With the north pulling off the consensus candidate stunt,
the 2011 presidential race has dramatically narrowed to
President Goodluck Jonathan, Vice President Atiku Abubakar
and former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari. Of
course there are other candidates but lack of firm political
structures and requisite huge capital gives such others less
than outside chance in this peculiar race. Unless the votes
will not count, on May 29, 2011, any of these three men
stands a more than a fair chance of being sworn in as
Nigeria’s president.
Many have given it to the president for the incumbency he
enjoys and for the fair-weather character of the Nigerian
politician, majority of who are AGIP - any government in
power. But many more emerging forces are beginning to eat
deep into whatever this incumbency means, thereby throwing
the race wide open should the presidents’ strategists remain
complacent.
What many saw as naivety of president’s
men was their insisting that achieving consensus among major
northern candidates was not plausible and worse still, their
reported celebration of the emergence of Vice President
Atiku Abubakar, ostensibly as a weaker and preferred
opponent. To wish away this caliber of man - a bull and a
foremost prodemocracy fighter, who stood up to Obasanjo in
the apogee of his power - is truly the height of political
naivety if indeed the president’s men celebrated it.
In the face of all this, the nagging question that has just
reasserted itself is: can Jonathan be the first incumbent
president to lose in Africa? Apart from an increasingly
independent INEC that may not lend itself to manipulation,
many other factors that could blight the chances of the
president to retain power beyond May 2011 appear not to be
within his grasp any longer. And many more odds are
stacking.
It is all about the
growing and diametrically opposed desire of the north to the
President’s ambition to finish their term in office that was
started by the late Yar’Adua and truncated by his sudden
death. There is no doubt that this desire yielded a northern
consensus candidate in the person of Vice President Atiku
Abubakar. And that is also why the region carries on as if
it is make or mar all-out war which will now move to the
next level of the struggle - mass coalition - with the aim
to deliver the much needed bulk votes that will place Atiku
in a better stead than the president. For the PDP
primaries, it is a delegates’ election. But the damning
question remains: will the average delegate from the north
be elitist enough to resist the sway of the regional
rallying cry?
There has always been
the debate on whether we still have a monolithic north.
Whereas it may not be correct to say that the zone is still
intact as it was when it was ‘Jamer Mutanin Arewa (One
North, One People)’ under the enviable leadership of Sir
Ahmadu Bello, it will equally be wrong to say there is no
longer any northern consensus. The region just proved it
wrong with the emergence of Atiku. Come to think of it,
every region in Nigeria has had occasion to rally for a
common cause, the north being most consistent and most
prolific, followed by the west.
Yes, the minorities of
the north motivated by the likes of TY Danjuma, Solomon Lar,
Jerry Gana and many others, are struggling to free
themselves from core northern domination and assured the
president that the region is already in the kitty. Though
this effort has yielded much fruits, it is still not uhuru.
The current reality is that in an election to decide a
today’s Nigerian President, the Middle Belt is likely to go
the other way. Yet, the mid region is never in a position to
take everything away or be decisive in who governs Nigeria
in a democratic process. In the Second Republic, for
example, NPP of Azikiwe won Plateau State, NPN won Benue and
PRP won Kano, and yet Shagari still emerged President with
nearly the entire south going either UPN of Obafemi Awolowo
or NPP of Azikiwe.
As I once wrote on the
same matter, unless he fights much harder, whereas incumbent
Jonathan may win in majority of the states if not in all the
states, he may still not win the race ultimately. How? The
Electoral Act gives 2 basic conditions for the emergence of
the President: (1) the candidate shall score 25% of votes
cast in 24 states and (2) lead with a simple majority. A
closer look will show that there is no state in the north
that will not produce 25% of votes for a northern consensus
candidate, including Benue and Plateau. Fair concentrations
of Muslims in all states of the north and those sympathetic
to the zoning logic will always ensure this. They may be in
minority in some states but there and their number growing
with each passing day.
What is more, such
candidate, spotting a southern vice, can also easily win 25%
in 5 more states in the 17 states in the south to make up
the first constitutional requirement i.e. 20 northern states
if you add the FCT, which is considered a State by the
Electoral Act for the purposes of electing the President,
plus 4 from anywhere in the south. It then means that
winning 25% in 24 states will not be a problem to a
northern consensus candidate as well as for incumbent
President Jonathan.
If this is the case,
it then means the problem will occur more for the President
with the second lawful requirement, which is scoring a
simple majority.
The other fact is that
the consensus factor may well go beyond the PDP primaries
if Jonathan gets the PDP ticket ahead of Atiku. Indeed, this
may as well be the time for ANPP/CPC/opposition coalition to
rise and shine if it succeeds in making Buhari its arrowhead
where Atiku fails to get the PDP ticket.
It would have been a
positive score in advance for President Jonathan if he had
succeeded in keeping the north divided by keeping Saraki,
IBB and Gusau in the race. Though in politics anything can
happen, ours remains a guided democracy and a vivid
poverty-stricken environment where money will continue to
play a decisive role for a long time to come. Yet, monetary
inducement may play second fiddle if the northern delegates
are made to understand that this election means their
survival.
The other debilitating
factors against Jonathan are the subterfuges of the PDP
governors and the pariah status of the PDP that is forcing a
growing number of Nigerians to desperately seek an
alternative.
Other damaging factors
that may also play larger-than-life roles and give
opposition some upsetting and unexpected impetus, as this
presidential campaign gathers momentum are many uninspiring
and unpopular policies which the presidency is toying with
since Jonathan took full charge of the nation. Some people
say fuel queues have disappeared but the president is said
to be thinking seriously of increasing the fuel price. The
persisting artificial scarcity (most filling stations now
sell from few pumps) is said to be in anticipation. The
other is the return of external borrowing shortly after the
nation managed to exit Paris Club and its other external
creditors. The CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi and minister of
finance Akanga have both taken a swipe at Atiku Abubakar for
raising these issues as well as his lamentation on depleted
foreign reserves when he was unveiled as the consensus
candidate. But they are, no doubt, some of the issues that
will determine the presidential election if it ever has
anything to do with issues and policies.
Perhaps the biggest
time bomb is workers strike for a new pay structure.
Concretely, Nigerians
need security, food, water, schools, roads, and more
importantly, electricity. Till date, the specter of the
absence of steady electricity supply has refused to go away.
The president must deliver especially on power if he hopes
Nigerians will take him seriously over his desire to
continue in power and go to stand in the sun and rain to
register and vote to ensure it.
Even his Niger Delta
people would want to know what the President has done with
the Amnesty Programme bequeathed by Yar’Adua, which hasn’t
progressed fantastically, to tell the truth. The return of
MEND and shooting battles in creeks are no positive scores
for the president. Many have said that keeping in line with
promises made by the late president when he set up the Ledum
Mitee Technical Committee on the Niger Delta Crisis,
President Jonathan would have long issued a white paper of
its findings and gone far in its implementation. This hasn’t
happened and there appears to be no hope it is going to
happen.
The real battle may be
at the interparty (general) elections should Atiku fail at
the PDP primaries. What is likely to happen is that the
north will move the same support to Buhari and by then,
through further coalescing, ANPP/CPC/Labour party and many
more would have joined either side and ANPP and Labour
appear amenable to the Buhari cause.
The one factor known
to be capable of giving it to the north in the final
analysis is the consensus factor and it is already in place.
The main idea is to deliver a minimum 70% of its core votes
to one candidate and this can happen since the region has
succeeded in prevailing on the big candidates to drop their
ambitions in favour of one anointed candidate – Atiku
Abubakar.
The truth is that
simple majority votes come through majority registration,
majority voting and bulk delivery. These factors are in
short supply in the South. Voter registration exercise is
never fantastic in the South, especially in the South East
followed by the South South and then South West in that
order, whereas in the north even the disabled, the blind and
the cripple, will struggle to register, vote and follow
through.
The prediction that
there shall be a greater number of voters to register in the
North than in the South is therefore merely stating the
obvious. This is not to say that the north has higher
populations, but in the matter under reference the region
posts a healthier frontier with equally stronger chances of
pulling together up to 70% of its votes through consensus,
with weaker chances of the south achieving the same.
What is more, since
INEC cannot declare results greater than the number of
registered voters, whoever is in a position to garner a
simple majority of these votes shall carry the day even if
he does not lead in majority of the states.
Atiku Abubakar and
Buhari are all worthy opponents. With the active support of
the gladiators who have agreed to step down in mobilization
of funds and votes, President Jonathan may be kissing Aso
Rock goodbye sooner than his supporters can imagine. The
fact is that the much orchestrated Jonathan’s incumbency
factor can help him only to the extent that it stops the
north from reenacting a consensus and delivering a bulk vote
to one of their own since the majority of registered voters
and those willing to vote and follow through will be in the
north.
As it stands today,
President Jonathan is walking a tightening rope and tilting
the weight in his favour in weeks to come will heavily
depend on many of these factors and perhaps more as handled
by his strategists. He certainly needs the good luck that
propels him now more than ever before if he indeed hopes not
to fail where all despotic African leaders have succeeded –
succeeding themselves!
·
Law Mefor, author and journalist,
is Director Center for Leadership, Social and Forensic Research, Abuja.234(0)803-787-2893;email:lawmefor@yahoo.com
Published
November 30th, 2010
