As the campaigns begin

The campaigns are set to begin. In a couple of days, the presidential contenders and their political parties will be filing out with their agenda. What do they have in stock for Nigerians? Whereas Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) are expected to present alternative blueprints that could be attractive to Nigerians, the same thing cannot be said of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Tinubu is an old wine in an old wine skin. We already the way it tastes. There is, therefore, no need for the President to campaign again. He has, strictly speaking, nothing new to tell Nigerians. The people have seen all of him.

Perhaps, what the campaigns need to emphasize is the way Nigeria has been run aground under the present order. If the likes of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai were to be around, we would likely have been regaled with matters bordering on the anger of the North. How does the North feel about the Tinubu presidency? What will be the likely outcome of their disenchantment with the Tinubu order? We will miss el-Rufai in this regard. Even when we do not have an el-Rufai telling us how the North would vote Tinubu out in 2027, the APC propaganda machinery is already tailored towards manipulating the truth about the Nigerian situation. The party tried its hands on this through its presidential primary election that threw Tinubu up again as its candidate. The party claimed that it recorded over 11 million votes during its presidential primary. That claim, for me, sounds a note of alarm. It could be a rigging strategy on a test-run.

The figures brandished by the APC from its presidential primary, in the first place, do not exist. The numbers exist only in the imagination of those who see Nigeria as a testing ground for all manner of voodoo. But the APC wants to weave a veneer of believability around the figures. That was why its National Chairman, Nentawe Yilwatda, gloated over it. He declared, unabashedly, that President Bola Tinubu, based on the figures in question, would garner over 10 million votes in the 2027 presidential elections. Some other APC zealots spoke in like manner.

Those were not idle statements coming from APC stalwarts. They are indicative of the way the minds of the President and his foot soldiers are working on matters of 2027. However, if we strip the figures of the magic being woven around it, we will be confronted with pertinent questions that cannot easily be glossed over. We will, for instance, ask: How can the teeming population of Nigerians who are resentful of Tinubu and his APC willingly and gladly be registered members of the APC? Even if they are members of the APC for whatever reason, what is the guarantee that they will vote in favour of Tinubu’s return? Besides, the greater majority of Nigerian voters are not registered members of any political party. So, why is APC flaunting party membership as the basis for its 2027 calculations? Even at that, the figures in themselves raise fundamental questions about APC’s membership register. It is suspected to be a padded document. Long before now, the grapevine was saturated with underhand dealings around the APC membership drive. In fact, there is so much haziness around the membership register of the party. It is on the strength of this opaque register that the APC declared that roughly 11 million Nigerians of its extraction alone filed out to declare through their votes that Tinubu should continue as their President. Anybody who imagines the possibility of this deserves a place in a lunatic asylum. The claim is not just hogwash, it is vexatious. The mere thought of it is an assault on the sensibility of Nigerians. It inflicts violence on our collective intelligence as a people. In fact, the claim suggests that Nigerians can be led by the nose. Will Nigerians lend themselves to the bland manipulation in the works? The time to find the right answers to these questions is now. But are Nigerians paying attention to the grand machinations of the APC? What about the opposition political parties, particularly the NDC and the ADC? Are they taking note? The unfolding scenario is a wake-up call on all concerned to rise to the occasion and stop those who may be planning to manipulate the forthcoming elections.

Let us, for purposes of argument, interrogate APC’s claims further. One very discernible feature of the APC presidential primary result is the claim that the North is at home with the Tinubu presidency and, therefore, want him back. That is what the results from the North suggest. A breakdown of the results across the states shows that all northern states returned Tinubu as the APC candidate in a resounding manner. So, where is the anger of the North against Tinubu? We did not see it in the results. It should, therefore, be clear that the figures being paraded do not reflect the current mood of the North. It is make-belief.

The figures are also designed to create the impression that the 31 governors that Tinubu cornered to his side are truly working for him. As a matter of fact, the results of the presidential primary is about the first test the defector-governors are facing in their avowed support for Tinubu. The time for justification of their defection has come. And the impression that they will readily sell to the public is that the governors Tinubu cajoled to his side are working for him. That is the surface structure. The deep structure is yet to come and, when it comes, it will be clear to one and all that more than half of the defector-governors will desert Tinubu when he needs them most. It should be noted as well that the real elections coming up in January 2027 will not be a one-way traffic for APC. What will occupy the centre stage then will be the hardship that the Tinubu administration has inflicted on the people. How can a starving populace be sold the dummy called Renewed Hope? In any case, you can meaningfully talk about renewal of hope where one exists in the first place. Where none exists, as in our present situation, any talk about renewal of hope will hang in the air. It can only sound hollow.

Nobody should even take the issue of the defector-governors seriously. The entire scheme was a playbook. The governors in question may just be decoys for possible manipulation of election results. The governors may be used as objects for justification. But we know, in truth, that state governors hardly influence the way the people vote in presidential elections. Let us not forget so soon that Ifeanyi Okowa as sitting governor of Delta State and vice presidential candidate of PDP was there when Peter Obi and his Labour Party swept through Delta State with sweet victory. This Delta scenario of 2023 will likely play out in 2027 in most of the states.