By Dele Momodu
Fellow Nigerians, please, allow me to remind you of an article I wrote in 2014 titled IN SEARCH OF MATHEMATICIANS. It was a simple calculation and permutation I made about how Major General Muhammadu Buhari was going to defeat the incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in the 2015 Presidential election. As at that time, the confidence level of the Buhari camp was still quite shaky, indeed it was quite low.
The APC candidate had lost three previous elections and had
virtually given up before the daredevilry of Bola Tinubu, Rotimi Amaechi,
Bukola Saraki, Atiku Abubakar, Aminu Tambuwal and others exhumed and
resurrected his dead ambition. It is interesting to note that of those from
that list, who gave their all in ensuring Buhari’s success at the 2015 polls,
only Amaechi and to a much lesser extent, Tinubu continue to enjoy some sort of
romance with the President. It seems that this is not only the way of
politicians but the way of Nigerians generally. We always seem to strive to
ignore most of our benefactors.
Anyway,
I remember how many of Buhari’s supporters bombarded my phones in utter
excitement about my favourable prediction. That was the first time I ever spoke
to Senator Hadi Sirika, the current Minister of Aviation. He was in the company
of his friend Honourable Farouk, another protege of Buhari. I took Senator
Sirika’s call in Ghana and they both took turns to speak with me. They saluted
my brilliant analysis and wanted a brief clarification which I obliged.
According to them my impassionate calculations and permutations had the
semblance of reality. It had buoyed their hopes and given them more confidence
that the goal, and task of making Buhari the President, was easily achievable
if they followed my blueprint. I will explain this preamble in a moment and
point out the important lessons in it.
Let’s fast forward to 2021
before we land in 2023. Those Northern politicians who are already gloating and
boasting that they will contest and win and produce the next President and that
heavens will not fall are merely trying to bully the Southern politicians who
have suffered so much intimidation in the past and have since lost their
self-confidence. The Northern politicians know the truth as well as the reality
that no Northern politician can ever win a Presidential election if he can’t
penetrate the South substantially. I do not talk on this matter or engage in
this discourse on a fanciful, wishful basis. I do so with justification
premised on scientific and empirical knowledge of Nigeria’s political and electoral
history and practice since the advent of a Presidential system of government in
the second Republic.
In 1979,
the National Party of Nigeria found it almost impossible to win in a straight
fight between its candidate, Alhaji Aliyu Shehu Shagari and Chief Obafemi
Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria. The logjam and apparent looming impasse
was only resolved when the highest court of the land went through the rigmarole
of mathematical somersaults and ended up with the infamous, and forever
notorious, two thirds of nineteen is twelve two-thirds algorithm of the
existing States in Nigeria, a computation which fractionalised one of the
states simply for electoral purposes, in order to fulfil the constitutional
requirements to make Shagari win at the first ballot and save NPN from the
potential slippery debacle of a run-off election. Had Shagari won a simple
number of 13 states, Nigeria would have been saved the hoopla and hullabaloo.
Even with Awolowo winning mainly in the South West and a sprinkling of other
places, he gave Shagari a good fight and nearly recorded a stalemate until the
ill-fated intervention of the court.
My
next example would come from 1993 when Chief Moshood Abiola, from political
hibernation, came out of the blue to join the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He
instantly made it known that his reason for joining the Party was that he was
ready and prepared to run in the Presidential race. Notwithstanding that this
seemed an impossible mission for several reasons, Abiola was resolute in his
mission and convinced of the attainment of his vision. For the purpose of the
lessons that I am about to impart I will now go through some of those reasons.
SDP
was largely a party of the South while its arch-rival, the National Republican
Party (NRC) was dominantly a Northern Party. Interestingly, the SDP actually
had a strong Chairman, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe from the Northern Borno State.
Chief
Abiola was confronted by at least three gargantuan hurdles. How to grab the SDP
tickets from the political heavyweights that littered the SDP, and in
particular Kingibe, who enjoyed the unflinching support of most of the SDP
Governors and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who enjoyed the avuncular support of the
hugely politically influential Major General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who himself
had only recently been banned from contesting by the military President General
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. These were formidable leaders within his own party.
He
had no guarantees or assurances that the military was ready to hand over power coupled
with the fact that the top echelon of the military was populated by Northerners
and so a Southerner could be perceived as taking a big risk with such a
Northern military conclave.
Despite
these seemingly insurmountable challenges, Chief Abiola remained undaunted and
pursued his dream with uncommon gusto, conscientiousness and industry. An
average Southerner would have panicked and possibly chickened out. But Abiola
was supremely confident that he had done most of the work required to
successfully take him past the finishing post in pole position in the past
three decades. The Presidential race is not a day or month’s journey. You must
have toured the world extensively and touched so many lives expansively and
expensively to succeed. It is first a popularity contest. It is also a game of
personal interests for members of the privilegentsia who call the shots in most
countries.
Above
all, it is a game of wit and skill. A complex game of chess with very grave
even fatal consequences if there is as much as a tiny misstep. It is, simply
put, a tough and rough game. Abiola eventually stood against Alhaji Bashir
Othman Tofa of NRC, a Northerner from Kano and took him to the cleaners with
the mathematical and clinical precision that an astute and cosmopolitan accountant
can muster. When the military top brass realized what had happened against all
odds, they had to annul the election summarily. But there was never a doubt
that Abiola won fair and square. He has now been vindicated posthumously by the
Buhari administration, something which General Buhari will always be positively
remembered for through the ages.
Let’s fast forward to 2003 when President Olusegun Obasanjo was seeking re-election. His then Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was also eyeing the top seat and had to be begged and importuned to allow his boss to complete his second term, in peace and not in pieces. There was another challenger, former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari. I must note that by then, Buhari had succeeded in building a cult following in the North and his teeming supporters were blindly loyal and absolutely fanatical in their unalloyed support of him. It is doubtful if anyone, since the emergence of Sir Ahmadu Ibrahim Bello, The Sardauna of Sokoto, had ever been that apotheosised in his lifetime in vast swathes of Northern Nigeria.
Only Aminu Kano could be said to have enjoyed something
similar, but his reach was limited to Kano and Kaduna States. However, despite
his significant popularity in the North, Buhari could not defeat President
Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003. Forget the cries of being rigged out. The truth is
that Baba Buhari’s acolytes could not have made him President through Northern
votes alone. Buhari again contested against an ailing Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in
2007 and still lost the election. Yar’Adua won because he enjoyed sizable
numbers in the South. No irredentist can ever win a national election without a
crossover appeal. Buhari’s Northern appeal was still not enough for him to tilt
the popular vote in his favour.
One
more example should suffice. Buhari took on President Goodluck Jonathan in
2011. I’m proud to say I also contested in that election, and I learnt very
useful lessons. Once again, Buhari lost the election despite massive support
from the North. Whilst Jonathan, his opponent, did relatively well in the
South, he was able to garner some significant votes in the North and thus the
quest by Buhari to wrest the Presidency from Jonathan ended up in tatters and
flames. Reports claimed that Buhari was so devastated that he wept and vowed
never to contest again. The big lesson in my view is that Buhari lost because
the South had a pathological fear of Buhari as an ethnic bigot and religious
fundamentalist. I need not prove anything further.
Buhari
is the all-time example of the unjustifiable, unwarrantable and unfounded myth
that the North can win Presidential elections permanently based on its numbers
alone. It is a tale told by lazy and indolent politicians who are happy playing
second fiddle to some nebulous and ephemeral mythical politicians in the North.
When did it become the norm for the place of birth to be the only prerequisite
for becoming the President of a country as ethnically diverse and religiously
divided as Nigeria? As I have tried to demonstrate, nobody who has relied on
the Northern votes alone has ever managed to achieve it in the Presidential
system. It is remarkable that people, especially Southern politicians, forget
that between 1999 and 2011 three out of the four Presidential elections were
won by Southern candidates including a Southern minority.
Let
me now propound the thesis of why Southerners may easily lose elections to
Northern candidates. Firstly. it may be said that the Southern politicians
always work at cross purposes and undermine and undercut themselves. They are
so scared and frightened, of the illusionary Northern might, that they make no
attempt to probe or challenge it, but rather accept it as a truism. Northern
politicians are only too happy to exploit and manipulate them as they wallow in
their folly. Secondly, the fable of a monolithic North has long been shattered
into smithereens. No such thing exists. The Middle Belt, and now The North
Central part of Nigeria, has never been fully subjugated by the core North.
This fact is always glossed over or ignored by the dozy, sleepy somnolent South.
The only advantage the North had for a long time was its ability to suddenly
unite during elections. But it is obvious things are no longer at ease in the
North since things fell apart under the watch of the amazing Buhari.
The
North is haemorrhaging badly, bleeding ceaselessly and the question on most
lips is of what benefit has holding power endlessly been to the long-suffering
people of the North?! The current President is from Katsina State, same as
former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, yet Katsina has since fallen into the
hands of bandits and terrorists. So, on what basis are some Northern
politicians insisting that another Northerner should take over President
Buhari, in a country where many groups are clamouring for a breakup into
different nations. Some of those Northerners warming up as candidates have done
little or nothing in their private or public lives to request us to trust them
with our political, social and economic life. Even those who have been in
public life suffer from the same disability. They have neither managed people
nor resources successfully. Any experience they have is one of failure, flop or
fiasco! What then is their motivation for God’s sake?
My
practical proposition is that we must no longer allow these artful dodgers to
browbeat us into submission again with their folktales and fables. The South
should wake up from its somnambulist and narcoleptic state. For 2023, PDP as
the leading opposition party must stand up for its traditional role as a
veritable opposition party and act responsibly by playing a joker or an ace,
depending on your viewpoint. Majority of Nigerian youths today are tired of
voting for recycled leaders. That is the reason for the low voter turnout in most
States nowadays.
If
the Southern leaders are serious, the journey should start from uniting the
three geo-political zones of the South. Today, those zones face similar
problems and common enemies. Some of the same issues are also prevalent in the
North Central. Let the South agree for once that South is South and look for
two candidates in APC and PDP with an Abiola kind of template, not necessarily
a hardcore politician but people who cut across: successful, bright, tolerant,
cosmopolitan, and so on. But if the Southerners continue to insist on asserting
that it is the turn of Yoruba, or Igbo or Ijaw, and fail to embrace one another
as Southerners, it will be a monumental disaster. This is my honest opinion.
The
Arithmetic is easy, three regions in the South with a firm handshake across the
North Central and it is a done deal. victory will be assured. The truth is that
some inroad will be made into the massive votes that will come from Kano,
Kaduna and Sokoto states as well. Let nobody fool or hoodwink us that all the
votes from those areas will totally be for the ruling Party. Experience has
shown that this is not the case. It will not change now. It will be a lot
easier for the PDP if it can get its act together and turn to pastures green in
sourcing a candidate. One that is without much blemish and is not associated
with the rot that the Party was known for in the 16 years of its controversial
rule.
The critical question and crux of the matter is whether the older generation or
the established politicians will leave power without a serious fight from the
supposed new breed? Time will tell.
*Momodu, a
publisher, is a commentator on public issues
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