Buba Galadima hit the nail on the head with his comment in an interview that politicians are driven by interests not sentiments. He had switched his apparently unfruitful political support from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 to former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar in 2019 and now to Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso come 2023. He is certainly being driven by interests, and, perhaps such interest stem from his principles. He was emphatic that politics is a game of interests, not sentiments. That comment explains why the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not look the way of the South-East in choosing a standard-bearer. Sentiments have no room in politics.
Kwankwaso had, in a previous interview, stated that Nigerians ought to have exited the comity of nations where leaders come into office on account of their ethnic prowess or support or fraternal support of kinsmen. For him, Nigeria should lean towards solution providers, not ethnic champions or those whose credentials are buoyed by votes from their kinsmen. Kwankwaso has recently gained traction as presidential candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples’ Party (NNPP), where Galadima has now pitched his tent. Earlier speculations have now been confirmed by both political parties that Labour Party, championing the Peter Obi Movement, and NNPP had been in alliance talks. Galadima makes the distinction of an electoral alliance as different from a merger. In other words, both parties are not about to merge. Their intention was to collaborate to defeat the ruling party to mount the saddle.
Lately, Peter Gregory Obi, by virtue of his past records, aided by his ‘go-and-verify’ challenges, has made his the face of true change in the political space. His support has become a vote for the future of young people and children. He has become a breath of fresh air in the Nigerian political space. His assessment of Nigeria’s debilitating issues and comparism with kindred countries, in terms of developmental pace, resonates with the Nigerian populace, especially the youth who have invaded the social media, their newfound space, to propagate massive support for Obi. His traducers, who dismissed it as a fluke, have come down from their high horses to face the reality of a true and present political threat. The grapevine says some of them, in their usual solution of throwing money at every challenge, have recruited hundreds of social media warriors, some of whom are being trained specially to counter what they perceive to be the social media popularity of Peter Obi. But it would be a battle against the people because the Peter Obi Movement is obviously not propelled by money, as his mantra says, but by youths who do not know him, whose support is propelled by the alternative he provides.
But Galadima’s assertion in a television interview counters that of his new principal. Both men had pushed for leaders to emerge on account of their capability, as distinct from their place of origin. The failed alliance between the Labour Party and the NNPP has blown open selfishness and interests as the propellant for most political moves. Kwankwaso may have been hypocritical in his acceptance to run as Peter Obi’s deputy but for one fact: voters from the North would align their votes with their kinsman. That snag would make him stick to his guns of being the standard-bearer of the failed alliance. He believes that his people would send their votes elsewhere if he was not the standard-bearer. His new promoter, Galadima, averred Peter Obi should avail his people the golden opportunity of sitting in the presidential seat by tagging with Kwankwaso as running mate. The comment sounds like an assurance that the Vice-President would naturally transit, as it were, to take the mantle from his principal as though Goodluck Jonathan’s ascendancy was not a product of the grim reaper. An attempt to run a full tenure met with stiff resistance even within his party by a section of the country that believes that the rotation should hold sway, such that they sabotaged his bid from within the party.
Now Kwankwaso and Galadima have chosen to consign zoning to the backwaters because it goes against their interest. For them, the only way Peter Obi could become President is to become deputy and climb, but the former governor of Kano State is good to go. Politicians speak about equity only when the pendulum swings in their favour. Compassion is satisfied not by speaking pity to pain but healing with the pained and living it out. Galadima was right when he said the South-East has lost out in the two major political parties in spite of some major political actors in the zone turning their back on the PDP to face the APC. They met more grievous injustice in their new abode. Now Galadima and Kwankwaso think that being a Vice-President is a “golden opportunity.”
As Peter Obi said yesterday, their position sends the nation back to where young people want to escape: ethnic politics. Obi’s support base has no ethnic coloration, but the desperate moves seem to have begun to tar it with that brush. The Bubas and Kwankwasos of Nigerian politics are strategically pushing the movement into that corner. They would certainly misfire because another candidate would reap from that move. Some pundits have even noted that the resurrection of Kwankwaso’s hitherto moribund party is a long-term manipulation to retain the presidency in the same zone that ought to relinquish it after eight years, if equity were anything to go by. There is also the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in APC, now burdened with the problem of choosing a running mate with the same religious background in a move that would return the 1993 feat of MKO Abiola when two Muslims won the presidential election. Those who reluctantly gave him the ticket, after failed attempts to corner it, know that he would meet a brick wall there. They know that, in today’s Nigeria, no political strategy can make a Muslim-Muslim ticket sell. It may well be another strategy to keep the presidency where they want it. But 1993 cannot repeat in 2023 because the nation has been steeped too deeply into ethnic and divisive crevices. The man genuinely breaking that barrier is Peter Obi. If he his ship sets sail, the nation would have had a new start.