PT State of the Race: Tinubu, Atiku spar as Peter Obi takes message abroad

In a joint pre-election assessment statement they presented to journalists in Abuja back in July, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute of the United States observed that the Nigerian 2023 presidential election may go into a runoff.

A delegation of the two institutes, led by the Secretary of State for Ohio, Frank LaRose, made the assessment during a visit to Nigeria from July 13 to 22.

The statement read in part, “The 2023 elections are a departure from some of the political dynamics that defined previous polls. For the first time since 2007, the presidential election will be an open contest with no incumbent. The ruling All Progressives Congress selected former Lagos governor, Bola Tinubu, as its flag bearer. Former Vice President and 2019 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, will contest on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party.

“However, the emergence of Peter Obi — former Anambra State governor and presidential candidate for the Labour Party — and Rabiu Kwankwaso — former Kano governor and presidential candidate for the New Nigeria People’s Party — as viable “Third Forces” has excited many young Nigerians. If a third party draws sufficient support, a runoff presidential election could be a real possibility for the first time since the transition to democracy, adding complexity to the 2023 elections.”

Runoff

A runoff will be called between the two leading candidates if the candidate with the highest number of votes does not have a quarter of the total votes cast in at least two-thirds (24) of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

Since Nigeria narrowly avoided a runoff in its first presidential election in 1979, through the controversial interpretation of “two-thirds of 19 states” by the electoral commission and the Supreme Court, each of the eight subsequent presidential elections has produced a winner at the first ballot, including the annulled poll of 12 June 1993.

All the elections in the Fourth Republic, except that of 1999 that began the dispensation, featured multiple candidates, yet no candidate outside the first two has secured more than a single-digit percentage. But the forthcoming one bears a close resemblance to that of 1979, when the five candidates had considerable followings, especially in their parts of the country. That is the reason why some analysts agree with the projections by the Americans.

However, for a runoff to happen next year, at least three parties may need to poll double-digit percentages of the votes, shared in such a manner that none of them would meet the two requirements of the highest number of votes and spread of the votes needed to be declared elected.

The APC and PDP are the only two parties that have governed Nigeria in this dispensation. Both also head into the 2023 elections with 22 and 13 state governors respectively and most members of the National Assembly. These make them the dominant parties in the country and their candidates the putative front runners in the presidential election.

Given that political configuration and barring an upset of seismic proportion, any runoff should involve those two, meaning that the maximum damage that a third force may do to them is to delay the victory of either of them.

Opinion polls

However, at least three recent national polls have suggested that the candidate of the upstart Labour Party (LP) is not just capable but is poised to upturn that apple cart. The results of the exercises conducted by NOI Polls/ANAP Foundation, Bloomberg and Daily Trust (online) all indicated that Mr Obi would win if the presidential election was held when the polls were conducted. Two of the polls were conducted in September, before the official kick-off of electioneering.

Of course, many people, including this analyst, do not take the polls seriously for that and many other reasons. Despite the attention he is drawing from inside and outside Nigeria, they consider Mr Obi’s bid a long shot. But the dynamics in the last few weeks, especially immediately after INEC sounded the whistle for campaigns to start on September 28, have shown that at least his supporters take Mr Obi seriously and really fancy his chances at the poll next year.

Their relentless online activities, boisterous street marches in many cities across Nigeria and the continuous appearance of Mr Obi on soapbox fora abroad are buttressing his reputation as a candidate who can at least draw enough votes to take Nigeria into the uncharted waters of a runoff presidential poll next year.

Political strategy

However, from the emerging tone of their campaigns, the two establishment parties either do not see the LP candidate as their main threat or they have taken a strategic decision to keep him where they think he should belong – outside the frame.

By ignoring Mr Obi through each focusing his salvos on the other, the ruling party’s and main opposition’s candidates obviously think they can assert themselves as the protagonist and antagonist in this electoral drama.

In the first place, Mr Obi’s candidature appears to be capable of hurting Atiku more than Mr Tinubu. He was the former’s running mate four years ago. And the areas where he is projected to draw most of his votes from – the South-east, South-south and Christian North – are traditional PDP constituencies. Also, most of the angry votes – voters disenchanted with the ruling party over the performance of the central government and the APC’s same-faith ticket – would have supported the PDP.

The entrance of the two third-force candidates, including Mr Kwankwaso, has divided the opposition. And the chance of the opposition is always brighter when it is united. Simply put, Atiku’s chances will be considerably brighter if Mr Obi returns to his side or just somehow drops out of the race. Or given what the polls have suggested, we can inverse that last sentence.

With that scenario, you would expect the APC to be less hostile to Mr Obi and indeed be offering him subterranean support to deepen the erosion of Atiku’s territories. Perhaps, the nature of the campaign of Mr Obi, especially of his supporters, makes this difficult to do for the APC.

The Labour Party supporters revile Mr Tinubu more than Atiku and have clear designs on his territory, especially Lagos. They have made him the butt of their cruellest attacks. They were the most active in spreading dark conjectures about him during his recent 12-day stay in London that kept him absent from the signing of the peace accord by the presidential candidates in Abuja.

So perhaps out of anger or fear of his threat to its own interests too, the APC does not appear to see a strategic sense in being kind to Mr Obi or in even being mild with his supporters. The APC seems to view the upstart almost the same way as its main rival does – another irritant.

And the public statements of the two parties suggest they may be dealing with him the same way: refrain from drawing more attention to him than his supporters in and outside Nigeria are already doing for him.

Ignore Obi?

This tone appeared last week from the several exchanges between campaign officials of Mr Tinubu and Atiku. Although the spokesperson of the APC presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, responded to the attacks by Mr Obi’s supporters on Mr Tinubu over his trip abroad, the minister of labour and employment seems to have more joy in taking up the PDP and Atiku.

Mr Keyamo mocked the PDP over its intractable post-primary crisis and the reported theft of a telephone handset belonging to former vice president Namadi Sambo at an event at the party’s secretariat in Abuja. But it was his exchange with Paul Ibe, a personal spokesperson of Atiku, that probably signposts the future of the campaign. In an interview on NTA which he shared via his Twitter handle, Mr Keyamo had said Atiku has no personal achievement to sell to Nigerians, unlike Mr Tinubu, and mocked the PDP candidate for clinging to the achievements of the Obasanjo administration under which he was vice president.

READ ALSO: 2023: INEC deploying technology to ensure Nigerians’ votes count – YakubuAccording to Mr Keyamo, while Atiku was answerable to his boss Mr Obasanjo for eight years, Mr Tinubu as governor in the same period was in charge of a state.

“Atiku Abubakar can be likened to a bus conductor applying for the post of a driver along with another applicant who was a proper driver,” Mr Keyamo captioned the video.

But in an acerbic riposte, Mr Ibe said: “Tinubu can be likened to a drug baron applying for the job of head of an anti-narcotics agency when other drug dealers are spending time in jail.”

APC has no candidate?

The PDP had also mocked the APC over the disqualification of its defeated Osun State governorship candidate, Governor Gboyega Oyetola. The federal high court had said the national caretaker committee of the APC that conducted the party’s primaries in the state was illegal, by virtue of being headed by a sitting governor.

Mr Oyetola has appealed the judgement. But PDP spokesperson Debo Ologunagba would not let pass the opportunity offered by the judgement to taunt the ruling party. He said APC will have no candidates in next year’s elections, ominously referencing the scenario in the 2019 elections when the courts barred the party from presenting candidates in Rivers State.

However, unless that scenario is reenacted and expanded to the national level next year, each of the APC and PDP will consider the other its main adversary in the presidential election and may do the most they can to diminish Mr Obi’s standing in the contest, as much as it aligns with their strategic calculations.

While the two large parties were sparring, Mr Obi is abroad in continuation of his conversations with the Nigerian Diaspora that has been a bulwark of his support. He was in the US and the UK where he had speaking engagements at the iconic Harvard and Oxford universities and a photo-op with Lamido Sanusi, the former governor of the central bank who until a few years ago was the emir of Kano. Even if his opponents conspire to ignore him, Mr Obi appears to have figured out how to keep himself in the news.

Omehia pays heavy price for AtikuThe soap opera of the internal crisis in the PDP is still running. In the previous episodes, Atiku is trying to pacify Rivers Governor Nyesom Wike who had been his closest opponent in the party primary. The candidate wants to gain the endorsement of the governor of a key state without paying the asking price – the head of party chairman Iyorchia Ayu on a silver platter.

Last week’s episode sees the governor taking his belligerence to a new level with the continued repression of Atiku’s supporters in his state. The latest victim is Celestine Omehia who was stripped of recognition as a former governor of Rivers State.

Mr Omehia has been an unfortunate politician. On 25 October 2007, the Supreme Court removed him as governor over no offence that he committed in person. He was virtually a bystander when the previous year the PDP tapped him to replace his cousin, Rotimi Amaechi, whom the party had disqualified as its governorship candidate. Mr Omehia won that election handsomely in a state that has since 1999 voted for the same party.

But Mr Amaechi had the last laugh when the apex court voided his disqualification and declared him the rightful winner of the election that he had taken no part in. Mr Omehia was not officially recognised as a former governor in the state until Mr Wike succeeded Mr Amaechi. Now, Mr Wike has accepted that the belated recognition was improper and has now asked him to refund every penny he has been paid as financial entitlements, amounting to about N600 million. His monthly pension of almost N100 million has also been stopped.

That is a huge price to pay for loyalty to Atiku. But it also shows the extent that Mr Wike may go when made angry. A meeting with the party’s Board of Trustees last week could not break the impasse.

Atiku may face the election with Mr Wike and perhaps a few other governors of the party aloof or working actively against his bid. That is not the sort of consolation you need from your party leaders after your previous running mate deserted to become a direct rival. Or has 30 years of running for president also prepared Atiku for such?