Atiku, 2023 Presidential Election And The Price Of Treachery And Arrogance

The Insight by Lateef Adewole

After the announcement of the presidential election results and final declaration of the winner, I made a commitment to do a postmortem analysis series of the elections, looking at what went down as far as each of the leading candidates was concerned, how they performed, what did they do right, what could they have done better and the lessons learnt from the whole process, for future reference and posterity.

Since then, I have written about Tinubu, who happened to be the winner and currently, the president-elect. I have written about Peter Obi, who lost the election and came a distance third. Many people asked why I had to jump over Atiku, who came second to write about Obi, if I was following positions. Well, if someone is to access the political situation and reactions of candidates and their parties to the outcome of that election, one could actually have mistaken Obi and Labour Party as coming second, with the loudness in their voices about how they claimed to have won the election.

One would wondered if they actually forgot their place and ask what they plan to do with the man who is immediately ahead of them in the second position. I choose to write about Obi first because of the manner they, their party and their supporters, have been carrying on since then, with their recklessness and putting our democracy and country at risk. It looked like they care less if the democracy is truncated or the country shred into pieces. They have over-reacted negatively, even when they have their case, challenging the outcome, in court.

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Last year, in my post primary election analysis series, I wrote an article titled; “2023 Presidential Election: Can Atiku Weather The Storm?” There, I raised many concerns concerning all the crisis rocking the PDP at the time, in the aftermath of the primary election, which he won and the shenanigans that surrounded it. The subsequent disagreement with a presidential candidate, some governors that formed the G5, and party leaders, who demanded that the National Chairman of the party should resign, to pave way for another person from the southern Nigeria to replace him since the candidate is a northerner.

It was said that this was their gentleman’s agreement before the primary. That came about because of the demand for power shift to southern Nigeria. However, because of the entrenched political interests of some northern leaders in PDP, they jettisoned it. The justification was that PDP is not the government in power and that even if Buhari is a Northerner, who is in his second term as the president of Nigeria in eight years, it did not matter. That another northerner can become the next president and take over from him, in a back-to-back rule by the north, while southerners look on.

After much pressure, the southern leaders in PDP agreed to throw the presidential ticket open to all regions. Before then, the position of national chairman of the party was exclusively given to northerners to contest for. No southerner contested, with the hope that the presidential ticket would be zoned to the south. After Senator Iyorchia Ayu, a northerner, won, the story changed. That understanding was breached. The south was betrayed.

So, southern leaders expected that Ayu’s resignation should be the minimum required to percify the south but I think the northerners in the party felt otherwise. Ayu refused to step down, the presidential flag bearer refused to intervene, another betrayal of the south, and all hell was let loose. Consequently, patriotic southern leaders fought back, led by Governor Nyesom Wike. He had four other governors with him; Benue, Oyo, Abia and Enugu states. Same as majority of party leaders and elected officials in their states and many other states, especially in the south. All entreaties failed since Atiku and his group were not ready to conceed anything to the aggrieved party.

All along, I wondered what could be responsible for such arrogance of the leadership and candidate. In my opinion, I believed Atiku was banking on northerners’ votes. With the benefit of hindsight, that was correct but it failed woefully because not all northerners bought into it, especially the ruling party APC northern governors, they not only insisted that power should move to the south, they walked their talk by working assiduously to support their candidate, Tinubu, who fared well across the northern states. This reflected in the results.

Like the comment by an American diplomat and a foreign observer in the 2023 general elections, Johnnie Carson, an Executive Officer of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), who co-led National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), International Election Observation Mission to Nigeria during the elections, said of Tinubu: “do you know why he won, he got the money, he had the best national organisation that worked for him and the ground game’’.

“Mr Carson emphasised that for a candidate to win an election in Nigeria, like a lot of democracy in the globe, the three things, including substantial and significant financial resources were needed. Others, according to him, are a national working organisation and a grassroots acceptance. He said while Mr Tinubu had all the three criteria in his kitty during the polls, the other major contenders did not have all”, as reported by Premium Times.

This was at one of the numerous engagements by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, in Washington DC within the week. The organisations include the Council on Foreign Relations, a well versed think-tank on African affairs and foreign relations, also at the Reuters News Agency; The Politico, an international political newspaper, and Zenger News, a channel that publishes its contents on Forbes, as well as interactions with the Think-tanks and international media, where the minister “presented the facts of the just concluded polls as against skewed narratives of the opposition and naysayers”.

He specifically stated that other candidates, especially Atiku and Obi did not have the three, reason why they lost. Why he agreed that the first was common to all to a large extent, the other two were where Atiku and Obi failed. While Atiku’s platform, PDP, actually has a national spread, the fragmentation among them weakened the structure. This drastically affected their chances.

All along, Atiku kept boasting of some 11 million vote bank somewhere for him. This came from his outstanding performance in 2019 presidential election where he polled 11,262,978. This was what could have been responsible for his desperation to clinch the ticket and his arrogance that he would win, regardless of how some critical stakeholders in his party felt. That was a big mistake. It backfired.

How could he compare the PDP of 2019, with full arsenal, with a sharply divided PDP of 2023? Sadly, all that happened were self-inflicted. In 2019, Peter Obi was the vice presidential candidate to Atiku. Senator Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso was in PDP. All the five governors were solidly on ground and put all they had in resources and influence into his election. They all delivered massive votes for him against in their states.

But now, all that were gone. PDP produced two other strong parties’ candidates. Kwakwanso was the first to leave to form another party of his own, NNPP, and become their presidential candidate, knowing fully well that he had no chance in PDP. Then, came the primary, before which Obi also left to join Labour Party, for similar reason. These two alone took away more than 50% of PDP votes, as eventually seen in the outcomes. The crisis with G5 then worsened it.

In the last election, Atiku polled 6,984,520. He won in 5 of 6 states in his North East region. He won 4 of the 7 states in the North West region but lost the total votes there. He did not win any state from the North Central. He won one state in South West, two states in South South and none in South East. Effectively, he won popular votes in only one region and lost in five. He was second in two regions and third in the remaining three. He got the constitutional requirement of 25% in only 21 states, short of what is required to be declared a winner even if he had obtained highest number of popular votes nationally.

While he too, like the others who lost, expectedly, rejected the outcome and already challenging it in court, how he expected to win that election with a divided house remained a mystery. He must have depended on tribal sentiment majorly, just like Obi. He must have believed the whole north would vote for him because he is one of them, without considering the injustice of such to the south, which would have seen the north hold on to power for a straight 12 or 16 years, as the case may be. Nothing could be more selfish than that.

A closer look showed that Atiku was hoping to harvest massive votes from the north. That was why he called the bluff of the G5’s demands. His insistence that Ayu must stay proved to be costly and damaging. Ironically, same thing that he did not want to happen has happened without adding value. It was too late. It was like what Yorubas say that “a ni k’olokunrun se to, o ni oun ko le se to to to o ja re”. It is ordinary party executive at the lowest level of ward who suspended a national chairman of the same party. While Ayu was still grandstanding as to how no one has any power to remove him except the NEC of the party, he was slammed with a court injunction that validates his suspension. Someone else has since taken over.

The question many now ask is: to what end was all that stubbornness of sitting tight on the seat while the party boiled and their chances of winning the presidential election waned? Where is Atiku, his “protector”, now? Why couldn’t he save him? This is a simple thing that could have resolved many issues within the party before the elections. The showing could have been better. Whether the active involvement of G5 would have guaranteed winning the election is another thing. This is because, the biggest damage to Atiku’s chance was done by Obi, and then Kwakwanso.

Since 1999, many traditional bases and supporters of PDP were swept away by Obi. Majority of those who are called “Obidients” today, were previously “Atikulates”. They were in PDP, were Atiku and PDP supporters, especially in the south. Given that two of them banked on similar strategies of tribal and religious campaigns, they simply cancelled each other out. Most Igbos choose to support and vote for their brother, Obi. The northern christians also choose to support and vote for their “brother-in-christ”, Obi.

So, the South East that used to be PDP base, with bloc vote, went to Obi. Same thing happened in South South where Obi won in 3 states and won in the region, which used to be PDP stronghold. In the north, the damage done by Kwakwanso was majorly in Kano state, one of the “KKK” bloc. In some other northern states, he scored low and did not significantly affect Atiku’s votes.

Although, Atiku and PDP supporters protested publicly for a day or few. They have calmed down and faced their case in court, unlike the Obi and Obidients, who have been more rabid, desperate and reckless in their approach, despite coming a distance third position. In fact, PDP has distanced themselves from the rumoured call for Interim National Government (ING) and called it treasonable. They also called for the arrest of whoever found to be involved in such sinister plan. At least, they are being responsible.

This is the sixth time that Atiku would vie for the presidency of Nigeria since 1993. He has lost out in all. Yet, he has remained resilient and decorous. This is commendable. It is unfortunate that this time around, the general sentiment is against him, being a northerner. The popular position is that “South l’okan”. Just like in 2015 when Jonathan was the incumbent president, the sentiment was against him because the popular feeling then was that “North l’okan”.

That worked for Buhari and he defeated a sitting president, against the tradition. At any other time, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar would have made a fine president. Although, his desperation this time pushed him to recline to those parochial ethnic jingoism, sadly. He used to be a cosmopolitan, pan-Nigerian, with reasonable liberal world view, but he goofed this time around. He showed his fangs, with his campaign using tribalism, with the kind of statements he made at the Arewa House, Kaduna, while meeting with the Northern Elders.

He is 76 years now. If he loses his case at the tribunal, he will be 80 years before he will have another chance to contest again. But, at such age, should he or would he? That is left for him to decide. Whatever the case, as someone who believes in God, he should realise that only God gives power and puts people in position. If it is God’s will that he will lead this country, only Him knows how and when. May he achieves what is the best for him.

In all, Nigeria is bigger than any individual’s political ambition. While it is within everyone’s constitutional right to aspire to any position, such ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian. So, those who lost out in the elections should be circumspect in their utterances, actions and inactions, so as not to create unnecessary crisis in the country that can consume them also. We have to have a country first before they can even dream of realising their personal ambitions. A word is enough for the wise.

May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.

God Bless Nigeria.

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April 8th, 2023.