By Charles Onunaiju
Despite how passions and emotions might have ran and even continues to run on the outcome of the presidential elections held on the 25th of February, the mathematics and politics of why candidates Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and others are evidently palpable and even as judicial interventions is widely, expected, the law, no matter how dispassionate it is or would be, cannot insulate itself from the mathematics and the underlining political implications of the outcomes of the elections. In simple mathematical terms, had candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi who ran on a single ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party in 2019 and polled 11,262,978 votes or 41.22% have not allowed ambitions to tear them apart, they would have easily won the 2023 presidential poll. There separate votes of 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 on their political party platforms of the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party respectively, would have collectively yielded a total of 13,086,103; a handsome incontrovertible number that would have comfortably given them, an unquestionable electoral victory.
The candidate of the ruling Party who has been declared winner in the presidential poll with his total vote of 8,794,726 would have trailed behind. Unable to stick together to confront a ruling Party, whose fortunes were on a free fall for combinations of several reasons, including a revisionist and turn coat faction, desperately undermining their own Party from within, candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi invited to themselves a well-known misfortune and traditional bogey of opposition parties, who almost all the time, fall, when divided. By the 2019 election when they polled 11 million plus to the incumbents 15 million plus, the incumbent president was on the ballot, and the ruling Party’s goodwill was still holding to about 50% but in the run-up to the 2023 presidential election, the ruling Party was flat on its belly in terms of popular goodwill. Ironically, the presidential candidate of the Party and now president elect has been pushed out from the mainstream of the Party which has sadistically narrowed down to a tiny powerful clique within the government, that was not only isolated from the broad sentiment of power shift within the party but radiated arrogance and insensitivity. Both in the primary nomination and general elections. Mr. Bola Tinubu, some governors from the Northern States, about 12 of them who stood up to the notorious “presidency Cabal” acquired a reputation as a credible opposition to both their own party and government. Even Atiku and Obi at a point entertained some illusions that either of them could be adopted by the powerful clique, who in desperation, orchestrated the toxic and politically motivated vindictive measure of the Naira design, ostensibly designed to make the ruling Party candidate stumble and fall.
In the face of the massive dislocation of lives for many Nigerians, arising from the currency design, Obi and Atiku stayed ambivalent and probably hoping to profit from the goodwill of those that instigated the Naira design mayhem, while only the ruling Party and its candidates stood in firm opposition to the measure. For the avoidance of doubt, there is nothing in the Naira design measures that comes near a policy. It was last minute political vendetta aimed at scuttling the electoral process or at best, enables the ruling Party candidate to lose the election. The fact that the Naira design and its component of the withdrawal of the old notes fell apart, soon after the election demonstrated unambiguously that its purpose was narrowly focused on politics.
Plainly speaking, had candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi managed to hold together and hold in check, their respective ambitions that tore them apart, both the geo-political and ethno-religious sentiments prevailing in the country were overwhelming on their side. However, how they will govern with their ultra-market fundamentalism would have been a different matter altogether. The South East which has always been the traditional bastion of PDP, dramatically swung to the labour Party. Peter Obi and his Labour Party dutifully harvested the widely shared sentiment in the region of “our turn.” Whatever became later of the hurricane of the Obidient movement was triggered by regional and ethnic sense of entitlement, which in itself, is not an aberration and it was in that regards that Mr. Obi backed out of the PDP nomination, in conforming to the mainstream position in the South East, that the region will not play the second fiddle. The Obedient movement, mostly powered by social media activism, promoted as Pan-Nigerian secular movement attested to its origin and its limits, when the electoral chickens came home to roosts after the elections. If our recent history is guide, the labour Party and its candidate’s stridency is not entirely new. In 2011, the Congress for Progressive Change, (CPC) formed by the then, candidate Buhari, who have previously lost two elections and the Buhari organization (TBO) triggered Nigeria’s most feverish political session. Despite not been powered by social media activism; the CPC was even a more formidable hurricane .
However, the CPC made many costly mistakes. In choosing the vice presidential candidate, candidate Buhari chose Mr. Tunde Bakare, a vocal cleric but with little or no political influence in South West. Without a credible political interlocutor in the South or more specifically, the South West the CPC failed to make any inroad to other parts of the country, except the North. In 2011presidential poll, candidate Buhari of the CPC polled a handsome 12,214,853 votes or 31.97% of the total and still fell for short of the 22,495,187 votes that gave the candidate of the ruling PDP, Jonathan Good luck, the victory. When the next governorship and state assembly polls held later, the CPC managed to win only one state, Nassarawa in North Central region!
In a similar political diminutive vision, the labour Party presidential candidate choose for a running mate, a vocal Northern entrepreneur, with little or no grass root political appeal and who would as widely expected loose his polling unit. As Buhari, who have no credible political interlocutor to the South in 2011, Peter Obi’s electoral hurricane simply hit a brick wall going northwards and the little wind left in its sail, was conclusively blown away, by the time the gubernatorial and state assembly elections were held three weeks later. As its historical parallel partner, the CPC, the labour Party took only one state, Abia in the South East region. Following its poor electoral showing, the party reinvented itself and in 2015, what the CPC lacked in organization, geopolitical spread and resources, it dutifully found in the grand merger with other three political Parties along with a dissident faction of the ruling PDP and the rest is history.
After the CPC hurricane blew feverishly and faltered, leading to the grand “weeping” of candidate Buhari, he quickly realized that neither the cult following of his fanatical supporters nor his reputation as incorrigible and ascetic army general was enough to deliver an electoral victory on a national scale. The labour Party, its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi and their allied obedient movement should never ignore the instructions of the lessons in the rise, fall and transformation of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC. It is either the labour plant themselves firmly in Kaura Namoda, Daura, Dustima and other Northern Communities or seek alliance with Parties with credible engagements in these areas or forever perish in the illusions that zealous followings with a considerable dose of political rudeness will translate to electoral success.
For the Peoples Democratic Party, it let pass its finest political and electoral hour. It only sacked its former controversial national chairman, Mr. Iyorchia Ayu, after it has lost the election, when it would have fought the election as a united Party, had it accepted the demands of its dissident five governors, who not only distracted the Party but also undermined it, from within.
If these five governors did not add to the Party’s fortunes, at least they would not have openly subverted and subtracted from its electoral fortunes.
The camp of the president-elect has openly admitted that, had the splinter candidates of Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso fought on the same platform as they did, four years earlier in 2019; winning for the ruling Party and its excessively persecuted candidate would have been an uphill task, if not, an outright impossibility.
Except for the purpose, to keep the electoral democracy noisy and to maintain the adversarial posture of opposition Parties as the alleged substance of liberal democracy, it is not really far-fetched on why and how the 2023 presidential election was won and lost.
Mr.Onunaiju, research Director, Abuja-based Think tank.