The Choice Atiku Must Make

Fred Izevbigie

The primary election to choose the candidate of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for the 2023 presidential election has come and gone, with an outcome that was very much predictable. While the dust has yet to settle regarding the drama that played out at the velodrome of the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja on the night of Saturday, June 28, 2022, including the surprises and disappointments, attention within and outside the party has shifted to the choice of vice presidential candidate in the election. 

With the certificate of return issued to Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president who emerged winner of the primary election to signal his formal recognition as the PDP residential flagbearer for 2023, the immediate task facing the candidate and, indeed, the party, is who to bring on board for the joint ticket that would deliver the presidency next year.  

Atiku is not a new comer on the Nigerian political scene. He has been around since 1992, the reason he is not a pushover. To say that he has a good understanding of the country’s political challenges and a fair idea of possible solutions is merely stating the obvious. In fact, it is taken as a given that he has what it takes to tackle the myriad of socio-political problems that include disunity and division along ethnic and religious lines which have plagued the country more in the last seven years than at any time in its history. 

But Nigeria’s problems are not only political; they are economic, as well. As a matter of fact, it is something of a national consensus that the problems are more economic than they are political. Solve the economic problems, and the political problems will be reduced to the barest minimum, if not totally eradicated. Revive the economy and get it on the path of sustained growth by making the private sector the driver of that growth; create jobs and reduce unemployment; raise the standard of living, and socio-political problems like insecurity, ethnicity, nepotism, unequitable distribution of the national wealth, lopsidedness in national appointment, spread of developmental projects and programmes would be mentioned in passing.

From 1999, the holder of the office of vice president has had responsibility for management of the country’s economy. It is in recognition of the sensitive nature of that responsibility and its direct bearing on the country’s very existence that it is taken off the shoulder of the president who already has a plethora of responsibilities and functions placed on his desk. In other words, the office of the vice president is almost as important as that of the president. This is more so when it is considered that not only must the vice president have a grasp of economic issues and a good understanding of how the private sector operates since that is going to be his forte, he must also be conversant with the workings of government, such that he would not be found wanting if and when called upon to run the country in an acting capacity.

The foregoing underscores the need for the PDP presidential candidate to be extra careful about his choice of running mate in the 2023 election. He will need the same level of circumspection he applied in making the decision to join the presidential race in choosing who shares the presidential ticket with him. For, whether or not he succeeds as Nigeria’s president at perhaps the most crucial period of its history (since the Civil War) would depend to a large extent on who his deputy is.

All socio-economic indices indicate that Nigeria is in its worst period of existence as a country since independence in 1960. A country that was the 40th richest in the world at the time of independence is today the poverty capital of the world, despite being the ninth biggest oil producing country in the world and sixth biggest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It is also a country that brims with almost all the natural resources that could be found anywhere on the planet, and with citizens that are good enough to occupy leadership positions in international organizations around the world.

Atiku needs a second-in-command with a solid finance and economic background who can play more than a ceremonially supervisory role to the actual managers of the economy; someone who can make meaningful inputs into the formulation of policies that would help in bringing about a complete turnaround of the country’s dire economy. Such a person must be someone with a rich pedigree of active participation in a key sector crucial to the economy.

The PDP presidential flagbearer must go into electioneering, when it commences, alongside a running mate who has demonstrated capacity for management of human and natural resources for the betterment of the lives of people. He needs a deputy who can support the vision for investment drive with a very amiable disposition required to change mindsets for the betterment of Nigerians. 

Indeed, the country and it citizenry seriously needs reorientation and a new mindset, if it must get out of the economic doldrums it has been especially in the last 7 years. The country needs a new set of leaders that would drive this change of narrative. The PDP torch bearer, who is a very matured and astute businessman and politician has achieved immense success over the years as a private sector player. For him, it would be “home working” with a deputy with a capacity to demonstrate capacity for immediate and far sighted economic planning to give vent to effort aimed at changing of an age-old narrative of consumption.

The running mate Atiku needs is not only someone with demonstrable knowledge of the economy; he must also be one with inside knowledge of the workings of government at the highest level of decision-making.

The PDP presidential candidate has a lot going for him. He has been Nigeria’s vice president for eight years. In terms of experience at the highest level of governance in the country, he has it. He effortlessly commands followership in virtually every part of the country. He needs an amiable, capable and supportive running mate to complete what should be a winning ticket if he makes the right choice.

It must be acknowledged, however, that though the party can make an input into his choice of running mate, the final decision lies with him. Despite speculations which looked at big names that were considered “worthy”, Olusegun Obanajo, then presidential candidate of PDP, surprised everyone, including the party hierarchy, by picking him- Atiku Abubakar as his running mate in 1999. He will now be expected to do the same, this time around, just as he did in 2019.

Izevbigie writes from Lagos