S/E, S/W scramble for 2023 may upturn 2019 election projections

President Buhari

By OBINNA EZUGWU

The outcome of the 2019 presidential election would have been a settled issue if performance were to be the only, indeed, the main consideration. But in Nigeria, it is not and this convoluted and warped assessment of leadership eligibility for office may be the icing on the cake for President Muhammadu Buhari’s reelection.  On the balance of probability political sentiments seem to be against him; yet the quest for 2023 by the south west is proving to be his trump card.

In more advanced climes, elections are largely won or lost on records of performance and manifestos of intent; in precisely key deliverables. In Nigeria, however, as in most developing countries, ethnicity, region and religion play, perhaps the biggest roles in leadership selection.

And as the 2019 presidential election approaches, Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari may escape the consequences of his failures as the question of who takes power in 2023 gradually becomes a major campaign topic ahead of the all important 2019 polls.

“Nigeria political atmosphere is driven by ethnocentrism and nepotism which doesn’t really look at merit. And that has always been the bane of our development,” noted Aremo Oladotun Hassan, president, Yoruba Council of Youths Worldwide (YCYW).

Nigeria under Buhari, and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has, many agree, been a country in shambles. Not long after he took power in 2015, the country went into an economic recession – for only the second time in its history, the first, coincidentally, being during his reign as military head of state in the early 80s.

Although the country managed to come out of it, officially in 2017, little has changed for the everyday Nigerian who has had to pay more for almost every item in the market on account of inflation which has been in double figures.

“We never had it this bad as we do now under this government,” Hassan said. “The president has demonstrated total lack of capacity to govern.”

Poverty and unemployment have become more widespread. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that 7.5 million Nigerians were out of jobs between January 2016 and December 30, 2017. A report released in June by Brookings Institution revealed Nigeria had overtaken India as the country with the highest number of extremely poor individuals with about 87million extremely poor people living below $1.90 a day, despite having only about 200million people at the maximum to India’s 1.324 billion.

The report had also said that number of Nigerians in extreme poverty increases by six people every minute. And in its latest report on Wednesday last week, the Institution said that another 1.1 million Nigerians slipped into extreme poverty in four months, bringing the total number of extremely poor to 88million. This is evidence of things getting increasingly worse for the people.

But it’s not just growing poverty and the hunger that comes with it that Nigerians have to deal with. Security challenges are equally escalating – in part also because of poverty, idleness and frustration. The so called herders versus farmers’ clashes have continued to result in daily harvest of bloodshed in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna states and across the North East, Middle Belt and indeed, Southern Nigeria.

Added to the mix are religious crisis that has led to loss of lives in Kaduna, the seemingly unending Boko Haram carnage in the North East, rustling and sectarian violence in Zamfara and several cases of rights violations and extrajudicial killings by soldiers as exemplified by the killing of Shiites and members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB). Last week several lives were lost in protests in Abuja by Islamic Movement of Nigeria, IMN, the Shiites, against the continued detention of their leader, Sheik El Zakzakky

With this perceived poor performance, it would seem obvious, at least going by the frustrations in the street, that Buhari could easily lose the 2019 polls to his main challenger, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. But the impact of the negative statistics could pale into insignificance as politicians in the ruling party’s ranks focus heavily on the calculations of 2023 presidency and the ethnic origin of vice presidential candidates.

“Muhammadu Buhari is a very clever man,” said Chief Goddy Uwazurike, president emeritus, Igbo think tank group, Aka Ikenga. “He has not even said anything. He is just allowing the East and the West to forget the main thing, which is the assessment of his government and focus on who succeeds him.”

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in choosing Mr. Peter Obi, a South Easterner, may have ended up creating a scenario where the 2019 polls could come down to a contest between the South East and the South West where the current Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo hails from. Yet, more importantly, the prospect of Atiku’s presidency will effectively end the hopes of the South West, and precisely, Tinubu who has been positioning himself for the nation’s top job in 2023.

Much of this was revealed by Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki who noted recently that Tinubu had vowed in a conversation with him, that he would support even a Buhari in wheelchair because he was sure power will return to the South West in 2023. It is with the intention to take control of the APC structure that he had pushed for the emergence of now embattled Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as chairman of the party.

Tinubu who had desperately wanted to run as vice presidential candidate in 2015, but was met with stiff resistance by Buhari who insisted he could only nominate anybody of his choice, has overtly been courting North’s and Buhari support for a potential 2023 power bid. This had most definitely informed his attempt to rationalize herdsmen carnage weeks ago. He visited Buhari on Wednesday last week to, according to sources, receive assurances from the president. After which he unleashed scatting verbal attack on the Waziri Adamawa, Atiku.

“Why Tinubu and the Yoruba is tolerating Buhari is because of 2023,” said Abuja based legal practitioner and political analyst, Tony Ezugu. “But the North will never give power to the South West. By 2023, they would have left APC for them.”

But the consequence of the push for power could, as noted earlier, serve to ensure that Buhari may very much escape being judged on his record ahead of 2019.

Members of the ruling party in the South East, particularly Labour Minister, Chris Ngige, former  Abia state governor and now senatorial candidate, Orji Uzor Kalu, Imo state governor, Rochas Okorcha, and Voice of Nigeria Director General, Osita Okechukwu had tried to sell Buhari’s 2019 bid to the zone as a way to power in 2023. In the same light, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha told the South East months ago that supporting the president in 2019 was their shortest route to power.

“Preach it to the other South East states that the shortest way to Igbo presidency is to support Buhari in 2019,” Mustapha told a delegation of the Ebonyi state chapter of the APC who visited his office in April.

But despite being out of power since the civil war, the prospect of South East presidency in 2023 doesn’t exist, more so in APC. And the South West would justifiably feel it has a chance should Buhari complete eight years. Indeed, it is this prospect that will increasingly drive Buhari’s campaign in the zone.

A few days ago Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola gave the clearest indication of this yet fortnight ago when he made assertions that could be thus summarised: “vote for Buhari again in 2019 and take power in 2023,” and “don’t abandon your son who is vice president to back an Igbo vice president.”

The Minister who spoke at a special Town Hall meeting on infrastructure organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture and the National Orientation Agency, said: “Did you know that power is rotating to the South-West after the completion of Buhari’s tenure if you vote for him in 2019?

“Your child cannot surrender her waist for edifying beads and you will use the bead to decorate another child’s waist.

“A vote for Buhari in 2019 means a return of power to the South West in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely.”

His assertion was greeted with angry backlash from people across zonal divide on social media, including, interestingly, people from his South West constituency. Most of who insisted that what the country needed was good governance.

“Fashola basing the election of 2019 on who becomes president in 2023 is very wrong,” Chief Uwazurike said. “2019 election should be an assessment of what President Buhari has done since 2015; nobody can change the narrative. We must understand what is going on.

“They want to becloud our views, to bamboozle us. But as far as we are concerned, it is judgment of President Buhari based on the three issues he promised to do: fight corruption, curb insecurity, and grow the economy.”

When contacted subsequently, Fashola insisted that the APC was a party formed by an alliance between the North West and the South West, and that it was only proper that after the North West has had eight years, power will return to the South West.

His position has propaganda value, even though evidence from Buhari’s character and ‘body language’ suggests it’s unlikely he will back South West’s bid for power in 2023. Buhari’s men will sure latch on this as a major campaign point as 2019 approaches.

Taken on face value however, one could not fault Fashola’s projections. Of truth, the whole logic of APC is underpinned by the resolve of the South West to go for power in 2023; it is the oxygen energizing the  zone – the unwritten logic of the APC.

The party was born, essentially, out of an alliance between the North West through Buhari’s CPC and the South West via Tinubu led ACN. Therefore, it would be logical that after the North West, the SW will go for power.

Nonetheless, the argument will be hard to push even in the South West because the Buhari government the alliance birthed has performed way below expectations. And for most people, Buhari doesn’t deserve reelection. The backlash that greeted the minister’s statement is an indication of this. But again, the logic is sure to win converts when pushed more rigorously as campaigns start.

The reality, however, is that South West – which has had eight years of power in the current dispensation through Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007 – is not the only zone that has cogent reasons to push for power in 2023. As much as the zone would hope it should get it after Buhari – should the president return in 2019 – on account of the APC alliance, the South East which has not tasted same ever cannot easily buy into South West’s bid.

Indeed, the zone would feel betrayed. On the other hand, the North East which has not had power since Tafawa Balewa will stage a rigorous bid of theirs. But the major challenge the South West could face may not come from either of the North East or South East, but from the very North West it has backed for power.

Indeed, it is highly improbable that Buhari who had shown nothing but disdain for Tinubu upon winning the presidential election in 2015, and his men had ensured that the former Lagos governor’s interests were curtailed in Kogi where James Faleke, his political son, was robbed of his governorship post, as well as the events in Ondo and Ekiti, only to return to him in the interest of their 2019 bid, will later decide to hand over power to him in 2023.

Indeed, if anything, some say, Tinubu could face bigger challenges than he did in the aftermath of 2015 because Buhari would not need his support going forward.

‘Mr. President will likely give the APC ticket to a Northerner. What they will end up doing is to set the South East and South West against each other which will cause a lot of damage between them. And while doing so, the North will say that since both cannot agree, power should remain in the North,” Hassan opined.

“I believe strongly that the calculation of Tinubu will fall like a pack of cards. For the president to undermine him and tell him straight to his face that there was nothing like National Leader of APC should have been a lesson to him not to expect anything from Buhari in 2023, but rather expect to find himself in the belly of the tiger he is currently riding on its back.”

For Hassan therefore, it will pay the former governor better to retire from party politics and assume the status of a statesman.

“He (Tinubu) should be thinking about retiring, for him to pursue presidency after 2019 is going to be suicidal mission. They will mess him up,” he advised.

“He should be acting like a statesman now, he should be pushing for restructuring. It is very important that he starts doing so because that’s the way to go to save this country.”