Governors And The Politics Of Succession

By Reuben Abati

The recent Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states threw up a number of issues about the politics of succession in Nigeria. In Edo state, you would think it was the then incumbent Governor Adams Oshiomhole seeking re-election. He campaigned more than the candidate.  He danced, waved the broom, his party’s symbol, far more enthusiastically than the man who wanted the office...

*Reuben Abati

He even did more to put down the opposition and any likely threat to Godwin Obaseki’s ambition. His pretty wife was always in tow during the campaigns, and did she dance? Oh yes, she did too. Godwin Obaseki’s emergence as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in that election caused much disaffection within the party. He was said to be Oshiomhole’s anointed candidate with the allegation that everything was being done to ensure his victory at the polls. Oshiomhole had his way. Obaseki is now Governor of Edo State.

       The incumbent Governor in Ondo State also did as much if not more to manage the politics of succession in the just concluded Governorship election in that state.  He anointed the candidate of his party, followed him everywhere, and “fought” for him, even in the courts and on the streets of Akure. The election was more about Dr Olusegun Mimiko and what he wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that Mimiko’s choice, Eyitayo Jegede, SAN hails from the same Senatorial district with him, but by far the biggest problem was the division within the PDP, which produced two candidates on the same platform for the same election, with the courts having to decide mid-way and at the late hour, with a superior court overruling the lower court. This confusion created a scenario whereby Jimoh Ibrahim emerged for a while as the party’s candidate, only to be dismissed through a court order two days to the election.

     This did not bother the businessman-lawyer-politician, though. Giving the impression that he was not so desperate to be Governor, he declared that his mission was to make it impossible for Mimiko to achieve his goal of installing an anointed successor. On the eve of the election, he urged his supporters and the people of the state to vote for the candidate of the APC. Under normal circumstances this would be considered an anti-party activity but the PDP is right now in such a confused state as a political party - its ranks are filled with disloyal, one-leg-in-one-leg-out members.  For this reason, in Ondo state, the PDP defeated itself from within even before the election. Mimiko can also be held responsible for his chosen candidate’s defeat. He overplayed his hands in the febrile politics of succession in the state.

     There is perhaps nothing new about incumbents, at state, local and national levels, showing interest in who succeeds them. Being politicians, they could plead that they are duty bound to support their party’s candidate, but where the problem lies is the desperation that attends the choice of such candidates, beginning with the party primary. In the United States, which is an example that can be readily cited, President Barrack Obama openly supported the candidacy of the Democratic Party standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, but he did so only after she had won the nomination. If Bernie Sanders had been the party’s choice, he would still have received President Obama’s support out of loyalty to the party. In other words, it would be difficult to speak of an incumbent American President or Governor anointing a successor and imposing that successor on the party and the electorate.

Why Bola Tinubu Must Be Rescued

By Ochereome Nnanna

It is obvious now that, for the first time in his illustrious political career, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the much touted National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has fallen into a political ditch. He needs a helping hand to get out fast. If the APC manipulates itself to victory in Ondo State (by using the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the Judiciary to ensure that a fake candidate, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, stands for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP), it might signal the end of the Tinubu political saga in the South West. 

*Tinubu and Buhari 

Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, masquerading as the APC that won the general elections last year will have two states in the zone (Ondo and Ogun) in its kitty. Being the party in power, and with the Tinubu loyalist governors in Oyo and Osun not eligible to run again, Buhari can use the same INEC, Judiciary, Directorate of State Services, DSS, and the “may-my-loyalty-never-be-tested” former Tinubu boys like Babatunde Fashola to make a grab for the rest of the South West come 2019. If that happens, the pro-Caliphate, Kaduna Mafia Arewa North led by Buhari would start calling the shots in the politics of the South West on their terms, and no longer in alliance with a “homegrown” political leader of the zone. 

That will bode very ill, not only for our democracy that thrives better on inter-regional alliances (which was what brought Buhari into power) but will entrench Buharist Northern domination; a recipe for national instability and eventual disintegration. Buharist Arewaism (coded into his 97%/5% parasitic formula for the distribution of the Nigerian commonwealth) has been on open display since he assumed power on May 29, 2015. It has shown itself in the manner in which the Federal Government was formed, the deployment of the security agencies, the repositioning of the top echelon of the Federal Bureaucracy, the denial of the South the right to produce the substantive Head of the Federal Judiciary (the Chief Justice of Nigeria) and in the way the INEC has been robbed of its Jonathan-era independence. 

It is also manifesting in the Islamisation of Non-Muslim communities in the Middle Belt and South by armed Muslim militias masquerading as herdsmen, the frequent abductions of under-aged Christian girls by emirs and Islamic clerics who promptly marry them off to themselves or other Muslims without the consent of their parents, the manner in which “blasphemy” murder suspects are being set free when the law enforcement agencies bother to get them arrested and tried; and the way the Federal Character principle in the constitution is contemptuously ignored while a brash reign of nepotism is plunked down the throats of Nigerians. Who knows in what other forms we will be seeing it in the years to come?