Postscript by Waziri Adio
There are enough intimations by now that the 2027 general election is likely to be keenly and bitterly contested, on the field and off it, probably more than most of the other elections since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999. If you think that the 2023 general election was uniquely competitive and toxic, you may need to brace yourself for more than an encore. The stakes, for some of the leading contestants and their avid followers, are even higher this time around.
We won’t know how things will pan out until after the elections. However, some things are becoming knowable. Certain patterns of politicking and electioneering are already evident, some of which are peculiar to the current cycle and some of which are not.
The first pattern has already been foreshadowed in the opening paragraph. It is that the 2027 electoral cycle is likely to feature more desperation than earlier ones. It is an open secret that President Bola Tinubu had been eyeing the presidency possibly before he stopped being the governor of Lagos State in 2007. The first time he was on the ballot was in 2023, and he won at the first attempt. He will be standing for re-election next year, the fourth incumbent to do so in the current dispensation, following President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003, President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 and President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. He had a difficult path to the presidency in 2023. Like previous incumbents, he is vulnerable but he is also the most political of the incumbents of the Fourth Republic and is not likely to shy away from pressing incumbency to his advantage.
Some of his opponents have threatened to ensure he ends up as a one-term president (or what they call OTP). It is clear, however, that he would do whatever he could to be in the same column with Obasanjo and Buhari, not in the one with Jonathan. If he loses in 2027, Tinubu might not technically timed-out because age is not on his side. He is unlikely to stand any chance in 2031, which is considered the turn of the North not to talk of 2039 when the presidency is expected to return to the South but he would be well advance in age. Jonathan lost his re-election in 2015 but is seen as a viable candidate 12 years after only because age is still on his side. Tinubu does not have that luxury, and this will add to his quest to attempt to retain the office by all means.
But Tinubu is not the only one without the luxury of time. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is even more pressed for time. The former vice president will turn 80 on 25th November. His active interest in the presidency predated Tinubu’s by more than a decade, as he ran unsuccessfully in the presidential primary of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1993. He also did not get the presidential ticket of his parties in 2011 and 2015, but he has run thrice as a presidential candidate (2007, 2019 and 2023), making him the permanent feature in all the eight presidential elections held between 1993 and 2023 (including the two times he ran as the vice-presidential candidate to Obasanjo).
As Simon Kolawole wrote on this page a few weeks ago, 2027 will be Atiku’s last roll of the dice. Not surprisingly, Atiku has emerged as the 2027 flagbearer of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). He looks good for someone who is a few months shy of 80, by the way. And he hopes to follow the path of Buhari who won the presidency at the fourth attempt as a candidate. But 2027 could be the realistic end of the road for Atiku’s presidential quest if he does not win. He can still run in 2031, and might still be spright and articulate, but it is unlikely that an 84-year-old who is not an incumbent would be a serious contender. This election is thus Atiku’s last chance of achieving what is evidently a life-long ambition. He appears to be at a touching distance, and will thus be expected to throw everything he has got at it.
Mr. Peter Obi, former Anambra State governor and the major discovery of the 2023 electoral cycle, is the youngest of the three frontrunners. He will be 65 on July 19th. However, he also has his own pressure to win in 2027, more than in 2023 when the support he garnered must have surprised even him. On account of the political consensus on power rotation, the presidency should return to the North in 2031. This is one of the reasons why Obi himself has pledged to do only one term if elected. It is obvious that he would need votes from the core North to cross over the line. He has teamed up with Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso as his running mate in Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and is promising to do just four years in office. Whether people believe him or not, this one-term pitch is basically to boost his appeal among those who want to be re-assured that power would return to the North after eight consecutive years in the south.
If Obi does not win in 2027 and the Nigerian political elites and the electorate stick by the power rotation arrangement, this means that he may not stand a realistic chance of winning the presidency until 2039 when he would be 77 years old. He can run for presidency in 2031 and 2035, by the way. (As is their constitutional rights, southern and northern candidates have run when it was not considered the turn of their region to hold office, but fidelity to the political bargain on power rotation largely kept them out). Obi might still be a strong contender at 77 in 2039, but it is also possible that his electoral appeal would have waned and some of his ardent supporters would have grown weary or fallen in love with someone else. He doesn’t come across as a desperate politician. But the fact that this is also a must-win election for him will likely shape how he and his base approach the election and the aftermath.
The second pattern that I have seen is that 2027 will feature not just a fragmented but a fractious opposition. It had been expected that the major opposition figures would band together to present a united front and increase their chances of upstaging the incumbent. The was considered more imperative because a divided opposition offered Tinubu the narrow path to victory in 2023. There was a tested template for assembling a formidable opposition in the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the lead up to the 2015 elections when it dislodged the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). ADC was not a merger of legacy parties, unlike the APC of 2013, but it looked set to be the platform that could cause an upset, with three of the top four candidates of 2023 and other heavyweight politicians in its midst.
Not unexpectedly, however, the coalition fractured, as Obi and Kwankwaso pulled out to join NDC. We are not just back to a divided opposition, but also an opposition likely to turn on itself. Atiku and Obi appear to have some respect for each other. But that love is not shared among their supporters who see the other camp as the stumbling block. Of course, they will both attack Tinubu, but not with one voice. More remarkably, they will probably have a go at each other with equal or greater venom, and their candidates might not be able to hold them to check.
The third pattern that I have noticed is that this cycle will be unusually light on ideas. Nigeria still faces serious economic, social and security challenges. The period leading to elections offer a rare opportunity for proposing, contesting and harvesting ideas on how to turn around the fortunes of the country, especially ideas about what should and would be done differently. Seven months to the polls, we are not seeing any such robust engagement, and this is not likely to change even when campaigns officially kick off in August.
The old and the new parties have not made any pretence that ideas really matter to them. In actual fact, it is difficult to tell one political party apart from another in terms of what they stand for. On their part, those standing for the highest positions in the land have not really articulated what they stand for, except what they stand against. Long before they emerged as the flagbearers of their prospective parties, the incumbent and the challengers had ample time to lay out and sell their policy plans beyond catch-phrases and the usual promises. By now, we should know what the different candidates plan to do or tweak and how to confront the critical developmental challenges facing the country and we should be able to appraise how reasonable or realistic those plans are. In fact, we should have branded plans such as Mr. A’s Plan on Tackling Insecurity, Mrs. B’s Policy for Reducing Poverty and Inequality, etc.
Most likely, the leading candidates will just regale us with why they are a better fit for the office than their opponents. Not about how their ideas are better, more appropriate, or more implementable, and how they will fund them. Of course, the incumbent would have to defend his policies, which though necessary and yielding some macro-level gains have inflicted serious hardship on most Nigerians. So, we would have some policy discussion. But if you expect anything more than superficial and a robust contest on the details of policy alternatives, you are likely to be disappointed. Rather, expect to be treated more to attacks and counter-attacks and a festival of slogans. This, no doubt, is part of electoral politics. But attacks, counter-attacks and sloganeering are not the same as outlining fresh and well-considered sets of concrete ideas and plans, with trade-offs and mitigation plans that can conceivably improve the quality of lives of most Nigerians.
The expected focus on personalities instead of policies is not new. For long, we have prioritised personality over policy in our politics. The result is that the policy ideas of contestants (when they do have ideas) are not subjected to serious scrutiny and all sorts of ill-thought policies get implemented at a serious cost to the country and its citizens. This is one of the things that need to change if we want a different outcome. But I think our politicians, especially in the current republic, have figured it out that policies are the least of the things that animate a majority of the voters. Identity issues and patronage have greater resonance with most of our people, and rather than try to change that, our politicians milk it to the hilt.
The fourth pattern I want to highlight is what I call the death of the high-ground in this electoral cycle. A major appeal of those challenging incumbents is the credible signalling of positive difference. Basically, it is saying without saying it that: “we are promising you a different outcome because we are different and we intend to politick and govern differently.” However, what we have seen in this electoral cycle is a patent reversion to the mean of Nigerian politics.
Very recently, there used to be an open disdain for politicians changing parties, especially among those who aim for the moral high-ground of politics. In this electoral cycle, we have however witnessed the normalisation of defections, with defections being narrativized as a noble form of dissent and honourable way of expanding choice and deepening democracy. Without missing a beat, leading opposition politicians changing parties twice, which is a record. For example, Kwankwaso moved from NNPP to ADC, then to NDC while Obi left LP for ADC, then joined NDC. Their supporters elected on the platforms of their earlier parties (NNPP and LP) also moved with them, first to ADC, then to NDC, without the ethical army screaming that it is immoral to be elected on the platform of one party and move to another party and still retain the office. Ethics has conveniently become situational, as defection is seen as bad or good depending on who is doing it. If the first set of defections in this cycle could be blamed on Tinubu for trying to impose a “one-party state”, the second set was clearly driven by something else and in a particularly instance drove some politicians into what is clearly a “one-man party” or run largely from one-man’s sitting room.
However, serial defections in the same electoral cycle and their hollow justification are not as egregious as the damage that the challenging parties have done to themselves with the shambolic and opaque ways in which they conducted their primaries. They exhibited all the bad forms and the dark arts of the legacy parties during their just-concluded primaries. They imposed candidates, rammed through consensus, wrote or change results, counted votes in fraudulent manners, etc.
Appealing to and embodying a high-ground do not necessarily win or lose votes. But the new or renewed parties and their leaders have not covered themselves in glory by failing to be different when handled the opportunity to walk their talk. They have given extra ammunition to those who reckon that all Nigerian politicians and political parties are cut from roughly the same cloth. And that is not a good thing to do.
