THE 2019 race for the presidency is looking like the slowest on record. It was meant to be a sprint, a dizzying two and a half months short-distance race for plum of the plum, and best of the best. Yet, the two leading athletes in the race, President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC)and former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have approached the race with the mentality of long-distance runners, or even worse, marathoners. Not only have they been slow from the starting blocks, they have so far not done anything significantly recognisable than flinging their turgid and uninspiring policy plans at the public face.
President Buhari’s Next Level plan has been needlessly assailed for engaging in plagiarism, but no one has sensibly argued how a fairly common title which athletes, film makers, preachers and even motivational speakers are accustomed to can conceivably become plagiarism or an infringement of intellectual copyright. Alhaji Atiku is belaboured over the length of his People’s Policy, tentatively put at six years, and is accused of secretly nursing the nefarious ambition of seeking two presidential terms while openly giving the impression of seeking only one term. However, there is nothing to suggest that the slow speed of the campaign has anything to do with these criticisms.
The PDP had nearly all of four years to get its act together to present a formidable challenge to the party that upstaged it in 2015. Instead, it allowed itself to be concussed with nothing more than a feather duster, chased red herring when it embraced the romantic adventure of the intransigent former Borno State governor Ali Modu Sherrif, and frittered away valuable hours and months in energy-sapping juridical wars. By the time the turmoil in the party subsided, its leaders were left breathless to face an equally confused and underperforming ruling party whose leaders cavorted in endless nomination plots.
If the convoluted political wars were limited to only the opposition party, the APC would have had a walkover. Happily for the PDP, the APC neither operated as a party, let alone a ruling party, nor had in its ranks leaders who could take responsibility about what needed to be done, nor yet had managed to produce an organisational structure able to withstand stress of any kind, not to talk of political and governmental stress. Confusion reigned in the ruling party as drama wearied the PDP and sapped it of its vitality. And to cap a very dangerous and dispiriting trend, the ruling party has engaged in the fiercest nomination wars ever, so bad that the president and governors are at sixes and sevens, the party’s soul racked by guilt, and many of its loyalists dazed by the president’s vacillations.
With neither party able to ethically and administratively rise above the other, and with none of the smaller and fringe parties able to seize the middle ground, it is hardly surprising that the 2019 race, particularly the presidential battle, has begun very slowly, hesitantly and uninspiringly. Despite the best but unconvincing efforts of former Lagos State governor Babatunde campaign effort, the PDP has opted for a combination of rallies and door-to-door marketing. But to do these, the party would need to unite around a common cause. That cause has so far proved ephemeral, and the party’s leading lights have stood disconcertingly aloof. Alhaji Atiku has also been accused of treating the highest ranking legislative leader from the Southeast, Ike Ekweremadu, shabbily. To remedy this omission, he has initiated a reconciliation effort. But almost concomitantly, the Southeast PDP governors have shunned the sales pitch of 2023 Igbo presidential bid, a carrot the PDP candidate is enamoured of and desirous of marketing. In fact the said governors appear at best to be noncommittal and, alarmingly to the PDP, even seemed somewhat persuaded by the logic of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, who has twice suggested that the Igbo 2023 agenda could best be realised by supporting President Buhari’s second and last term.
In any case, the PDP is spending an inordinate amount of time trying to coax unity out of its restless and ambitious party leaders. On top of this time-wasting, it faces the arduous task of raising enough clean money to fire and then structure its campaign. It will hope to get going sometime in December, a festive period that is however so unsuited to mass movements and electioneering. Despite the party’s best efforts, about two weeks or even three in December and January are virtually useless for campaigning. So the party is in effect left with about six weeks to persuade Nigeria to see through the APC’s chicanery. It won’t be easy.
On the other hand, the even more languid APC is not only tongue-tied and deaf to entreaties on rule of law and governmental ethics, it has been unable to coalesce around a common cause, let alone find and trust a few men in whom to delegate the epochal race for President Buhari’s re-election. Its nationalist and democratic credentials are weak, but it has lumbered on nevertheless, slowly and tediously. The demons confronting it are legion, ranging from nomination battles to party leadership struggles, and of course appalling lack of understanding of its raison d’être. Having stayed glued to its self-inflicted crises, more because of its inherent incompetence, it could hardly spare time to plan the 2019 campaign with the alacrity, fecundity and profundity the late statesman, Obafemi Awolowo, was renowned for.
But for their lack of hugeness and completeness, not to say inadequate financial resources, the smaller parties unencumbered by internecine revolts and battles have demonstrated more competence in planning and kick-starting their campaigns. Their ideologies may be inchoate and unconvincing, but their platforms, especially their promises, have resonated very well. They will not get far, and are unlikely to do well, but they will give glimpses of the utopia politics and campaigns ought really to be.
Having started slowly and poorly, even half-heartedly, the 2019 campaigns will overall fail to inspire or attract crowds on a scale commensurate with the fame and liveliness campaigns in Nigeria are reputed for. Whether major rallies or door-to-door campaigning, the 2019 elections will very likely fail to draw a huge number of voters.
Both President Buhari and Alhaji Atiku will hope that once they get their campaigns going, the zeal of the electorate will be fired. For the sake of the health of Nigerian democracy, the public will hope that at last some excitement can be triggered, and that once triggered it will encourage the candidates to press the throttles even more in order to convince voters to take the trouble of judging whom among the two leading candidates is the lesser evil. It will be a tough choice for the people, no matter how the campaigns go. The president is simply too distant and inattentive to envision a great and noble future for the country, its democracy and unity; and the challenger, despite his liberalism and talent for attracting young technocrats, is hobbled by both his controversial past and other ethical challenges. Indeed, nature has a way of taking care of its maladies. This may be why the campaigns have slowed down unnaturally, and the candidates themselves, despite their best efforts, have remained dour and colourless.
