Not Quite the Coronation

  Chidi Amuta

The aftermath of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential nomination convention is a landscape of political ruin. In the rubble lies the treasures and broken remnants of nearly everything both right and wrong with today’s politics in Nigeria. In the long hours of accreditation, patient waiting and painstaking balloting, we witnessed a growing culture of democratic forbearance among our people. The insistence on genuine balloting based on verifiable delegates list spoke volumes about the future of democracy among the common run of a vigilant public. 

There are the genuine disappointments of those who hoped and failed. There are of course the wreckages of many unsustainable ambitions and plain foolish gambles. But by far the more enduring outcomes of the convention are the lessons it has left on the ambiguities of democracy in our kind of time and place. Though limited to the ruling party, the ripples of the just concluded APC nomination convention touch us all in one way or the other.

First, the prime challenge remains that of democratic succession in our typically African ‘Big Man’ democracy, a system in which the idiosyncrasies of one man can alter the destinies of millions.

The immediate subject remains President Muhammadu Buhari himself. He was faced with a stark choice between the enlightened self interest of handpicking his successor and the more ennobling option of allowing the internal party democracy of the ruling APC produce a candidate to challenge that main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opponent. Buhari left that choice dangling in uncertain territory up to the dying minute. It remains unclear whether the uncertainty was the result of incompetence or deliberate strategy. The former conclusion is more tempting given his trademark record of serial tardiness on important matters. Moreover, deft political footwork has never been his bright spot. He is more of a power office occupant than Machiavelli’s practical disciple.

In the dying prelude to the convention, an apparently unfazed President Buhari found more excitement paying a state visit to Spain or jetting off to nearby Equatorial Guinea for an inconsequential summit and even a one day hop to an ECOWAS   meeting  in the neighborhood.

However, the president found time in between these distracting excursions to indicate his succession preference. He addressed governors and leaders of his party and literally begged them to allow him the courtesy of choosing his successor from among the APC’s terming motley of aspirants. That was a dangerous signal for democracy and a destabilizing stratagem for the ambitious aspirants to his privileged stool. Aspirants were torn between privately groveling for a presidential endorsement and the democratic imperative of facing the challenge of a competitive elective convention. No one is exactly sure of what Mr. Buhari really wanted. But the odds were evenly divided between hopefuls for his endorsement and the few who felt confident enough to purchase a big enough delegate constituency. There is increasing anecdotal evidence that Buhari may have dangled the carrot of endorsement before at least half a dozen aspirants.

For a president with such a miserable current job approval rating and now a lame duck with a hostile national constituency, the more expedient  option was perhaps a conscious undemocratic selection of a faithful ally as successor. Moreover, Buhari has in the past seven years presided over a lopsided administration which would ordinarily tilt his succession towards either a fellow northern hegemonist or a quisling southern worshipper. So, the logic tilted more towards selective endorsement. But control of the succession train drifted from his hands. The safety zone was to appear to have chosen a purely elective convention out of conscious preference for democratic correctness.

Yet, it is also true that this president, unlike Olusegun Obasanjo before him, would find it difficult to expend whatever political capital he has to elevate or advance anyone else’s cause other than his own. It was therefore only safe for him to don an appearance of democratic objectivity and commitment while privately wishing for a conservative regionalist successor. The current of national feeling dictated a southward direction in the APC’s succession politics after Buhari’s seven ruinous years.

The most ambiguous twist in the APC convention drama however remains the emergence of the bloc of northern governors as a political factor. On the face of it, their insistence on a southern presidential candidate looks like an open revolt against the president’s non committal stance on zoning or in fact his rumored preference for a northern Muslim candidate. No one but the president can explain why APC chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, could have unilaterally announced Ahmad Lawan as the anticipated consensus candidate in the heat of the pre convention jockeying.

To the rest of Nigerians, especially the significant southern Christian population, the position of the northern governors appears patriotic and nationalistic. But it may eventually end up as the contrary if Tinubu slips. Otherwise it remains for now a negotiating strategy which is perfectly legitimate in political gamesmanship.

Nonetheless, the favorable twist of the northern APC governors has obvious strategic advantages. First, it re-establishes the geopolitical equilibrium of bipolarity that has remained the basis of Nigeria’s precarious cultural and political unity. Secondly, it creates an atmosphere of apparent normalcy and amity in which the 2023 elections can painlessly take place. It also quickly blunts the sharp edges of a contest that would have been poisoned by religious and geo political bitterness and  hate. Thirdly, it prepares the ground for a future closing of ranks and reciprocity between northern and southern governors on matters as mundane as cattle grazing and the free movement of persons and economic factors.

For Buhari, the recourse to the democratic imperative of open election has yielded a friendly nightmare. Bola Ahmed Tinubu is no stranger to power games. He is neither a friend nor an outright foe. He is first and foremost a political customer whose time has come to reclaim his warehoused good.

In the immediate prelude to the convention, Tinubu was briefly rattled. His political intelligence machinery misread Buhari’s quest for a favourite successor and didn’t quite see Tinubu in the horizon. In fact, the offending intel was that the Oyegun screening committee had disqualified the former Lagos State Governor. Tinubu chose to bark and threaten to bite! In that brief moment of unguarded eruption in Abeokuta, he lashed out in every direction, showing his fangs to Buhari and his devotees. The message got home. 

The convention came and went the way it did. Tinubu’s original cash inundated playbook prevailed. He won fit and square. With the outcome of the convention, a few things are obvious.

Tinubu  may be the incidental political heir to an APC dynasty. He may be the prime beneficiary of Buhari’s belated choice of free elective primary. He may have finally harvested his support for Buhari in 2015. That in itself frees him from any sense of indebtedness to the Daura general if he wins the general election. He may be  Buhari’s fellow Muslim and prime political facilitator since the formation of the APC. But to the Aso Rock mafia and hegemonist cabal, Tinubu is perhaps the ultimate nemesis. He knows where they are coming from and how far down they can go. He goes to the same Mecca and Medina as they do.

Above all, among the key indices of power identified by the old English philosopher, Bertrand Russel, Bola Tinubu controls  the greatest number of all the levers of Nigerian power compared to his co-contestants. Check: Media and opinion. Traditional authority. Religion and belief on both sides. Means in the form of instant armada of raw cash!

On his own merit for the job of president, Tinubu still comes decked in positive precedents. Successful governance, urban renewal, diversity management, revenue digitization and transformation of Lagos is all the resume anyone needs to presage a successful presidency of Nigeria. The man may not be an epitome of all the knowledge that ruling Nigeria demands. But he has one thing going for him: he knows what he doesn’t know but knows how to find others who know how.

Above all, if Tinubu succeeds in becoming Buhari’s successor, the electorate will have succeeded in fulfilling a cardinal aim of democratic renewal: changing a bad leadership with a better one through the ballot box. Buhari is bad. Tinubu may not be excellent but he will end up a better overall leader of a nation in desperate trouble.

The emergence of Tinubu as APC flag bearer does not in anyway guarantee a direct entry into Aso Rock. His party is a baggage. The APC under Buhari has run Nigeria aground in the last seven years. He is running to succeed a president with the worst approval rating in recent Nigerian history. Reassuring Nigerians that the APC under Tinubu will do a better job is a tall order.

What Tinubu just eon is only a privileged fighting chance because the opposition has also chosen a candidate from the same bag as Tinubu. Atiku is as much a money man as Tinubu. He has a wide network of nearly everything Tinubu has. He is as Muslim as Tinubu and has a marginal home region demographic access advantage.

In a sense, the 2023 presidential contest promises to be a more animated circus than previous ones. Two contestants powered by humongous wealth; two contestants drawing inspiration from the same holy book; two contestants with nearly equal national reach. Two men considered tolerable by the national elite. Above all, two men who literally purchased the tickets to centre stage with immense private resources traceable to our commonwealth. The 2023 presidential election promises to be a fair fight between two tainted equals, none of whom will qualify as a candidate for messianism.

But the APC convention is not only about Tinubu’s ascendancy. It showcased other stars in the hierarchy of the ruling party. Mr. Rotimi Amaechi waged a spirited fight and in the process further defined himself as an upcoming political star. In this race, he came ahead of a sitting Vice President and incumbent Senate President to emerge in second position. This performance backed by his sterling performance as a minister places him in the forefront of the leadership hierarchy of his party and hopefully the nation. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was consistent in running easily the most civilized and enlightened presidential campaign in the nation’s history. He remained calm, brilliant and issue oriented.

Beneath the tolerable procedural outcome of the APC convention hides the contradictions of our democracy. Much has been said about the brazen corruption implicit in the monetization of our democratic processes. A system in which the social contract is reduced to a transaction with a monetary value among wealthy contestants and in which the citizens are but broken spectators deserves a second look. More curiously, the world cannot but shudder at the contradiction of a nation of mostly poor people in which a few fat cats each paid $200,000, roughly the equivalent of the real annual salary of the US president, just to buy a form to qualify to run in a presidential contest.

Now that most parties have their presidential candidates, let the travel king circus hit the road. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) timetable provides a long enough timeframe for a sustainable issue -oriented campaign season. Now, let the games begin.