By ’Tunji Ajibade
July 13, 2022
Since the time the presidential candidate of the APC, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced his running mate, I have followed some of the comments made in the public space with interest. Fantastic claims are made by some critics that made me ask: How dem wan do am? This was the same question I asked back in 2018 when some new faces came on the political scene and their followers asserted that they would win the presidency in 2019. When some aspirants came on the scene in 2022 to contest the APC presidential primary, I had asked the same question. In the end, and in five different pieces in The PUNCH newspaper, I explained how those APC presidential aspirants couldn’t have gone farther than they did. Here I focus on some of the claims being made by political parties, religious bodies, presidential aspirants against the backdrop of the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC.
Till tomorrow, I continue to be amused by some of the comments and even analyses that some make regarding the chances of cnadidates in 2023 in view of this latest development on the APC platform. Why? Some of the assertions don’t reflect our reality. Some claims are so absurd that I could only laugh out loud. What do people read; what do they observe – the political indicators or their emotions and sentiments? The other day, someone handed over to me the audio message of a political analysis purportedly made by a university professor. I was shocked, because this professor didn’t even get his facts straight as to the tribes and place of some of the political actors he referred to. He referred to Kashim Shetima, Tinubu’s running mate, as Fulani, which he is not. He wrote about the north and he hardly got anything right about the north he was writing about.
I took note that this professor wrote in support of a presidential candidate from the south who is in one of opposition political parties, so it was obvious why he got everything upside down. Yet these are the kind of materials that get some excited and emotionally high. After I listened to this audio, in order not to be discourteous to the person who gave it to me, I said to someone else that if that kind of commentary by a so-called professor would be what I would follow regarding what transpired in our political space, then my lecturers in Political Science – from B.Sc to Ph.D – didn’t teach me well. But they did, so as a journalist I bring my training to bear on how I observe political phenomena, read and comment on them in our polity. What I was taught is to focus on empirical evidences as available in a political system, analyse them, analyse available data, and from here begin to look for patterns that help in making hypotheses. One could make predictive statement regarding what might happen next as well.
This was what I followed in 2018 when I said all the colourful characters who showed interest in the presidency would soon fizzle out. They did. In 2022, I said in private conversations that all the permutations being made regarding some tribes and the political aspirants from them would fizzle out. They did. Now, I state that some of the claims being made by a few entities regarding the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket wouldn’t count in 2023 because the political realities just don’t indicate such.
Opposition political parties have been coming forward to make claims that they have Muslim-Christian or Christian-Muslim presidential ticket and as such they deserve to be elected. It is noteworthy that only very few of them have been in existence for more than a couple of years so the strength of their national spread and presence is doubtful. Most of them do not even boast of a single Ward Councillor in a local government council let alone a member of a State House of Assembly. These are political parties that should concentrate on building themselves from the grassroots upward. Instead, they have this pattern of remembering they are political parties during each national election circle. Members gather in a hotel hall and elect a presidential candidate without any grassroots base across the country to sit on. Has this ever worked in Nigeria in producing a president? 2023 will prove the point once again that these are not serious political parties and they are simply using their criticisms of the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket to be heard and be relevant.
Moreover, some of the more colourful of these opposition parties were formed a few months ago. The same challenge is what they face like the other opposition parties. Their structure is young, never as solid as the main political parties they seek to challenge. Their usefulness may be in the future when they form new alliances, but definitely not in 2023 when they will be able to pilfer votes here and there, and nothing more.
There are the religious entities as well who have been making fantastic claims regarding APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. They had started out earlier threatening fire and more fire if the APC adopted a Muslim-Muslim ticket. I still wonder where these bodies get the boldness to make the kind of declarations they make. Their members are across all political parties. These members will stick with their parties for all manner of reasons. Yet we hear these religious bodies talk as though all members of their religions share their view. They don’t, and we see it in how APC governors, Christians and Muslims, say they will support their parties no matter the tickets they fly. Now that the bluff of these religious entities has been called, they say it is left for Nigerians to decide in 2023, a kind of come-down from the fire and more fire that they had been threatening.
I still ask if there religious entities base their comments on any survey at all. If they do they will realise that their members do not agree with them. The vociferous few may say they do, but the silent majority doesn’t bother; they just vote whichever party they feel good about irrespective of the religious colour of the ticket. The Yoruba of the south-west, irrespective of their religions, do this best. Yet, religious bodies make fantastic claims about how they will call their members out to vote against a Muslim-Muslim ticket. This situation speaks to lack of any systematic assessment or observation of what obtains in our polity. People and groups simply make loud and unsubstantiated claims about what is possible. They aren’t always right. In fact, they were proved wrong on several occasions in the past. Yet they continue to make the same mistake.
In 2014, this was how some religious bodies went about saying a presidential candidate would Islamize Nigeria. Nigerians voted for the candidate, ignoring the religious entities that sowed disunity among them. This time again, these religious bodies are back making all manner of claims. I suppose 2023 will show them what Nigerians think. The challenge for these religious bodies is that they do not come to terms with the reality that the more they issue threats and the threats are bluffed, they lose their relevance in speaking on national issues. This should make them cautious, but it doesn’t.
These religious bodies and some of their preachers are even overdoing it. One preacher was saying the other day that members who vote against the wishes of the particular faith is voting against the will of the God they serve. In fact, he presented it as though getting to paradise by any member depended on the party the member votes for. So, I ask, is this what the Book that these preachers carry say? Those who listened to this particular preacher shouted their agreement. That is what happens when people let religious fervor becloud their sense of judgment regarding civic duties. But these religious bodies and their preachers are doing harm to our nation. They sow disunity. In their messages, where is the sense of “vote the candidate you prefer.” I fervently hope that in 2023, Nigerians will once again show these religious bodies that they the citizens determine who governs them, and not some religious entities.
Then there are the political aspirants and some party members too who have been jumping over one another to condemn the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket. These aspirants can condemn as much as they want, but are they viable alternatives? Some of them are in political parties that most Nigerians are not even aware of. So how do they want to win in 2023? There are party members as well who say they resign from their party over the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket. Some media outlets made a feast out of this. A look at the people resigning though show two things. One, they are generally from states where APC is not in control. Two, some of the persons involved are completely irrelevant in both state and national politics and they cannot even influence any voter either for or against the APC. It needs to be mentioned though that such people are doing their political career some harm. Whichever party they join, some day the view shall be expressed in relevant circles that they are not only tribe-focused, but religion-driven as well; as such, they are less reliable as bridge builders. What these people do by claiming to resign doesn’t project them as party men and women, and they may find that this counts against them one day.
In the face of the recent development, APC governors have been saying the best political choice is what their presidential candidate, Ashiwaju Tinubu, has made. They say they are putting their best foot forward with the kind of running mate selected. They say they will work for the success of their party. That’s what real party men and women do. More than that, one wonders what some political parties are looking at when they say they want Nigerians to vote against the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket. Are they looking at the indicators, the figures, the voting pattern? I don’t think they do. The reality is that south-west will vote for the APC ticket because it’s their son who holds the presidential ticket. States in the north-east will supply huge numbers of votes because the vice-presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, is from Borno. For instance, Borno State alone supplied the highest number of votes – over 800,000 – in that region in 2019. APC also controls three out of the six states in this region where the PDP presidential candidate comes from.
More than that, with the presidential and vice-presidential candidate not coming from the north-west, the indications are that the north-west will probably be the single biggest beneficiary in an APC government post-2023. Why? The north-west delivers a high number of votes so the next president will have to compensate them with many appointments within the cabinet and outside the cabinet. This makes the north-west a major stakeholder in the success of the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket ticket, and their political leaders are keenly aware of this.
In the south-east, APC has the grudge that Ndigbo have against the presidential candidate of the main opposition party going for it as well. Add that to the fact that the political structure of the opposition party is still not in its full strength across the nation, considering that it has not been in power at the centre for more than seven years, and it was almost decimated by internal wrangling at one stage.
More than this, the APC has the wherewithal of power to make voters stick with it in 2023. For instance, the opposition party recently alleged that the ruling party rolled out 6.5 trillion naira meant for social investment programmes as a means of securing its hold on power. It is a charge the APC has denied. But every political party does these things if it has the opportunity. It’s all part of politics. In the face of the foregoing, how the opposition political parties, religious entities, and party candidates intend to exchange punches with the APC in the presidential election and hope to win in spite of its Muslim-Muslim ticket remains to be seen.
tunjioa@yahoo.com
