The one Nigerian who correctly got the prediction about the result of the just concluded presidential election is not a pastor or an imam. The man is a frontline politician, and his name is Chukwuma Soludo, a professor and incumbent governor of Anambra State.
In an article entitled “History beckons and I will not be silent,” widely published by the mainstream media four months ago, the Anambra governor swam against the tide to unambiguously tell Peter Obi the bitter truth, as follows: “You will not win, but will make Tinubu’s presidential election easier. Let’s be clear: Peter Obi knows that he can’t and won’t win. He knows the game he is playing, and we know, too, and he knows that we know. Let me, once again, wish my brother Peter Obi good luck. He should have fun and enjoy the fleeting frenzy of the moment.”
Soludo added, for effect, that “Indeed, if I were Asiwaju Tinubu, I would even give Peter Obi money as someone heading one of the departments of his campaign because Obi is making Tinubu’s pathway to victory much easier by indirectly pulling down PDP.”
These are only excerpts from the article, which, predictably, drew widespread condemnation, especially from Soludo’s base: the Igbo, most of whom were overwhelmingly supporting Peter Obi to become the next President of the Nigerian federation.
The Anambra governor did not lose sight of the fact that justice and fairplay will have demanded that a compatriot of Igbo extraction ought to be the next President of Nigeria, but he was obviously critical of the way and manner Peter Obi and his supporters were going about the whole thing.
Soludo believes, for example, and he is right that no one can run a campaign on the basis of exclusivity and expect to win. Peter Obi mistakenly created the impression that only Christian voters mattered. And he allowed (or failed to tame) some of his handlers, like a former secretary to the government of the federation, who appeared countlessly on national television to castigate Islam and Muslims, as well as pastors in almost all churches making the whole thing an exclusive Christian affair.
At personal level, there were some of us from the North that wanted to show strong support for Obi and vigorously campaign for him. But even his running mate openly cried on national television that his father that died three decades ago was being abused by some fellow northerners who saw him as a betrayer to their cause.
Unfortunately, owing to this negative approach, very few people in the North were ready to listen to the fact that Peter Obi had a message that was aimed at liberating the whole nation and making it a just and egalitarian society. Obi also did very little to assuage the fears of these people, inadvertently creating the impression that they did not matter.
In these pages, on at least two occasions, I had reason to also re-echo what Governor Charles Soludo said about Obi’s presidential aspiration, including the fact that he was very clearly the best of all the 18 persons that vied for the presidency. It was a very risky thing to say, given the cult-like followership that the man was enjoying and still enjoys, and the torrents of abuse that always follows anyone even mildly critical of Peter Obi.
But in Nigeria, and indeed everywhere else, being the best is not enough reason to win an election. Otherwise Donald Trump will not have defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election of the United States.
In a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Nigeria, any candidate that plays the tribal card is only inviting disaster. President Buhari only won the presidential election eight years ago when he was repackaged as a pan-Nigerian nationalist, and not the religious bigot he was widely perceived to be. Whereas I do not personally see Obi as a religious or tribal bigot, his strategy of mobilizing Christians and making his aspiration all about Christianity was bound to hit the rocks.
Peter Obi will have been the President-elect if he had succeeded in convincing former Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to serve as his running mate. But Kwankwaso made it clear that that would have amounted to committing a political harakiri because Obi, by his actions and pronouncements, was being perceived in most parts of the North as anti-Islam and anti-North.
Peter Obi committed a big political blunder when he insisted that IPOB members are a peaceful lot. Any dispassionate Nigerian knows they are not. He also found a vacation in visiting one church and one pastor after another, to the exclusion of imams and mosques.
On the contrary, his main opponents, Atiku and Tinubu, were fraternizing with leaders of both faiths. Tinubu, in fact, was even accused of importing fake bishops to an event he held in Abuja. While the allegation may be true, the message lost was that the man was desperate to be seen as a pan-Nigerian who would be fair to Christians as much as Muslims.
Whereas this column is not in the least suggesting the presidential election of last week was free or fair, the reality is that there was no way Peter Obi in particular could have won the election even if it were the best in global history. The framers of the Constitution were careful to forestall the emergence of an ethnic bigot as President. And so it provided for a geographical spread to ensure not just one section of the country voted for a President.
Atiku Abubakar’s chances were better, and either he or Peter Obi would have been the next President if both of them had cemented their differences and forged a common front. But to be fair to Obi, his life would have been in serious danger if he had withdrawn his candidature for Atiku, in which case the blame for the inability of the duo to forge the needed unifed front could be rested on the doorsteps of Obi’s determined handlers. They, too, did not just stop Obi from pairing with Atiku, as he did in 2019. They had a feeling they were strong enough to get Obi to the presidency without the support of the larger voting bloc in the North. It was, with all due respect to these people, a clear case of naivety and political inexperience. Many of the Obi handlers were intellectuals at home and abroad. Sadly, intellectuals are often accused of being mostly better in theory, as against the much needed practicals.
And so, both Atiku and Obi trudged on, each believing he was going to win the election without the other. And whereas, as pointed out earlier, this is without prejudice to the possibility that both of them were rigged out in the election, the idiomatic expression: united we stand, divided we fall, most succinctly captures the reality of the cruel fate that befell the two of them in the election.
Collectively, they denied more than thirteen million Nigerians desperately craving for change to have it for the next four years.
Why do I talk about the next four years when there is the possibility of the court upturning the election result and giving the presidency to either Atiku or Peter Obi? sadly, the reality is that I no longer have any confidence in the Supreme Court being chaired by the incumbent Chief Justice of the Federation. The man had, against his oath of office, portrayed himself as partisan and incapable of dispensing justice without fear or favour. His statements about the G-5 group of some renegade governors stood condemned by all discerning Nigerians, and in saner climes, he will have resigned to save the integrity of the Supreme Court.
So as far as I am concerned, neither Atiku nor Obi is going to get justice at the Supreme Court superintended by the incumbent CJN. As far as I am concerned, they will be wasting precious time and resources to take this matter to the court. Of course it is within their right to do so, but my prediction is that it won’t take them anywhere. If this Supreme Court could grant victory to people who did not partake in an election, there is nothing it could not do to further drag its already battered image on the mud.
A very big mistake has been made. Lack of cooperation and sacrifice for the common goal has been the bane of politics in Africa from time immemorial. One man who captured it most succinctly is Kelvin Odanz, who wrote on Twitter that “to kick PDP out of government, the APC needed an alliance of ACN, CPC and nPDP. And they defeated PDP despite PDP’s rigging strategy.
Eight years later, the PDP wanted to get APC out of govt. And to do that, they divided themselves into NNPP, LP, G5 and PDP. The result is not surprising.
Tinubu won with just 8.7 million votes. Combine the votes between Atiku and Peter Obi alone and you’d get 13 million votes. Add Kwankwaso and you have 14.4 million votes.
There is no way on earth that APC would have been able to win if Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso were in one party.
And please stop telling us how APC rigged the election. If you thought this election would have been free, fair and without rigging then you’re just being naive.
PDP also rigged in 2015. But yet the people’s will prevailed because the margin of APC was too wide to catch up.
If this election was 14.4 million votes of opposition against 8.7 million votes of APC, there is no way APC could have bridged that gap with rigging. Just impossible.
So yeah, everyone knows the election was rigged. We expected it. But rigging is NOT the main factor here pls.
This election was already lost the moment the opposition divided themselves into different fringe parties.
The foolish opposition parties were conducting useless polls up and down. And in ALL the polls, Bola Tinubu was coming second. Virtually ALL.
In polls that favours Atiku as winner, Tinubu is second.
In polls that favours Obi as winner, Tinubu is second.
In polls that favoured Kwankwaso as winner, Tinubu is second.
So yeah, the signs were there all along that THIS will happen. But most of us turned a blind eye.
In summary, the opposition failed Nigerian masses through their selfishness, greed for power and ego.
Majority of Nigerians (14.4 million voters against 8.7 million voters) wanted a change. But they won’t have that change because the opposition made Tinubu’s victory easier.
So like I’ve said before, expect Tinubu to be your President for the next 4 to 8 years.
There’s nothing anyone can do about it at this point. You can call this gaslighting or any of the fancy trendy words here, I don’t care.
Let’s all live with our choice. Good luck to us all.
(To be concluded)