Something intriguing is taking place in Nigeria’s political space. Political actors are moving in droves into an arena they are supposed to shun. The All Progressives Congress ( APC), the political party they are scrambling for, is a plague of sorts. Yet, many are struggling to identify with it. This level of banality has not been seen before in Nigerian politics. But it is happening before our very eyes. Many see the aberration as a sign of the times. By that they mean that the Bola Tinubu presidency is a corrupted version of what democracy should be. Therefore, anything that appertains to it must, necessarily, look weird.
If we must say it as it is, we will not hesitate to point out that Tinubu, the product of the APC, will go down in Nigerian history as one president that personified hardship. As president, Tinubu has reduced Nigeria to a fiefdom. His presidency has destroyed the thin fabric that holds Nigeria together. The country is now a doomed and damning effigy of what it is supposed to be. Under Tinubu, the country has lost its soul and its peoples are tediously trudging on. This situation invites revolt. It urges revolution. The president and the party that produced him ought to be called to account. But rather than look in that direction, the people have conveniently shoved aside their degradation. They are not making an issue out of the poisonous order that has reduced them to doomed voyagers. Instead, they are falling over themselves to identity with the bad and the ugly that the government of the day symbolizes. This is curious through and through.
But analysts have since gone to work. They are working hard to put a finger on why things have gone the way they did. The handiest of their findings lies in the trenchant, if not fatalistic, attitude of the people of northern Nigeria to matters of power. This region of the country lives and breathes political power. It does not want power to slip off its hands for any reason. That is why the north, as a geographical and political entity, does not recognize, let alone respect, zoning in Nigeria’s power equation. This fact is as good as settled. Watchers of and players in Nigeria’s political arena know this. They know that the north is always ready and eager to grab presidential power whether or not the zoning arrangement or understanding favours it. They repudiate zoning because they believe that it could keep them unduly out of political power.
It is on record, for instance, that Muhammadu Buhari, who eventually ascended the presidential throne, stood election for the office of president for four consecutive times. When he ran for the presidency in 2003, he aimed at displacing or stopping a southern incumbent, Olusegun Obasanjo, from attaining a second term in office. When the same Buhari contested for the presidency in 2011, he set out to upstage yet another southern president, Goodluck Jonathan, from retaining power. He (Buhari), ventured again in 2015. This time, he succeeded because Jonathan had a cavalier attitude to political power. He allowed himself to be overrun by opposite forces.
The northern disposition to political power contrasts sharply with what obtains in the south. The south does not intrude or seek to displace the power holder any time it is considered to be the turn of the north. For instance, Buhari spent his eight years in office without a challenger of note from the south. The region simply and quietly allowed the north to take its turn.
The north’s ever-ready disposition to the presidency manifested again in 2023 when it was considered the turn of the south to produce the president. This time, Atiku Abubakar stepped forward to grab power not minding the fact that his region had just completed an eight-year tenure under Buhari. He was a top runner for the office and could, possibly, have won. If that had happened, the north would have held power for 16 unbroken years. But that scheme did not work out. Instead, a southern president emerged, somehow. Yet, the northern hunger for power persisted. Now, there is so much buzz about how to displace Tinubu, the southern president, in 2027. That is understandable. Tinubu has disrupted Nigeria to the point of disaster. He therefore needs to be shown the way out so that the country can be rebuilt. But does the north want Tinubu out because of his poor performance in office? Not exactly.
The region’s quest instead is driven by its undying appetite for power. Rather than enter into an alliance that will produce a competent southerner that will replace Tinubu, the north is scheming to use one of its own to abridge the turn of the south in the name of stopping Tinubu. This is where the problem lies.
For many analysts, this northern plot appears to be fueling the spate of defections that we are witnessing in the polity at moment. Having realized that the north wants him out of power not due to poor performance in office but because the region wants to regain political control of the country, Tinubu has since launched a counter offensive. He is playing up regional sentiment. He is impressing it on southerners that the north wants to take what belongs to them. With this sentiment gaining ground, many southerners are being compelled to embrace Tinubu just to ensure that the northern plot does not work. As a matter of fact, those who will campaign for Tinubu’s return are likely to cash in on this northern agenda if the north insists on taking back power. Already, the likes of Nyesom Wike are raising questions about the propriety of a northerner taking over from Tinubu after just one term. That is why he wants the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to make a pronouncement on its zoning plan for 2027. Wike and concerned political players want to know if Atiku Abubakar who has practically seized PDP since 2019 will still feature in the forthcoming presidential election under the same party. If he does, then the belief that the north wants to grab power again after four years of the south will gain more ground. In fact, the suspicion that Atiku is positioning himself for another presidential run is a major reason why the coalition is not working. Many believe that a coalition that is person-centred is a fraud. It will advance not the interest of the country but that of a cabal. This suspicion for an Atiku-driven coalition is a major reason why defectors are trooping towards Tinubu and his party. If those behind the coalition talks must reverse this unusual trend, they must aim at putting forward a strong and credible southern candidate that will slug it out with Tinubu in 2027. In other words, those who want Tinubu dethroned have good reasons to justify their pursuit. But the quest can only be sustained if a southerner is primed and positioned to take over from him.