THE DILEMMA OF TINUBU AND ATIKU

All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party presidential flagbearers’ choice of running mate is crucial for their success at the poll, writes Bolaji Adebiyi 

At the close of primaries last Friday, the task of choosing running mates confronted presidential flagbearers of the 18 political parties that are competing for Nigeria’s prime job. The most discussed though are the ruling All Progressives Congress, which has Bola Ahmed Tinubu, its national leader and a former governor of Lagos State, as its standard-bearer, and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party with Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president of the federation, holding its flag. 

Both parties stand out because of their size and experience in the game. Formed in 1978, the PDP has a presence in all the units of the 774 local councils in the country, produced three presidents and conducted seven presidential nominations. The APC, though the ruling party, is the younger of the two with a two-term president and three presidential nominations in its roughly nine years of existence. 

The two parties and their candidates, therefore, understand the rudiments and importance of managing the process of nominating a running mate. Only that this time around the determination of a choice is a little bit complex. Unlike in the past when the running mate needed no name recognition or electoral value, now both leading candidates will have to fly with nominees that can rally votes in their respective regions. 

With the widespread sentiments in the South for a southern presidency after eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari, the PDP’s northern candidate will have to choose a deputy that can whittle down the impact of the APC’s southern candidate. And with the propensity of Nigerians for ethnic proximity, Tinubu needs a northern deputy that would reduce the ethnoreligious advantage of Atiku in the North. 

For Atiku, the matter is less complex. Being a Muslim from the North, he has no difficulty in balancing the regional cum religion equation by nominating a Christian from the South. The challenge, however, is that he needs a politician with weight who would help him to douse the southern presidency sentiments that may sway votes in the direction of Tinubu. With the APC candidate coming from the South-west, his options are limited to the South-east and the South-south. 

So, he needs to consider the electoral viability of each of the two zones, and then the capacity of the nominee to deliver the regional votes. Going by the low voter registration and turnout in the South-east, Atiku’s best bet would be the South-south with its high voter register and perennial massive turnout. He would, therefore, need to think of a politician who can help him to deliver the potential votes in the South-south while shopping for a fair share of the South-east votes that would be cannibalised by the Labour Party’s Peter Obi. Who is that nominee that would do that for him? Fingers are still crossed. 

Tinubu’s options are much more complex. Being a Muslim from the South, he needs a northern Christian to balance the religious equation. His challenge is that there are very few such persons with the political clout to help him shrink Atiku’s ethnic and religious advantage in the region. Besides, the low Christian population is also a challenge. This has forced the thinking that he would most probably need to run an all-Muslim ticket. 

With the Christian Association of Nigeria already raising dust over such a possibility, Tinubu would have to weigh the risk of a likely backlash from Christians from both regions. To do that, he would have to do some cold demographic analysis that would reveal to him the potential voting strength of the Christians. Would he take the risk? Yes, he could. 

There is a precedent. In 1993, the Social Democratic Party’s all-Muslim ticket of Moshood Abiola and Babagana Kingibe trounced the National Republican Convention’s Bashir Tofa and Sylvester Ugo Muslim-Christian combination. But it must be noted that the SDP personalities involved were much stronger and had more national appeal than the emerging ones. At that time too, Nigeria was not as sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines as today. 

But for Tinubu to effectively respond to a possible dilution of his southern base by Atiku’s nomination of a South-south running mate, he would have to focus on the massive votes from the largely Muslim-dominated North-west. He would, therefore, need a strong Muslim politician with the name recognition and capacity to sway the voters his way. His strategy would have to be to lock down the South-west and North-west votes and foray for palliatives in the North-central and South-east. 

He may get away with this gambit if he is able to pacify his South-west Christians while neutralising the northern Christians’ anger in the North-central states of Plateau and Benue States with the Muslim votes from Kogi, Kwara, Niger and Nasarawa States. This tactical approach would become more viable if Buhari and the 15 APC governors in the North campaign actively and vigorously for him.  

This support would, however, depend on how the nomination of his running mate is managed. If his deputy emerges through a popular consensus of the dominant organs of the party, there is the likelihood that everyone would have a stake and might be interested in delivering his candidacy. Tinubu appears to have realised this. THISDAY reported yesterday that he had submitted a tentative name to beat the Independent National Electoral Commission’s deadline today.  

The same goes for Atiku. The support he gets from the South would depend on how his deputy emerges as well as the commitment of the governors of the party in the region. Appearing to have learnt from his 2019 mistake when he unilaterally nominated Obi, media reports said yesterday that the process had been submitted to the PDP hierarchy, which set up a committee headed by Tom Ikimi, the flamboyant former minister of Foreign Affairs, to vet a short list of nominees, all from the South-south.  

For now, both candidates are still engaged in cold political calculations and consultations with the powers-that-be of their parties. The outcomes promise to be interesting and point to the possibilities for 2023. 

Adebiyi, the managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdaylive.com