Nigeria is likely to have its most competitive presidential elections since return to civil rule in 1999 on February 14, 2015. No one will be deceived by the irony that the date coincides with Valentine’s Day, when many people celebrate love and amity! The election promises (as is already evident) to be characterised not by love, but by vitriol, vile propaganda, vicious attacks and counter-attacks, bitter struggles and elevated levels of desperation! The Nigerian politician often treats his opponents not as well-meaning fellow contestants for public service to be defeated, but as enemies to be overcome!
It is very unlikely that the contest will be defined by any ideas, ideologies or principles and so far none has been on display! The PDP is accustomed to power and approaches it with the arrogance and assurance people who assume they possess ownership rights over anything relate to such proprietary assets. On the other hand, the current APC is fundamentally (even though its stakeholders will strenuously dispute the characterisation) essentially a splinter faction of the Nigerian ruling elite more generally defined, and specifically its political representation, the PDP. Indeed, the Nigerian political party system is, in my analysis, in a temporary or interim formation in which ex-President Obasanjo and his deputy for eight years, Atiku Abubakar, who held office on the platform of the PDP, are APC members or stakeholders; in Obasanjo’s home state, an individual like Segun Osoba, who was Alliance for Democracy (AD) governor, is in a new SDP, while the current APC governor, Ibikunle Amosun, was a senator on the platform of the PDP!
To illustrate the probable fluidity and chaotic essence of the current party configurations, note that all the APC presidential aspirants, except Muhammadu Buhari, were members of the PDP! Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso was governor, minister and NDDC board member under the PDP banner; Atiku was for eight years the most important politician within the PDP as vice-president and leader of its dominant PDM faction; Aminu Waziri Tambuwal was elected to the House of Representatives under the PDP and secured the Speaker’s office on that basis; and even the Leadership Newspaper publisher, Sam Nda-Isaiah, could not, until recently, be presumed to be closer to the opposition than the ruling PDP. Most of the dominant power brokers in APC except Bola Tinubu (Chibuike Amaechi, Bukola Saraki, Rochas Okorocha, Chris Ngige, Audu Ogbe, Governor Wammako, etc.) were all previously in the PDP. I consider therefore the 2015 presidential election as a transitional process to the emergence of a new political party system dependent on the outcome of the presidential polls.
It may already be presumed that the PDP candidate will be President Goodluck Jonathan. As he signalled at his declaration some days back, Jonathan will fight the election based on his record on economic management, including the size and growth of the economy; improvements in infrastructure – road, rail, aviation, etc – reforms in agriculture, power, automobile and housing policy; investments in education, including new universities, infrastructure and “Almajiri” schools in the North; accomplishments in sports and other aspects of national life; and preservation of freedom and democratic liberties. The chink in his armour will clearly be national security and the scourge of “Boko Haram”, as well as the reality and/or perception of continuing corruption. It is clear that the PDP response to these vulnerabilities will be to query the opposition’s record on Boko Haram (which objectively raises important questions!) and to point to sectoral curbs on corruption in the agriculture sector through a new fertiliser distribution mechanism and what could have been a similar success in the downstream petroleum sector if the president’s attempt to remove corruption-prone oil subsidies had stood.
It remains unclear who the APC’s candidate will be between Buhari, Atiku, Kwankwaso, Tambuwal and Sam Nda-Isaiah. Their two main champions, Buhari and Atiku, have their own well-known deficiencies. Buhari has a reputation as a sectarian politician with religious, ethnic and regional baggage and has lost presidential elections in three previous contests. He has severe weaknesses in economic policy and administration and objective analysis suggests his worldview is rooted in the 1960s and 1970s! He also has a reputation for abdicating his office to whoever his deputy or other powerful subordinate is! His much-touted advantage, anti-corruption, is mythical, but there is no evidence of any institutional capacity to curb corruption in any previous office!
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On the other hand, Atiku is regarded by many Nigerians as a typical Nigerian corrupt and unprincipled politician, and it doesn’t help that he has left PDP, returned, and now left again! To Atiku’s credit, however, he is the only contestant discussing policies and ideas, and he is not feared by any Nigerian constituency, ethnic, religious or regional. Kwankwaso and Tambuwal may be considered “new generation” alternatives to Buhari and Atiku and if the APC power-brokers seek a new image and transition in leadership cadre in Nigeria, it may turn in their direction. No one seems to expect Sam Nda-Isaiah to be APC’s presidential candidate.
Tragically, while the elections are being conducted on the basis of cynical calculations and propaganda, the context for the vote is troubling – a religious fundamentalist insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East region and occasionally beyond that has consumed over 20,000 innocent lives and global economic changes that require a substantive debate on the direction of future economic policy. There is of course the continuing social crisis of poverty, unemployment, crime, deteriorating educational standards and a debased societal value system and unresolved issues on fundamental constitutional and federalist principles of the Nigerian union. These matters will not be addressed by partisan calculations, but a campaign focused on proposing ideas and solutions for policy going forward. Unfortunately, there is little likelihood that we will get that!
NB: But for technical reasons, this article would have been published yesterday under Agbaje’s Wednesday column.
Opeyemi Agbaje
