After the Coup that Failed

DIALOGUE WITH NIGERIA BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

The dominant theme of the All Progressive Congress, APC’s presidential primaries was the unravelling of buhari’s supremacy reinforced by the ease and speed with which it was accomplished. His imperial presidency could not have prepared us for the spectre of helplessness and disarray he projected at a most critical moment. Let us go back and take a second look at the calendar, leading, (in byzantine twist and turns) to the primaries in which Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was elected the APC presidential standard bearer.

On May 31st, Buhari assembled the APC governors and made a singular request
“In keeping with the established internal policies of the party and as we approach the convention in a few days, therefore, I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor, who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023”. Consistent with this solicitation, on June 6th “The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, announced the Senate president, Ahmed Lawan as the consensus candidate during the NWC meeting held on Monday at the National Secretariat of the party in Abuja. Adamu, it was gathered, informed  the NWC members that the choice of Lawan was reached in consultation with President Muhammadu Buhari”.

At the eventide of the same day Buhari disowned the solicitation he requested from the governors to be granted the sole discretion to choose the presidential candidate of the party.That something had gone criticality amiss was indicated in the somewhat disoriented, incoherent and tortuous language he conveyed the disclaimer. “You were elected as I was. Have a clear mind as I have. God gave us the chance; we have no reason to complain. We must be ready to take pain as we take the joy. Allow the delegates to decide.The party must participate; nobody will appoint anybody”.

Ordinarily, given his appalling record in office, he should not be in a position to have a veto power over who and who should not be his successor. Contrariwise, if has had a successful tour of office, he would have had considerable leverage and it would have been commensurately difficult for the governors to defy him. As recently recapitulated by a critical observer

“Buhari’s claim that he has caused improvements in the lives of Nigerians is rubbing salt on our injuries.There is absolutely no doubt that the condition he inherited is much better than what obtains today. Insecurity has worsened, the economy has collapsed. Corruption has also worsened. External debt stands at 41tln from 7tln in 2015. Over 80% of farms in the North are not being cultivated due to insecurity”. Vice president Yemi Osinbajo was no doubt speaking to an audience of one (and may have no impact on his prospects at the APC primaries anyway) but he terribly irked Nigerians with his foot in the mouth campaign pitch that he was going to continue with the buhari legacy.

Perhaps in the fullness of time the whole story of this episode will be known. Suffice to say that his defeat in the momentary supremacist struggle between him and the northern governors on the choice of the presidential candidate, Buhari has had his ego deflated. As the drama of the night unfolded, neither him nor his hatchet man (the party chairman) looked particularly cheerful. They looked pitifully forlorn and the body language conveyed was more a display of mourning and less a celebration of what was going on.. I have worked with presidents before and have studied quite a few. It is next to impossible to imagine a scenario in which a conspicuous proxy party chairman will have the audacity to announce a selected candidate without the buy in of his paymaster.

In the light of his unambiguous demand to be granted sole discretion to name his successor, I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve that the announcement of Ahmed Lawan as the consensus candidate was at the bidding of Buhari. Further indication was the President’s indifference to the list of five names subsequently given to him to vet by the northern governors.They did not give him a blank cheque and his liberty to act was circumscribed by the exclusively southerners list imposed on him comprising Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Governor Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti State), Rotimi Amaechi, former Minister of Transportation, and Governor Dave Umahi.

In like manner, there could be no reading of the Tinubu outburst in Abeòkúta other than throwing the gauntlet for a showdown with buhari in the conviction that he was no longer in contention for the presidential flag bearer of the APC. I know of no president, let alone the winner takes all buhari who is not interested in who succeeds him. Feigning indifference, (after shooting down his request for reciprocity), at the shortlist of the five aspirants presented to him is not a good omen for whoever emerges as the victorious candidate. It was apparent that he only became indifferent when his preferred choice, Lawan, did not make the shortlist.

If he is not enthusiastic, which he clearly is not, about Tinubu’s emergence, then he would by commission or omission play the spoiler role. Notionally if he had to choose between party and ethno-regional identity, between APC and fulani muslim parapò, there is little doubt on the option he would choose. And therein lies the recourse to the Atiku Abubakar option. In his own famous logic-why would he prefer those who gave him three per cent support to those who gave him ninety seven per cent. We have had the benefit of seven years to ascertain the authencity of this proclamation and let us not forget that vengefulness is a duty and obligation by presidents like Buhari.

On the other side of the ring is who the Yoruba call ajantala alias Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Ajántala is the spirit being who, despite being a clumsy physical weakling, keeps winning the relay race in near impossible situations. Most certainly, his victory at the APC primaries caught me flat footed. If he became the victor after he had written himself off and regardless of buhari’s disposition, why could he not go ahead to win the ultimate prize?

There has been a lot of speculations on his health status. And those who believe in the infinite capacity of the northern political elite for evil conspiracies have been whispering a replay of the Umar Yar’adua prototype as the ulterior motive of his northern backers. Nonetheless, the reality today is that Buhari has not had his way concerning Tinubu and met this watelooo at the behest of the northern governors collective.

This being the case and to put it in the idiom of one of his proteges, he may been effectively retired as the godfather of northern hegemony politics.
In a manner of speaking, the Buhari meltdown apes his ouster as military head of state in 1985. He wanted to deal a bad card to a military colleague who played a crucial role in the coup that brought him to office in 1984.The army caucus who cooked the soup to which he was invited to have the first taste  (led by General Ibrahim Babangida) remonstrated with him to reconsider his decision to no avail. Hence the recourse to asking him to step aside. As a general without an army he was taken out as one would swat off a nuisance fly. Often, Nigerian politics is synonymous with the management or mismanagement of Northern hegemony. It would have amounted to the height of the mismanagement of this custody were buhari to have had his wish for Lawan to become the APC presidential candidate.

In this understanding, his northern governors rebellious proteges, are by the same token deemed as demonstrating enlightened self interest in upholding the power rotation convention. As I have often asserted, northern hegemony per se is not the problem of Nigeria.The problem is its primitive abuse and misuse by leading political actors like Buhari. It was this potential abuse that the APC northern governors precluded by following through on the convention of presidential power rotation between the North and the South.

When intelligence sources reported that buhari had bought into the proposal for orchestrating the emergence of Lawan or the Jigawa state governor Badaru as the party presidential candidate I had argued ‘It used to be the case that a northern proxy from the south (as president) reinforced with a stranglehold on the national assembly is deemed sufficient guarantee for the subsistence of northern hegemony. But like Oliver Twist the managers keep coming for more until there is nothing left to give’. If the governors saved the day by seizing the initiative from the president, they are looking to stoke another mismanagement of northern hegemony with the contemplation of a Muslim Muslim presidential ticket, pairing Tinubu with a northern muslim running mate.

It is true that extremist religious intolerance in Nigeria has manifested in the last three decades than at any comparable period in Nigeria’s history. It has both national and international dimensions. According to professor Moses Ochonu “There is a problem of extremism in the north.The source of religious extremism in the North is partly doctrinal and partly socioeconomic.There are certain doctrines and ideologies that have made their way historically into northern Nigeria and have been left to fester and thrive.”  

Internationally, universal spike in religious identity politics is theoretically attributable to the ‘end of history’ thesis postulated by the American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama. He argued that the end of the ideological polarisation predicated cold war era in 1989 “marks the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Since nature abhors vacuum it was the ensuing vacuum created by the termination of this ideological polarisation that cultural wars especially the Christian /Islamic bifurcation came to fill. Hence the near universal intensification of militant and aggressive Islam.

To this general background, Nigeria cannot be an exception. It was still early days in the global evolution of this trend in 1993 when the Muslim Muslim presidential ticket of Moshood Abiola and Babagana Kingibe was widely acceptable to Nigerians. Contextually this precedence is nonetheless incomparable to the deliberate weaponisation of Islamic identity to win votes. In the interim, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Of the lot none is more toxic than the overlapping mixture of Boko Haram /ISWAP / a rogue Fulani militia crowned with the aggravation of buhari’s divisive politics.