of ethnic amity Nigerians have always dreamt of, and a commercial city like Kano cannot do without. But Kano has been to Governor Kwankwaso a cocoon, from which he had before his presidential race seldom ventured. His visage and inner qualities show him quite capable of ruling a complex society like Nigeria, but running a presidential race, let alone winning it, requires long preparation, venturing out to other parts of the country, and staying evocatively and munificently in public glare.
I am afraid I am not persuaded that either of the remaining two aspirants, to wit, the intrepid publisher Sam Nda-Isaiah and Governor Rochas Okorocha, is actually serious or prepared for the race; nor is it clear they can muster enough goodwill to run a race against such an implacable foe as President Goodluck Jonathan, or whether they have the calibre to trigger excitement and emotions in Nigerians seeking romantically for knights and miracles against the unrelenting harassment by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Mr Nda-Isaiah is young, energetic and a gifted columnist. But as his columns indicate, he is also impatient, and often acerbic and cocksure of everything. Owelle Okorocha is eloquent, empathetic but sometimes grandiloquent. But either as governor or presidential aspirant, he is often detached and distracted, quite unable sometimes to match input with output, his modest talents with the lofty goals and accomplishments of his boyish dreams.
The APC presidential primary will in my opinion revolve around the challenges Nigeria is facing. The economy is not yet in a tailspin, but it is nearly spinning out of control, its managers lacking in the requisite initiative and discipline to rein it in. Insecurity is rife in all parts of the country, with emphasis on the insurgency in the Northeast. If it persist for much longer, there is no certainty the entire country will not be engulfed. Nigeria is at the moment truly distressed, buffeted on all sides by political rancour, socio-economic paralysis and decay, deliberate attacks on the constitution and civil liberties by the government and secret service, and wearied by a terrible feeling of ennui that has lingered for more than four or five years. Few doubt the incapacity of the Jonathan presidency to grapple with these monumental problems, and no one doubts his government’s absolute lack of discipline, motivation and ambition. Whatever doubts exist concern the ability of the APC to give us a candidate able to provide effective leadership at this trying moment. The PDP has offered Dr Jonathan, and he is absolutely feckless.
Perhaps in quieter times, the talents of Alhaji Atiku, Governor Kwankwaso, Mr Nda-Isaiah and Owelle Okocha would recommend them suitably for the presidency. But at this time of pressing danger and mortal threat to national security, the electorate and the APC would be disposed to someone with a safe pair of hands than the dreamy and distracted Dr Jonathan has offered or is ever able to offer. It seems to me that the only man in the APC able to subdue the threats of the moment is the inflexible and emotionless general from Daura. He has been head of state once, and he has had the experience of many battles from which he never flinched. He has expressed his readiness, even covets the chance, to lead once again and re-establish order in this increasingly fissiparous country. The APC will give him the ticket, for he seems both prepared to do battle, and he appears the only one among the five aspirants able to face Dr Jonathan implacability for implacability, toe-to-toe, head-to-head, and if necessary, malice for malice.
The APC is not unduly finicky to worry that a Buhari presidency could become intractably distant from constitutional reality, a sentiment the country itself has expressed many times given the general’s antecedents. But if they desire to win the election, and if the country hankers after order and discipline without which development cannot take place, their best bet will be the retired army general. He often seems too set in his ways, surrounds himself with a coterie of often hawkish and insular officials and technocrats, and some of his ideas hark back to distant times and eras. But the party will assume the confidence to mould him and reorient him, and as a disciplined officer and leader, he will constantly remind himself of the supremacy of the constitution. These sentiments will be shared by the country, for the alternative is too grim to contemplate, an alternative replete with Jonathan induced failures, paralysis, indiscipline, mismanagement, cowardice, poor judgement, gaffes, unfathomable avarice, arrogance, nepotism and parochialism.
I think the choice before the APC is clear. They will have a few misgivings about the stubborn general, but the know which side their bread is buttered. As for the country in February 2015, it is presumed they understand they have reached a fork in the road, where the wrong turn will unleash catastrophic consequences. Unlike the APC which is expected to choose right in their presidential primary this week, the country may still entertain the view that it has the luxuries of time and choice. I don’t think they do. Indulgent and hardhearted as they may seem, they will probably, at the last moment, step back from the brink.
